At the Pensione Pedrotti, there was one unbending rule.
By Noah Isenberg
In the spring of 1988, while spending my junior year in Munich, I jumped at the opportunity to abandon the rigid, crusty Bavarian capital for a respite of sorts: a two-month stretch in Milan, Italy. The German university system offered a nine-week break between semesters, so this was my chance to get a taste of Italian living. It was, after all, a favored destination and time-honored tradition among Germans dating back to Goethe.
Unlike Goethe’s journey to Italy, however, mine was less of a Bildungsreise than an escape hatch, a desperate search for the hedonistic pleasures of Southern Europe (even if this was one of Italy’s northernmost cities). The truth of the matter—still vaguely embarrassing some four decades later—is that I was moving to Milan to work as a fashion model, for an agency with the oddly apt name Why Not. It was run by a slender, impeccably dressed, mustachioed Milanese named Giuseppe, who had big, wandering eyes and a pronounced tendency to raise his eyebrows and lower his spectacles, almost like Humphrey Bogart play-acting in The Big Sleep.
A couple years earlier, during my freshman year at Penn, I’d been stopped on Locust Walk by a couple of enterprising Wharton seniors, two girls from Long Island, who asked if I’d be willing to appear in the Men of Penn calendar. My ego got the best of me, and I promptly agreed, no questions asked. That fashion shoot, which had me dressed like a member of an ’80s haircut band (think Spandau Ballet), led to additional print and runway work in Philadelphia, Stockholm, and New York City the following years. It was easy money, albeit more of a side hustle than a full-time job. And it was my ticket to Milan.
The journey from Munich proved more eventful than anticipated. Aboard the night train, I made something of a rookie mistake—thanks to my 20-year-old boy brain—and left my traveler’s checks, along with my ticket, inside my passport; in the foggy haze of predawn inspection, the Italian conductor gladly took the unsigned checks as an American-style gratuity for his otherwise underappreciated services. Undeterred, I disembarked in the Italian city, promptly cleared things up at the American Express travel office, and marched my way to a cheap pensione, just off Via Dante not far from the Duomo metro station, that allowed bookings by the month.
The pensione was owned by an elderly couple, Signore e Signora Pedrotti, who at the time struck me as an Italian version of Archie and Edith Bunker. Grumpy to the core, with a shock of thick white hair and perpetually untucked shirt, Signore Pedrotti would patrol the hallways as the padron of the pensione, spouting occasional racist cracks and making the floorboards shake with his lumbering gait. His wife of half a century, Signora Pedrotti had a style entirely her own: platinum-blonde hairdo, more Mae West than Veronica Lake, thick layers of rouge and bronzer on her cheeks, fire-engine-red lipstick which invariably found its way onto her teeth, and a fluffy white angora sweater with a large black brassiere underneath, accompanied by a long black skirt. Neither Pedrotti spoke English, but the Signora would affectionately address me as “Meester Noah”—or just as often, owing to the stacks of books strewn about my room, as “Il Professore.”
When I rented the room at Pensione Pedrotti, I took one that had two twin beds, covered with dark, threadbare linens that looked as if they’d been there for generations. A pair of communal toilets and showers, both barely serviceable, were in the hallway. I’d agreed to share the space with one of my classmates in the Munich program, a Georgetown foreign-affairs student from Tennessee named Erik, who’d gone off on a cycling trip with the plan to meet in Milan afterward. He figured he’d try his hand in the fashion trade and see if there was easy money to be made. After all, I’d wangled my way in; how hard could it be?
One afternoon, while reading in bed—this was the start of a protracted Kafka phase, if I recall correctly—and drinking cups of sugary Nescafe that I’d make with the old water kettle kept in my room, I heard Signore Pedrotti answer the intercom (“Pronto!!”). On the other end I could make out my roommate’s voice, that vague Southern twang, increasingly agitated as the conversation unfolded. “I have a room with my friend Noah, which I’ve paid for,” I heard Erik say, politely enough, speaking into the intercom with the slow, careful intonation of an American traveling in Europe. “Non c’é una camera libera,” Signore Pedrotti quickly retorted, claiming no vacancy with an almost devilish sense of pride. This went back and forth, with me eavesdropping from the room, until I suddenly heard the only two English words ever uttered from Signore Pedrotti’s mouth: “No deal!”—repeated for emphasis. To which the normally demure, genteel Southerner responded in kind: “Fuck you, mister, I have a room!”
