Clash of Civilizations for an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

by Amara Lakhous

  THE TRUTH ACCORDING

  TO JOHAN VAN MARTEN

  My father wasn’t very enthusiastic about my project and tried every means to get me to reconsider my decision: “Johan, forget Italy, you won’t learn anything from the Italians. Remember, that’s the country that invented catenaccio! That system of defensive lockdown would have killed the game, if the Dutch hadn’t invented total soccer.” I still remember his parting words to me at the airport. “Remember, Johan, Milan became one of the best teams in Europe—and the world—thanks to the Dutch trio of Gullit, Van Basten, and Rijkaard, not Berlusconi’s money.” My father never forgave my disobedience and so he started teasing me, calling me Gentile, because in his opinion I don’t deserve the name Johan, which reminds him of the great player Cruyff.

  I know that “gentile” is an Italian word that means polite and well mannered, but actually it’s the surname of the former player for Juventus and for the Italian national team that won the world championship in 1982 in Spain, who today is the coach of the national under-21 team. Claudio Gentile was known for his aggressiveness and for man-to-man marking. For my father Gentile is the primary enemy of the sport, in fact the ultimate symbol of catenaccio. In his opinion the international soccer federation should have disqualified him when he made Maradona cry and ripped Zico’s shirt at the world championship in Spain. That’s why I keep saying “I am not GENTILE”—it’s my way of saying I’m innocent. But is Gentile the true image of Italy?

  I came to Rome to study film and realize the dream I’ve had since I was a child. I love Italian films; my true passion is neorealism, which in my view is the best response there’s been to Hollywood. I adore the films of Rossellini and De Sica. Rossellini’s Rome Open City and De Sica’s Bicycle Thief are among the finest films in the history of cinema. Some scenes from The Bicycle Thief were shot right here in Piazza Vittorio. That’s what inspired me to rent a room in the building where Amedeo lives in Piazza Vittorio.

  Of course I still remember our first meeting. I saw him come out the street door of the building with the film Divorce Italian Style under his arm, I asked him the name of the director and he said, “Pietro Germi. This film is the masterpiece of Italian cinema.” I told him that I preferred the neorealist films and at that point he looked at me with a smile: “This subject deserves a cineaste’s dissertation at Sandro’s bar.” That day we had a conversation about the state of Italian cinema, and how it’s become a victim of bureaucratic obstructionism. Amedeo maintained that Italian-style comedy represents the highest level of Italian creativity because it emphasizes paradoxes, combines tragedy and comedy, humor and serious criticism. So I realized that Amedeo is an open person and not a supporter of catenaccio.

  No, no. Catenaccio really does have to do with this! It’s not just a defensive tactic in soccer but a way of thinking and living, a result of underdevelopment, of locking the chain and throwing away the key. There are plenty of examples of the culture of catenaccio in Rome. To mention one, after the New Year holidays last year, when I came back from Amsterdam I decided to bring gifts for some Italian friends. The police stopped me and brought me to headquarters to question me. I didn’t understand why, I thought it was a mistake. They searched my suitcase, found a few grams of marijuana, and said to me:

  “What’s this?”

  “Presents for my friends.”

  “Are you making fun of us, you son of a bitch?”

  “No. I’m telling you the truth, it’s not against the law.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “These are presents for friends, here’s the receipt from the store in Amsterdam.”

  “Are you Dutch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, that explains everything.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Rome is not a paradise for drug addicts, like Amsterdam! Selling drugs is illegal in Italy. Now do you understand? Possession of marijuana is a crime punishable by the law.”

  In the end they let me go, after making me swear that I wouldn’t bring drugs into Italy and that I would give up marijuana for good. I still don’t understand what marijuana has to do with drugs like heroin. Isn’t there a European Union? Doesn’t the freedom to smoke, believe, and think exist in Italy? Is Italy a civilized country? My troubles with the police are not confined to this one incident. One night I went to Via Gioberti, near the station, where the prostitutes are, and there was an African girl I liked; we agreed to go to her room in a hotel nearby. I was just heading over there when the police stopped me and assaulted me with questions. At a certain point I couldn’t take it anymore: “I don’t understand why you’re arresting me. You don’t have the right. I made an arrangement with her, I’ve already given her the money, I haven’t committed any crime. And then isn’t this the red-light district, like the one in Amsterdam?” I nearly spent the night in jail.

