Italian Neighbours

by Tim Parks

  Giampaolo walks in with a carpenter holding a huge polished shelf about eight feet long and almost three inches thick. They apologise for muddying my stairs, but Giampaolo is paying for the carpenter’s time. Then Lucilla comes out on to the stairs above. ‘Rina! Rina!’ she calls. I tell her Vittorina is out taking flowers to Giosuè. Lucilla asks if I would come up to her flat and help her with the Yellow Pages. She can’t remember the name of her dressmaker and would I read out all the ones in the phone book. I lay down my mop.

  For some reason, everybody is having something made for them. Perhaps it’s because, with the world outside being so icy and damp, winter naturally becomes a time for home improvements. Giampaolo is changing the focus of his sitting-room, the position of the TV. Instead of having it on a raised platform in the far corner he has invited the same carpenter who previously did that job to relocate his impressive set alongside a row of equally impressive encyclopaedic volumes on one of two huge, specially made shelves which pin directly into the walls with no visible brackets. The whole plan is undertaken with the utmost seriousness. A plug socket will be moved to directly behind the TV so that no wires need be visible.

  At the same time Vittorina, in the flat opposite, is getting another carpenter in the village to replace her kitchen furniture. There are long consultations as to the height and depth of cupboards, the position of the lights, the need to change the fridge so as to have one the right width for the new cupboards, etc. etc. People here seem to enjoy this so much more than just going to a store and buying the readymade thing. Over the years they establish a relationship with their carpenter and then during dinner-table or taverna conversation they will boast that he is the best in the provincia and they would give you his name and number if only he wasn’t so busy he’d never have time to fit somebody new in. They talk about il mio falegname di fiducia (my trusted carpenter); and quite probably they have an electrician di fiducia too, and a bricklayer di fiducia, and a tailor or dressmaker di fiducia, and undoubtedly a butcher. Indeed, the Veronese rarely seem happier than when talking about their somebody di fiducia. A social status is implied, the status of the person who doesn’t just buy what the market offers, nor stoops, as the Englishman might, to DIY, but discusses and creates together with his craftsman. It’s the status, almost, of the patron.

  But as in any relationship, there are drawbacks. The most common being that the somebody di fiducia is too busy. And the reason he is too busy is not just the enormous demand there is here to have everything done and made privately, but the fact that the somebody di fiducia is actually a statale working on the side in his spare time. Our postman, for example, is frequently to be seen about the village busily engaged in illegal masonry work or installing radio-controlled gates and garage doors. A man from the health clinic is trowelling on stucco. And this sort of situation can lead to a quite schizophrenic attitude on the part of the client, one moment praising the skill of his carpenter, or mason, or gardener di fiducia, and the next berating these statali and all their privileges and craftiness. Still, at least when the man gets his early retirement he will have more time for your domestic projects.

  Inspired by the general enthusiasm, we have found a carpenter ourselves and are getting him to make a bed for us to replace the uncomfortable medieval thing which always makes me feel like I’m sleeping in the central panel of a triptych of tortures. Recommended by a student, our falegname di fiducia is young and enthusiastic, talks green politics more intelligently than most, rapidly produces an attractive design for a simple bed with bay oak surround, quotes us a price that is a good 30 per cent below anything in the shops and then disappears. He is so busy that we won’t see the bed for another six months and more. It’s the price you pay, Orietta says sagely, for using a good carpenter. But it’s worth waiting.

  I go up the stairs I have just mopped to help Lucilla rediscover her dressmaker. She had her kitchen furniture recarpented only a year or so ago. On a nut tabletop she has a pink gingerino waiting for me. ‘Now, Signor Tino’ – and with simpering and obviously relished embarrassment, shifting her tubby bulk from one slippered foot to another, she explains. She has to have her bras made for her specially. Yes. Otherwise they are not comfortable. You know? Normally she would ask her dressmaker ‘di fiducia’ but the woman was too busy (this sad admission indicates that the client’s importance is only relativo); so she went and asked somebody else, but has now forgotten the name. Seeing that the bras were due to be ready this week, perhaps I can find the name for her in the Yellow Pages, assuming it’s there, since of course she didn’t use the Yellow Pages herself to find this person, but got a friend to give her the name of her sarta di fiducia. And the friend is off on holiday.

