Italian Neighbors

by Tim Parks

  Because the whole pole has been thickly greased with soap.

  There are about fifteen contestants and they go again and again in turns, slipping and slithering clownishly on the soap. If you refuse to go when it’s your turn, you’re out. And since the water rises right here from under the hills, it is not exactly warm. An older man, in his sixties perhaps, is shivering violently as he lifts his stomach on to the bank. A muscly exhibitionist clutches his crotch. There’s a clammy weed in his hair. At each attempt, each contestant dissolves a little more of the soap, and then for four turns each is allowed to carry a handful of sand which he spreads in front of his feet. Thus some kind of progress is made, pushing further and further towards the flag, amidst the screams of girlfriends and mothers, and the chuckling of those men wise enough to appreciate that this is definitely a spectator sport.

  It’s interesting (and rather a shame) that no girls are competing.

  At the end of the day (and we stay two hours and more), since it would be impossible to provide the winner with the real cockaigne of palazzina and family business beside, the prize, finally awarded to the lad who delivers bread from one of the village’s bakeries, is 150,000 Lire’s worth of petrol from our local petrol pump. As a vision of plenty, it says much perhaps. Though this archaic festival is obviously timed to coincide with the harvest.

  11

  Bepi

  ORIETTA VISENTINI SAYS that in twenty odd years she has never really been accepted in Montecchio. For she was born in Peschiera, on the southern shores of Lake Garda, forty kilometres away. People’s friends here are their childhood friends, their family. Orietta sighs. They don’t even know how to make friends, because they have never had to do so, and anyway, they can’t imagine anybody being without their own circle.

  What hope for me then?

  Very little. I step off the bus outside the derelict bottle factory and walk down Via Colombare. I nod to people: to the grappa-scented car mechanic in his overalls whose work overflows on to the narrow street; to ancient be-capped Giobatta, the hunter and fisher, but working on his vines today along a sagging fence; I nod again to the slightly mongoloid-looking woman in black who puts her father out on a chair by the doorstep in the morning, squashes his straw hat on his head, and brings him in in the evening (surprisingly their dingy house, which opens directly on to the street, has an expensive aquarium in the window of a bare room with large table, wooden chairs, stone floor and nothing else). I salute the portly, heavy-jowled man in the light suit who finds climbing out of his Alfa 75 something of an effort, the more casual fellow who sells insurance in a Fiat 126, the stout, vigorous woman who every morning takes a twig brush to sweep the dust from the road outside her house and push it over toward her neighbour’s. My greetings, which after all follow the traditional Italian style and which all these people exchange with each other every time they cross paths – Buon giorno signora, buon giorno signore – are met at first with embarrassment, perhaps even suspicion, since clearly I am part of that world which encroaches; later with returned nods, muttered courtesies. And perhaps that is quite enough. Only in the greengrocer’s does a loud voice reply: ‘’ello, sir, ‘ow are you!’ And it is Bepi. My first friend in Montecchio.

  I suppose Bepi fits into that class of Italians who are eager to know foreigners. One has to be careful not to be collected by these people. It’s a group Giampaolo Visentini belongs to in a rather different, more sophisticated way. Not that these people have in any sense ceased to believe in the supremacy of Italian cooking, Italian wine, Italian style, and so forth, just that they are sensitive to a certain provincialism, eager to be associated with anything that lies outside their narrow circle. Perhaps they have been frustrated: Giampaolo by the stifling promotion procedures in the monolithic company he works for, Bepi by the obstacles put in the way of anybody without contacts who wishes to get a licence for a lucrative shop. Both feel they have ideas bigger than the narrow mentality of the people around them. But, interestingly, they don’t feel this provincialism could be overcome by going to Rome, as a man stifled in Barnsley might head for Birmingham or London. On the contrary, Rome would be even worse, the locals would already have staked the place out for themselves. No, they look to the fairness and openmindedness of the efficient nations further north. Extraordinarily, they believe Britain to be such a nation. And can never understand what on earth I am doing here in Montecchio.

