The Italian Divide

by Allan Topol

  “However, through fourteen centuries there was one constant. Southern Italy was part of a separate political entity from the north. The border between the north and the south shifted from time to time, but it was not until 1861 when Italy was unified that north and south were joined.

  “This is critical. Our history and our heritage in the north are different from that of people in the south.

  “Now let’s turn to our current situation in Italy. Geographically, our boundaries are essentially the same as they were in 1861. However, politically, our system is dysfunctional. Economically, we are a disaster.

  “The world is changing. We have to change also.

  “Globalization is killing us in Italy. Our small companies operated by skilled artisans, the makers of shoes, bags, clothing, pianos, and hundreds of other high quality items, can no longer compete because of prices on the world market. So they are going out of business.

  “As a nation, we are hugely in debt. Last year it was over 130 percent of GDP, gross domestic product. And our current GDP is what it was in 1997. In other words, our economy refuses to grow.

  “In northern Italy, we have so many talented and energetic people. We should be rivaling Germany as an economic powerhouse in Europe. Yet we are barely able to pay our bills.

  “The reason is simple. Southern Italy is a drain on the north.

  “I have thought long and hard about our economic and political situation and decided it is now time for another change in the map.

  “It is time to divide Italy into one nation in the northern part of the present country. And another in the south.”

  The crowd was on its feet cheering wildly. This was Parelli’s platform. What they came to hear. What they wanted.

  Raising his voice over the crowd, Parelli shouted, “Our two economies have vast differences. Together we are not operating effectively. Divided into two, I believe we will each be able to capitalize on our respective strengths.

  “We can achieve this result through the election in September. I promise that if you vote for my New Italy Party and we achieve a dominant position in parliament and in the government, I will divide Italy into two nations of the North and the South.”

  He stopped talking. The crowd was on its feet again giving him a standing ovation and chanting his name.

  Elizabeth tuned out the noise and thought about what Parelli had said. She had been following separatist movements in Spain, one by the Basques and the other in Catalonia. There had been others in Europe as well—in Scotland and, historically, Norway and Sweden had split. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia had divided into three and two parts respectively. She wondered if Parelli had gotten his idea from them.

  Regardless of the source of his views, although she wasn’t Italian, and indeed she was still a US citizen, she found Parelli’s proposal abhorrent. To be sure, the Italian economy was going through a rough patch, but so were the economies of lots of other countries. As for its dysfunctional political system, the same could be said about the United States.

  With all of that, Italy was a great country. Dividing it was absurd. There was also a practical question of where to make the split.

  Then she thought about the demographics of the country and the vote in the upcoming election. She would have expected all southerners to hate Parelli’s program and vote against it. They would lose the support of the national government. Surprisingly, Carlo had told her that the mafia and the church were giving Parelli support. In addition, more northerners than southerners voted, and the vast majority supported Parelli. If he won, Parelli could achieve his aim.

  As a journalist, she knew she should be unbiased. That was the theory of her profession. In reality, she was so opposed to Parelli’s program that she’d love to find a way to stop him with her pen.

  After his speech, Parelli was mobbed by supporters and the media. Elizabeth hung back and watched him bask in the glow of adoration.

  * * *

  It was almost midnight when she entered the Palace Hotel, rode up in the elevator to the fourth floor, and knocked on the door to 401.

  She heard a man shout, “Come in,” through the closed door.

  She twisted the brass knob and pushed the wooden door in. She found herself in the large living room of a suite, furnished tastefully in heavy wooden furniture.

  The scene was somewhat between disarray and chaos. Elizabeth counted ten people in the room: six men, jackets off, and four women, most with shoes off. Some were talking on the phone. Others were reading papers. Televisions were blasting with different stations. Food and bottles of wine, soda, and scotch were on the tables. Clothes, plates, glasses, and papers were strewn around.

  On either side of the living room were closed doors. They must have led to bedrooms, Elizabeth guessed. It all reminded her of political campaigns in the United States that she had covered when she was working for the New York Tribune.

  As she stood looking around, trying to decide which of the men was Luciano, no one paid any attention to her.

  She noticed the door to one of the bedrooms opening. A tall Chinese man dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and tie came out and closed the door behind him. Elizabeth had no idea who he was, but her reporter’s instinct told her he might be important.

  She whipped out her phone and pretended to make a call. It was a good cover while she took his picture.

  Without glancing at her, he walked past and left the suite.

  She waited until the door closed to approach the oldest looking man in the living room. He was seated at a table sipping water, she guessed, judging from the bottle of Pellegrino on the table and the clear liquid in his glass.

  He had on a short sleeved, dark blue shirt, open at the neck and half unbuttoned to reveal curly gray hair. His eyes had a tired and sad look. His thick head of gray hair was ruffled, his face pale. He’s not a well man, Elizabeth guessed.

  “Are you Luciano?” she asked.

  “What do you want?” he replied in a hoarse voice.

  “I’m Elizabeth Crowder, Foreign News Editor of the International Herald. My friend Carlo Fanti from Italy Today suggested I talk to you. I want to interview Mr. Parelli.”

