Italian Ways

by Tim Parks

  THE TRAIN HAS BEGUN to pull out of the station and you’re just settling down to read when an ear-splitting voice erupts from a loudspeaker in the panel over the door, the panel with the knob that adjusts the neon.

  ‘Benvenuti a bordo a treno 624 Svevo per Trieste Centrale!’

  This is not the mechanical speak of the station announcements, but the would-be friendly voice of your capotreno, who has his hideaway in the last compartment of the front carriage, a sacred space where no passenger is allowed to sit, even if the train is bursting at the seams. He lists the stations you’ll be stopping at. He informs you that there’s a minibar, something you already knew. He warns you that smoking is now forbidden on Italian trains, corridors included. At a volume that has the compartment wall panels trembling, he encourages you to turn down the volume on your mobile phone ringtone. ‘Thank you for choosing Trenitalia,’ he concludes, ‘and buon viaggio!’ Who else could you have chosen? you wonder. Still, the voice is silent now. Relax. Then he starts again in another language. Leddies an gennlmen! Next it will be Mesdames et messieurs, then Meine Damen und Herren.

  I jump to my feet. Beside the knob that controls the lighting, there are two other knobs above the compartment door – significantly over head height, that is. They are also of quaintly old-fashioned design, black plastic hemispheres sprouting pointy little fingers. One controls heat and cold. Supposedly. You know that because there are two small thermometers designed on each side of the knob, the one to the left coloured blue, the one to the right red, with, over the top, a widening curved line to suggest the gradual passage from blue to red – that is, cold to heat – as the knob turns. It is pointless to fiddle with this knob since it just turns round and round and makes no difference at all to the temperature. This service, like the individual lamps, has long been discontinued; the temperature is centrally controlled, though the passenger isn’t informed of that, just as he isn’t informed, except by this initial announcement, that the image of a smoking cigarette on the glass door of the compartment no longer means that you can smoke in here. ‘’Ave a good journey!’ The capotreno winds up his English performance. If I’m quick I can still escape his French.

  The volume control can be recognised by the design of a little loudspeaker emitting radiating lines and tiny quavers and semiquavers, in a charming reminder of piano teachers and music lessons, though I can’t recall music ever being played on the train PA system. The knob has three clicks – presumably loud, medium and off – though again, you will get little joy from moving it to these settings. I never found a single knob that functioned as it was designed to. Yet the volume control does work in its way, in the sense that if you can get the knob to stick between any two clicks, the sound abruptly disappears. You have turned it off. The knob has a propensity to slip, so this adjustment is a delicate one, but it is possible. ‘Mesdames et messieurs! Bien …’

  Done it!

  Suddenly the voice is only a rumour in the distance, a radio in someone else’s apartment. Turning to sit down, I catch a glimpse of my face in the strip of mirror between seat and luggage rack. I’m looking old and harassed. Take it easy. Relax, read.

  And I do. I sit back and return to my novel. This is bliss. The evening after a reasonably productive day, the sway of the carriage over the points leaving Centrale, the lights of the city streets sliding by in the big night, the voice of Thomas Bernhard on the page before me; above all, the intimacy of a compartment all to myself. Perfect.

  For about five minutes.

  Just as the train rides through the platforms of Lambrate, where desultory passengers are still waiting for the 21.15 Interregionale, now half an hour late, the compartment door is hauled open and with a great clattering and banging and a frightening fit of coughing in comes a truly pantomime figure: an extremely tall, bulky man with a huge head, no neck, a most respectable paunch and an ankle in plaster up to his knee. He is walking with the help of a single aluminium crutch but despite this handicap carries a backpack and a very large, very old duffel bag. Panting hard, with the look of a man who has just escaped death by the skin of his teeth, he drops the backpack and bag on the floor and collapses with extravagant theatricality on the seat by the door, his back to the direction of the train.

  Without even looking at me, the new arrival starts to moan: ‘Dio povero, how they make you run!’ He coughs and splutters. ‘But how they make you run, Dio santo, Dio povero, Dio santo!’