  From behind his stone-topped counter, Bepi pumps my hand. He is ‘very ’appy’ to have an Englishman in his shop. He smiles broadly, he’s my own age or thereabouts, but physically a much more impressive specimen: hugely solid, with thick shoulder-length curly hair, and such a look of eagerness about him, such a presence. Green green eyes. He sticks a couple of kiwis into my bag and doesn’t want to be paid for them. Per carità!

  As I turn to go, the priest walks in, Don Guido. I am thus able to witness the whole scene. In his black cassock, the priest stands there sniffing the air, a short, droll, old-woman of a man. He sniffs and sniffs, snub nose upturned as the other customers go about with their little plastic baskets picking up artichokes, peppers and what have you from the boxes around the wall. Then he lifts his shoulders sharply up and down in a gesture of impatience. The cassock has a shiny, worn look to it. ‘Something smells rotten in here,’ he announces out loud and with almost a threat in his voice.

  Quite unperturbed giving or taking change, Bepi replies, ‘Must be the carrion flesh of the last person to walk in.’ ‘Carogna’ is a common insult. At which the priest calmly proceeds with his shopping.

  I never managed to get to the bottom of this dispute between our greengrocer and priest, a quarrel made attractive by its combination of intense animosity and total lack of consequence. And perhaps that is the essence of the Latin quarrel, at least on this level. It is almost enjoyed for its own sake. There is no feeling of any need to make up or resolve things, because no harm is being done. The priest came every day, ritual insults were exchanged, fruit and vegetables selected, money handed over, and that was that.

  In a place like Montecchio, the indigenous population are, as Orietta had said, almost impenetrable. Because self-sufficient. Thus, being a newcomer and peripheral to village life, one inevitably gets to know other peripherals, people who like yourself have been washed up here, because at some particular moment this was where the current flowed, and the place turned out to be convenient. Bepi had tried for years to get a licence to open a supermarket – anywhere in the Province of Verona would do – until finally they allowed him to rent the downstairs of an unprepossessing old house on the outskirts of Montecchio – for a greengrocery.

  Invited to dinner, he sits down, legs wide apart on his seat, his powerful body straining his clothes, and immediately, before I’ve even poured an aperitivo, announces: the man I call father in the shop is not my father.

  In a country where reserve and formality are usually excessive on these occasions, it is certainly a dramatic opening. And embarrassing. He proceeds to tell us that he is the illegitimate child of a woman whose family threw her out. Not wanting her baby, his mother left him with a childless sister and her husband: the man he calls father and who helps in the shop.

  He then goes on to tell us how, poverty-stricken, the family sold their house in Rivoli and came to live in a meagre flat in one of the downmarket residential areas of Verona. But he swore to buy back that house for the family to demonstrate that he was more than just an illegitimate child. And last year he finally did so.

  If Bepi’s abrupt, reductive autobiography is disconcerting, the obsession with family and home comes as no surprise. When an Italian leaves a place it’s almost always with the intention of returning victorious and vindicated. Even if he believes that place to be hopelessly provincial.

  How had he made his money? Bepi laughs. He taps a finger on his temples. All in here, he says, all in here. He tells the picaresque story of his entrepreneurial career. You know they’re always saying Italian wine has no ad
ded sugar? Yes. And it’s illegal to add sugar to wine in Italy? Yes. Well, I drove the truck that took the sugar to all the wine producers from Vicenza to Verona. At night of course. There are no police about at night. They only work office hours. He grins, he is very pleased with himself. For this was an act of furbizia, of cunning, and it paid very well. Spent all the money setting up a restaurant with a friend, near the main road to the lake, a big restaurant, for coach parties and the like. The mistake was doing it with somebody else. The friend couldn’t see reason. Didn’t have it up here. Bepi taps his forehead again. They went bust. There followed two or three other restaurants, then finally the licence for the shop. He had wanted a supermarket, but local shopkeepers always gang together and bother their political contacts to make sure no new licences are given. This is common practice, they have the politicians in their pockets, or they are the politicians. But Bepi will beat them at their own game in the end. Yes, he will. Sooner or later he’ll have the knife by the handle …

