Tim Parks - Italian Neighbours - An Englishman in Verona

No, she added, the point was, it would be extravagant if we were only staying for a year. Because when we were gone we would of course renounce the number, so as not to be listed under it any more and have bills for it in our names, at which point she could if she chose have the line disconnected, but then God knew how long it might take to get it reconnected and how much that would cost. The result being that she would most probably have to take the number on in her own name (rather than Patuzzi’s). And since she already had a phone number, this number (Via Colombare’s) would be registered as a second home phone, meaning much higher basic bills even if she made no calls.

So many conversations in Italy follow these serpentine paths, with new laws and regulations constantly raising their ugly heads to turn the most obvious ways forward into dead ends. With the creeping sense of paranoia that results, you occasionally find that people have been imagining rules that don’t actually exist, simply because they seem to be the kind of thing the government would invent to make life more difficult and hence probably has. Was it really true, for example, that Marta would be obliged to register the number in her name. Couldn’t she register it in a child’s or grandmother’s? Or was it that if she did that they would then have to switch their residenza to Via Colombare with all the problems that entailed?

I proceeded cautiously: when we left the flat, I said, if she asked us to leave it that is, and we rather hoped she wouldn’t because we liked it here, then this would presumably be because she had decided to sell it, or had found someone else to live in it, and in either case the new occupant would want to take over the phone, wouldn’t they?

‘Not if they already have one in their own name elsewhere,’ she came back. ‘Or if they want to retain residency in another province.’

Who could have thought of this before starting the phone call? Then, when I had already given up and offered a cool arrivederci , she suggested by way of an olive branch: ‘I don’t mind writing to say that you live there, though, if you need to have residenza for other purposes.’

How explain the elusive yet all-important significance of ‘residency’ to a Brit who merely lives where he lives and acts accordingly? Can we hazard a definition? Residency means that the state now recognises that you live where you live, or say you live (for example, in the province of X at such-and-such an address) and henceforth will distinguish you from all the people who live in another province, or country, or who do, yes, live in X but whom the state does not recognise as living where they live (in X), either because those people want to be recognised as living elsewhere (where they don’t live) and have managed by some wangle to achieve this, or because they can’t get hold of some precious documento that would allow them to demonstrate that they do in fact live where they live (in X), and must thus continue to be recognised as living where they no longer live (in Y or Z, for example).

But does it actually matter? Well, yes. Once the state recognises that one lives where one lives, there are all kinds of benefits: the right to register your car in the area (otherwise you will have to travel to Y or Z to register it); the right to register with a local doctor; the right to apply for all kinds of local state jobs; the right to have access to certain services and benefits; the right to pay lower phone and utility bills; the right to vote; and, most importantly for us, a 2 per cent reduction on the amount of income tax withheld at source on free-lance services.

‘ Va bene ,’ I told Signora Marta, if she could write such a letter we would be very happy. ‘ La ringrazio .’

But I was puzzled. She hadn’t wanted a formal rent contract. I had half suspected that this was why she hadn’t wanted the phone number in our name: she didn’t want it to be in any way official that we lived here. And now, on the contrary, here she was offering to help us get residence. A calculated risk? Generosity?

‘The flat,’ Rita suggested, ‘is officially owned by Maria Rosa, who is gaga in a nursing home. How is anybody to know that we are paying into Marta’s account?’

Still … Life is complicated. In any event the drift seems to be that the government makes well-meaning but complicated laws and people very sensibly get smart and get round them. For example, there was this business Marta had mentioned that second homes carry much higher utility bills — a popular tax-the-rich measure. However, it is quite common in Italy for the middle and even lower-middle classes to rent their real home in the city where they work and possess a small holiday flat (second home) by the sea, by one of the lakes, or in the mountains. Result: many people register themselves or their wives or children as resident in the holiday home, so as to avoid higher bills. This in turn will create all kinds of other problems. On election day, the registered residents will have to travel a couple of hundred miles to go and vote in some place whose local politics they know nothing about. So they don’t vote, you object. But, in Italy, if one doesn’t vote three times in succession, one loses certain rights … etc. etc. Bureaucracy is a huge tangle of sticky string in which every attempt to loosen one knot tightens another.

And checks, or accertamenti , to make sure that each citizen is contributing his length of string to this tangle, are quite common. A few weeks after moving into Via Colombare, I went out on the balcony to see who had buzzed our bell and found a seriously fat man in uniform sitting on a moped with big dispatch boxes. Montecchio’s local vigile . Taking some papers out of one of these boxes, he asked me something. I asked him if he could please speak Italian. He politely switched from dialect to something more comprehensible, upon which it emerged that he had been asking me whether I lived where quite obviously I was living (wearing pyjamas, a piece of toast in my hand). I said I did. He then asked if he could come and see. And in my kitchen he explained at length about the tassa sui rifiuti , the rubbish-collection tax. This apparently was paid, not by the owner or even renter of a property, but by the head of the household actually living there whether or not resident — that is, they wanted the money and red tape was not a problem (similarly, it is perfectly normal for a foreigner to file an income-tax return without having a work permit). The person in question was me, I said. I would pay. He scratched his head, cocked it to one side, eyed me carefully from his tubby face. ‘ Bon ,’ he said.

The vigile then wrote something amazingly painstakingly on his sheet of paper. While he worked, I noticed how clean his uniform was, how well-ironed his shirt, how white the little pouch on his belt. It was another day of sultry heat. Despite the weight of flesh beneath all these clothes and accessories, he was not sweating.

He asked my name. Then asked me to spell it. Fair enough. We got through Parks quite rapidly, and were speeding through Timothy (Torino Imola Monza Otranto — I say it in my sleep sometimes) when we ran up against the age-old problem of Y which does not exist in the Italian alphabet. ‘Hotel, Epsilon.’ I finished. He hesitated, raised his head, blew out his cheeks and narrowed his eyes. What was epsilon? ‘Epsilon,’ I said, ‘is a letter.’ ‘ Ah s ì?’ he said. It was clear that he was used to having his leg pulled, and so had developed these mannerisms — the suspicion, the slow questioning, the stare — to make himself seem less gullible.

Having studied me for a sufficient length of time, he decided I was not the type, said: ‘ Sì, Sì, sì, d’accordo ,’ and scribbled something down, I didn’t dare to ask him what. But then I had the idea of pulling out my English driving licence and offering it, ‘ per una verifica ’. Offended, he waved it away.