  I look up ‘Sartorie per donna’. It turns out there are about twenty in Verona. I ask Lucilla if she remembers the name of the street. Only that it was in the centre. But they all seem to be in the centre, more or less. We arrive at a name she thinks she recognises: Riccadonna. I dial the number for her and hand her the phone. She has her synthetic pink dressing-gown on, fluffy little-girl’s slippers, a glimpse of varicose ankles. Her hair is in a sort of plastic cap, covering curlers, I assume. Perhaps Simone is coming tonight. When she gets through, she puts on the most extraordinarily servile, obsequious voice: ‘Buon giorno, buon giorno, I am Zambon, the signora of the seven bras, are you the dressmaker I ordered from?’

  It is the number seven that somehow renders it so magically incongruous – seven seas, seven seals, seven bras.

  The second place we try asks for specifications, which Lucilla duly gives, but I am not familiar with cup sizes. On the third, remarkably, we hit the jackpot. The seven bras are ready and waiting. I write down the name and address on the notepad in her kitchen. As I do so I notice out of the corner of my eye a covered birdcage next to the waste bin on the balcony. Lucilla has cleaned out her canary, poveretto, once too often.

  ‘Troppo bravo,’ she tells me at the door, as if I had been responsible for finding the right name. She is clearly pleased that Vittorina is out. She likes to have men do things for her. And she says, if only I could afford to buy the flat when she becomes our landlady she would be very happy indeed to have us stay.

  Giampaolo, meanwhile, is not at all happy with his falegname di fiducia. Incredibly, this trusted man tried to install one of the big new shelves the wrong way round, couldn’t understand why it didn’t fit inside a piece of wall that juts out, and smashed off a very large piece of plaster. What’s more he refuses to accept that the damage was his fault, claiming that he should have been told the alcove was not perpendicular to the main wall. They argue by the Visentini’s door for ten minutes until the carpenter hurries off, lamely pleading another engagement. My mop in hand again (for I still have the last flight of stairs down to the garage to do), Giampaolo insists on taking me in to show me the damage. His long slender fingers probe the smashed plaster. What do I think? It doesn’t look that bad, I tell him. But he shakes his head. Obviously, he will have to call in his mason di fiducia. Yes, there’s a man who’s done a variety of jobs for them in the past. Because one could never plaster a corner perfectly right oneself. People would always notice. Worse still, he’s going to have to decide whether to fire his falegname di fiducia half-way through the job, or have him back. Again he shakes his head. The attachment to a person di fiducia is such a deep one, Giampaolo clearly sees the man’s behaviour as a kind of betrayal. Not to mention the added cost of the mason. Which on a dipendente’s salary is a tough proposition. Orietta brings in the vacuum cleaner to take up all the dust and plaster. ‘Grazie al cielo,’ she sighs, ‘that we’re getting near Christmas and there’s the tredicesima.’

  The tredicesima! Here’s another little peephole into the heart of modern Italy. For what other country in the world has a tredicesima? None I’m sure, unless at the end of some very slippery pole the Land of Cockaigne truly does exist.

  Or perhaps Italy is the Land of Cockaigne. It’s something the Italians like
to say sometimes. Or they say: ‘Go to America? But Italy is America!’

  The word tredicesimo means nothing more nor less than ‘thirteenth’. But la tredicesima, the adjective turned feminine noun, means your thirteenth salary of the year. Thirteen, it’s worth noting, is considered a lucky number in Italy.

  What happens is that in the first weeks of December, the statali and dipendenti in general receive an extra month’s salary. This is a legally required part of any employer–employee relationship. In the negotiations which originally brought the development about, I am told, back in the 1960s, the tredicesima was perceived as a productivity bonus to be paid only if the employee had behaved well, not been absent more than a certain amount, and so on. But given that almost nobody takes it upon themselves to judge the performance of anybody else, at least in the state system, payment soon became automatic. And some companies, notably banks, even introduced la quattordicesima and I believe in some cases a quindicesima.

