Italian Neighbors

by Tim Parks

  In the protected world they live in, some statale exploits have become quite legendary. Given that managers in government offices are for the most part unable or unwilling to discipline their staff, when things get out of hand the police or Carabinieri will, once in the bluest of moons, arrive in force to check up on who is there and who isn’t, perhaps prosecute a few dozen absentees. Thus the Arena tells us how in one administrative office the Carabinieri came across an expensive fur coat on the back of a chair, but no person in that chair. The employee in question had clocked in and then disappeared, as she did every morning, returning briefly in the afternoon to clock out. The following morning the Carabinieri followed her, to discover that she was working as a call girl in a flat directly opposite her office.

  Stories like this strike a very deep chord. Naturally, the immediate reaction is one of disdain, of self-righteousness. ‘Maria Santissima,’ Lucilla claps her hands, ‘when you think how hard I worked all my life, Signor Tino.’ But there is also profound admiration. How smart of her to have fooled the state like that for so many years. And they haven’t even put her in prison or anything. How furba (sly, shrewd) she’s been. Then look at the fur coat she put over her chair. ‘Pure sable, Signor Tino!’ What a smack in the face that was. Good taste too. Perhaps I should have been a statale.

  And, at a deeper level still, people think: if that is how the state wastes its money, mismanages its affairs, then why should I be paying my taxes? The truth is that the non-statale has a psychological need for the statale. They are two sides to a coin that is common currency here. For just as the chaos and corruption of the south justify the peccadilloes of the north, so the lazy, absentee statale (who notoriously is a southerner, or so northerners will tell you), justifies the tax evasion of the non-statale.

  Always assuming he is in a position to evade tax. For though the non-statali, the private sector, will present a united front in their disdain for statali, they themselves split into quite distinct factions when it comes to taxes. Leaving aside all the many nuances, there are basically two groups of non-statali: the dipendenti, i.e., employees, and the autonomi, the self-employed; and there is as much, if not more animosity between these two groups as between both of them and the statali. Indeed, the dipendenti and the statali, with their taxes deducted at source, may often form a united front against the autonomi, since they are convinced, and not without good reason, that the autonomo pays next to nothing in taxes and, what’s more, earns a great deal more than either of them do. Everywhere jealousy is the key.

  Three classic conversations result. The autonomo (perhaps our shopkeeper Bepi) meets the dipendente (let’s say office-worker Giampaolo) and they complain about the statale (somebody in the post office for example), his benefits, his proverbial laziness and rudeness, his constant presence in the pasticceria, his twenty-day sick leave over a sore thumb, Italy’s hopeless inefficiency in the public sector which is preventing it from becoming a truly important player on the European scene, etc. etc. etc.

  Or the statale (Lovato’s son-in-law, for example, with his Prisma in the illegal prefab garage) meets the dipendente (Giampaolo again) and they complain about the quite shameless acquisitiveness of the autonomo: never a receipt when you pay for your cappuccino, when you have the plumber in, when you see your heart specialist about your extra sistole. These people are unscrupulous. They steal from the community. We all have to pay more because they pay so little. It has to stop.

  And when the statale meets the autonomo? Well, there’s caution, obviously, but a certain mutual respect, too, an air of self-congratulation even, as of two people who have made the right decisions in life. And why are these miserable dipendenti always complaining? If they’re not happy they should change their jobs. Or if the name of a mutual friend comes up, perhaps the word poveretto will be used, as of one who is lost, beyond hope. For it is generally agreed that the dipendente of a private company has the roughest deal. With his rigid hours, his limited opportunities for moonlighting, his difficulty justifying sick leave, his slavery to the market, his taxes always deducted and his comparatively low salary, the dipendente is undoubtedly the loser.

