North of Naples, South of Rome

by Tullio, Paulo;

  Families in Italy are large, not just because there are lots of children, but because they include cousins, second cousins, in-laws, godparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts. Third cousins are aware of one another’s presence and, though not strictly obliged to accept one another as family, often do. As a contrast to this, my Irish wife has a first cousin living some six miles from us whom we have seen once in ten years. A small village like mine gives great scope for the amateur of genealogy. Given the Italian definition of family, it would be hard to find someone in the village to whom I am not related. Once third cousins by marriage are included, the web stretches far. I learnt as a small boy that when I was taken to Gallinaro, it was prudent to greet everyone that I met as though they were a long-lost intimate. This offended no one, since those who did not consider themselves related were touched, and those who did thought it only natural. My wife has adopted similar tactics and is now much loved for her open and friendly nature.

  Italians, despite their apparently carefree life-style, are conservative by nature. They value the past and its lessons, they value order, saving money, education and self-advancement. The family unit makes much of this possible. Family members have the right to call on other members when they need help, but to obtain this right they are also subject to the responsibilities of being a member. Everything is ultimately weighed and balanced. Each favour demands a favour in return, each action is considered before a reaction.

  None of this is voiced, but it is as though each person keeps a record of favours given and received. It’s no accident that the double-entry accounting system was invented in Italy. This does not mean that there is an immediate return, favour for favour; only that eventually all accounts must be squared. This awareness of balance in all social transactions is universal; even small favours are repaid assiduously. In the Comino Valley, and I am sure over much of Italy, if a friend or relation gives you a plate of freshly made gnocchi, you do not return the plate empty. It should be returned with something on it. This tradition is no more than the recognition of the need to keep a balance.

  Dinners are a currency in these social transactions. A cena is, despite its appearance, a formal mechanism. Dinners become the cement that bonds people and families and it is for this reason that they figure so prominently in daily life. In turn this puts emphasis on food. At any dinner there will always be far too much food. The quantity becomes the measure of the hospitality, which reflects the respect given to the guests. Even the poorest Italians will spend huge sums, almost bankrupting themselves, to produce a wedding feast worthy of their daughter. Weddings, being an overtly formal bonding of two families, produce the most extravagant excesses. Twelve or more courses are not unknown.

  I went once with my mother to a wedding where we sat down to eat at one o’clock. We finished our coffee and liqueurs by about half past five. Slowly the guests got to their feet and began to mix. A band played. At around half past six waiters began to clear the tables and reset them. My mother, noticing this, said that it was time we went, since they had clearly arranged for another group of guests to eat dinner with them. We found our hosts to say goodbye.

  ‘My dears, you can’t go now, we’re just about to have dinner. You really must stay.’

  There was no second group. Dinner was for us. This sort of feasting is unusual, but not unknown. Huge meals for huge numbers are the norm for weddings; 300 people would be an average affair. Apart from the food and entertainment, each guest will be given a bomboniera, a memento of the wedding, which could range from a net bag of sugared almonds to pieces of silver engraved with the date and the names of the couple. This kind of lavish entertainment imposes obligations on those who accept it. This is why it is so important for a young couple starting off. They begin married life with a deposit book stuffed with favours owing to them.

  In the currency of favours smaller change than dinners would be food alone. Someone who makes 20 kilos of sausages when a pig is killed will give some to friends and relations. Should any of them make wine or cheeses, it is reasonable to expect some of that produce in return. In a strictly peasant society this works well enough and balance in these exchanges is usually worked out over the years. The problem comes when you do not deal among equals. Can you give a mayor a kilo of sausages when you need a favour? What if he knows you vote for the opposition?

  In these cases only one thing will do the job: la bustarella, a little envelope with money in it. This is a vital piece of social grease in Italy. Without it little gets done. If you are not in the position of being able to return a favour to the person of whom you are asking one, then you pay.

  This system of favours sets up its own checks and balances on people’s behaviour. There is a great uniformity of behaviour among Italians, a high degree of agreement on what is acceptable and what is not. In Ireland eccentricity is the norm. Behaviour that in Ireland would not turn a hair becomes remarkable in Italy. The Italians define themselves very much as part of a group. They refer constantly to gli amici, their group of friends and family. Defining themselves as members of a group means that their allegiance to that group is strong. They are mutually supportive. Again, to compare this to Ireland, where no success goes unpunished, in Italy people are proud of members of their group who do well. Into any casual conversation about Britain the subject of Lord Charles Forte will soon come up. Inevitably there is a certain vicarious sharing in his success, a feeling that this success somehow reflects well on the whole valley and its inhabitants. This would never happen in Ireland. You would be regaled instead with stories beginning, ‘Sure, I knew him when …’ which then go on to belittle his achievements. The mutual support that Italians give to one another goes a long way towards explaining their amazing self-confidence.

