Italian Neighbours

by Tim Parks

  Although this particular choice of comparison hardly seems to warrant the gleam of faith and enthusiasm now shining in Giampaolo’s eyes, the delicious fumes are sufficient to quell any further objections and keep me more or less merrily at work for the rest of the morning. At least, I reflect, we have escaped the assault on the garage, which we might otherwise have been expected to get involved in. Leaving the cellar in a daze towards lunchtime, we find Lucilla shovelling up bleach-sodden sawdust in an atmosphere suggesting chemical warfare. The ferocious vapours cut right through our tipsiness, would quite probably clear the nose of a man long after he had ceased to be eligible for a certificate of esistenza in vita. ‘Signor Giampaolo, Signor Tino!’ the old woman calls to us. ‘See, all the tyremarks and oil stains are gone!’ Likewise gone is Vittorina who apparently felt faint. Orietta has her kerchief round her mouth, her eyes streaming.

  32

  Fiaccolata

  IS IT A complete coincidence that the fiaccolata occurs toward the end of May, only a few days before tax declarations are due? ‘The financial administration’, says the form in front of me on the kitchen table, ‘has tried to streamline and simplify the contributor’s obligations …’ There follow sixty-four pages of instructions on how I am to fill in my income-tax return, not many of them easily comprehensible, some referring me to paragraphs and articles of laws which I should apparently somehow procure and study. So that I am just reflecting that I will, after all, have to go to an accountant, when a faint murmur of ‘Ave, Ave Maria,’ takes me out on to my balcony.

  It’s a balmy, almost summery evening. The cherry blossom has long gone. The foliage is thick on everything but vines and fig trees. Winter’s dry sticks are no longer in evidence; new ivies twine the fences, smothering sharpness and starkness under soft leaves. And all the street’s roses have flowered at once, small bright blossoms climbing up stuccoed walls. But not up the railings. Good iron railings must be kept clear. Our cat, who goes by the name of Toro, is scratching at Marini’s cypress tree. The swallows whirl about the rooftops in a hurry to catch their supper before retiring. And Simone’s car has just drawn up in the street below, when, from round the corner into the curdling twilight, turn the first of a candlelit procession, the fiaccolata.

  They are coming from the village end of the street, the derelict factory end, led by Don Guido and chanting Ave Maria. They are enjoying holding their candles. Among them, as they approach our house, are most of the people I regularly see in the street: Mario, the insurance salesman and his zitella sister; old Marini, the Lovatos, man and wife, daughter and son-in-law; the salmon-faced mechanic; the wife and children of the man with the Alfa 75, although not the busy imprenditore himself; the elderly, bent, straw-hatted fellow who the mongol-looking woman plants on a chair outside her front door of a morning; Lara with various youths usually to be seen straddling their mopeds, bags of crisps in hand; the woman with the twig broom, of course.

  With others from the village, there are perhaps a hundred people altogether, walking rather self-consciously along Via Colombare through the gathering dark towards the Madonnina at the far end. The patient little statue has been freshly painted and a small electric light adds to the halo effect. A bunch of spring flowers has been placed on the ledge below.

  Vittorina goes down to join the chanters. Lucilla does not. She comes out on to her balcony for a moment to nod to everybody, then goes back inside where the business of entertaining ex-carabiniere Simone is doubtless a demanding one. The dirge grows louder and, as always at this hour, bats begin to flit back and forth, taking over the warm skies from the swallows in a peculiarly appropriate changing of the guard. They swoop below the eaves filling the darkness above the procession’s slow candles with quick, demonic life.

