by Tim Parks
That would have done it. That would have prepared you. But the truth is I had imagined I could get right through my story without ever mentioning Chievo. Chievo are irrelevant, I remember thinking, to the scope of this book that I have decided to write about the glorious Serie A team Hellas Verona. Chievo are a quiet backwater, a bunch of parochial nobodies. You don’t want to waste your reader’s time with Chievo.
The decision was rash. For some weeks I have felt the problem creeping up on me. For some time now I have been observing, ruefully, that when you write a book as a diary, you just can’t know at the beginning what may turn out to be monstrously important at the end. Here we are nearly halfway through the season and Chievo Verona are actually a couple of points clear at the top of Serie B. While Hellas plummet into the abyss, Chievo rise meteorically. Something will have to be said.
Chievo is a small suburb of Verona, sometimes nicknamed ‘the dam’ because it’s situated by the dam that controls the flow of the Adige through the city. Their team was little more than another parish club until the 1960s. Then slowly but surely, despite boasting only a handful of fans, they worked their way up. In 1994 they finally made it to Serie B and were admitted to the Bentegodi. Hellas play there one Sunday, Chievo the next. When you go to watch the boys from the dam, you find the terraces empty and just a few old folks with their picnics of salami and polenta.
Well, it was bad enough when Hellas were relegated, having to play Chievo in Serie B. It will be even worse having to welcome them into A. But in the end even that is not the problem. The growing fear is that Chievo will get into A while Hellas Verona crash into B. And this fear is galvanised by the apprehension that the world at large, the great wide world of TV and political correctness, finds Chievo Verona a more palatable phenomenon than Hellas Verona. Chievo have a couple of black players. Chievo supporters do not indulge in racist chants. They never attack the police as the Hellas fans are about to do in ritual fashion as soon as this miserable game with Napoli is over. Chievo fans are cheap to manage, easily dispersed and rarely irritate the authorities by travelling to away games.
If Chievo go up to A and Hellas down to B, I ask myself, as the dying minutes of Verona-Napoli tick by, could this really be the beginning of the end of the Hellas community? I think it could. And don’t be fooled by pleasant appearances! No doubt many readers are thinking: how quaint to see a tiny parish getting its boys in Serie A! Maybe. But the quaintness is only part of the truth. Like anyone else, Chievo’s managers have to pay their players salaries. How do they do this without supporters? With money given by the television channels for the rights to show the Serie B anticipo on Friday and the posticipo on Monday. Chievo are actually a by-product of modern TV football, proof that fans in the flesh aren’t essential. For anyone eager to eliminate the unruly crowds who haunt the stadiums, the promotion of Chievo and the relegation of Hellas Verona would be a most welcome event.
Today, 14 January, it had seemed that Chievo had at last met their match. They were losing at Salerno. The news of Salerno’s goal had been met with a great cheer. Perhaps one loss, people thought, would pop the Chievo bubble. But now, no sooner do we start losing than the news comes up that our execrable neighbours have equalised! Never has the gloom been more intense on the terraces of the Bentegodi.
Then someone scored.
It was hard to say at first who it was or how it happened. Napoli had taken off their one striker, Bellucci, and were packing the box. It looked easy. They had only a few minutes to hang on. But Verona were at least putting the work in today. And at last in a mêlée, even before the girl behind me had time to tell him to shoot, somebody finally stuck the damn ball in the net, right beneath the curva.
‘Cassetti’ – the name flashed up on the scoreboard. In the midst of the exultation, I couldn’t believe it. I always curse Perotti when I see he has fielded Cassetti. Every Saturday the team is announced, in the Arena, without Cassetti – it seems impossible we should need Cassetti – and every Sunday we find him there on the pitch, sweet, long-haired, adolescent and incompetent as ever. But in a sea of mad embraces, I shouted aloud, ‘Cassetti, I forgive you. I forgive all your utter uselessness for that one goal.’ My son too was shouting, ‘Grazie, Cassetti, grazie.’ Then the scoreboard made a correction. ‘Mutu.’ I felt better.
