North of Naples, South of Rome

by Tullio, Paulo;

  A new sense of realism is emerging, a gradual realization that money spent by the state and its agents is money raised by taxation. Italians are coming to understand that the more the state spends, the more taxes you pay. When comuni like Gallinaro start to try to find ways of reducing their electricity bill, it is clear that a new ethos of stricter housekeeping has arrived. The days of cathedrals in the desert are at an end.

  Hand in hand with better accounting is the new tax regime. For years Italians have been taxed indirectly. Now tax on income that actually bites is an ever nearer reality. The ubiquitous receipts that are foisted upon you for every purchase in a shop have become obligatory for professionals. Doctors and dentists are obliged to give them; theoretically they will have to pay tax on receipted income. Unfortunately in practice it is not working out like that. Professionals very rarely offer a receipt and asking for one has its drawbacks. If you force the issue, you are likely to find it difficult next time you need an appointment. Rather than run this very real risk, most people accept no receipt, or will settle for one that details at most a quarter of the sum actually spent.

  To overcome problems such as these, now that the state has assessed the floor area of every house in Italy for the house tax, the tax collectors are applying similar formulas. If you own a house of a particular floor area, it is assumed your income cannot be less than a particular amount. Similarly, if your office is of a certain size, then your turnover is assumed to be in direct proportion. These are crude instruments and often unfair, but they will go some way towards evening the tax burden.

  The problem with restructuring the tax laws is speed. All this has happened with alarming haste. In August 1993, Italy had 192 separate taxes and duties, each with its own paperwork and each adopting a different method of payment. No tax in Italy can be paid by a cheque in the post. They are payable only in cash, some at the post office, some at a bank, and some at a government bureau. To pay VAT a trader, or someone on his behalf, must spend a day queueing in the bank to hand over cash. Since the majority of traders are attempting to pay on the same day the chaos is predictable. The annual tax return document of 1993 ran to forty-eight pages and was incomprehensible to virtually everyone. Even the president declared it to have been designed by a sadistic maniac and promised that next year’s will be simpler. As with most laws in Italy, the tax laws are far from clear. No one is completely certain that they have paid the required amount – there is a lingering uncertainty that some day the amounts will be re-assessed and large fines will be levied.

  The shock to the system is considerable. Up to now taxes have been moderate and often collected haphazardly. Many professionals and traders have paid little if anything, and are unused to the idea of taxation. Suddenly, within the span of a year, their world has been turned on its head. Not only are taxes being demanded, they are being collected with a vigour as never before. The taxes on houses will certainly rise in the next few years. People who have several houses, and they are many, will find that the expense will outweigh the benefits of keeping more than one house. As more people try to sell them, the property market will suffer as well. All over Italy workers returning from the summer break have found the factory gates closed. As unemployment begins to rocket, Black Autumn is living up to its name. The immediate future is far from rosy.

  One spin-off from the house taxes should be a decrease in, or possibly the end of, speculative building. Up to now building a house was a sound investment. The proof is the sheer quantity of them in various stages of construction around the place. I was given figures from a housing census which show that there is housing for 80,000 in the Comino Valley, whose actual population is around 19,000. The difference cannot be explained by people like me, who do not live permanently in their houses, since any householder is counted on the electoral register. There are simply many more houses than there are people to occupy them. The building continues, but it would be my bet that when market forces begin to be felt, the concreting of the valley will eventually end.

  It is hard not to be optimistic about the current turmoil. Whether it all works out as planned or not, it will still be preferable to what went before. Changes to the system appear to be radical, and should have far-reaching effects. It should, however, be borne in mind that the people discussing the changes, the legislators, are those who have most benefited from the previous arrangements. It is difficult to imagine greedy and venal people voting short rations for themselves. Most likely the changes will be made when a new political force with new members, such as the Lombard League, comes to power. If the collapse of the Christian Democrat party continues, the next elections will certainly see them out of office, and possibly reduced to a rump of members.

  These are turbulent times in Italy and only the brave venture prophecies, but it seems clear that the Second Republic will start life with new political alliances and a new set of deputies who will at least profess to have mani pulite. Whether whoever governs Italy in the next five years can keep the economy on an even keel and avert a tax-payers’ revolution is anyone’s guess. Current trends point to violent revolution – but then in Italy they always have.

  10

  Walking to Sinella’s

  Gallinaro is not beautiful. Centuries of poverty, miseria, have left the old town centre dilapidated and to some degree devoid of permanent inhabitants. The newly built part of the town is essentially graceless, even though large amounts of foreign-earned capital have been lavished upon it. The prosperity of recent years has not passed Gallinaro by, but the Italian urge for the new has left it possibly more impoverished. What was typical of traditional stonework, or of historic or local interest, has mostly been removed, broken or covered in concrete. This disregard for the old is not peculiar to Gallinaro, but is endemic in the south of Italy. What to a tourist is a fascinating relic of the sixteenth century is to the inhabitants a reminder of hardship, grinding poverty and a life of discomfort and hard work. A brand new house of poured concrete is perceived as infinitely superior to a restored ruin, a roof of new tiles is preferable to leaking roman canali. And yet, despite all the unsympathetic alterations and reconstructions, the village still retains the quintessential qualities of an Italian hill-town: it is picturesque, and to me it’s home.