  Disappointingly, just as the picture is at its most evocative, the street lights go on, reducing the candles to pinpoints. And, immediately afterwards, any mystery that might have persisted is promptly dispelled when, having reached the Madonnina, an amplifier and microphone appear from somewhere for Don Guido to speak into. His uninspiring voice thus has a loud electronic ring to it, with now and then a whine of feedback. And he speaks for almost twenty minutes. What he actually says I don’t know, for the words are as distorted as they are loud and uninflected and, after a few moments, I cease to pay attention. In any event, it seems unlikely he will have any useful advice on how I’m to fill in my tax forms. Nor do I imagine that my joining in the ceremony will afford me any particular protection against eventual errors I might make. And I go back inside to wade through the sixty-four pages of instructions.

  The alignment of social forces vis-à-vis the payment of taxes is not quite perhaps what one would have imagined. Of course, the radio news has been reminding us with some insistency these last few days of our forthcoming civic duty as contribuenti. But not so the calendar of the frate indovino, who, despite his conservative attitudes on such questions as women and the family, despite his frequent appeals on behalf of all kinds of missions, does not hesitate to tell me at this crucial moment in the financial year that: ‘Italy is not, as the Constitution claims, “a Republic founded on labour” (of which there is less every day), but a Republic founded on taxes (of which there are more every day).’ Not satisfied with this inflammatory talk, he inserts, only shortly before the declaration deadline, the reflection: ‘The criminal is not obliged to testify against himself. The taxpayer is.’

  What is the Church’s position here? Far from generating a sense of guilt in the would-be evader, the frate indovino seems to assume an attitude of solidarity with an oppressed population, as if we were still in the days when spendthrift Bourbon princes sent heavily escorted bailiffs about to wring the last centesimo out of a starving peasantry. The complicity will stop when we get back to sex of course, but on questions of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, our Rovigo-based friar has a demagogue’s infallible eye for the popular line. ‘To make sure that VAT is collected,’ he winds up the section entitled ‘Predictions’, ‘the Italian government intends to subject the Italian people to a machine that most nearly approximates a meat mincer.’ It’s as if, tipping us a wink, he were saying, ‘Don’t worry folks, do as you feel with your declaration and the Church will be on hand to shrive your peccadilloes afterwards.’

  Sometimes, when I pick up my bread of a morning at Bepi’s, my friend invites me out for a quick espresso, and in these tense days towards the end of May we inevitably find ourselves discussing what is on everybody’s mind. ‘The government is a thief’, he announces almost at once. It’s a stock phrase, ‘governo ladro’. You frequently see it sprayed on walls and railway bridges. He shakes his shaggy head as though over an irretrievable and pitiful situation. I make the mistake of remarking a little piously that I do believe in a state where everybody pays what they have to, so that everybody can pay less, and I say I think the Church, with the hold it has over a lot of people, should tell them to cough up rather than conniving with them. Bepi’s response is somewhere between the incredulous and the irate. Am I mad? His head-shaking speeds up. His scorn is all too apparent. But then it occurs to him that this is merely my Englishness talking – of course, I’m from a different world, I don’t understand – and now he becomes concerned, his big forehead creases up, concerned that I may be about to make a big mistake and declare more than I need. He leans over the table, his voice urgent and conspiratorial: ‘What you have to remember’ – there’s a bright light of conviction in his green eyes – ‘what you have to remember is that they are attacking and you are defending. It’s naked aggression. And self-defence is always legitimate.’

  ‘The balance of indirect to direct taxation is fairly valido,’ pronounces Giampaolo more reasonably that evening. He is weighing his words carefully in this sad period when last year’s prosecco is already finished and the stuff we bottled last week isn’t ready yet. ‘Then the level of fiscal pressure has been established discretamente bene; but all this is rendered relativo by the fact tha
t the government makes no serious attempt to collect. Except from dipendenti.’

  And indeed the dipendenti have announced a protest to coincide with the tax-declaration deadline. They will be marching on the parliament in Rome, to demand draconian measures against the demonic autonomi who aren’t paying their fair share. To hot things up, the newspapers amuse themselves by publishing figures indicating the average level of earnings as declared by various categories of autonomi the previous year. Your average jeweller claimed he earned just five thousand pounds, the average doctor even less, the average lawyer not much more, etc. etc. It’s ludicrous. But everybody has their justification for behaving as they do, and the dipendenti’s protest is quickly followed by a series of articles showing how the government only wastes what it receives anyway, is generally corrupt and inefficient and always will be until Italy is more or less taken over by the European Community.