  Amedeo is a foreigner! Is it logical that the person who represents magnificent Italy is a foreigner? He’s the only one who answers all my questions about politics, the Mafia, movies, cooking, and so on. Also, I don’t understand why Amedeo has been accused of murdering the Gladiator. I know Lorenzo Manfredini very well—I shared an apartment with him. He adored dogs. Just have a look around his apartment and you’ll see hundreds of photographs of dogs on the walls. Someone who loves dogs the way he did doesn’t deserve to die like a criminal. I know that he wasn’t liked by the other tenants because of his strange behavior. He always said to me, “I’m a stray dog and I have no master.”

  Did Amedeo harbor some anger toward Lorenzo? I don’t know. I’m sure that finding the body in the elevator has a precise meaning. Most of the fights between the tenants originate with the elevator. All the meetings focus on it: Mr. Elevator! Once I lost my temper and shouted, “Do you realize that the Dutch parliament recently approved a law that allows an individual to kill himself? It’s the first law in the world that legalizes euthanasia. While the Dutch people passionately debate this new law, we are discussing the use of the elevator!” This is underdevelopment, this is fucking catenaccio! I left the meeting in a fury. The elevator is the source of the problem. There is no agreement among the tenants about it: there are some who want air-conditioning in summer and heat in winter, there are some who propose putting a crucifix and photos of the Pope and Padre Pio in it, while some insist on the right to a secular elevator with no religious symbols. Then, there are some who reject all these proposals, maintaining that they are costly and unnecessary. In other words, this elevator is like a ship with more than one captain.

  Slowly I began to get to know the tenants, thanks to the methods of neorealism, and I discovered that the elevator would be a good subject for a film that combines neorealism and the cinema of Fassbinder. Some splendid titles came to mind: Catenaccio, or Mr. Elevator or The Elevator of Piazza Vittorio, or Clash of Civilizations Italian Style or Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. I dreamed of giving the role of the protagonist to Hanna Schygulla, who was in Fassbinder’s big films. The role of the owner of the dog who disappeared could be right for her. I’m a great admirer of the Iranian Parviz because he reminds me of Anthony Quinn in his early films. And the Neapolitan concierge Benedetta also has an important role, because she represents the character of the people, like Anna Magnani in Campo de’ fiori. I asked Amedeo to help me persuade all the people in the building to be in the film. I’m enthusiastic about making this film, and even more so after the murder. That’s already publicity. I’m not turning back—I’m going to continue on my path.

  SEVENTH WAIL

  Saturday November 7, 11:43 P.M.

  Today I met a young Dutch fellow called Johan. He’s a film student who’s a fan of neorealism. We had a long discussion about reality in Italian movies, and I strongly defended Italian comedy, which often takes on serious and sad subjects in a comic manner. I love Pietro Germi’s film Divorce Italian Style, I’m never bored, no matter how often I see it. It’s the story of a man who devises a plan to k
ill his wife so that he can marry a young woman. It’s said that this film prepared the way for the referendum on divorce in Italy in 1974.

  Friday March 25, 11:55 P.M.

  I went to the Mamertine prison near the Coliseum for the first time: it was a moving experience. There, in 104 BC, our great warrior Jugurtha died, after six days without food or water. Goddam traitors. On the way home I met the Dutch student, and talked to him for a long time about Jugurtha and his struggle against the Romans. He said to me, “You’re the only Italian who knows the history of Rome. The story of that African hero would be a great subject for an epic like Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.”

  Wednesday May 25, 10:53 P.M.

  Johan asked me to be his guide to Rome. Tomorrow we’re going to Campo de’ Fiori, where the famous film with Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi was shot. In the middle of this square Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. Now in this cursed place there’s a big statue in memory of the philosopher.

  Saturday November 30, 22:39 P.M.

  Tonight I went with Johan to the Goethe Institute to a retrospective devoted to the German director Werner Rainer Fassbinder. We saw Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. It’s the story of a Moroccan immigrant, al Hadi, who is called Ali, and his wife, a German woman the age of his mother. The two are under constant pressure because of the hostility and arrogance of the people around them: neighbors, colleagues at work, and especially the woman’s family. Fassbinder describes the tragedy of Ali, torn between his nostalgia for couscous and his desperate attempts to please the Germans.

  Monday April 20, 11:35 P.M.

