Tim Parks: Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona

Still fumbling with her keys — I wished she would give them to me — Signora Marta at last lost her nerve. So far she had been playing cool city woman to this ill-bred, peasant savagery. Now she too began to shout. ‘You need a doctor, signora , a psichiatra !’ And in her eagerness to get away from the unpleasant scene, she yanked quite viciously at the key in the security lock and it snapped in her hands.

Silence. Surprise. Then Lucilla was saying, ‘ Grazie Gesù, grazie !’ Behind her back, after swiftly making the sign of the cross, her hands seemed to be trying to loosen off some girdle or brassiere. Her face was purple: ‘ Maria Santissima, grazie !’ The key had broken. We couldn’t get in. It was a sign from God. It was proof of her claim to ownership. She was weeping for joy. Signora Marta led us in a hasty retreat down the stairs. As we drove away the onlookers were already converging on the house for news of how the battle had gone.

OVER ESPRESSO IN a bar back in Verona, Signora Marta endeavoured to reassure us. That ignorant old witch had run the cleaning company for which Marta’s uncle — Patuzzi — had done the accounts. When the company was sold off, Lucilla, her brother Giosuè and sister-in-law Vittorina had built the palazzina in Via Colombare together with Patuzzi so that they could all retire happily together. Lucilla’s daughter had been supposed to move into the fourth flat but hadn’t wanted to be near her mother. Signora Marta pouted thin lips and tapped a city nose, as if to say, ‘and we know why, don’t we?’ In any event, Lucilla had somehow got it into her head that the whole palazzina had been built with her money, that is the company’s money, and that all flats would revert to her or her heirs on the death of the occupant. ‘Can you imagine anything so crazy?’ Uncle Patuzzi had died a year ago. His wife, Anna Rosa, Marta’s aunt, had hung on in the flat a year longer, but was ill, infirm and constantly harangued by an ever more threatening Lucilla with whom she had never andata d’accordo , being herself from an altogether different social class. Now the old lady, poveretta , had gone into a home, mainly to escape Lucilla, and she, Signora Marta, as future heir and present administrator, needed to make some money out of the place, if only, as we would surely appreciate, to pay the various bills and taxes. No sooner were we actually in the flat than Lucilla would accept the situation, this afternoon’s outburst being anyway mainly due to this abysmal weather which could play havoc with anyone’s nerves.

Well, Rita and I had spent most of our life together looking for rented accommodation. We had searched twice in Boston, three times in London, and this was our second time in Italy. We knew that finding a place is tough and that the more generous and idealistic the tenancy laws are, the tougher it becomes. Italy’s laws are idealistic in the extreme, with a sort of permanent freeze on evictions, since no political party seems ready to face the flak of unfreezing the situation (the same might be said of almost every area of Italian politics). What’s more, we had no place to stay. So it was agreed that no sooner had the locksmith done his job — and Signora Marta had a friend who had another friend who knew something about locks — than we would try again under cover of darkness.

Thus it was. Poor Lucilla must have been in bed, or deafened by her television. Signora Marta had her keys carefully labelled. Barely a minute after the cars had been parked, their doors clicked quietly shut, we were already tiptoeing into the flat. Under a 40-watt bulb, Marta made us sign something on the kitchen table; to the effect that we promised to leave in exactly one year’s time or at any moment thereafter when she should so desire. Of course, such a contract could have no legal validity since wise Signora Marta had no intention of declaring us as tenants and getting caught for tax on her rent. But as you discover after a while, Italians lay great store by the signing of pieces of paper, ‘ documenti ’ they insist on calling them. There is a certain ritual attached to the practice, a warding off of evil spirits, and an appeal to the notion of honour which, people feel, should take precedence over legal quibbling, if only because it is generally more convenient to keep the government out of things.

Satisfied, but still nervous, Signora Marta gathered up her piece of paper. Here was the bank account number to pay the rent to: at the Banca Popolare di Verona in Piazza Nogara. Three hundred thousand Lire. Apparently, she didn’t have time to show us the place. If we had any problems finding anything we could call her on the phone. The furnishings, she could guarantee — and she made the gesture of someone in a hurry — were excellent. Her uncle and aunt had been people of considerable culture, well educated, much travelled. We would find books and art works that were estremamente interessanti . If there was anything left in the drawers or cupboards we could store it in the solaio , the loft, upstairs. The key was on the bunch. ‘ Va bene ?’ This thin, nervous woman took more than a cursory look through the Judas hole in the door, drew a deep breath, whispered arrivederci and scuttled off down the stairs.

So far we had barely looked about us. Now we explored. And discovered that none of the light bulbs in the flat were any more than 40 watts, so that even the grotesque five-armed chandelier in the salotto dripping with globules of smoky glass cast only a dim glow of sad pomp. For such a cultured man Uncle Patuzzi had been doing remarkably little reading of an evening.

Still, minor shortcomings of this variety could easily be remedied, we thought. Likewise the array of department store Madonnas, Sacred Hearts, Sant’Antonios and clumsy bric-à-brac crucifixions that stared down from every wall could be removed and stored away with minimum effort. And the orange-and-green floor tiles did have a smooth, clean, cool feel to them; the window fittingswere, by London standards, quite luxurious, while the bathroom, with walls tiled almost to the ceiling, hardwood loo seat and handsome creamy beige bidet and bath, was palatial. Certainly, when one remembered the bedsits and miniflats of Acton and Willesden, this was a very well-appointed place indeed.

But the furniture … Well, we had seen it elsewhere, so it was not entirely unexpected. But depressing all the same. So many Italians, even young Italians, will move into the most modern buildings, light and airy with attractive ceramics and fittings, only to clutter the space with heavy coffin-quality furniture which affects the antique and noble but achieves only the cumbersome and uncleanable, casting sad shadows into the bargain. Thus, a dark-stained console with twisting candlestick legs was shedding neat piles of sawdust to let us know the woodworm were at work. Veneer was blistering on a mammoth bookcase with surely anachronous frosted glass doors, while above the sofa a teak-framed mirror with cracked silvering found 40-watt reflections of a darkly noble dinner-table opposite. Venturing as far as the bedroom, and rather disconcerted now, we found great, square, black-varnished head— and footboards supporting a sagging boat shape between, reminiscent of the bed in a school-of-Veronese Death of the Virgin I had recently seen in a local church. On opening dusty chests, dark wardrobes, deep drawers, we discovered that all without exception were full to overflowing with the worn-out possessions of thirty years ago.