Tim Parks - Italian Neighbours - An Englishman in Verona

Outside our window, Vega barked, howled, moaned deep into the night. With that extraordinary insistence dogs sometimes have. Bark, bark, bark, bark, for hours on end. What were we to do about it?

‘Poison the thing,’ a student suggested at once.

Poison. For weeks, months, it was to become an obsession. We noticed stories in the paper reporting dog poisonings. They seemed quite common. Almost the done thing. Somebody in a place called Bussolengo had killed more than twenty in a single evening. Well, we needn’t go that far. And I read Sciascia’s novel, A ciascuno il suo , where he mentions a whole Sicilian tradition of dog poisonings, a sort of low-order vendetta between rival huntsmen.

We considered rat poison. And bought some. We studied the dosages. Twenty or thirty pellets in a meatball should be enough. But what if a child were to pick it up? Occasionally the Negretti had guests with small children who were left to ramble about the defecated garden area. A student whose father was a vet cheerfully suggested the easier solution of a sponge soaked in meat juice. Apparently, the sponge expands enormously in the animal’s gut, blocking intestines and eventually leading to death. He knew people who had found this method very effective. Well, we had a small sponge in the bathroom which overlooked Vega’s little patch. Part of the Patuzzi heritage. Nothing would be easier.

We observed the animal’s eating habits. She seemed perfectly used to having her food tossed at her from considerable distances. She was instinctively friendly, running to her master or his sons in the hope of a pat, which very occasionally, grudgingly, she got. Although sometimes it was kicks. On a sort of dry run, we tossed her a biscuit from the bathroom window. Immediately it was snapped up and appreciated.

‘The only problem with the sponge’, my knowledgeable student explained at another lesson, ‘is that the creature will die in unspeakable agony, and you’ll have to hear her howling like mad. Probably for a couple of days. Although of course it will be worth it in the end.’

We couldn’t do it. At night, startled from sleep by bloodcurdling howls, we would feel that we could. I might go to the bathroom and squeeze the yellow sponge in my hand, feel how it contracted and expanded, sense how easy it would be, laden with the weight of the meat juice, to chuck it the three or four metres over the fence to the howling dog. But something prevented us. And we developed the alibi that it wasn’t the animal’s fault, it was the master’s, and we would kill the master if only such things were feasible. As a poor substitute for serious action we took to phoning casa Negretti whenever the dog woke us. After a couple of nights they left the phone off the hook.

We talked to our neighbours about it. The Visentini weren’t badly affected because they lived at the other side of the building and had installed elaborate double glazing. But the subject did allow for our first real contact with Vittorina. No sooner had we mentioned the dog than she was telling us how, when her husband had been dying the previous July, he had been unable to sleep because of the creature and she had begged Rocco Negretti to do something about it, to no avail. They were gentaccia , filth, no fate was bad enough for them. She burst into tears, remembering her husband’s suffering and we were able to offer her coffee in our flat, where she amazed us by remarking that she had never been in here before. No, she and Lucilla had been good friends with il professore , but the hateful Maria Rosa was a city woman and believed herself above them. They had never been invited into the flat. Il professore had always taken his coffee at Lucilla’s. While Maria Rosa did the shopping.

Vittorina was in her late sixties, big boned, only slightly overweight. With great dark rings about her eyes, she was obviously morose by nature, a lover of candlelit churches, superstition, mystery and gossip. But when she laughed it was with sudden heartiness and enthusiasm, a sort of profound natural health. She would go and tell Lucilla, she said, what nice people we were, because her sister-in-law was mad not wanting us to use il professore ’s parking place after il professore had treated her so badly.

This was good progress, and terribly interesting of course (should we ask Vittorina about the photo taken near Prague), but it didn’t solve the problem of Vega.

Until one Sunday we would wake at dawn to the celebratory crackle of gunfire. The hunting season had begun, the hunting season that litters the paths with spent cartridges and deposits as much lead on the national territory as all the Fiats, Alfa Romeos and Mercedes put together. And although we had never seen so much as a wild rabbit on our Montecchio walks, the surrounding hills echoed with sharp reports all morning. Uccellini , pigeons, purpose-bred pheasants were presumably tumbling from the sky. And Vega was quiet that night, having had some exercise at last.

AUGUST IS A better month than July in the Veneto. The days are still scorchingly hot but, after a series of dramatic thunderstorms bringing hailstones as big as marbles and prompting radio and newspaper discussions as to whether farmers could ever have had all the crops they are claiming compensation for, the humidity finally fades like a bad dream; the days are drier and clearer and the welcome dusk comes that bit earlier.

It’s a good time to take walks. The countryside assumes its dusty green long-suffering summer look: matt colours under sizzling light. The vines are thicker now, their shoots knotting swiftly across the system of wires between one row of posts and the next, completely shading the ground below. You can walk beneath them under a panoply of leaves through vineyard after vineyard up the valley toward the village of Mizzole, your hair brushing against berries that are just beginning to swell. In the scented green light a wealth of insect life goes about its business: you see extraordinary, bright yellow spiders spinning their threads fast from tendril to tendril. And through the still air and intense heat, you gradually become aware of a great silent seething all around, urgent and secretive, as if the whole world were concentrated on growth, growth, growth. One tends to fall silent oneself crossing vineyards on hot summer days. The plants don’t want to be disturbed. There is so much still to be done before September.

On the plain to the south, the corn is already in and the contadini are burning the dusty stubble with a cavalier disregard for fire hazards. On the hill above us il conte (as most rich landowners seem to be known) loses an acre of woodland and there are whisperings of arson. Climbing a steep slope of stunted trees and scrub we find two men running around a large burnt area trying to stamp down flames every time they flare up: here, there, behind them, in front. The smoke has a pleasant smell and is thin and lazy in the shimmering air. The men’s task seems hopeless, but, no, they say, they don’t need help. We climb on and find the count’s huge house, mansion rather: an ochre stucco, austere façade with travertine sills and plinths. Looking through the ironwork of the old gate we count six expensive cars. Rita reflects that Mussolini’s round-up of iron for the war effort generally seems to have passed over the gates of the rich, while the contadini shelled out their saucepans. I feel we could do with another war effort to get rid of the thousands of kilometres of superfluous ironwork sprouting up in modern suburbia.