  I ran into Johan tonight. He was rather depressed because of the bureaucratic obstacles that keep him from making Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, but although he was complaining about what he defines as the “catenaccio mentality,” Johan hasn’t lost his enthusiasm. “The film will be very successful,” he told me. “I’ll use a theater setup, with a single background—that is, the entrance to the building facing the elevator. I’ll persuade the tenants to play their roles the way people did in the era of neorealism: Benedetta will become a famous actress like Anna Magnani!”

  Friday November 30, 11:16 P.M.

  Blond Johan has decided to go ahead with his film about the tenants’ morbid relationship with the elevator. I asked him to leave me out, simply because I don’t use the elevator. All my nightmares take place in an elevator: a narrow tomb without windows.

  THE TRUTH ACCORDING

  TO SANDRO DANDINI

  I’m the owner of the Bar Dandini, which looks out on the gardens of Piazza Vittorio. Most of my customers are foreigners. I know them well, and I can tell the difference between a Bangladeshi and an Indian, between an Albanian and a Pole, between a Tunisian and an Egyptian. The Chinese, for example, pronounce the letter l in place of r, as in “Good molning, olange juice.” The Egyptians say b instead of p, for example, “A cabbuccino, blease.” As you see, it won’t be easy to convince me that my friend Amede’ isn’t Italian.

  Amede’ is Amedeo. In Rome we’re in the habit of eliminating the first letters or the middle or final ones of a name; for instance, I’m called Sandro but my real name is Alessandro, my sister’s name is Giuseppina but we call her Giusy, everyone calls my nephew Giovanni Gianni, my son is Filippo but we always call him Pippo, and there are plenty of other examples.

  I met Amedeo when he came to live in Piazza Vittorio. I still remember our first encounter: he asked for a cappuccino and a cornetto, and then he sat down and began reading Montanelli’s column in the Corriere della Sera. I’ve never in my life seen a Chinese, a Moroccan, a Romanian, a Gypsy, or an Egyptian read the Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica! The only thing the immigrants read is Porta Portese, for the want ads. As he was leaving, I told him that I admired Montanelli for his courage, his honesty, and his frankness, and because he defied the Red Brigades when they shot him, saying, “You’re crazy! Goddam sons of bitches!” I said that in my view Montanelli was wrong when he declared that “the Italian people don’t have a historical memory.” That may be valid for the rest of Italy but not for Rome, because the people of Rome have a deep-rooted memory that goes back to the ancient Romans. You only have to walk the streets and admire the ruins or glance at our team’s banner to find the image of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Finally I remembered my father’s advice for winning customers:

  “My name is Sandro, what about you?”

  “My name is Amede’.”

  “So you’re from Rome?”

  “I’m from the south.”

  When he was about to go I said, “See you tomorrow, Amedeo,” and he responded with a warm smile.

  Amedeo made an excellent impression from that first encounter, but his answer “I’m from the south,” worried me a bit. I’m not a racist, but I can’t bear Neapolitans. I hoped from the bottom of my heart that he had nothing to do with Naples, because I still haven’t forgotten the beating I got some years ago from the Naples fans after a tie on their home field. I say they didn’t deserve a player like Maradona. You know how things ended up for poor Diego? After he won so many trophies they accused him of collusion with the Camorra and then they drove him into drug addiction, until he became more passionate about drugs than about the ball! If Maradona had played for Roma he could have become a man venerated like the Pope. I’m not embarrassed to say “I wouldn’t trust a Neapolitan, even if he was San Gennaro!”

  Amedeo began coming to the bar every morning for the three “C”s: cappuccino, cornetto, Corriere della Sera. I tried to learn the details of his origins, his family, his team and political preferences, but Amedeo doesn’t talk much, and that made it difficult. The fact is I’m not good at playing cat and mouse, and my patience runs out quickly. So, straight out, I asked him, “Excuse me, Amede’, tell me yes or no: are you from Naples?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a fan of Lazio?”

  “No.”

  I drew a sigh of relief and embraced him the way our fans do when Roma scores the winning goal in overtime, and I decided that breakfast was on me that day.

  Once I reassured myself that he wasn’t Neapolitan or a fan of Lazio, I opened up to him, and we became friends. Our friendship intensified when I bought an apartment in the same building where he lives. I never asked him where he was born or when he came to Rome, but as time passed I discovered that he knows this city better than I do. Surely he must have come here as a small child, like my grandfather, who left Sicily a century ago and settled in the capital. After a while Amedeo became a fan of Roma, and he doesn’t miss a game at the Olympic Stadium. It’s all thanks to me. I’m an apostle like St. Paul, but with a small difference: I make converts to the Roman faith, whereas he was recruiting for the Catholic Church. When you get right down to it, every fan roots for his home team.