  Hence, there is nothing the likes of dipendente Giampaolo can do but assume the rather stony moral high ground and talk about the citizen of the future and a society where everybody will one day have a sense of civic responsibility. This Giampaolo does with great dog-in-the-manger frequency. And England, for example, is much admired because there the social contract between government and people is truly valido and the level of fiscal honesty (yes, Italians talk that way) is discreto, even if all this is rendered relativo by gloomy weather, bad food and a general lack of taste. Never does Giampaolo like to distinguish himself more from the provincial, narrowminded aspects of Italy, than when talking about dipendenti, autonomi and evasione, as if his own fully paid-up taxes were some sort of avant-garde, internationalist creed, a measure of moral stature, rather than mere misfortune. Although in the taverna, one evening toward Christmas, barbecuing trout from Montecchio’s fish farm and drinking rather more than he usually would (because novello is no good after December), we do get him to reminisce with obvious nostalgia about the good old days before PAYE was introduced (in the mid-seventies), the days when you declared next to nothing and nobody could do anything about it. So from his high ground, in the time machine of the taverna, the condominium dipendente will turn a wistful wine-soaked eye back on the cities of the plain. Which were, and for others still are, so much more fun.

  I am tempted at this point to proceed to the rather grand reflection that thus, while the English have their lower classes, their middle classes and their upper classes, the Italians in turn have their dipendenti, their statali, their autonomi; so very deeply are these distinctions felt here, so bitter are the resentments, so sweet the triumphs. But the analogy could be nothing more than superficial. For this is not a hereditary system (a railway-union request that jobs be made hereditary was recently turned down), nor a family affair. On the contrary, father and son can all too easily be turned against each other. Old farmer Lovato, for example, with his years of hard autonomous (though mainly tax free) work on the soil, obviously feels not a little contempt for his wimpy son-in-law from the same background who has bagged a prize statale job as cook in a nursery school: just five mornings a week, plus all school holidays and the endless benefits: a day off to give blood, a day off for a union meeting, a day off for a urine test … The young statale pulls the Prisma out of the garage and cleans it meticulously beside his father-in-law’s hard-worked cabbage patch. Or sits in the window opposite our lounge, building an elaborate nativity scene to grace the church porch a month hence. While old Lovato digs and eyes our flat …

  Then there is more mobility between these groups than one would expect to find in a class structure. A dipendente, given the chance, or an autonomo, should his business take a dive, might well decide to become a statale. And a statale, on retiring at some ludicrously early age (‘i pensionati baby’, they call them) might well become an autonomo, although he is unlikely, it must be pointed out, to want to become a dipendente.

  Orietta, for example, a woman who has turned worrying into a fine art, who quakes when the ground trembles in Calabria, shivers when it snows in the Val d’Aosta, would very much like Giampaolo to become a statale, because then his job would be safe beyond any market logic for ever and ever and she could look forward to middle and old age with serenity in the full knowledge that the family will be able to pay for a well placed loculo at the end of the day. And Orietta is by no means the only wife pushing her husband in this direction. The search for security is an obsession here far far beyond anything I ever came into contact with in England or the States. I imagine this is linked to post-war insecurity, to the rapidity of economic change, the survival of a peasant culture forever seeking protection from bad weather. And, presumably, it’s not unconnected to those frequent visits to the hospital for blood and urine tests, and then in a different
way to the entrenched conservatism that surrounds all local customs and traditions here. Which is rather attractive. In any event, the more people despise the state, the more, nevertheless, they appear to wish to depend upon it, to become statali. As one dear southerner, Pasquale, self-declared anarchist and evening-school teacher explained to me: ‘During the year the state cradles us, and in the summer holiday they just rock us to sleep.’

  21

  Concorsi

  BUT HOW CAN Giampaolo become a statale? By doing a concorso. One appreciates that the reader may be getting weary of so many Italian words, but this is one that quite definitely defies straightforward translation. My dictionary, for example, offers a whole range of meanings: ‘a throng of people’, ‘a coincidence’, ‘a competitive exam’, ‘complicity in a crime’ … All of these, I fear, are appropriate.

