This story is about me, my life, and the time - more than ten years ago – when I met Sisto Malaspina.
I am not his dear friend and my presence in his life was likely brief and marginal. However, he left a permanent mark on my own life.
Before I continue, I wish to apologise to those who truly loved Sisto, because their pain does not belong to me. I cannot understand it and this story will not contribute in any way in making their future easier.
I will leave it to others, those who lived their lives by his side, to tell his story and remember the man that Sisto Malaspina was. I will be their respectful listener and reader.
This story of mine begins in mid-2004 when I left my native Italy and found myself in Melbourne for a short study-holiday. While I was staying with family friends, I met what would become my first true Australian friend, Frank.
Born in Melbourne to Italian parents, Frank and I had in common a passion for rock music so he invited me out to show me his Melbourne, St Kilda and its iconic live music venues, The Espy and The Prince of Wales. But first of all, Frank took me to a coffee shop that he had always loved - Pellegrini's.
Like many recently-arrived Italians in Melbourne, on my first night out with local friends I ended up at Pellegrini's. That very evening I met Sisto who was there, standing behind the counter.
Frank knew Sisto and his family well, not only because he had been going to Pellegrini's for all his life, but also because his father, a food supplier in Melbourne, had Sisto's family among his clients.
I fell in love with Pellegrini's and the kind and charismatic man who moved up and down behind the counter. I often went back during the three months that I was studying English at a school a few blocks from Sisto's bar. Eventually though my first beautiful Australian adventure ended.
I returned to Europe for a year and in the meantime, I managed to secure an offer for further study from the University of Melbourne. So, in June 2005, I said goodbye to my mother and went back to Australia.
When I arrived in Melbourne again, I moved into a chaotic sharehouse full of international students and I immediately started looking for a job in hospitality, handing my CVs to every Italian bar and restaurant in the city centre. The first place I went was Pellegrini's.
Sisto was there and he listened to me explaining my situation. Unfortunately, he kindly told me, there was no possibility of employment in his bar. Pellegrini's already had a strong team comprised of competent and experienced staff.
While he was saying this, a coffee that I had not ordered appeared in front of me. He said that he would ask around and started naming bars and restaurants in the area that he thought would be good workplaces. When I was about to leave, I tried to pay for that coffee and he told me words that I repeated - paraphrasing them - many times over the years.
He told me that coffee at Pellegrini's was free for me until the day I found a job. And not just coffee. He told me to come back for lunch the next day and, if still unemployed, the day after so I could take a break and regroup during my search for a job.
I do not remember exactly what I said to his generosity. I certainly thanked him. Perhaps I tried to insist that I was able to pay. In my memory his words are much clearer than mine.
He told me that once I had found a job I could start paying for my coffees and food, not before. He told me that this is the way it is done in Melbourne, when a new person arrives from far away. He would not say it, but I got a sense that someone had told him those same words, many years before.
The following day I continued to run around the CBD, disoriented and discouraged by the lack of success in my search for a job. And I eventually did go to get that coffee at Pellegrini's. I wanted to feel welcome in a familiar place and by friendly adult figure, the only adult I knew in the centre of Melbourne.
I found a job two days later, in an Italian café on Swanston Street which no longer exists. One of the cafes that Sisto had suggested. I immediately went to Pellegrini's to announce my "success", and pay the first coffee of my new Australian season.
I visited Sisto dozens of times in the following years. As with all his regular clients, he was interested in my story. So many times I went back with my friend Frank, after the footy.
One evening I went there with a girl whom I thought I might be in love with. I liked the idea of being recognised by one of the owners of such an iconic and romantic place. It made me feel like the character of a Martin Scorsese film.
Four years of my life passed. From being a student and a barista, I became a journalist, and returned once more to Italy.
Five years later I found myself on my way back to Australia once again, this time to settle in Sydney, sent by my new employers. Once again, I was only meant to stay one year. That was 2012. I'm still here. Now Sydney is my home, and Australia is my country.
I went back to Melbourne a few times, but never in the last couple of years. When I was there I also went back to Pellegrini's with my old friend Frank.
I'm not a dear friend of Sisto's, it's true, and I cannot speak of pain while the people who so deeply loved him have lost him.
To me, Sisto Malaspina is like one of those school professors who leave their mark on the lives of generations of students. Teachers that cannot certainly remember all the names and faces of that multitude of students. Students that, on the other hand, will always remember them for they were given values and beauty that are to be with them for the rest of their lives.
Values and beauty. For years I have told the story of Sisto and of those coffees that I was not allowed to pay for.
I try to follow Sisto's example when I meet someone who has just arrived in Australia, and I always explain why I'm doing it by telling that same story, the story of Sisto and of those coffees.
It's a story that feels a lot like Melbourne. A story that feels like home. A new home on the other side of the world.