  Such extravagant arrangements give the hard-working autonomo perhaps his only real chance to gripe about the cushy lives of the dipendenti although since he is aware that most of the extra money will be spent on his goods and services in the general Christmas binge, he doesn’t complain too much. Indeed, the imminent arrival of the tredicesima perhaps explains why Giampaolo and the ladies have all decided to get their carpenting done and bras made now. For, as pensioners, the ladies have their tredicesima too. They are briefly rich. Lucilla sets off into town for high heels and diamond-patterned black tights. Two men struggle up the stairs with Vittorina’s new fridge. One can only wonder what they might do if they ever got the money they want for our flat. Give Giosuè a new headstone? Muffs and minks? A new sitting-room suite? Extra Masses said?

  Going back down to replace the doormats after the stairs have dried, I hear the postman’s Vespa arriving, as it usually does, toward lunchtime. I wait for him. Apart from some junk mail for Patuzzi, there is a magazine for Vittorina, I fioretti di San Gaspare. My dictionary translates fioretto as, ‘an act of mortification’. The magazine is published by L’ordine dei frati del preziosissimo sangue, which the saint founded. Most of it involves stories of miracles following hard upon praying to the saint. One reader writes to say that, after years of painful prostatitis, his problem was resolved by a single supplication to San Gaspare. Perhaps old Giuliano should have been informed. And it occurs to me that Italians have a long and uninterrupted tradition of miracles. Of which maybe la tredicesima is just a recent and very civilised manifestation.

  24

  Viva, viva, Natale arriva!

  IT WILL SEEM odd perhaps that, having spent all my teens in London, I had to come to Italy to discover real fog. It is a peculiarity of the bassa padana, the Po valley. Protected by the Appennini from the prevailing west wind, the sun shines brightly on the vast triangular area of flat, damp soil between Milan, Venice and Bologna. The snow-covered mountains to the north keep a constant stream of icy air rolling down to meet the warmth steaming up from fields and ditches. And the result is the thickest fog imaginable stretching for mile after mile after mile. Sometimes lasting for weeks. The winter version of summer’s afa.

  Stepping out on to our balcony this December morning, the world is milky white and quite silent. The terraced hill has gone, the castle has gone, likewise the abandoned mill. Along Via Colombare, the Madonnina has vanished and with her the woman with the twig broom, whose patient sweeping can nevertheless still be heard, pushing dirt she can barely see away into the fog. The dry sticks of Marini’s vegetable patch opposite are sombre pointed shadows, spear tips of an army of wraiths. A few poplar poles lean against a spectral fig tree, eaves and balconies drip, and all the street’s railings are hung with dew-soaked spiders’ webs.

  Leaning on the marble parapet we never polish, it’s such a pleasure to breathe in this soft spongy air. It’s as if the whole Veneto had been very gently, very efficiently anaesthetised. Even the smells have gone, smothered where they rise. Everything is whitely quiet, waiting.

  Then into this beautiful, hushed world comes a sudden fierce jangling, turning the corner from the Madonnina end. A grating jingle blares through a megaphone, followed by a voice speaking in dialect: ‘Mamme, bambini, ragazzi, ragazze, come and see, come and see, three panettoni for the price of one, three panettoni for the price of one!’ The voice stops with unnatural abruptness. The jingle plays again, harsh, idiotic, strident. When it stops there is the unmistakeable rumble of a diesel ticking over. The still, damp air begins to smell. And now I can just catch the ghostly shadow of a white Fiat Fiorino delivery van. Out blares the voice again, incredibly loud, the kind of volume one expects at the Last Judgement, booming through fog: ‘Mamme, bambini, ragazzi, ragazze!!!’ Odd, I think, how he excludes fathers, unmarried adults and the like. The van stops three times along the two hundred metres of Via Colombare, sells a dozen or so panettoni and is gone.

  As many as four or five of these ambulanti may pass down our semi-suburban, semi-rural street in a single day, summer or winter, rain or shine. There’s the man who sells brooms, dustpans, brushes, kitchen mats, pan-scourers. He’s a regular. He passes around ten o’clock, his wares piled on the top of his tiny Fiat 650 van. A broomstick lunges forward through the fog like a lance.

  Another fellow sells mattresses. He has a dozen or so piled on the back of a small lorry. Like the panettoni man he has a recording crackling through an overloaded speaker system: ‘Un’ occasione d’oro per sogni d’oro.’ A golden opportunity for golden dreams. Every Tuesday without fail. He is burly, brisk, darkly moustached. But how many mattresses can he sell to thirty or so houses?