  The idea is as follows. A statale’s job is a very easy number, a meal-ticket for life. This the state tacitly acknowledges. Indeed, they have deliberately allowed this situation to develop in order to ingratiate themselves with the population. But, given the unfairness inherent in the fact that these jobs cannot be available for quite everyone, it becomes absolutely crucial that their allocation be seen to be fair. No favouritism must operate. Only merit will be considered. Merest merit.

  Thus, the local railway station cannot, for example, simply put an advertisement in a local job centre saying they need three cleaning women and give out the jobs on a first come first served basis. Because then the station master might take on friends, or friends of friends – as a favour. Worse still, in the south, the Mafia would get control of things. So no, the railway has to hold a concorso, a public exam, and this must be announced at national level. Because again it would be unfair to exclude people from the south, even though they may, of course, after a couple of years, request transfer back home, thus contributing to overmanning there while reopening the vacancy in the north …

  Our ‘competitive exam’ is thus announced in the papers and on posters inside and outside public buildings. Our ‘throng of people’ applies. Perhaps a thousand. Sometimes twenty thousand. Everybody wants to be a caretaker, a receptionist. ‘Fifty Staff taken on to Process Applications for Dustbin Men’, might be the typical headline of some small article in Corriere della Sera. It is never clear how these selecting staff were themselves selected. Whether there has been a pre-concorso, or what. It is as well, one suspects, not to enquire too precisely into the matter.

  But what qualifies a person to be a dustbin man? Well, a certain level of intelligence, a certain mental attitude; so a written exam. Then a certain level of reliability, a certain personality; so an interview. But above all, health of course, and so a medical …

  Which is where we come to the concorso as ‘coincidence’, or ‘complicity in a crime’; or both.

  The story I have in mind is Giampaolo’s, a splendid Italian tale which I think sums up more or less everything that need be said about dipendenti, statali and concorsi. In one of the departments of Giampaolo’s company works a highly skilled young technician who is very clever at his job. So clever that, under the table, the company is paying him more than his fellow workers to keep him. This lad’s father is a Christian Democrat, has always held his membership card, and the son too is a member of the Party and lends a technical hand with Party activities, setting up the dais at the Festa dell’amicizia and such like.

  After a few years at the company, the young technician marries. Both his own family and his wife’s feel that the couple would be much more secure if he had a job as a statale. There are threats of recession. The State is the only organisation which will never fire you. Even if it means taking a cut in salary, security and peace of mind are the overriding concerns. And there will be the months of paid paternity leave when they have a child.

  So the talented young man decides to take part in a concorso to become a bus-driver. And he goes along with his father to talk to his local Christian Democrat councillor. It is time the councillor did something for a family which has always voted for the Party and always been ready to help out. Otherwise what reason is there for being members? D’accordo, agrees the councillor, va bene. Which is as much as to say: Will do.

  But our young technician is a conscientious, honest boy, with a sense of loyalty. He goes and warns his foreman that he will be leaving the company in six months or so, thus giving them time to train up someone else. Because he has applied to be a bus-driver, he explains. And, yes, he knows hundreds of people have applied, but he is sure he will be selected because he has spoken to Christian Democrat councillor X who knows Y who is on the committee.

  The foreman promptly buttonholes the managing director. This boy is the cleverest and most efficient we’ve ever had, it will be a major setback if we lose him. The managing director, who is a Christian Democrat and friend of the same local councillor (here’s our concorso as ‘coincidence’, although not such a great one perhaps), phones the said councillor. ‘What is this, stealing our workers? It takes years to train someone to that level. How can a private company even begin to compete with the state with all the ridiculous benefits you’re offering? I’m sorry, but this isn’t on. You’ve got to stop him being selected.’

  This places the councillor in a delicate position. The written exam and the interview have already been done, he explains. The boy is already through. He apologises profusely. ‘I can’t change those now, I’m afraid. If only I’d known.’ Until at the last moment he has a brainwave: ‘There’s still the medical though.’

  And we arrive at ‘complicity in a crime’.

