Italian Neighbours

by Tim Parks

  Since it’s Christmas Eve, we drive into town for some last-minute shopping. On leaving the village, the fog is desperately thick along the narrow road, though no one is going particularly slowly. Each car hangs on to the tail lights of the one in front and hammers through, even though this means being far too close to avoid an accident if one had to brake. And since we are one of the only vehicles on the road without fog lights, the car behind has to hang on even closer to us than we to the car in front. What this means in terms of the dynamics of an eventual pile-up, I’ve no idea.

  Suddenly a carabiniere looms right in front of our bonnet, waving a red stop sign. And we realise we haven’t even seen the big traffic lights. Comes the sound of sharp braking all along the line. Four officers in fluorescent plastic jackets are risking their necks to keep the junction operating. I wonder, will we see a parking spot even if we pass one?

  In town, the medieval and Renaissance buildings are splendidly mysterious. The illuminated clockface comes and goes in the fog at the top of the fourteenth-century Tower of the Lamberti. The Roman arena is sombre despite housing an exhibition of East European nativity scenes. Christmas carols, all English, are being efficiently cranked across the fog-draped trees of the main piazza, interrupted by the crackle of fireworks, illegal but abundant. Diving into the shopping streets the stuccoed façades have been bled of all colour by stabbing neon beneath. And anyway, nobody is looking up at them. They have things to buy.

  But despite the tredicesima, Christmas is not quite the spree it is in England. This is partly because, at least in the Veneto, the children have already had their presents. Santa Lucia, 13 December, was the day. So the pavements are no longer choked with grandmothers determined to gratify excited infants. Decorations are everywhere evident, but fairly modest in the end: lights strung across the streets, red carpets on the cobbles outside shop windows, paper festoons in the three department stores. An unconvinced Father Christmas with the name of a shop on his armband is handing out sweets. And, of course, there is the everyday streetlife, which takes on a special poignancy at Christmas: a gypsy woman sits begging in a doorway, the baby in her arms swaddled against the fierce cold; young blacks proffer trays of cigarette lighters and pirated cassettes; despite numbed fingers, a tramp is playing a popular tune on some kind of bagpipes: Viva, viva, Natale arriva …

  In Standa, the cheaper of the department stores, people are picking up a few last-minute details to add to their home-made nativity scenes: an extra sheep or two, fake hay they forgot to pick up for the plastic manger, a star with a little bulb in it. There’s an array of polythene packages. The magi are available separately or as a group.

  But most interest is concentrated on food. Serious food. The delicatessens are packed, despite prices that would raise eyebrows anywhere. There is no one traditional Christmas lunch in the Veneto, but it would be a mistake to imagine this indicates lack of interest in the occasion. On the contrary, it avoids any danger of getting into a rut. Parma hams and salamis are coming off their hooks at an extraordinary rate. All kinds of goodies – Russian salads, black olives, green olives, a sticky crystallising orange mixture which calls itself mostarda vicentina – are being spatula-ed into plastic tubs. A bristling old fellow picks up a whole form of Parmesan. For how much? A hundred pounds? Two butchers (di fiducia of course) are unloading duck, turkey, geese and chickens from the surrounding farms and factory farms, plus all the best beef cuts. The die-hard contadini are looking for cotechini and the wherewithal to make polenta. A curious shop window offers fresh pasta of every colour: green spinach pasta, swampy artichoke pasta, red pepper pasta, brown chocolate pasta …

  We pick up the turkey we have promised our American friends and a few bottles of this and that from a display offering a remarkable range of cheap Scottish whiskies, many quite unheard of, I suspect, in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Glenlivet, however, is thankfully cheaper than it ever was back in London, although slightly watered down to meet local proof regulations. Driving back to Via Colombare just as twilight stiffens the fog, we find our astonishing postman still messing with stones, bricks and railings beside the Alfa 75, and we take the opportunity to give him his Christmas bottle of grappa.