  But no! Amedeo wasn’t an extremist. I read in some newspaper that the Gladiator who was found murdered in the elevator was a Lazio fan, and the author of the article deduced that they should look for the murderer in neighborhoods with concentrations of Roma fans. But do you really think that’s a motive for murder? Rome is innocent. I mean, Amedeo has nothing to do with this horrible crime. Amedeo is good and generous, “good as bread,” we say in Rome. For example, he is very generous with the Iranian, he helps him find jobs and pays for his wine. The thing that’s notable is Amedeo’s passion for penalties—he prefers a penalty kick to a goal! He trembles when a player is about to kick a penalty, I’ve never understood why.

  I find it hard to believe what you’re telling me. Amedeo is an immigrant like Parviz the Iranian, Iqbal the Bangladeshi, Maria Cristina the fat maid, Abdu the fish seller, and the Dutch kid who makes me laugh when he repeats like a parrot, “I am not gentile.” You don’t know Amedeo the way I do. He knows the history of Rome and its streets better than I do, in fact better than Riccardo Nardi, who’s so proud of his origins, which go back to the ancient Romans. Riccardo, who drives a taxi and has been going up and down th
e streets of Rome every day for twenty years. Once he and Amedeo had a contest to see who knew the streets better. I was like the mc of a TV quiz show, and I posed a series of questions, for example: Where is Via Sandro Veronese? Where is Via Valsolda? How to you get from Piazza del Popolo to Via Spartaco? Where is Piazza Trilussa? And Piazzale della Radio? And the Foreign Ministry? And the French Embassy? And the Mignon cinema? Via del Babuino? Piazza Mastai? Amedeo answered before Riccardo. When it comes to the history of Rome, Amedeo has no equal, he knows the origins of the street names and their meanings. I’ve never in my life seen a person like him. Once, after yet another defeat by Amedeo, Riccardo said to him laughing, “Wow, Amede’, you really know Rome! Did the wolf suckle you?”

  Don’t say that Amedeo is an immigrant, it gives me a headache. I don’t hate foreigners. Wasn’t the greatest player of all time, Paulo Roberto Falcao, a foreigner? What about Piedone, Cerezo, and Voeller, weren’t they foreigners? These players were the glory of Roma, and so they deserve respect, appreciation, and esteem. There’s a big difference between Rome and Naples, between Rome and Milan, between Rome and Turin. We’re friendly with the immigrants, we treat them affectionately. I don’t love the people of the north, because they’ve got the wealth of the whole country. Bastards! They only think of their own interests. Take the example of Antonio Marini, who treats the residents of the building like nursery-school children or a tribe of Zulus. He never stops giving orders. He came from Milan to teach at the University of Rome, as if this were a city of asses, as if we didn’t have university professors here, those bastards! They know all about favoritism and influence, they’re obsessed with power, with imposing their will on everyone.

  That professor from Milan has done his best to keep us from using the elevator; he wanted to have it just for himself, and he advanced the oddest proposals, on the pretext that they would improve the quality of the service: bolt the elevator door shut, keep visitors and guests from using it, ban smoking and spitting, clean your shoes before entering, put in a mirror and a seat for two people, and so on. Once, after yet another meeting where I was really pissed off, I said to him, “You’re a pain in the ass, and I’ve got a mind to beat you up—this elevator belongs to everybody! It’s not part of your house, this is our building and we’re not a tribe of Zulus! Go back to Milan and do whatever the fuck you like!” He didn’t take that: “You barbarians, I’ll never be one of you! I will defend civilization in this building as long as I live. The elevator is the dividing line between barbarism and civilization.” He should be thrown in jail on charges of defamation, or, at least, expelled from within the walls of Rome, and forbidden to re-enter for the rest of his life. Let’s talk about the disgraceful scandals that the Clean Hands investigation has turned up, exposing the corruption in the cities of the north, starting with Milan? And after all this, people still wonder: why has Rome won only two championships while Milan, Inter, and Juventus have won most of the trophies in Italy and abroad? The answer is obvious: corruuuuuuuuuuuption!