  As so often in conversations here, one notes this assumption of a fundamental lawlessness. The law is only one of the arms the individual uses in his essentially lawless struggle. Bepi talked at length about various court cases he was engaged in: with the phone company about stupidly high bills, with a neighbour about his (Bepi’s) dog kennels, with INPS, the national-insurance people, about unpaid contributions for the girls in his shop, and there were others too which I forget now. Far from any desire to reform or change the situation, Bepi seemed pleased to have these various fights going on and not at all concerned he might lose them. As Negretti had seemed pleased when Visentini called the police about the stench of dog filth rising from his garden, as Lucilla was galvanised by her fight with Signora Marta. It is a bellicosity one finds hard to take at first, but which constant contact with other people, and above all the authorities, gradually tends to make more comprehensible, and even attractive. If there is an anarchical tradition here, there are certainly reasons for it.

  Towards nine o’clock, his dinner barely over, Bepi simply falls asleep in the middle of a conversation on Patuzzi’s cheap synthetic couch, one of the only modern items of furniture in the flat. The chandelier now has five small 6o-watt bulbs casting sharper shadows from the fancy mouldings on the bookcase. But Bepi snores just the same. When we wake him he looks at his watch. Diamine, he has to drive thirty kilometres to Rivoli now to feed his dogs. Fifteen of them. Tomorrow he will be up at five to get to the vegetable market and pick up stuff for the shop, then in the evening he teaches a gym class at the abandoned church by Laghetto Squarà which he rents from Don Guido (the source of their quarrel perhaps?). Yes, he teaches gym on Mondays and Wednesdays, karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Do we want to come?

  How can I say that after a day’s teaching and translating I’m not sure if I’ll have the energy?

  12

  L’uomo rinascimentale

  WE GO OUT running with Bepi. He gathers about fifteen young people by the abandoned church beside the laghetto. Most of the group are girls, more than one with their eyes on Bepi. Off we trot out into the country, up the valley towards Mizzole. The evening air is cool. We run by the cherry orchards, leaves limp with a first suspicion of autumn. We run past the first long, low poultry farm. The stench is unbelievable. And on an empty box by the side of the road, I read: ‘BEST CANADIAN CHURKEY EGGS – SEALED CONTAINER – FOR INCUBATION FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.’

  Jogging (or ‘footing’ as the Italians unaccountably call it) along tractor paths, we pass through a large vineyard, the purple fruit almost ripe around our ears. Here, beneath the dense foliage, Bepi stops for some exercises, barking out orders with an unmistakeably authoritarian ring to his voice. Flessioni! And he’s down on his stomach doing press ups. Addominali! He’s on his back doing sit-ups, hands behind his head, legs bent at the knee. Dorsali! Over on our stomachs again. Such a desire for leadership! He flogs us. Showing off his macho dynamism. It’s endearing. The girls titter, most of them making only token efforts. Footing again, we pass through a delightful old wine-stuccoed farm. There’s an ancient well in the garden with stone top and swallows mustering for departure on the roof of the barn. Panting now, we run on through the picturesque village of Mizzole with the golden onion dome on its church. Posters tell us about pollution from pig farming, courses in secretarial skills, the imminent grape festival and the most recent deaths: Magnagatto Marta: ninety-two anni, much missed by her family. Graffiti on the stone walls, however, is mainly directed against a group of southerners from Reggio Calabria who have formed a co-operative and plan to build themselves some villette a schiera – terraced houses (a brand new fashion in Italy): ‘Benvenuto a Reggio Mizzole’, has been scrawled over a road sign. Italians have a gift for grafitti. In the central square by the war memorial we read: ‘Long live the government, long live taxes, long live the South … or no?’ The work of the local separatists. Opposite, a sign over one of the village’s two bars announces: Real American Cocktails, by Gianni.

  We arrive back puffing and panting. Bepi wants to do some more exercises, but I’ve had enough. Perhaps anyway he is only waiting to see which groupie will hang on the longest. A process of natural selection. Walking home, past the millwheel, past a Roman arch, under which heavy trucks pass to two huge silage containers in a small yard, we reflect that if he votes at all, Bepi probably votes MSI, the not very reformed fascists.