I finally cleared up the misunderstanding, explaining to Signore Pedrotti that Erik had paid a full month’s rent and thus deserved to join the ranks of the pensione dwellers. My Italian was nowhere near as fluent as my German, but I’d spent the previous summer in New York City working as a waiter at Ciao Bella, a trattoria on the Upper East Side, the only non-Italian on staff. It was run by two brothers, Alberto and Rocco, who relied on a small army of young Italian men on tourist visas to work at their cash-only establishment. With the look and swagger of Marcello Mastroianni, bedroom eyes and all, Rocco was terrifically popular among the local divorcees, known to disappear during lunch shifts for a little love in the afternoon. His less handsome brother Alberto, an inveterate prankster, wore dark black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, even during the dinner shift, and was known to stick out his leg to try to trip the coffee boy delivering a tray of espresso, cappuccino, and other scalding beverages.
It was solid training for my journey to Milan, where I managed to hit my stride around a month into the stay. By that point, things were generally looking up for me: I did a full-page spread for Mondo Uomo magazine, dressed in a Moschino cashmere overcoat and dark glasses, doing my best to channel the spirit of Federico Fellini; I was indulging with reckless abandon in the promiscuous nightlife (the agencies handed out free nightclub passes, as a kind of fringe benefit, to models); and, perhaps most important, I was on good terms with the Pedrottis, who would occasionally invite me into their parlor for coffee and biscotti.
All of this changed, however, when I got a little too complacent, even cocky, and showed the same adolescent judgment I’d shown on that night train from Munich. The Pedrottis had a few ironclad rules at the pensione, one of which was that no outside guests were allowed in the rooms. But an old friend of mine from San Diego, Scott, was doing a short Eurail tour and would soon be passing through Milan. Of course, I told myself, I’d love to see him—and of course he could crash on the floor of my room at the pensione. The plan seemed foolproof. We’d spend the night out carousing at the local clubs, courtesy of free passes from Why Not, and in the predawn hours we’d sneak into the pensione and get some sleep. No problem.
What had started out as a brilliant idea—we enjoyed many sweaty hours on the dancefloor, accompanied by two very tall models from Sweden, both named Linda—quickly soured once we were crammed into the room at the pensione. We managed to toss enough blankets and pillows on the floor for Scott to sleep off the endless stream of free booze to which we had been treated, but we hadn’t really thought through the bathroom issue. It was a rainy night and just when the morning light was seeping into the room, Scott realized, rather urgently, he had to pee. Given that it was still raining, and that my underdeveloped brain clearly hadn’t evolved any in Milan, naturally I suggested that Scott just pee out the window.
As he perched on the windowsill, the rain providing good cover, it initially looked as though our harebrained scheme had worked. But while still kneeling, midstream, Scott turned to me and said, “Noah, there’s a woman on the balcony hanging laundry. She’s in a white angora sweater, a big black brassiere, and she’s not happy.” Within seconds, there was banging on the door, “Meester Noah! C’é un ragazzo nella sua camera. Lui ha fatto un peepee della finestra!” (Only in Italian could urinating from the windowsill sound so beautiful.) Not knowing what to say, I initially panicked and figured I might as well try gaslighting: “Non, non c’é un ragazzo nella mia camera.” My goose was cooked. It didn’t help much that Signora Pedrotti, at this point, could see Scott zipping his fly and scrambling in the darkened room to scoop up his belongings, knowing he’d soon be tossed out on the street.
From this ignominious moment onward, no more coffee and biscotti, no more “Il Professore” sobriquet. Instead, I was given notice that I’d have to vacate the premises within 72 hours. Thankfully, it happened to line up with the end of my semester break. I’d have to return to Munich to resume my studies regardless, and I was a couple inches too short for the runway season in Milan anyway. Admittedly, it was a sorry way to bid farewell to Milan, and to Pensione Pedrotti, a genuine source of shame, but I can’t let go of the story or the memory—lipstick, angora, and all.
Noah Isenberg C’89 is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie [“Everybody Comes to Casablanca,” Nov|Dec 2017].
