Tim Parks - Italian Neighbours - An Englishman in Verona

Sometimes, when I pick up my bread of a morning at Bepi’s, my friend invites me out for a quick espresso , and in these tense days towards the end of May we inevitably find ourselves discussing what is on everybody’s mind. ‘The government is a thief’, he announces almost at once. It’s a stock phrase, ‘ governo ladro ’. You frequently see it sprayed on walls and railway bridges. He shakes his shaggy head as though over an irretrievable and pitiful situation. I make the mistake of remarking a little piously that I do believe in a state where everybody pays what they have to, so that everybody can pay less, and I say I think the Church, with the hold it has over a lot of people, should tell them to cough up rather than conniving with them. Bepi’s response is somewhere between the incredulous and the irate. Am I mad? His head-shaking speeds up. His scorn is all too apparent. But then it occurs to him that this is merely my Englishness talking — of course, I’m from a different world, I don’t understand — and now he becomes concerned, his big forehead creases up, concerned that I may be about to make a big mistake and declare more than I need. He leans over the table, his voice urgent and conspiratorial: ‘What you have to remember’ — there’s a bright light of conviction in his green eyes — ‘what you have to remember is that they are attacking and you are defending. It’s naked aggression. And self-defence is always legitimate.’

‘The balance of indirect to direct taxation is fairly valido ,’ pronounces Giampaolo more reasonably that evening. He is weighing his words carefully in this sad period when last year’s prosecco is already finished and the stuff we bottled last week isn’t ready yet. ‘Then the level of fiscal pressure has been established discretamente bene ; but all this is rendered relativo by the fact that the government makes no serious attempt to collect. Except from dipendenti .’

And indeed the dipendenti have announced a protest to coincide with the tax-declaration deadline. They will be marching on the parliament in Rome, to demand draconian measures against the demonic autonomi who aren’t paying their fair share. To hot things up, the newspapers amuse themselves by publishing figures indicating the average level of earnings as declared by various categories of autonomi the previous year. Your average jeweller claimed he earned just five thousand pounds, the average doctor even less, the average lawyer not much more, etc. etc. It’s ludicrous. But everybody has their justification for behaving as they do, and the dipendenti ’s protest is quickly followed by a series of articles showing how the government only wastes what it receives anyway, is generally corrupt and inefficient and always will be until Italy is more or less taken over by the European Community.

In the event, the administration of this year’s income-tax collection does little to improve the government’s image for fairness or efficiency. As May progresses and people go from one tobacconist’s to another in search of the appropriate forms, it becomes clear that not enough have been printed. Or perhaps they have been printed, but they are certainly not being distributed. Then to make matters worse, somebody discovers that an important mistake has been made on one of the pages. We will have to return to the tobacconist’s to buy a revised form. So that as well as reminding us of our civic duty, the radio is also talking about the possibility of a two-week postponement of the deadline for filing our returns. Indeed, this now seems more or less certain, the newscaster tells us, with a noticeably congratulatory tone to his voice. Just three days before we are supposed to pay, the Minister of Finance is interviewed and says that there will be no postponement, he has never mentioned such a thing, nor does he see why he should be obliged to deny any old rumour as soon as it starts circulating, even if it has been given credence by the public broadcasting network. People should never imagine anything has changed until he personally announces it has. And it hasn’t. There will be absolutely no concessions to anybody, and people who don’t file their returns inside the deadline will be fined in the regular fashion.

My accountant is thus in a state of desperation when I finally see him at nine in the evening the very day of the deadline. Out come all the invoices, the registers. His fingers incessantly tap the three-zeros button that distinguishes Italian calculators. As usual, I understand little of what he is saying about the various deductions available to me. I notice in my instruction book that if my wife was dependent on me I could reduce my taxable income by a splendid 120,000 Lire, or sixty pounds, and when I have a child I will be able to reduce it by a whole 48,000 Lire, twenty-four pounds.

Yet despite this evident meanness (there is no child benefit here), I am always surprised at how little I have to pay. ‘First,’ the accountant says briskly, ‘we reduce your income by 14 per cent. Now, let’s see.’ Fourteen per cent! Why? ‘Because in the category you fall into, or rather that we have chosen to put you into, taxable income is reduced by 14 per cent, which is considered to be your expenses. If the category were different, the reduction would be different. As would the percentage of national insurance you have to pay, and so on.’

When finally we get to the end of the whole business, it turns out the government actually owes me money. Which I can expect to be refunded in about four to five years’ time, the accountant remarks. ‘But you definitely will be re-funded. With a modest interest. And it’s always welcome when it comes, isn’t it?’ We finish towards eleven. The accountant has a whole stack of completed forms to be delivered to an office at the station which remains open until midnight the day of the deadline.

Then the following week the Minister of Finance calmly announces that, although he didn’t postpone the deadline for filing returns, there will now be an amnesty for those who didn’t get them in on time. They have until 14 June. Another two weeks. Perhaps the fiaccolata and the power of prayer are not entirely to be overlooked.

GIVEN THEIR ENTHUSIASM for children, it will at first seem curious that Italians produce so few of them. Lara is an only child. Marta, the daughter of the mongol-looking cleaning woman is an only child. The woman with the twig broom has a little nephew who visits and at age six rushes up and down Via Colombare on a tiny motorbike with two-stroke engine making an awful racket. He is an only child. Many of my adult students have just one child. If they have any at all. The population is expected to fall by two or three million before the end of the millenium. Only in the house next to the cadaverous old lady does a very jolly signora have three children, all daughters. ‘How many girls’, claims an article in the newspaper, ‘owe their existence to the elusive quest for a male child!’

It’s interesting that those who prefer vegetable gardens to dwarf cypresses and do not clean too obsessionally, or have their blood pressure checked with fanatical regularity, tend to be those who produce more than one child. Again much seems to depend on the family’s relationship to the rural past, the extent to which they are influenced by the general clamouring for security. For children are so expensive. They must be provided for from start to finish. First a gynaecologist di fiducia must be found, and then a paediatrician di fiducia . The little ones must spend their summers in pensioni or second homes by the sea to breathe the iodine, in winter they must go to the mountains to escape the fog. Very probably they will have to attend a Church rather than a state nursery, paying more. Then perhaps a private school, of which there are many. Everything they have must be new. Who would buy a second-hand pram or cot for their dear little child? Who would buy anything but the most expensive leather shoes for their toddler? And it will be a costly business sending heir or heiress to university, for this takes an absolute minimum of four years, usually much much longer, and there are no grants. Anyway the child will have a fidanzata or fidanzato by then, and very probably the family will have to buy them a flat, since they can’t marry before they have been bought a flat, can they? And all the furniture. And all the appliances. Nor would it be wise for them to marry until family contacts, or personal prowess, have secured them a steady job. In the local area. It’s a major undertaking.