  He doesn’t understand. He looks at us nonplussed in the foggy dark, his breath steaming warmly, white droplets on a black moustache. I explain that it’s a tradition in England to give your postman something. The tracery of blood vessels on pink cheeks suggest that he is not unused to a glass or two. A token of our appreciation, I say, somewhat foolishly, for perhaps such words have never been addressed to a statale before. He takes the bottle, sets it down by the railings, thanks us, but remains somewhat wary, as if we must be expecting a favour in return. Perhaps in the end he will put it down to a fog mirage.

  Giampaolo is unloading a Christmas tree from his car. In Italy they are not sold cut as in England, but with their roots in a pot. However, to get a cheap price, as every dipendente must, Giampaolo has driven some twenty kilometres to a hypermarket where they sell trees that, yes, have their roots, but tied in a plastic bag. Very valido as an idea and the price was discreto. He will plant it in a pot for Christmas, put it out on the balcony through January, then move it into the garden before the spring to join Lucilla’s sad madrigal of ornamental evergreens. Orietta seems dubious as to its chances of making it that far. Probably it will have her hoovering pine needles every ten minutes right through the holiday. There must, after all, be something relativo about the deal.

  Preparing tomorrow’s food in the evening we turn on the radio. Rita has recently taken a liking to Radio Santa Teresa, our local religious channel. Or one of them. Two priests are discussing the Madonna’s house believed to have been brought by angels to a convent in Loreto near the Adriatic coast. With sobre enlightenment, the priests explain that, in fact, this is a tenth-century Palestinian dwelling brought over from Bethlehem by the Crusaders. Having chatted for a while, they open the telephone lines for questions. Immediately, a woman’s voice crackles through. She is very excited: ‘Don Marcello, Don Marcello, do you remember me, Maria, from Nogarole Rocca?’ Don Marcello doesn’t remember her. ‘You baptised my children.’ From the cracked sound of her voice this must have been some considerable number of years before. ‘Praise the blessed Virgin’, Don Marcello says warmly.

  Another woman phones, from Caprino this time, up in the mountains. She is so depressed, oh but so depressed. ‘Actually,’ Don Guglielmo reminds her gently, ‘we were asking for questions about the blessed Madonna’s house in Loreto and the value of devotional relics in general.’ She bursts into tears. She is so depressed she doesn’t think she can go on living. She would never have imagined life could be so awful. ‘Unburden your sorrows on the Holy Virgin’, Don Marcello tells her. She has tried, she has tried, but she can’t. It makes no difference. She honestly can’t. She sobs loudly on our old valve radio. And it takes these two embarrassed men literally ten whole minutes to get her to agree to unburden her sorrows on the Virgin and get off the line. ‘The Madonna be praised, ‘she finally sniffles. There’s an audible sigh of relief from Don Guglielmo.

  After which about a dozen more women call, at least half of whom seem to know one or other of the priests personally. Not one of them has anything to say about the tenth-century Palestinian remains in Loreto, or indeed about Christmas. Their menfolk, one suspects, are elsewhere.

  Shortly after eleven we hear the clunk clunk clunk of the Visentini turning their security locks about two hundred times as they prepare to go out for midnight Mass. A few minutes later, Giampaolo comes up to our flat to inform us that our cat has got trapped in the garage and has walked all over his white Giulietta, which he had just cleaned. There are black paw marks all over it. The Italian distaste, on Orietta’s face rather than Giampaolo’s, for animals which are allowed to penetrate the four walls of the domestic bunker, is only too plain. I solemnly promise it won’t happen again and mollify them both with Christmas gifts which they weren’t expecting: a scarf f
or Giampaolo, simple brooch for Orietta, perfume for Lara. We have, as Italians say, made a bella figura, a good impression.

  Best of friends, they offer to give us a lift to midnight Mass to save us getting our own car out. Although we hadn’t been planning to go, we accept. Walking out into the street, we catch the familiar sound of a small engine revving wildly, shooting off as the clutch is released, then whining, dying and finally puttering into life again. Giampaolo goes down to help Lucilla get her car out.