  Another evening we drop by the gym where he is teaching karate to a mixed group of all ages. Italians take their sport very seriously. Black belt tight round his waist, Bepi barks out commands in what we presume is Japanese, his body squatting low, making the impressive ritual movements with concentration etched on his features. ‘All here,’ he tells us afterwards, ‘all here,’ and he taps his forehead.

  A few weeks later we are invited to the house Bepi has repurchased and is now renovating up in Rivoli. He drives us west through Verona and then strikes off north up the Valpolicella. It’s vendemmia time, the grape harvest. The Alfettas and BMWs fret and fume behind tractors inching along with their cartloads of grapes; it’s important that the fruit doesn’t get too knocked about, so they’re taking the road as slow as they can. The air is heavy with an extremely pleasant drunken smell, an almost tangible sweet stickiness. Midges swarm in quite unbelievable numbers. Storms and clouds of them. These vendemmia days, you find yourself breathing midges the way the whale simply swallows his plankton as he swims along.

  We arrive in Rivoli, perched high on the hills above the Adige, site of one of Napoleon’s famous victories. Bepi turns his grocery van into a narrow track, bumping steeply down. At the end, the old peasant house that has focused his enterprising mind for so long is unprepossessing: a humble two-storey rectangle divided into two small dwellings with chickens pecking about outside. Buying it back can have had only symbolic value. Especially seeing as Bepi doesn’t want to live here himself, and can’t even get on with the ancient grandmother he has installed there. On our arrival they exchange fierce insults, much as he did with the priest.

  The grounds are large though, perhaps thirty or forty acres sloping steeply downward away from the house. Once laboriously terraced and cultivated, they are neglected now, like so much of this countryside. The vines are overgrown, the support walls crumbling, so that here and there a terrace has collapsed, showing how chalky white the soil is beneath. Bepi takes us down to his dog kennels, a low concrete building a good fifty metres long and full of big, black, barking dogs. Our host, apparently – he tells us himself – is the foremost breeder of Belgian Shepherds in the Veneto, if not in Italy. His neighbour, despite being out of sight and earshot of the dogs, has started a court case about the kennels because he is resentful that Bepi outbid him for possession of the house. The same old story. Bepi thus stands accused of having built them without planning permission. In typically belligerent fashion Bepi has turned the case on its head, sueing the local authorities for being so slow over granting permission that he was ‘forced’ to go ah
ead without in order to accommodate his business.

  He releases a couple of dogs and lets them come with us. Disconcertingly, as we walk along, he barks at them in German. I ask him which language he prefers for his girlfriends. With touching honesty he tells us he hasn’t as yet found the language that girls respond to best. I assure him it is not English.

  Before going in for lunch, he takes us up to a ridge at the edge of the property where we have a breathtaking view northward up the Valpolicella to the Alps, their rocky peaks barely visible for the haze. Deep deep below in the valley a huge irrigation canal leaves the River Adige and disappears into a tunnel under the hill. Disused marble quarries now converted into mushroom farms are dotted all about. The vista is vast, open, inspiring. I remark rather banally that it seems out of this world, fuori del mondo. To which, quite naturally, Bepi replies that, yes, UFOs (Oofoes as the Italians call them) used to visit here quite often, but have now ceased to do so, ever since people became too violent. The Veneto, he says, along with parts of Russia, boasts the highest frequencies of UFO sightings in the world. He used to see the lights himself further up the valley. I feel it isn’t the moment to say that the Veneto also shares with Russia one of the highest consumptions of alcohol in the world.

  Returning to the house we find Bepi’s delightful ‘father’, Vittorio, who has come out to the country for the day with his wife. Strong, squat, of great girth and irrepressibly merry, Vittorio is just the kind of jolly chap one tends to see interviewed in the local paper after a UFO sighting. Now he presides over the big wooden table in the kitchen, where he has lined up five or six bottles of wine and seems intent on opening all of them at once. Meanwhile, his wife, Gina, buxom, retiring and embarrassed about her poor Italian, has prepared the most wonderful lasagna from scratch. Oceans of it.