The ninety minutes were up. The fourth man produced his little glowing board to announce injury time: three minutes. But Verona couldn’t be satisfied with a draw. Not against Napoli. ‘Vai Verona vai,’ shrieked the crowd. And when the whole curva shouts together, then there is a real psychological pressure. Then it is no longer a question of the single imprecation lost in the storm, the voice unheard. Now it is a rising tide of sound. And Napoli were crumbling. They had lost their nerve. My opinion on supporters changed again. Fans are vital! If Chievo had supporters they’d be in the Champions’ League! ‘Su Verona su!!!!’ The chant was steadily deafening. Until, from the left, Mutu sent the ball in high to Bonazzoli on the corner of the six-yard box. Caught between two defenders the big boy swivelled his torso to chest down to where Adailton was storming in unmarked. He didn’t even need to hit it hard. It was so easy. Rete!
I cannot recall another moment of such complete promiscuity on the terraces. People were tumbling every which way in huge group embraces. And as they stumbled to their feet at last, the brigate began to sing. All myths and fables tell us that what the hero must do after he has killed a monster is steal its magic power, the Gorgon’s head, the aegis. So, having at first defended themselves with gas-masks, the Hellas fans now stole what the Neapolitans are most famous for, their song: ‘Ohi vita, ohi vita mia,’ they sang. Ten thousand people. Life, my life. ‘Ohi core, ’e chistu core.’ O heart of this heart. ‘Si stat’ o’ primmo ammore, O’ primmo e l’urdemo sarraje pe’mme.’ You were my first love, oh first and last you’ll be for me.’
This is Italy, the north singing the south. Giuseppe Colucci, himself from south of Naples, was so excited he tossed his shirt in the air and was promptly sent off. A few seconds later Mutu was sent off for reacting with a punch to a foul by a Napoli defender. Both players will miss the next game. But who cares! The crowd flowed out of the Bentegodi ecstatic. Today at least the magic had worked. In extremis. Hellas exists.
Insulti
Bolognese, you’re useless at insulting, something even the terroni know how to do.
Black Dog
ON MONDAY 22 JANUARY, two days after a miserable one–nil defeat at Bologna, I returned late to my cheap hotel in central Milan, turned on the television and saw, to my immense surprise, the face of Luìs Marsiglia, would-be professore, not of ginnastica, but religione. Another important development was at hand. The man is doomed to haunt Verona and my book.
Having wound up my tutorial around seven o’clock, I had spent the evening with a friend who is professor of psychology in Turin. She had recently organised an international congress and was laughing at the incredulity of her English and American colleagues when she tried to explain to them how politicised the Italian academic world was, how absolutely important it is in Italy to understand which political grouping has which appointment in its gift. I responded by telling her how, on arrival at Bologna’s rather pretty little stadium, the brigate had started the afternoon’s insults with a hearty chant of ‘Communisti! Vergogna!’ – since Bologna was ever a left-wing town – followed by a chorus of ‘Rossi di merda, voi siete rossi di merda.’ ‘Shitty reds, you’re shitty reds.’
‘Football is politicised too,’ I said.
Sensibly, Valeria said this wasn’t quite the same thing. So I told her that Giuliano Amato, our present centre-left prime minister, had recently given an interview saying, ‘This year I’m supporting Rutelli and Roma, both capable of beating the people I don’t like.’ Since Francesco Rutelli, ex-mayor of Rome, is the candidate whom the centre-left have chosen for the forthcoming national elections, and since the man he has to beat is Silvio Berlusconi, President of AC Milan, the remark w
as considered as giving unfortunate political significance to the Milan-Roma game played at San Siro yesterday: as if the match were somehow a rehearsal for the elections.
Valeria shook her head. ‘It’s still not the same thing as having political parties who carve up power in areas that shouldn’t have anything to do with politics.’
I told her that according to market research, Milan’s championship victory some years ago had been worth half a million votes to Berlusconi in the general election that followed, whereas it was calculated that a loss against direct rivals Roma might cost him thirty thousand votes in this spring’s election.
‘Thirty thousand votes,’ I repeated. ‘If it’s a cliffhanger like the Bush–Gore contest, Milan–Roma could decide it.’
‘Did you say the game was yesterday?’ Valeria asked at once. ‘How did it go?’
‘Berlusconi won, three–two.’
‘Shame.’
‘There’s always the return match.’
‘And when’s that?’
