Originally published by Dime Show Review (now defunct) in early 2017, my whimsical and wistful story "Italian Hand Gestures" has been reprinted now by Doubleback Review (Issue 7:2 - October 2025).
The story is (first) about a self-conscious stutterer's discovery of the liberating world of hand gestures to express everything he couldn't convey otherwise.
"He especially liked the gesture where the hand moved level over the top of the head, meaning drily, 'go jump in a lake.' He learned to tilt his hand slightly to specify which lake he had in mind—the lazy length of Lake Como, smoky and blue with late summer bonfires burning tendrils of old grape vine; the gusty German holiday-making shores of Lake Garda with garish bursts of sails; the chilly mirror of a snow-fed lake in the Alps down from the St. Bernard Pass, where the great dogs are raised and archaeologists scour the bedrock for traces of a Roman temple to Jupiter.
Within just a few weeks, freed as he was from the impediments and hesitations of regular speech, Sam got into the more difficult signs. The one that cries out with daring insouciance 'bring me some octopus!' The one that asks 'is the blue of your eyes what the Renaissance artists made from lapis lazuli and called azzuro oltramarino?' And that gentle flutter of the left-hand fingers against the palm of the other, half-reaching hand, that recalls in a quiet singsong how the sun brushed the pink-throated yellow roses on the morning of your great-grandparents' wedding day before the vows, I, Albert, take you, Nora."
Image: Photo by Nahid Hatami on Unsplash
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