  This is one of the first things visitors to Italy notice. Women in the streets look stunning – they have an air of quiet assurance. Men strut, not thinking, ‘My god, I’m beautiful,’ but knowing it with a supreme certainty. Children are told from birth that they are beautiful and it makes them thrive. On Italian television game shows, people called on to the stage from the audience are never tongue-tied. They apparently suffer no stage fright and are delighted to be thrust into the limelight. In the summer fat men on beaches lovingly rub oil on to their stomachs with unconscious self-absorption. They appear to like themselves just as they are.

  The mutual support, the constant compliments, are cushions around fragile egos. There is no doubt that it gives great strength to the Italians, but it has a down side. Because so many Italians rely on this support from friends and family, they rarely enjoy being alone. In the huge area of wilderness called La Macchiarvana in the Abruzzi, where we go to enjoy winter sports, the vast majority of people will all stick together. On beaches and in the mountains, they gravitate to where everyone else is. This is the complete opposite of Ireland, where in the summer we go to Brittas, on the Wicklow coast. There are lots of little coves, as well as large sandy beaches. We look down from the cliffs and if someone is already there, we go to the next cove. The Italian way would be to ignore the empty beach and join in the fun on the one with people on it.

  The family unit also explains why whole villages find themselves displaced to another part of the world. Three times as many people from Casalattico live in Dublin as in the town itself. This is simply because the first to arrive would have sent for his brother and his wife, then her cousin, his cousins, their wives and so on. Anyone thinking of emigrating would always think of going to where family and friends already were. Even my father’s decision to leave England and move to Ireland was prompted by his cousin Dino, who lived in Dublin. Like the Irish in America, Italians have family all over Europe, supplying them with a network of connections should they ever need it.

  The reliance on family in the modern business world has its drawbacks. Many old-established family firms are in the hands of incompetents, promoted to positions of influence and power solely on the basis of bloodline. The tradition of trusting only
the family is a strong one and a display of supreme incompetence would be necessary before an inept family member could be removed. Family businesses in our valley have foundered rather than bring in new blood from outside.

  For Italians growing up abroad, family pressure ensured that they married Italians. In my case there was no pressure and I married an Irish girl, but my parents’ generation was subject to a lot of coercion. The reason, I think, was that foreigners in general have little idea how an extended Italian family works and first-generation immigrants wanted to make the kind of alliances that they understood.

  The ability of Italians to be happy in groups means that high-rise housing does not present the same social problems as it does in other countries. All of Italy’s large cities have high-rise apartment blocks. This is partly because land in Italy is scarce and partly because there is no opposition to this form of housing from Italians. Like Hong Kong Chinese, or New Yorkers in Manhattan, this form of housing suits them well.

  Italians are house-proud. Their houses are spotlessly clean and scrupulously tidy. It can get carried to extremes. A woman I know in Gallinaro showed me around her house after she had done a great deal of work on it. The kitchen was so immaculate that I wondered out loud how she could cook and have it so clean. She didn’t. She showed me her utility kitchen, where she did her cooking, explaining that in this way she could keep her main kitchen spotless. Although extreme, it is not an isolated example. Another family friend in Sora has a master bedroom that she keeps immaculate by the simple expedient of having turned the dressing-room into a bedroom for herself and her husband, thus ensuring the main bedroom doesn’t get messed up by actually being used. There is the woman who waits outside the door while guests use the bathroom and who then goes in to disinfect and spray air freshener when they’re finished. A cousin of mine puts on specially constructed slippers as soon as he gets home so he can shuffle around the house polishing the parquet as he goes. This insanity is only a physical manifestation of keeping the nub, the centre of the family, in order. The house becomes the public representation of the family’s position and aspirations.

  It is rare to find among the middle classes in Italy the sort of shabby furnishing so beloved of English country houses. The sofas will not have dog-hairs on them, cats will not sleep undisturbed on an Aga. There is a passion for the new, the shiny, what is di moda. Pets until recently were rarely found in Italian houses, mainly I suspect because of their contribution to disorder. A love of beauty is combined with a love of order and to British eyes this may lead an over-emphasis on tidiness and cleanliness in their houses.

  Those rare individuals adventurous enough to buy antique furniture will invariably have it polished and restored to the point that all semblance of age is removed. It is also a way of symbolically scrubbing away the touch, the usage of strangers. Italy is a consumer society, where second-hand is not appreciated. I have yet to find an auction room, a car-boot sale or a jumble sale. There is no acceptance of exchanging your old tat for someone else’s.