I pulled the championship calendar out of my wallet. It would be the same day as our return match against Bologna: ‘May twenty-seventh.’
‘O Dio, that might be right around the election date.’
‘You see! You take it seriously.’
Valeria laughed but insisted that it still wasn’t the same thing.
How could I persuade her?
‘Did you know that last week’, I tried, ‘Andreotti [ex-prime minister] proposed Franco Sensi, the presidente of AC Roma, as candidate in the forthcoming election for mayor of the capital. With Roma six points clear at the top of Serie A, the club president couldn’t lose.’
‘Now we’re getting there,’ Valeria admitted. Then she frowned. ‘Though it would probably be a mistake to propose Sensi if Roma have just lost to Berlusconi’s team.’
In Italy one doesn’t so much discuss politics, in the sense of what this or that party is actually proposing, or what it might be better to do for the country. No, you discuss who is controlling what, why and how. During such conversations you enjoy a sense of outrage at what is happening and of complacency at the thought that you are one of the few who have understood.
But such weighty matters were not on my mind as I walked back to my hotel in heavy rain. Nor was I even thinking seriously about football. Under my umbrella I was humming, ‘Stevanin! Stevanin! Sepeliva le putane nel giardìn, col badil!’ And what I was wondering was: why do I laugh at such awful things? Why did even someone serious, someone left-wing and feminist like Valeria burst out laughing when I sang her this unforgivable song? ‘Stevanin! Stevanin! He buried whores in his garden, with his spade.’ I had learned it Saturday afternoon on the Zanzibar bus. Every single person I have repeated it to since has burst into laughter.
The game with Bologna, as I said, had been dull beyond belief. After only a few minutes, Verona allowed the striker Locatelli to walk through their defence and curl a shot into the top corner, after which nothing was done to remedy the deficit for the rest of a sleepy afternoon. The players gave the distinct impression of not really wanting to be there. When the final whistle blew, I felt quite sure that we were doomed for relegation. And Chievo had won again!
Yet the ride back to Verona was hilarious. And in fact, if ever you have to swallow a bitter pill in life, even something as awful as relegation, I can suggest no better way to do it than to ride with the Brigate Gialloblù. The truth is that I now look forward to these bus trips. I love the din, the confusion, the shambles of beer cans and bottles and abandoned newspapers and smoky air. And above all the riotous, desecrating songs:
L’autista va, senza capelli,
Sull’autostrada sfonda i caselli!
Indifferente! Brutto pelà!
E che la vaca che te l’ha cagà.
How can I convey in English the mad hilarity of such a song?
The driver drives, bald as a coot,
On the road he crashes through tollbooths
Indifferent! Egghead brute!
Cow of a mother that shat you.
This image of the ruthless aging driver, ploughing with grim contempt through the feeble fencing of the law, is completely at odds with the reality of the tame young man who is steering us back to Verona under police escort in a bus incapable of exceeding 100 kilometres an hour. The song is a celebration of impossible transgression, a celebration that mocks both driver and singer. Join in and you’re guaranteed to collapse in a gale of laughter. That said, how can one possibly defend the Stevanin song?
Stevanin – does anyone remember his Christian name? – was/is a serial killer. He lived just outside the small village of Terrazzo in the foggy plain south of Verona. His particular perversion was to pick up prostitutes, strangle them as he achieved orgasm and bury them in the family’s smallholding. He killed eight in all, or at least eight were dug up: blacks, Slavs and Italians. The judge refused to recognise diminished responsibility. Thinking of his poor victims, of the horror of their deaths, the gruesome midnight burials, how can you laugh? How can a middle-aged, respectable family man like myself giggle over such a song, I wondered, splashing up the Via Matteotti in heavier and heavier rain. It just will not stop raining this year. ‘The pitches of northern Italy are a disgrace,’ says the magazine Rigore.
The tune is jolly, with a sort of brass-band, marching-song base to it. It begins with a flourish, ‘Stevanin! Stevanin!’ as if announcing the name of some celebrated centre-forward. Then there is the rapidly rhythmical narrative: ‘Sepeliva le putane nel giardìn.’ After which we have a thundered addition, banged on at the end of the line like the beat of the big bass drum: ‘COL BADIL!’ With his spade! You can almost hear the hard steel whamming down the earth on another grave.