  She took a card from her bag and handed it to Luciano.

  He studied it and stood up, looking angry and annoyed. He raised his hand, which Elizabeth noticed was shaking. “It’s too late for journalists to come knocking on doors. Besides, you should call first. Perhaps in France you people have no sense about these things. Here we do.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m doing an article on Mr. Parelli’s speech tonight, which I attended. We have influential international readers. The exposure will be good for him.”

  “It’s too late for an interview. I told you that.”

  “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Impossible. He’s committed.”

  “Then when?”

  Luciano was scowling. He was angry about something, Elizabeth thought. It can’t be me. Maybe it had to do with the Chinese man. Luciano hadn’t stood up or made an effort to see him to the door. It didn’t make sense for Parelli’s top advisor to behave this way with a foreign visitor.

  Luciano took a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “It has my cell and office number at campaign headquarters. Call me sometime. I’ll try to arrange an interview.”

  At that moment, the front door to the suite opened, and a man in his twenties entered. He was accompanied by a young woman about the same age with long black hair, a low cut magenta dress that revealed a generous bosom, and a black lace shawl over bare shoulders. Her face was heavily made up.

  Luciano had a furious look on his face. He grabbed the man by the arm. “I told you no, Nene. Don’t you understand anything?”

  Elizabeth glanced at the woman who looked flustered.

  “Mr. Parelli is the boss,” Nene replied defiantly.

  Nene pulled his arm away from Luciano. With the woman in tow, he pushed past the gray hai
red political advisor toward the closed door through which the Chinese man had come.

  The young man knocked on the door. It opened. Elizabeth saw Parelli standing inside the bedroom in a shirt and slacks. He was looking at the woman.

  “Thanks, Nene,” Parelli said.

  Nene gave the woman a shove into the bedroom. Parelli closed the door behind her, and Nene retreated to a corner of the living room where he poured a glass of wine and ignored the glowering Luciano.

  Elizabeth left the suite, rode down in the elevator, and exited through the lobby. In the building next door along the Grand Canal, she saw a bar. She sat down at a table that gave her a view of the front of the Palace Hotel and ordered a bottle of Pellegrino.

  After an hour, when the black haired woman hadn’t left the hotel, Elizabeth was beginning to believe that she was wasting her time. It seemed the woman would be spending the night with Parelli.

  Elizabeth was on the verge of paying the bill and leaving when she saw the woman come through the revolving door of the hotel. She placed twenty euros on the table, sprang up, and confronted the woman in front of the hotel.

  “Excuse me, Signora,” Elizabeth said. “I’m staying at the Grand Hotel next door. Perhaps you can spend a little time with me.”

  The woman flushed with delight. She could hardly believe her luck, Elizabeth imagined. Two wealthy clients in one evening. “Lead the way,” she told Elizabeth.

  When they were in Elizabeth’s room, she asked the woman, “How much an hour?”

  “One thousand euros.”

  Elizabeth reached into her bag, pulled out a thousand euros, and handed the bills to her. The woman began to unzip her dress.

  “It’s not for sex,” Elizabeth said.

  The woman looked frightened. She sat down. “What then, Signora?”

  “I’m a French journalist.” She pulled out her identification card, in French and English, from her wallet and showed it to the woman.

  She probably didn’t read French or English, Elizabeth thought, but still, she nodded. It must have seemed genuine to her.

  “I want to talk to you,” Elizabeth said.

  “Talk about what?”

  They were seated in armchairs facing each other. “What’s your name?”

  “Estelle,” she replied easily. Elizabeth doubted that was her real name.

  “How do you know Roberto Parelli?”

  Estelle hesitated and bolted up straight. Elizabeth pulled out another pile of euros and held them up. “I promise I’ll never use your name in any article.”

  Elizabeth handed her the money.

  “I don’t know Signor Parelli. The woman I work with called me early this evening. She said he was a very important client. That he will pay plenty. And that a young man, Nene, would come to my house and pick me up.”

  “When you left, Parelli’s suite, were there any foreign men there?”

  “Foreign men?”

  “Chinese.”

  “Nothing like that. Only Nene and an old, gray haired man who was very angry.”

  “Did you like Parelli?”

  She blushed. “He’s a powerful man. Amazing in bed for someone his age.”

  Elizabeth decided she couldn’t learn anything else from Estelle. She told the woman to go home. Then she sat down at her computer.

  Before beginning to type her article, she decided to do some research on the Internet to test Parelli’s claim that until 1848 southern Italy was part of a different political entity from the north.

  She learned from the Oxford Illustrated History of Italy that the split began in 568 when the Lombards conquered the north and the Byzantines held onto much of the south, beginning the Italian divide. In the ninth century, the Arabs conquered all of Sicily and much of the south. Two and a half centuries later the Norman conquerors arrive and placed southern Italy under their banner.

  In the south, the Normans gradually built up a strong state. However, over time the northern part of Italy became much more powerful than the south, which was relegated to being a provider of food and materials for the northern population and industries. This endured until Garibaldi mobilized his forces and the movement for unification in the nineteenth century.