  The effort expended on the interior does not always extend to the outside of the house. When I was about eleven my mother took me to visit a school-friend of hers who lived in Arpino. Through a dingy courtyard we approached what looked to me like a crumbling, run-down palazzo; in my experience such buildings were known as tenements. As soon as the front door opened my preconceptions were rudely destroyed. Downstairs beautiful marble floors gleamed, while upstairs on the piano nobile sixteenth-century parquet of great beauty gleamed beneath centuries of beeswax. Exquisite paintings hung on the panelled walls, while we sat and took tea on furniture from the settecento. Old money in Italy has a way of lying low. It is never flaunted. Indeed in recent years it has become dangerous to display wealth. Kidnapping is sufficiently common now that it touched good friends of my mother’s in 1991, when their grandson was kidnapped. Thankfully the child was unharmed, but their house on the Via Appia Antica now resembles a prison, in an attempt to be impregnable. The only way you can drive a Ferrari safely today is if you wear mechanic’s overalls.

  The obsession with cleanliness and order doesn’t only apply to houses. Italians bring this obsession to personal hygiene. Hoteliers that I know in Ireland hate having Italians to stay. They use lots of hot water, they are constantly asking for clean towels. But this is their habit. Next to any lavatory bowl in Italy there is a bidet. It is not considered a luxury but a necessity. Sheets are commonly washed and ironed daily, even the heavy linen ones. On a crowded commuter train in Rome, even in summer, you can smell soap and cologne.

  Self-improvement is a concept that Italians revere. Rural Italy has for years been class-ridden, with the peasants kept in their place by lack of education. Local lore is full of stories of poor men who have been fregato – conned – simply because they couldn’t read a contract or fill in a government form. They were treated as fools by officials, whether in government offices or in banks, so literacy and education became a Holy Grail. Only through education was self-improvement a possibility, only education or emigration offered a way out from the grind of working the land. This aspiration has been fulfilled by the modern Italian post-war republic.

  The drive for literacy and education among people who were traditionally without has produced some extraordinary stories. While my father was at university in Florence, he met a young man from the Comino Valley called Vittorio Grimaldi. In 1942 Vittorio went to Florence to enrol. Not being able to afford a train, he decided to go on his bicycle, which had rags tied around the wheels instead of tyres. Florence is about 300 miles away. His mother equipped him for this journey with some rolls, and trousers made from an old sheet, which she had dyed black. By mid-journey his rolls were long finished, he was hungry and tired. A farm worker saw him on the road and invited him to eat with him that night. The menu was polenta.

  Maize meal has been a staple of the Italian diet for centuries. It was used for animal feed, for polenta and for bread. Like hominy grits, polenta is maize semolina boiled to a consistency of thick porridge, which is then spread out on a platter and eaten with butter, gravy or ragù – a tomato sauce. It is traditional to pour the polenta on to a board, cover it with ragù and then place the sausages that flavoured the sauce in the middle of the polenta. At the ‘go’ signal, the end of grace, the race begins. Each diner begins eating from the edge nearest their place. Whoever gets to the middle first gets the sausages.

  For the family Vittorio stayed with that night there was no contest: he was like a ravenous wolf, eating most of the polenta and all of the sausages. He eventually arrived in Florence for his interview. It had been raining hard and as he sat in the interview room a black puddle began to form as the dye ran out of his trousers. He was uncomfortable and embarrassed. He didn’t do very well in the interview and when it was over one last question was asked.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘By bike.’

  ‘No, I mean here to Florence.’

  ‘By bike.’

  There was a stunned silence, broken by one of the professors who said that anyone prepared to make a journey like that deserved a place. And deserve it he did, finishing his final year as a vet with the highest marks in all Italy that year, graduating magna cum laude.

  Today schooling is available free for everyone. From the age of three children can go to the nido – literally a nest – which is a pre-school playgroup. It also serves as a crèche, allowing Italian women to work. Even in a village like Gallinaro there is a communal bus, which collects children from every house, takes them to school and returns them afterwards to the door. No matter how isolated a house, the bus comes for the children. So good have the state schools become that private schools have virtually ceased to exist. Many of those that do exist are only for the educationally sub-normal, rather than for the privileged. If you were to tell someone that your child goes to a private school, the most likely response would be sympathetic.

  Third-level education is encouraged, and a pupil who
has passed the baccalaureate has the right to go the university of their choice to study the subject of their choice. This law poses some problems for the universities. If 4,000 applications arrive one year for the faculty of medicine in the University of Rome, the faculty must accommodate all of them. Obviously this puts strains on the teaching staff as well as filling lecture halls far beyond their designed capacity. It has also caused over the years a glut of graduates in some professions, who now have enormous difficulty finding work. Of the fourteen males within five years of my age in Gallinaro two have higher-level diplomas, the rest university degrees. Five are doctors who, luckily, have work.

  If these statistics were national, the results would be extraordinary. In rural Frosinone there is a drive to ensure that offspring study hard and earn degrees, a direct response to the historical lack of education. Families prod and cajole their children to study hard, at school and at home, in term time and throughout the holidays. The result is a valley of well-qualified people who unfortunately cannot always find work in their chosen profession. One of my friends, with a degree in jurisprudence, drove the school bus for years. Recently the universities have responded by making their courses harder to complete. The drop-out rate in the first year or two is high, so that graduate numbers are now coming into line with what the market needs.