  His accent is Veneto. He gasps, brings up some phlegm, swallows it, and now pulls a clown’s cloth handkerchief from the pocket of his voluminous trousers to wipe the sweat from his forehead. His face is red and steamy and amazingly big. The eyes are glassy. His hair sprouts unkempt from a baseball cap, his whole body exudes discomfort and stickiness. ‘Ma quanto ti fanno correre! Ma Dio santo.’ Then he stops and holds his breath, his eyes opening wider and wider until, without any attempt to cover mouth or nose, he produces a deafening sneeze, aaaah-choooo!

  My victory over the PA system is a distant memory.

  The sneeze is repeated. He sucks up hard through his nose, which also sprouts thick black hairs, then begins his monologue again. ‘Ma quanto ti fanno correre! Bastardi! If only you knew! Dio povero. If you knew. How they make you run!’

  I go back to my book. I can sense he is looking at me now, no doubt a little disappointed that I haven’t responded. After what might be two minutes, despite all my instinctive resistance, I’m obliged to exchange glances. The width of the man’s nose is remarkable. I raise my eye-brows in polite acknowledgement of his presence, but I absolutely refuse to say anything. I must not give him an excuse for carrying on. The expression in Italian is dare corda, to give someone string, meaning to offer them the conversational opportunity to go on talking to you. Non mi dai corda, you don’t give me string, is one of the classic Italian complaints. The refusal to chatter is a breach of etiquette.

  With or without my assistance the new arrival goes on talking anyway. I knew he would. He has travelled, he says, santo Dio, from Genoa. Da Genova, Dio santo! The train was late, Dio povero. He had to make this connection with the train to Trieste. OK, so the Trieste train waited for the Genoa train, as it should, no, caspita, as it must! But he had to get from platform seventeen to platform eight in just two minutes. Dio santo! With my foot in this state, Dio povero! There should be a law, he says, santo Dio. There should be damages.

  I’m thinking exactly the same thing. There should be a law against intrusions like this. Again he bursts into a fit of coughing. Again, there’s something willed and theatrical about it: he’s auditioning for a freak show. Then he bends down, unzips his bag and pulls out a monstrous sandwich wrapped in the noisiest paper ever manufactured. A smell of mortadella invades the compartment. The air is swiftly saturated with spices and fats. Still spluttering, he opens a mouth in which various brown teeth are missing and takes a savage bite with those that, crooked as they are, remain, contriving at the same moment to wipe his nose with one arm and fish about in his bag with the other. For a can of beer.

  He belches.

  That does it. Ten years ago I would have sat and suffered, I would have listened to the story of how he broke his ankle, of why he was travelling so far, to visit his mother or auntie, no doubt; I might even have expressed sympathy. But times have changed. The repetition of similar experiences in a controlled environment like a railway compartment allows you to experiment with a variety of solutions and techniques. Very calmly I close my Bernhard, I pack it away in my bag, I slip my pen in my pocket and get to my feet. For the first time he looks at me with curiosity. He is puzzled. ‘Ma quanto ti fanno correre, Dio povero,’ he mutters. There are shreds of mortadella between his lips.

  ‘In the state you are in,’ I tell him, ‘signore, I fear you need a whole compartment to yourself.’ I pull open the door and step into the corridor. As I do so, I can see him straining to watch me, extreme perplexity on his face. Who is he going to moan to?

  TWO COMPARTMENTS UP, I find
a pale young man, alone, sitting in the seat near the door, bent forward over a book in such a way as to narrow the corridor between the seats. It is the perfect way to discourage a new arrival. He doesn’t want company. This is my sort of companion. I open the door. He sits up. I read disappointment in his eyes. ‘E’ libero?’ I ask. This is, of course, only a courtesy. He nods. He has a thin, studious face. In his hand he holds a fountain pen with which he has been writing notes on a notepad held under the book he is reading, a rather old book by the looks. I sit down by the window. Despite the rush of the train I can still hear the coughing of that terrible man two compartments away. But the earplugs will eliminate that.