  A walk from the Atina side of Gallinaro to the other takes about fifteen minutes at a dawdle. The road follows the crest of the hill on which the town is built. At the road sign welcoming you to Gallinaro, which also informs you that you are some 600 metres above sea-level, a chain-link fence lines the road on the right. Behind this six-foot fence zebras and ostriches frequently browse. This is the upper boundary of Don Armando Mancini’s estate. Enormous by Italian standards, it runs from the eastern valley floor all the way up to Gallinaro town, taking in several small valleys and forests. It is surrounded by high fences and is strictly out of bounds to all. Don Armando is indisputably the valley’s Mr Big. He dominates the building trade in the valley and to a large extent the province too. His influence is keenly felt in the administrations of nearly all the valley towns, the province, and some would maintain Rome as well. He is a man to respect.

  Following the road brings you to the beginning of Gallinaro new-town. In June and July this stretch of road is alive at night with fireflies that flit and bustle in their mating-dance. On both sides of the road there are large villas, shuttered for eleven months of the year, their owners in France or Belgium. Taking up the ground floor and garden of one of these villas is Maurizio’s pizzeria, which serves possibly the finest pizzas available for 30 kilometres in any direction. Maurizio and his Canadian wife Maria make the real thing, in a brick, domed oven fired by beech and oak. This is probably the only place in Gallinaro where you can see people from other towns, the closest thing we have to tourism. Even in the winter, when all life appears to be hibernating, people find their way here. Like most Gallinarese, Maurizio’s family make good cabernet-based wine, and he is not shy in suggesting it as an accompaniment to his pizzas.
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  A little further along, on the left is the town hall, the comune. It is housed in the old school building while the new comune is being built, of which more anon. Opposite the town hall, in a place that appears curiously inappropriate, is a new bar. Not surprisingly, it is frequented by the denizens of the town hall, and, less surprising still, has begun to be the preferred choice of the administration. This has had a polarizing effect on the town. Until recently Sinella’s was the only bar, apart from a couple of dingy shebeens. Regardless of politics, this was where the village met for coffee, for recreation. Now the choice of bar is almost a political statement. The mayor lives near the town hall, he and his associates meet in the bar there, and the bulk of his sustaining votes come from here. The citizens of the old town feel abandoned and ignored, further increasing their likelihood of voting against the administration, and consequently ensuring that their needs and wants are barely addressed.

  Last summer I found myself doubting this analysis. All through August the mayor and many of his councillors were to be seen in Bar Sinella, in the heart of the old town. Had a truce been agreed? It turned out there was a simpler explanation. A new law was proposed last year granting voting rights to Italians living outside Italy. For the last couple of years I have received from the comune of Gallinaro a voting slip for each election – provincial, regional and national – sent to me in Ireland. The Italian state will pay for my travel to Italy, as long as it is by train, to enable me to vote. It doesn’t take much calculation to see that this could become very expensive. The new law allows voting in the country of domicile, even for local elections. Gallinaro’s emigrants, far more numerous than its inhabitants, are now voters, which explains the courtship of the emigrants by the current administration.

  Far-sighted local administrators are assiduously cultivating the enormous block of new voters. The next local elections in Gallinaro are not until 1995, but preparations are being made now. As well as three lavish conferences to discuss the needs of the emigrant community, Italians who choose to return to Italy will have their moving expenses largely paid for; there are schools specifically for the children of emigrants where the emphasis is on learning Italian before the children transfer to a normal school; housing is available for those who cannot afford to buy – in short, a whole panoply of support. Whether or not all this can be maintained in the current climate of severe austerity remains to be seen.

  Beyond the town hall is the Sanctuary of San Gerardo. The church dates from the twelfth century, although the bulk of the structure is more recent.

  Opposite the Sanctuary the road is flanked by a low wall, where the whole western half of the valley is on view. Below this point is the little Chapel of the Baby Jesus. In front of the Sanctuary is the largest open space in the town. It is not a piazza, but a place where the buses bringing pilgrims park. Nestling between two large rubbish bins and a specialized bin for medicines and batteries is one of the few remaining public fountains in the town. Most of the time the area surrounding the fountain and the bins has more litter than the bins hold.

  This open space is one of the few spots in the village with a view of both halves of the valley. Settefrati, the highest of the towns, clings to the valley sides, further east is Picinisco, described by D. H. Lawrence in The Lost Girl; at the far end is San Biagio, and below it and nearer is Villa Latina. From here you can also see Gallinaro’s oldest established night-club, Smeralda’s. What little crime there is in the village is allegedly caused by some of the less desirable elements who come from Cassino and Sora to patronize the night-club. Along the bottom of the hill running north to south is the superstrada, a wide road connecting Atina to San Donato.