  So the basic premise of Parelli’s platform was at least correct historically, Elizabeth decided. But that didn’t mean it made sense to divide the country again.

  As she continued her Internet research, Elizabeth discovered a startling fact. In early 2014 following the vote in Crimea to secede from Ukraine, residents in Veneto, the region of Italy with Venice as its capital, held online a referendum on secession from Italy. She couldn’t find the result, but the mere fact they held the referendum lent some support to Parelli’s platform.

  And then she found something else striking. Recently in the northern area that included Milan, a political party received about 5 percent of the vote with a platform calling not precisely for secession, but for increased regionalization, which was a more subtle way of breaking down the unity of Italy. Supporters of the policy were upset that too much of the north’s tax dollars were going to the south. So Parelli wasn’t writing on a clean slate.

  With her research completed, Elizabeth turned to writing the article.

  She decided to write only about Parelli’s speech and the crowd’s reaction. She decided to leave out everything she had seen after leaving San Marco Square—the Chinese man, the prostitute, and Luciano’s anger. Those would need more illumination before she could write about them.

  Still, they influenced her in selecting the title for her article:

  ROBERTO PARELLI—SAVIOR OR SINNER.

  After finishing the article, she thought some more about the Chinese man in Parelli’s suite. She had no idea why he’d be secretly meeting with Parelli, but both she and Craig had been so involved with Chinese threats in the past, she had to let him know.

  When he answered his phone, she said in a brusque business like tone, “Listen, Craig, after Parelli’s speech in Venice, I tried to interview him in his hotel. I couldn’t get past his advisors, but I saw something strange.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Chinese man was coming out of Parelli’s bedroom.”

  “Did you get his name?”

  “That was impossible, but I took his photograph on my phone.”

  “Smart move. Send it to me.”

  “Right now.”

  She forwarded it. A few second later, Craig said, “Got the picture.”

  “Ever seen him before?”

  “Negative, but it gives us something for the future.”

  “I’ll let you know if I get anything else.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Any news about Federico?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  She clicked off.

  Milan

  Federico’s funeral was Tuesday in the Duomo di Milano, the magnificent, spired gothic cathedral in the heart of Milan. Approaching the Duomo on foot, Craig was awestruck as he always was by the splendor of its gothic architecture.

  Construction had begun in the late 14th century and extended over a five-hundred-year period. The Duomo is one of the world’s largest churches, second in size within Italy to St. Peters in Rome. But far more than size is the artistry and workmanship of the structure.

  Constructed with brick and faced with Italian marble, its exterior with pinnacles, gables, belfries, and statues has no equal. Above the roof, a spire shoots into the air to the dizzying height of 108.5 meters. On its top is a polychrome statue of the Madonna.

  This marble floored structure, built in the shape of a cross, is divided by soaring cathedrals into five wide naves divided by forty pillars. The interior contains a vast quantity of art and monuments in addition to beautiful stained glass windows. Craig couldn’t even imagine the cost of the Duomo or the number of people who had worked on it over the centuries.

  Walking into the cathedral, Craig reflected that over the last several decades very few people were permitted to have fu
nerals in the Duomo. They had to be either a pivotal part of Milan’s religious hierarchy, very wealthy, or exceedingly philanthropic. Federico satisfied the last two criteria.

  The Duomo was mobbed with people. About 3000, Craig estimated. As he took a seat near the front, Craig recognized many of the top echelon of Milan’s social elite. And since Milan was the heart and pulse of Italy, he saw so many leaders from Rome and elsewhere in the country. He also spotted some top international figures from England, France, and even the United States.

  Waiting for the service to begin, Craig thought about how he’d been fortunate to meet Federico. Craig’s racing coach, Paolo, had, without telling Craig, invited Federico to the track one day where Craig was training. Craig had achieved a personal-best speed that day, and when he had climbed out of the light blue Jag, Paolo had said, “We’re going for coffee. I want you to meet someone who loves car racing.”

  When they sat down, the first words out of Federico’s mouth were, “You’re a helluva driver… . How old are you?”

  Paolo had brushed aside the question, telling Federico, “In this sport, you don’t win based on your age. It’s how you drive. And I’m telling you that you’d be smart to make an investment in Enrico Marino. He’s a natural behind the wheel.”

  For Federico and others who followed the sport, Paolo had almost a god-like status. Paolo’s words were enough for Federico to take out his checkbook. He followed that by obtaining checks from two of his close friends in Milan who were also anxious to sponsor a driver whom Paolo was pushing.

  That was more than a year ago. Since then, Craig and Federico had spent evenings together and gone to sporting events. Craig was a frequent guest for dinner at Federico’s house before Bonita died of an aneurism, and again during the last few months with Federico and Amelie. Craig liked her and felt sorry for her coming into a hostile environment as Federico’s second wife—and a French woman at that. Craig had attended Bonita’s funeral and Federico’s wedding to Amelie. He couldn’t believe he was now at Federico’s funeral.

  The newspapers had carried the story that Elizabeth told Craig in Stresa. Federico had been shot and killed in a jewelry robbery in his summerhouse in Biarritz.