  In the event, the administration of this year’s income-tax collection does little to improve the government’s image for fairness or efficiency. As May progresses and people go from one tobacconist’s to another in search of the appropriate forms, it becomes clear that not enough have been printed. Or perhaps they have been printed, but they are certainly not being distributed. Then to make matters worse, somebody discovers that an important mistake has been made on one of the pages. We will have to return to the tobacconist’s to buy a revised form. So that as well as reminding us of our civic duty, the radio is also talking about the possibility of a two-week postponement of the deadline for filing our returns. Indeed, this now seems more or less certain, the newscaster tells us, with a noticeably congratulatory tone to his voice. Just three days before we are supposed to pay, the Minister of Finance is interviewed and says that there will be no postponement, he has never mentioned such a thing, nor does he see why he should be obliged to deny any old rumour as soon as it starts circulating, even if it has been given credence by the public broadcasting network. People should never imagine anything has changed until he personally announces it has. And it hasn’t. There will be absolutely no concessions to anybody, and people who don’t file their returns inside the deadline will be fined in the regular fashion.

  My accountant is thus in a state of desperation when I finally see him at nine in the evening the very day of the deadline. Out come all the invoices, the registers. His fingers incessantly tap the three-zeros button that distinguishes Italian calculators. As usual, I understand little of what he is saying about the various deductions available to me. I notice in my instruction book that if my wife was dependent on me I could reduce my taxable income by a splendid 120,000 Lire, or sixty pounds, and when I have a child I will be able to reduce it by a whole 48,000 Lire, twenty-four pounds.

  Yet despite this evident meanness (there is no child benefit here), I am always surprised at how little I have to pay. ‘First,’ the accountant says briskly, ‘we reduce your income by 14 per cent. Now, let’s see.’ Fourteen per cent! Why? ‘Because in the category you fall into, or rather that we have chosen to put you into, taxable income is reduced by 14 per cent, which is considered to be your expenses. If the category were different, the reduction would be different. As would the percentage of national insurance you have to pay, and so on.’

  When finally we get to the end of the whole business, it turns out the government actually owes me money. Which I can expect to be refunded in about four to five years’ time, the accountant remarks. ‘But you definitely will be re-funded. With a modest interest. And it’s always welcome when it comes, isn’t it?’ We finish towards eleven. The accountant has a whole stack of completed forms to be delivered to an office at the station which remains open until midnight the day of the deadline.

  Then the following week the Minister of Finance calmly announces that, although he didn’t postpone the deadline for filing returns, there will now be an amnesty for those who didn’t get them in on time. They have until 14 June. Another two weeks. Perhaps the fiaccolata and the power of prayer are not entirely to be overlooked.

  33

  Mamma!!!

  GIVEN THEIR ENTHUSIASM for children, it will at first seem curious that Italians produce so few of them. Lara is an only child. Marta, the daughter of the mongol-looking cleaning woman is an only child. The woman with the twig broom has a little nephew who visits and at age six rushes up and down Via Colombare on a tiny motorbike with two-stroke engine making an awful racket. He is an only child. Many of my adult students have just one child. If they have any at all. The population is expected to fall by two or three million before the end of the millenium. Only in the house next to the cadaverous old lady does a very jolly signora have three children, all daughters. ‘How many girls’, claims an article in the newspaper, ‘owe their existence to the elusive quest for a male child!’