  All over Italy hill-towns are suffering the same fate. The reason for their positioning – security from marauding bandits – has long gone. Their inconvenience, however, remains. Atina is a long way towards moving from the hill-top to the plain below. Frosinone town has long since completed the transposition, Gallinaro is beginning it. Most of the town’s main retail outlets – the supermarket, the chemist, the builders’ suppliers – have all moved to the valley, flanking the road. The hotel is here, as are another two night-clubs, furniture shops, cafés and restaurants. It is easy to imagine a time not long from now when the hill-top will be a dormitory, and commercial and social life will be down in the valley.

  Dominating the open space in front of the Sanctuary of San Gerardo is one of the town’s hillocks. The old road skirts it to the east, and a new one circles it to the west, joining the old road some 200 metres further on. Two buildings top this rise, one the school, and the other the fine house of the ex-schoolmaster, Crescenzo Tanzilli. What purpose the new road? At the back of this crest the skeleton of the new town hall moulders. Like most new buildings in this seismic area, it is built of poured concrete. Like some child’s building toy, the uprights and cross-pieces are shuttered and poured, until a skeleton building is made. At this point the sides are filled in, windows and doors placed, and the roof tiled. The new town hall, however, will certainly remain in the skeletal stage for the foreseeable future. The funds from central coffers arrived for building both the access road and the town hall, but somehow the money just wasn’t enough and no more is forthcoming. Where the money went can only be surmised, but what was a lovely hillock is now despoiled.

  Where this pointless new road rejoins the old is the beginning of the climb to the old centre. Probably the only monument to Fascist endeavour still extant in Gallinaro is the viaduct which carries the road at an even incline over what was a steep gully impenetrable to motor traffic; before its construction the village had effectively only one access road – the one from the other end. Apart from making the expansion of the town in this direction possible, the viaduct had an extraordinary effect on the houses on either side. Their front doors used to give on to the old track in the gully, but when the viaduct was built what were once bedrooms became the main entrance, accessed by tiny bridges from the sides of the viaduct. I’ve never been inside any of these houses, but internally they must be upside-down by any standards.

  The top of the viaduct brings the road alongside the main square, Piazza Santa Maria. Even for the Comino Valley this is a sorry sight. A previous administration created it by the simple expedient of allowing three garages to be built into the hillside, with the stipulation that their roofs would become part of an enlarged and levelled piazza. Two sides of the piazza are bounded by once-proud palazzi, one of which seems about to collapse at any moment. Until recently, it was the town hall. The south side is a monument to the newly arrived concept of conservation. The Church of Santa Maria, unquestionably the least architecturally interesting of the town’s churches, is now a preserved ruin. Alongside it is the poured concrete monstrosity of the recently erected war memorial. Thankfully, none of this can be seen from the road, so the assault on the eye and sensibilities can be avoided.

  The road climbs more gently at this point, passing on the right two of the few shops that have not defected to the valley, and on the left a low wall allowing an unhindered view to the west. Look over the wall and a large expanse of concrete presents itself. This is in fact the second story of the projected new piazza. Because Gallinaro is built along the crest of a hill, there is almost no level ground, so it must be created. Built into the steep slope, another concrete skeleton supports this area of about 30 by 20 metres. This, too, will never be finished. The allocated funds arrived and somehow just weren’t enough to finish the job. The cost of this concrete skeleton so far? £250,000.

  Some 50 metres further on, evidence of the 1984 earthquake comes into view – not the destruction it caused, but the ghastly effects of letting Italians loose to rebuild. The vast expanse of plain concrete retaining-wall may well serve a purpose other than a rubbish tip and occasional parking place, but this is functionalism devoid of any aesthetic merit. A few more paces brings you past a couple more houses to the public garden, which adjoins my house. It has recently been bought by the comu
ne for use as a playground, although swings, roundabouts and slides have never materialized. It is home, however, to rubbish bins, and is now the focus of a campaign to make the administration figuratively and literally clean up its act.

  From this point the road begins its descent, passing my house on the left, and the backs of some old houses on the right. They were part of the old walled town, the backs of the houses forming the medieval walls. Just below these houses is the old-town piazza. It is tiny, and marks what was once a gate into the medieval town. Until 1945 it was considerably larger, but in the chaos immediately after the war planning permission was granted for a house right in the middle of the piazza.

  This is where I would want to bring any visitor to see Gallinaro as it should be. All the old houses have been painted in pastel shades, the restoration work done with some care. Although a purist could find cause for complaint, the houses are pretty and the general effect is pleasing and picturesque. Until recently there was a stone in the square, roughly cubic, once used by debtors. To proclaim bankruptcy, the debtor would remove his trousers and sit on the stone, the origin of a crude dialect phrase for going bankrupt. From this tiny square you can look up to the main church, taking in most of the old town as well; and looking down the long, thin piazza, which originally formed the centre of the old walled town, you can see the men at the café tables shouting and gesticulating as they play cards. Of all the images that I hold of this village, it is the ones from here that give me the most pleasure.