This brusque reminder of a story everyone in Verona knows is followed by a chanted couplet:
E scava scava scava,
Si è trovata un’ altra Slava.
And shovel shovel shovel,
We’ve dug up another scrubber [actually, Slav woman].
Yes, this is truly awful! Cleaning my teeth in front of a cracked mirror, shortly before turning on the TV and finding Luis Marsiglia’s sanctimonious face, I’m determined to understand why I actually enjoy these and other songs so much. Or at least, I enjoy them on the bus, in the context of the trip, the carnival din of voices, the fatuous Fondo, wearing pink skiing goggles beneath his gialloblù cap, the kids hauling back the window to yell, ‘Bolognesi comunisti!’ The faint sound of the answering cry from the street: ‘Veronesi, razzisti di merda!’
Then, drying my face, I remember the French author Lautréamont, or at least Roberto Calasso’s essay on Lautréamont, which I recently translated: ‘on reading his work,’ Calasso said, ‘the reader is infected at once by an insane hilarity and a vast sense of unease.’
Wasn’t this exactly what I felt when I heard the Stevanin song? Hilarity and unease.
Lautréamont. I settled on the bed with the TV remote control in my hand. Here was another man who didn’t seem to have a Christian name. Or rather, Lautréamont was a pseudonym, the way all the brigate have pseudonyms, and all those who write on The Wall enjoy masquerading under false and ferocious identities: Black Dog, Ivan the Terrible, Il Bandito.
In 1869, after a long battle with censorship, Lautréamont finally managed to publish his Chants de Maldoror, the story of an unbelievably cruel and perverse serial killer. And the book was as hilarious as it was horrible. The reader finds himself seized, as the critic Julien Gracq put it, by ‘the most embarrassing of nervous giggles’.
One of the advantages of having translated something is that with an effort you can remember long chunks of it. I lay on my bed in Milan trying to exhume Calasso and relate it to the burial and exhumation of Stevanin’s victims. The Songs of Maldoror, Calasso claimed, ‘was the first book ever written on the principle that anything and everything must be the object of sarcasm’. Isn’t that, I thought, more or less the guiding principle of the Brigate Gialloblù, especially
after the team has lost? ‘Everything is reduced to the same level,’ Calasso goes on, ‘in the obsessive sound of the same voice, that reaches us as though amplified by a faulty microphone.’
The microphone! Where did I hear the Stevanin song if not through the crackle of the bus’s faulty PA system? One of the fans had gone to the front, taken the driver’s microphone and between swings of limoncello was singing all the scandalous songs he knew. ‘Son’ greso! Pisso cago scoreso!’ (I’m gross, I piss, shit, fart).
Another trick of Lautréamont’s was to publish a short book of poems that were actually adaptations, desecrations, of the greatest and most sacred lines of French verse. Calasso comments:
‘The premise that lies behind such methods is that the whole world is inevitably cloaked in a poisonous blanket of parody. Nothing is what it claims to be. Everything is already a quotation the moment it appears.’
Again it fits. What do the brigate do but take every famous piece of song or opera or even religious hymn, and adapt it immediately to any situation that occurs, the burning truck on return from Bari, the crashed helicopter of the carabinieri, the championships Milan have lost at Verona, the farce of the supposed beating of Luis Marsiglia. But everything is farce. ‘Vi vogliamo così,’ I remember them singing once as Verona went down six–nil. We love you like this.
So you sit – I’m almost ready to turn the TV on now – half-inebriated, semi-suffocated, in the beery, smoky community of the coach after yet another away defeat – Florence, Lecce, Bologna – and through these scandalous songs you are allowed to touch, just for a moment, Leopardi’s world of utter nothingness, of no truth, no moral substance, the futility of all illusions. The bald and brutal driver crashes through the tollbooths; Stevanin sweeps away every public piety. Col badil! With his spade! Every value is dismembered and buried in this moral midnight. And what are you left with? Only the insane thrill of life itself, a fizz in a void. You burst out in a long nervous giggle. After which, on arrival in Verona, you are restored to your beloved wife, your darling children, your challenging work, somehow fortified, ready once more to take everything around you as seriously as you possibly can.