  The doctor is looking at an X-ray. ‘Don’t you get any pain just above the pelvis sometimes?’ The confident young technician says no, he never does. ‘Really? Try and remember. In the small of the back. A dull ache?’ ‘No, never.’ The doctor frowns, hangs the X-ray up on the viewing screen. ‘Come and look at this. Here, you see, too much space between these lower vertebrae. Quite a common malformation, nothing to worry about in the normal way of things.’ He is shaking his head. ‘But I’m afraid it would soon result in disc hernia if you started driving a bus six hours a day.’

  And incredibly everybody is happy: the doctor is happy because having done the councillor a favour he is now owed a favour in return, he has a card to play for the future; the councillor is happy because he has ingratiated himself with both young technician and managing director, they will see him as the right man to vote for, their own personal access to power; the managing director is happy because he has kept his worker and demonstrated his ability to wield influence; the skilled young man is happy because he never really wanted to be a bus-driver anyway.

  Only the families of the young couple are left with a lingering feeling of regret, of wistfulness for that safe haven. A dipendente’s life is not an enviable one – he depends, as the very word suggests, on the whims of the market, the whims of his employer – and they had wanted the best for their children.

  Whenever this story is told, by myself, by Giampaolo, people burst out laughing. The kind of laughter which greets those jokes that confirm a caricature. Yes, how they enjoy this harmless breach in the general omertà. And where could you get a story like that if everything was done in an honest, open way? According to merit. Or even if everything was done on a straightforward and acknowledged basis of nepotism and favouritism. No, it is the superimposition of the bureaucratic and apparently fair over the private and determinedly unfair, the public umbrella, we might say, over the personal intrigue, which breeds so many such stories, and which creates such a delicious tension in so many areas of Italian life. The rules are only a veneer, and indifferently glued on at that; like the Pope’s diktats, or the catechism – no more than the thinnest coat of paint. While in the soft old wood beneath, the jolly worms honeycomb past each other in the dark. Busy and alive.

  Curiously enough, I got confirmation of Giampaolo’s story one December evening travelling back from town on the bus. It was rush-hour time, the bus w
as packed, so I went ahead to stand at the front behind the driver and watch the black countryside flinging by, the starkly twisted shapes of the bare vines against the twilight, the pinpoints of light rising up the hills to the north. In Borgo Venezia, another driver got on and came to stand beside his colleague. Barely a foot away from me, they talked about the most recent concorso for maintenance jobs in the garage. The new arrival had heard from someone in the know that these jobs were to be divided up equally on the basis of the local strength of the political parties; three people chosen by the Christian Democrats, one by the Socialists, one by the Communists … This made it unlikely that a friend of his would get in.

  The speaker made no attempt to lower his voice to prevent me hearing. Nor did he show any sign of outrage or even unease that in this case a concorso was more a question of complicity than an exam. He might have been talking about a patch of dull weather, or the difficulty of finding fresh tortellini in the late afternoon, some irritating contingency. His colleague at the wheel drove on at great speed between the cement walls beside the flood ditches, stabbing at brake and accelerator as we hurtled through the narrow stretch where, if a bus or truck comes the other way, there is no room.

  I moved back down the bus to the door. Two old women were knowledgeably comparing their blood sedimentation speeds as exhibited on the familiar health-service printouts. A group of fourteen-year-olds discussed whether horsemeat was nicer than beef, whether polenta was better with melted cheese or without. Then they argued about what kind of car Ruud Gullit drives. I climbed off. A bulldozer had been having a go at the old factory at one end of Via Colombare. A notice announced the construction of a complex of flats and shops. Reassuringly, the Madonnina was still in her place at the other end of the street, promising to protect us. Electric light gleamed on the more tangible security of iron railings. Simone’s car was outside the gate at number 10, come for an abundant dinner: baccalà, polenta, Valpolicella. An electricity bill addressed to Patuzzi was in the postbox. The cassonetto had been pushed down toward number 8. Vega was barking, the TVs were on, and all was apparently well with the world.