  We read. Sometimes I think I should have kept a list of all the books I have read on trains. Certainly most of the books that have been important to me would be there. Perhaps I just read better on rails. A book has a better chance of getting through to me, particularly when I’m in a compartment, and at night. This hiss of metal on metal, the very slight swaying of the carriage, the feeling of being securely enclosed in a comfortable, well-lighted space while the world is flung by in glossy darkness outside, all this puts me in a mood to read, as if the material world had been suspended and I were entirely in the realm of the mind.

  Some forty minutes into the journey, having put the trauma of the fat man behind me, I look up and watch my new companion. A pleasant intimacy can settle over two people reading together on a train, even if nothing is said. Finally the young man shifts his book in such a way that I can glimpse the title: The Confessions of St Augustine. He has round, rimless glasses. His hair is that blond that is almost colourless, like greyish honey, slightly curly, tight to his head. He puckers brow and lips as he reads, he has thin lips, and makes sudden rapacious movements when he wants to jot down a note. Perhaps he’s studying at a seminary. Sometimes it is wiser, I reflect, to choose a compartment with a single quiet companion, rather than risk the precarious pleasure of the compartment all to yourself. Alone you are vulnerable. Together we two readers will surely discourage any further intrusion.

  I turn my head and through the big black pane of the window spy a small walled cemetery on a low hillside. It’s uncanny, but I always seem to turn my head exactly as the train passes this cemetery. It’s on a low hill near Brescia. What is the mechanism that makes this happen? Do the dead call? There’s the glow of our Intercity windows in the night, a dark field, then the old cemetery, then a newer section added on. In the newer section, where the coffins are slotted into cement drawers in the high walls, you can see the flicker of those little red lights that keep the dead company; lumini, they’re called, as if the tenants of the place were all lying quietly there, reading together as they decay. At Desenzano my seminarian gets to his feet and puts his book away in his little student’s backpack. He smiles softly. Buon viaggio, he says. Buona sera, I reply.

  Part Two

  FIRST CLASS, HIGH SPEED

  2007 – 2010

  Chapter 3

  MILANO–VERONA

  I DISCOVERED, OR let’s say I finally started using, the tiny station of Verona Porta Vescovo (literally, Bishop’s Gate) in 2007. There was an intriguing plaque about Italian soldiers heading for Russia:

  DA QUESTA STAZIONE PARTI’ LA PRIMA

  TRADOTTA DI COMBATTENTI PER IL

  FRONTE RUSSO

  14 LUGLIO 1941

  (The first troop train carrying combatants to the Russian front left from this station, 14 July 1941.) But that’s not what attracted me to use Porta Vescovo. It had simply become impossible to drive across town to the main station; impossible for me, that is. Not that by normal metropolitan standards Verona is congested; the bottleneck over the bridge taking you from east to west of the river on the circular road can slow things up ten minutes, but no more. All the same, I have begun to feel that the car’s pollution is not limited to the exhaust it pumps out; driving a car pollutes the mind, or at least my mind; it poisons and agitates. Another argument in favour of the train.

  All over the city, people get out of their beds far too early. They don’t have time to shower and shave, to relax over coffee and a croissant. They leap into their cars and hit the accelerator, racing to the station, knowing that if they don’t find that parking space in the roads nearby they may miss their train. Moving from bed to road, soft mattress to hard tarmac in only five minutes, I find myself doing things I shouldn’t, overtaking where I shouldn’t, crossing lights at the last of last moments, reacting angrily when other hurrying drivers cut me off, loathing the scooters that hover in the mirror’s blind spot. My personality, I realise, is bending under the press of a collective stampede, the rush to be first, or at least on time. A wiser person than myself, I know, would not succumb to this contagion. But I’m not wise, and especially not on the road.