  The fog is impossibly dense, the traffic very brisk. The church car park, needless to say, is packed to overflowing. Inside, despite the fact that we’re ten minutes early, the church is already a solid mass of fur coats. People obviously came some while ago to stake out their places and now there are no seats left. I am surprised at this lack of forward planning on the meticulous Giampaolo’s part. Although perhaps the fault is our cat’s.

  We stand at the back near the nativity scene Lovato’s son-in-law has been working on for so long. Stars wink in three phases, water runs in a little stream, ox and ass nod their heads. It’s an elaborate affair. Although, as in all nativity scenes, there is no sign that the animals perform their natural functions. On the hill, the shepherds have a little carafe at their feet, which is a nice touch. They may not, after all, be so unused to UFOs.

  More people crowd in. There’s a buzz of chatter, greetings, handshaking, kisses. Everybody knows everybody. People you usually see smoking on street corners or double parking outside the bar are queuing up to light candles. Some of the youngsters are obviously dressed, under their coats, for the discothèques they will be heading off to as soon as the service is over.

  Things get under way a few minutes late. Don Guido intones the liturgy in a style my father, an evangelical Anglican, would no doubt have scorned. But there are advantages. The quickly read, toneless words impose a sense of order and ritual without one having to pay attention to whatever they might mean. The congregation are prompt with their responses and know very well when to stand and sit. They move as one well-trained animal. And they enjoy this oneness. Since we are anyway obliged to stand, my ignorance passes unobserved.

  Looking about, as the others mouth prayers they learnt in childhood, I can see Maria Grazia from the sanitaria who supplies contraceptives at below list price. To her left is Montecchio’s most famous politician, presently Verona’s councillor responsible for traffic. His wife has a nice full-length fur, although, surprisingly, the family are on the list for the co-operative housing to go up behind the Madonnina. Beyond them stands the builder who is putting up the luxury villas on the hill above Via Colombare. Giuliano and Girolamo are there too, and Un panino due, and the woman with the twig broom, again in a fur …

  But these fur coats seem to be causing problems. For, although it’s cold outside, it is desperately warm inside. Big modern radiators are pumping out heat. Before the altars, down the side of the nave, a thousand candles are burning. Orietta wriggles uncomfortably, frowns. But she hasn’t put on anything sufficiently attractive underneath to be able to take her coat off.

  Up in the chancel, a small choir of young people sing a very upbeat Christmas carol to the accompaniment of guitars and drums. Nobody seems to know the song. There is very little tradition of Christmas carols here. And, anyway, nobody is invited to join in.

  Don Guido preaches a sermon from the chancel steps with the aid of a microphone on a stand. He also has a microphone on the altar. This means he never has to raise his calm dull voice and assume a rousing evangelical tone. He is not a leader, but a medium, a go-between. Predictably, he preaches generosity. We must remember the poor at Christmas. Christ was born in a stable. There is absolutely no criticism, veiled or otherwise, toward his overwhelmingly bourgeois congregation. He is rehearsing the values on which their respectability rests. As so often with things traditional in Italy, I am unable to decide whether this is attractive or sinister, an expression of civilisation, or decadence. My Protestant truculence no doubt.

  And after the sermon, we move into the Eucharist proper with the modern guitar band playing and a girl singing, very pleasantly and professionally. Indeed, it’s a treat. People walk to the front, the host is popped into their mouths or placed in their hands. Moreno, the halfwit, goes up three times but is not turned away. To deal with such a huge congregation, Don Guido has four helpers, a younger priest, three nuns. Other young people, many of whom shoot by me every day on motorini, are walking up and down the aisles with baskets, collecting money.