  It’s interesting that those who prefer vegetable gardens to dwarf cypresses and do not clean too obsessionally, or have their blood pressure checked with fanatical regularity, tend to be those who produce more than one child. Again much seems to depend on the family’s relationship to the rural past, the extent to which they are influenced by the general clamouring for security. For children are so expensive. They must be provided for from start to finish. First a gynaecologist di fiducia must be found, and then a paediatrician di fiducia. The little ones must spend their summers in pensioni or second homes by the sea to breathe the iodine, in winter they must go to the mountains to escape the fog. Very probably they will have to attend a Church rather than a state nursery, paying more. Then perhaps a private school, of which there are many. Everything they have must be new. Who would buy a second-hand pram or cot for their dear little child? Who would buy anything but the most expensive leather shoes for their toddler? And it will be a costly business sending heir or heiress to university, for this takes an absolute minimum of four years, usually much much longer, and there are no grants. Anyway the child will have a fidanzata or fidanzato by then, and very probably the family will have to buy them a flat, since they can’t marry before they have been bought a flat, can they? And all the furniture. And all the appliances. Nor would it be wise for them to marry until family contacts, or personal prowess, have secured them a steady job. In the local area. It’s a major undertaking.

  ‘We didn’t have another child’, Orietta tells a rather bitter Lara, ‘because it wouldn’t have been fair to you. How could we have given you everything you need?’

  A certain Antonio and Sabrina come to talk to Lucilla about the possibility of buying our flat. Their voices boom in the hallway. They now have jobs in the Banca Popolare di Verona in town. But they can’t get married until they have bought a flat. And when they buy a flat it must be within walking distance of his parents. They have been looking for more than a year. Via Colombare would be ideal. Antonio’s father is with them. A gruff dialect voice. Money isn’t a problem, he says, and promises ‘all in cash’.

  The Veronese don’t usually look for cheap ‘first homes’ as the English do. Indeed, the very notion of first and second is in naked contradiction to the word home, isn’t it? Because a home is for always, for keeps. Looking for a ‘first home’ would thus be as absurd as looking for a ‘first wife’. And while one might eventually fall out with one’s wife and desire to change her, it’s extremely unlikely that one would ever want to change one’s home. Only a bomb could shift the people in Via Colombare from theirs. No, you protect your home with iron railings, remote-controlled gates, shock-resistant glass, armoured doors and locking shutters. It’s your palace, your bunker, your life sentence Even the modern Giampaolo will never leave Via Colombare, although his company has offered him positions in Rome and New York. For where would Orietta be without the marble and ceramics she has polished so often? The carefully chosen bathroom porcelain. ‘Aggràppati al mattone,’ says a character in Natalia Ginzburg’s, La casa e la città, when her brother announces he intends to sell his flat: ‘Cling on to the bricks.’

  The upshot is that most of the people b
uying in Montecchio are youngsters being eased (regretfully) out of the old nest (to a place not too far down the road). Antonio’s gruff father will pay a fortune to sort out his child. While he himself lives in a decrepit cave of a place off the main square. Because this is what parents must do for their children.

  Understandably then, the people at the prenatal course we go to in town are all at their first child. And their last, is the general consensus. For the most part they are reserved and serious. Veronese. A poster shows a pregnant beauty in flimsy, fashionable nightdress looking out of a window into some spiritual distance of motherhood and self-realisation, the faintest smile on her face. On the wall opposite, a smaller photograph shows the blood and gore of birth itself. There is a crucifix of course, although I haven’t spied a Madonna yet, which is odd.

  An attractive woman social worker arrives and, sitting on a stool, discusses at length all the clothes we must prepare for the esserino when he arrives. She smiles constantly as she talks and a relentless use of diminutives generates a warm, cosy feeling in her audience. It’s something I’m going to have to get used to over the next few years: la gambina, la testina, il braccino, il piedino, le manine, i ditini, la boccucia, le spallucce, i ginocchietti, il nasino, il sederino; and then the clothes: la tutina, le scarpine, il vestitino, i guantini, il maglioncino, il giubbottino, i pantaloncini … Together they create an overwhelming impression of lovable tininess to be cuddled and coddled and kissed and tweeked and generally thoroughly and triumphantly spoilt.