  One day something happens to tip the balance; it’s Monday, I’m leaving home a little late, I’m hurtling towards the light where the circonvallazione, the busy circular road from the east, meets the Adige River and turns left and south before the famously congested bridge. This is one of the longest lights in the city; as I approach, it is already on yellow, actually it has long been on yellow, I’m aware of that. Yellows are much longer in Italy than in other countries. Precisely to give you no excuse. At the last of last seconds, the Alpha in front of me hits the brakes. I’m having none of it. I swerve right, overtake on the inside, and cross his path, turning left. As I do so, I see that the light is already red; in fact I’m only a yard or two clear of the cars now accelerating towards me from the right, along the river. Immediately the reason why the Alpha braked so hard is clear. The first car is police.

  There are two lanes along the river. We now have five hundred slow yards to the bridge, where the traffic is backed up for another hundred yards across the river to the next light. The pula, as Italians call the police, draw alongside. I’ve got my speed right down now for the simple reason that the traffic here is barely moving. To my right, the police car has space to move ahead, but doesn’t. Damn. Blue and white, it simply sits beside me; when I move, it moves; when I stop, it stops.

  I could turn and look the officers in the eye, but I don’t. I sit in traffic looking straight ahead, both hands sedately on the steering wheel, trying to appear absolutely ordinary and calm. I’m not calm, of course. I’m shaking. The two uniformed guys sitting so close to me know I crossed on red. This is a serious offence. What are they waiting for? Why don’t they stop me? Twenty years ago, when I crossed this same light on red at two in the morning and a police car again popped up from nowhere, I solved the problem by simply shelling out the 20,000 lire the men asked for, but those days are over. This could mean losing my licence.

  We’re turning right now, over the river, just a few minutes from the station. I can’t get away from them. I can’t even park and force them either to get it over with or go away. They stay beside me all the way across the bridge, beneath which, in a completely different manifestation of my personality, I love to play in my kayak on a wave that forms between two bridge pillars. Now the police are playing with me. They drop behind a little. To check my number plate? I’m very aware that the car is old and not a little battered. My daughter had a brush with the garage wall recently. And I rarely clean the car. Correction: I never clean it. I don’t believe in cleaning cars. Life is too short. How quickly could the police run a check on the plate, I wonder, and find that there is a recent speeding fine? This was actually my daughter again, returning in the early hours from a concert where her band had played. But I accepted the fine and the loss of points on my own licence, since I had more points than she to lose and they tend to be harder on young drivers. This was dishonest of me but crucial for my daughter, who at the time was driving all over Italy playing concerts. If they are able to run a check on some computer in their car, some dedicated police iPhone, and see that recent conviction, will that convince them to pull me over now? I can hardly start explaining that it wasn’t actually me speeding but my daughter, the
rocker.

  The traffic inches forward. The police draw alongside again. They’re very close, as if they wanted to brush against me. My neck is stiff from looking rigidly ahead. The adrenalin is pumping. I would love to stay cool, but at the crucial moments in life I never can. Five minutes are becoming an eternity. Thank God I’m wearing a nice jacket, which gives at least an air of respectability. Perhaps I could say that I was hurrying because I was on an exam commission and I feel a duty to my students. Would they buy that? They would tell me I should have got up earlier. When we finally pass the light and come out of the bottleneck on the city side, the police car stays nailed beside me; I can hardly speed away from it, so the two lanes of traffic stuck behind us now proceed through the underpass with admirable composure. I’m under escort is the truth, and leading a procession. The only thing that feels positive is that so far I’ve resisted looking at the two men. There are always two in an Italian police car. Perhaps my staring straight ahead, remaining entirely still, has created a sort of protective enchantment, an intimacy almost; if I turned to look at them, thus acknowledging my crime, the spell would be broken and they’d pull me over.

  At long last, when I peel off left for the station, the police car accelerates away. They’ve gone. I feel incredibly grateful to them. What nice guys. They could have enforced the letter of the law, and the spirit, too, for that matter. I really was driving dangerously. Instead they just made me sweat for ten minutes. Turning off the motor, I realise I’ve made a decision. That is the end of driving for me, or at least of this kind of driving. I’ve pushed my luck for too long. From now on, however inconvenient it may be, however few trains there are, I will use Verona Porta Vescovo, a tiny station in a sleepy cul-de-sac on my side of town, the Venice side, just three quiet traffic lights from home.