  Then Orietta faints. The heat was too much. She should have taken her coat off. Fortunately, there is such a crowd of people round her, she couldn’t possibly fall. Giampaolo rushes her out to the car and off home. No doubt this will mean a fair number of tests at the hospital. We stay behind for the hot chocolate Don Guido advertised at the end of his sermon and discover that below the church there is a very large taverna complete with bar, and drinks. Now this is civilised! In the crush, we come across Vittorina and Lucilla, determined to show off their furs to the last, although Lucilla’s thick make-up is running a little in the oppressive atmosphere. ‘Auguri, auguri, Signor Tino!’ she calls, ‘buon natale, buon natale’, then returns to her cemetery chat with other older widows. ‘The stingy niece’, I can hear her telling them, ‘still hasn’t ordered a stone for the poveretta. So I ordered one myself. To shame her. I told my lawyer to tell her lawyer I’d ordered it, and I didn’t want to be paid, and do you know …’

  Walking home in a freezing fog filled with car exhaust now as the worshippers disperse, I wonder where this morning’s marocchino might be. Has he found a stable to sleep in perhaps? With ox and ass. Not unfeasible in these parts. And I remember an article I read in the Arena only a few days ago: in the recent cold weather many marocchini have been sleeping in the empty loculi in the walls of the city’s main cemetery, wrapped in their carpets. Well, at least they won’t have to hear Vega barking.

  25

  Buona fine, buon principio

  THE FOG PERSISTS, thick and extraordinarily white – not the gritty, yellowish variety you occasionally encountered in London. Penetrating even the narrowest streets, it deadens the anyway dead days between Christmas and New Year, muffling the sound of fireworks children are letting off between slices of pizza outside Un panino due’s. And when there is a deep frost the night of Santo Stefano, you wake the following morning to find every tree crystallised from roots to topmost twig: the clinging fog on their branches has turned to white ice. So that walking out in the country, breath tasting of blood in the throat, it’s to find icing-sugar cypresses standing on a great cake of frostbitten landscape. The leafless vines have become disturbingly spectral, fields of crucifix-like contortions, bled white by frost and fog. The tall stone walls beside the road ring with the cold sound of voices. Figures approaching through the murk intone the end-of-year greeting: ‘Buona fine, buon principio.’ Happy end, happy beginning. It’s been a week and more perhaps since you saw the sky.

  And yet, if you walk and walk, you can have that pleasure. For Montécchio is at the very northernmost extreme of the bassa padana and its fogs. The hills begin here, and you need only climb. Following more or less the same route we took with our neighbours in the mellow autumn, we head for Cancello, at the top of the ridge far above Via Colombare. And, after a mile or two, there’s a sudden thinning of the atmosphere. The fog becomes merely mist and haze. A pale disc of sun comes and goes. The landscape takes on pastel shades, a faded tapestry of beiges and dull greens woven up and down the steep slopes where farmland is retreating before heath and thicket. Another few hundred metres and, almost before you realise it, here comes the explosion of colour and light: a sky more electrically blue than it ever is in summer, a low but whitely dazzling sun that immediately narrows the eyes, and, to the north, the vast, sharp panorama of the pre-Alps sparkling with snow.

  There are cars parked by the side of the road. Well-dressed people are stretching their legs. ‘Buona fine, buon principio.
’ It’s nice how these greetings are extended to every stranger one passes. Other cars race by with skis on their roofs. Immediately, the light encourages a mood of fun and sensual pleasure. And with the light comes heat. The air is full of the smells of damp earth and vegetation warming in the sun.

  Turning back to look at the plain, you appreciate how the fog stretches, like cloud cover seen from an aeroplane, as far as the eye can see: white, flat, monotonous, with just occasionally a church spire, or radio tower poking spookily through. And having made it up here and rediscovered such brilliant light and scented air, it makes you furious to think you’ll soon have to walk back down to that under-world and live heaven knows how many more days in the half-light and cold. Indeed, if you were in the habit of dividing people into groups (and writers inevitably are), you could do worse than to distinguish between those Montecchiesi who are happy with their foggy lot, who sit it out stoically, like the Visentinis, seeking comfort in hearth, home improvement and fifteen TV channels; and those, on the other hand, who are obsessed by that bright paradise only a few kilometres away and who pass the entire winter with their ski-racks or bike-racks on the tops of their cars, counting the days to the next long weekend. In between the two extremes are the hunters, country folk, like old Marini, quite at home in the fog except that, if they’re going to see anything to shoot at, they have to make the effort to get up here. Every few minutes the hills echo with gunfire. Little children gather the orange, yellow and blue cartridges along the path.