  One suspects the knifesharpener of being wilfully picturesque. He has a grinding stone geared up to the drive of his moped and a little shelter affair arranged over the handlebars. He squints, hunched. In normal conditions you can see the sparks fly. Through the fog there’s just the sinister shriek of metal on stone. You’re reminded of the Green Knight, sharpening his axe; another sound heard in dead of winter.

  Or there are the one-off ambulanti offering the most amazing deals. A huge lorry noses along the street, squeezing between parked cars, watching out for shutters left carelessly swinging. Four best-quality wooden kitchen chairs for 60,000 Lire. Just thirty pounds. Is that possible? Or on another lucky day you may get the chance to buy a whole terrace set of tables and fold-up chairs for 100,000 Lire. Sometimes I wonder if, rather than being behind the lorry when the stuff fell off, they didn’t just take the whole lorry and start driving around the streets.

  Of the regulars, the cheese duo are the most impressive. These two fat, jolly men have a super-long, purpose-built van which folds open at the side to reveal a cheese counter that wouldn’t look out of place in Fortnum and Masons. Turning the corner by the Madonnina, they have to reverse and manoeuvre. The relaxed megaphoned announcement of ‘Formaggi, formaggi, eccoci qua’ suggests far more confidence in their clientele. The vehicle ticks over in the fog. Orietta slips out in coat and scarf to buy some seasoned Asiago and Parmesan. It’s cheaper, she says, than in the shops. I wonder why.

  ‘Thieves,’ is Bepi’s only comment when I mention the ambulanti to him.

  Coming back, Orietta makes her usual detour to the cassonetto, heaving it so far the other way it’s almost lost in the grey damp.

  The marocchino is even more discreet than the formaggi fellows. Officially, marocchino just means Moroccan. In reality, the word refers to a stock figure in Italian life, the Moroccan carpet pedlar. Male, anywhere between fifteen and fifty, he patrols the streets with a heap of carpets over his shoulder and colourful tablecloths on his arm. In summer one almost melts at the sight; if you bought anything it would surely be drenched in sweat. On winter days you suspect the carpets are worth their weight in gold. You’re surprised he wants to sell them at all. In any event, the marocchino is admirably stoical. His face is a cipher. Apparently, he expects nothing, fears nothing.

  The bell rings. Rather than buzzing somebo
dy in immediately, or even quizzing them through the intercom, I have learnt to go out on the balcony for eye-to-eye contact. The Arabic man stands there in the damp cold, his rugs over his shoulders. Would I like to buy something? I say no, thank you. He doesn’t insist. And this is another admirable side to the marocchini, they will never bother you, never shout anything or use a megaphone, never try hard to persuade. Perhaps this one might have done better if he had tried. For the truth is we could use a few rugs on our freezing tiles. It’s just that I’m not used to buying this way.

  He presses Lucilla’s bell. We can hear. Inevitably, she lets him in. How many times have we been obliged to listen (for conversations on the stairs are audible everywhere), to Lucilla talking to Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, water-purifier salesmen, survey interviewers and the like. But this morning she actually lets the marocchino into her flat. He leaves about half an hour later, I fear without having sold anything. For a marocchino could never be di fiducia, the way the cheeseman is for Orietta. I hope at least Lucilla offered him a gingerino and told him he was troppo gentile.

  From my balcony I watch the man walk stoically off into the fog. Even from this distance I can see that his carpets are not Moroccan at all. Most probably they are produced by some small sweatshop in Reggio Calabria operating from an illegally built prefab. He keeps a steady pace, stopping only at the house of the man with the Alfa 75 where the postman is mounting new railings on a low cement wall. Then the fog swallows him up. A short distance away there will be an old Fiat 128 serving as a base for himself and three others. They keep the carpets in the boot, move from village to village. Perhaps they sleep in the car too. The marocchini are rumoured to be homosexuals without exception. Certainly, they bring no women with them. And, curiously, they rarely aspire to a place in regular Italian life the way other immigrants do. I have never seen a marocchino here who did anything but sell carpets.