The Bridge - Монгол Орчуулгатай Англи Өгүүллэг (A2-B1)
- Professor Octo
- May 1
- 8 min read
Chapter One - Florence
Zolboo’s plane landed in Florence, Italy, on a warm April morning. He was twenty-eight years old. He was tall, still wearing the thick winter coat he had been wearing in Ulaanbaatar. The air smelled like coffee, wet stone, and early spring flowers. When he reached the city center, he had to take off his coat as it was too hot. Scooters were buzzing past him like busy bees. The old European buildings made him feel like he was in a movie.
He had come on a six-month student visa to learn stone carving. He also planned to earn some money for his family. They were sheepherders in a rural province, and the cold blizzard had wiped off half of their herd. His old mother needed medicine for her heart. He had three younger sisters, two of which stayed in the countryside with their mother. Their father had passed away when Zolboo was nineteen. He has been the head of the household since then. On the long flight, he’s been thinking about the promise he made to his mother.
Finding his address was not easy. He didn’t speak much Italian except for the few sentences he had learned since getting his visa. He showed the address to a friendly man on the street. “Keep going in that direction until you see the piazza, then turn left!” the man said in Italian, smiling at the lost foreigner. Zolboo only understood the word piazza, which means a public square. He started walking in that direction.
He finally found the address after walking all day. Zolboo’s room was in a shared flat with two other students. Each morning, he crossed the Arno River to master Valenti’s marble workshop. Signor Valenti was short, with gray hair, and spoke with a lot of hand gestures. “Stone is like wine but slower,” he told his new apprentice. “it needs time and respect.”
Zolboo didn’t understand much of Master Valenti’s words, but he observed carefully. He practiced on cracked offcuts after hours. Growing up in the countryside, his hands were strong from cutting wood and carrying water. He learned to use the tools quickly. He enjoyed working with his hands to carve stones. His father was a carpenter and a wood carver. He had learned how to sculpt from his father, but stones were a different matter.
The language barrier weighed on him like a heavy backpack. He knew just enough Italian to order food and ask simple questions but not enough to understand signor Valenti. He had many questions on his mind, but he couldn’t ask them because of his language limit. In the evenings, he copied verbs and phrases into a notebook and repeated them while cooking dinner.
One late afternoon, dark clouds rolled over the red roofs. Near the ancient Ponte Vecchio, an elderly street artist was packing her canvases, but the wooden paint box was too heavy. Tourists hurried toward cafés to escape the rain.
Zolboo rushed to help. “Mi scusi, signora. May I help?” said Zolboo as he lifted the box, covered it with his coat, and carried the box a few blocks to the old lady’s studio. The rain started pouring heavily.
The old, kind-looking woman was very grateful. “Grazie, young man. You saved my paintings.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a tiny painting of the bridge, and put it on his hand. “A gift for a kind stranger.”
A young woman came running in. Her hair was soaked from the rain. She had light brown eyes and dark curly hair. “Nonna, are you okay?” she asked in Italian. The old woman laughed. “Yes, thanks to this young man. Sofia, meet our hero.”
Sofia turned to Zolboo and switched to English. “Thank you so much for helping my Nonna. She loves to paint, even when the sky is crying.” Sofia said with a thick Italian accent, smiling warmly with her beautiful eyes.
“Happy to help,” Zolboo replied in Italian, feeling a bit shy. His English was decent enough to communicate, but he was determined to practice Italian.
Two days later, while Zolboo was sanding a marble lion, a familiar voice behind him said, “Nice lion. He looks ready to roar.” He turned and saw Sofia holding a small box. She had come to bring a thank-you gift: homemade biscotti and an invitation to Sunday lunch.
At lunch, in a cozy apartment, Zolboo met the Rossi family, Sofia and her Nonna. The table was full of pasta, olives, bread, and stories. He learned that Sofia was studying art restoration at the university. She was surprised to find out that Zolboo was from Mongolia. She told him that she loved Mongolian calligraphy and showed him a notebook full of alphabets from different countries. Her Nonna used to tell her stories of Marco Polo’s adventures when she was a child, and she always wanted to visit Mongolia. They could barely communicate, mixing English and Italian. Sofia found Zolboo very funny. Before he left, Nonna Bianca winked. “A good bridge needs two strong arches,” she said. Sofia blushed; so did Zolboo.
