Tim Parks: Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona

IT IS AS summer gets into full swing that you are reminded you are living in a foreign country. A strange breed of wasps, more than an inch long, have made their nest in the eaves above our balcony and will occasionally whirr into the flat causing intense alarm. Opposite the church we see a snake, head held high, sliding rapidly along the wall of the flood-emergency dike. Typing away on il professore ’s desk, I become aware that a baby lizard has come in through the french window and is soaking up the sunshine on the tiles by my feet. Outside, freed from their winter covers, lemon and orange trees flourish again in tubs by lowly back doors shrouded with bead curtains against the flies.

Meanwhile, Montecchio is being made ugly by preparations for the forthcoming general and local elections. It even seems possible that our child could be born right on polling day, although what kind of omen this might be I don’t know. The local council erects long lines of ramshackle scaffolding outside the church and in the main square. These are then hung with laminated billboards rusting with age, thus giving the political parties free advertising space. At least fifty metres of scaffolding and sheet metal are required just to make sure that every party will get a look in. For, of course, there are many.

It was my first Italian general election and, despite the imminent domestic upheaval, I was eager to get a handle on the political life of my adopted country. I read all the editorials in national and local newspapers, I spoke about it to everybody I knew, I went to meetings in the local library. I thus passed from confusion, to disbelief, to further confusion, and, ultimately, a quiescent state of total disillusionment. Which I have maintained ever since.

Of course, every nation is disillusioned with its politicians. Everybody is half aware that a politician can never represent the people who voted for him, for the simple reason that anybody who stands for election is fundamentally different from the mass of people who don’t. And if he isn’t when he decides to stand, he most certainly will be once elected. The idea of a representative parliament is a pipedream. However, in the other countries I have lived in, one is at least left with the consolation of choosing between, if not different ideologies, then at least different emphases. This party will spend more, this less, this party believes in social security, this doesn’t, etc. etc. So that elections can be expected to focus (reductively perhaps, but usefully) around some issue like, should we give more money to the health service, should we possess nuclear weapons, and so on. There is also the government’s record. The governing party has done this, this and this. Do you like it, or don’t you? Italian elections have none of this refreshing naïvety.

In the early days — heady May and the first half of June — most comment in the newspapers and on TV seemed to be concentrated on which member of the five-party coalition had been responsible for bringing the government down and provoking these early elections. Given that the public generally perceives elections as a great evil (if only because the squares are cluttered with scaffolding, and the TV monopolised by dull talk shows), this is a matter of some importance. Apportioning blame could prove a potentially effective weapon.

So, were the Socialists right to vote against such and such a clause of such and such a bill (usually something quite obscure)? Were the Christian Democrats right to insist on this clause and make it an issue of confidence when they knew the Socialists would vote against it and the Liberals abstain? Why did the Republican Party minister attack a government policy he had just subscribed to in a cabinet meeting? Why wouldn’t the Social Democrats agree with the others as to who should be chairman of some bank or TV network? And so it goes on. Blame is never effectively apportioned. In the eyes of your average Montecchiese they are all responsible. They become responsible the moment they are elected. And anyway it wouldn’t have mattered if such and such a clause of such a bill had been passed, since everybody would have ignored it just the same.

The Socialists, a Modern Party for a Modern Italy’ — Bettino Craxi, their leader, is pictured with somebody behind him working on a computer. Despite the fact that their emblem is a carnation, the Socialists are using green posters this year to steal a march on the Greens. Who have unfortunately split into the Rainbow Greens and the Smiling Sun Greens and are arguing heatedly about who was responsible. ‘A New Role for Women in a Fair Society’, says the Communists’ poster. But will it cut much ice in la strada delle zitelle ?

All in all, there is a curious lack of imagination about this advertising. Especially given the Italians’ usual verve and flare for such things. A weariness. As if none of it really mattered. ‘Working toward a United Europe’, boasts the Christian Democratic Party. But then so, if we’re to take them at their word, are the Social Democrats. The Republicans trumpet their ‘Honesty and Integrity’, clearly hinting what everybody already knows, that the others have neither. But then do the Republicans? And is it what people want? The Movimento Sociale, inheritors of the fascist tradition, think it is. ‘Firm Government and an End to Corruption’, they proclaim. Well, it’s a step forward from the ‘ Credere, Ubbidire, Combattere !’ — ‘Believe, Obey, Fight!’ — of their predecessors, a motto still provocatively visible under a thin coat of whitewash on the town hall of a nearby village. ‘The Right Choice’, say the Liberals about themselves, feeling that no further explanation is necessary. Or perhaps possible. ‘Towards a Real Alternative’, plead the Communists, their hammer and sickle reduced to a sixpence. ‘Stability, Prosperity’, thunder back the Christian Democrats, making much of their own emblem of the Crusader’s red cross on a white shield. Well, who would ever argue with stability and prosperity?

In the end you have to turn to the extremist fringes to get any hint of policies. ‘Rome = Mafia = Taxes’, says the slogan of the separatist Liga Veneta. And another poster warns: ‘Bringing Blacks to the Veneto = Slavery’. Obviously somebody has a penchant for perverse equations. At the other extreme, the Democratic Proletarian Party wants ‘Nuclear Weapons Out Now’. The Pensioners’ Party demands social justice for the elderly. Predictable stuff. The Radical Party, splendidly idealistic as ever, proclaims: ‘No to World Famine.’

Responsible modern-man Giampaolo Visentini is thus profoundly depressed. ‘They don’t even bother trying to hoodwink us any more, ‘he observes. Bepi just snorts. He won’t talk about it. It’s too ridiculous. In the sanitaria , herbalist Maria Grazia’s husband thunders for the Liga, the separatists. There are too many meridionali moving into the area. Have I heard that they’re setting up yet another cooperative to build houses for themselves in Mizzole? Have I? With that and the new high-security prison going up next to the barracks, we’ll have the Mafia here in no time. Amusingly, work on the prison is stopped the following week because it’s discovered that the contractors involved paid bribes to politicians to get the job. A student of mine tells me she was a Democratic Proletarian activist once, but then she realised they were just the same as all the others.

Meanwhile, the debate on TV has switched to the technical question of whether parties should declare their allegiances vis-à-vis other parties before the election, so that people know what kind of coalition they are voting for. This is an age-old Christian Democrat ploy to have people suspect that the Socialists might desert the present government to form an alliance with the Communists after the election. Which would be the end of everything, of course. The Socialists insist that each party must simply present its policies and that is that. Whereas so far nobody has presented any. The Communists accuse the Church of using the pulpit to encourage people to vote Christian Democrat. The smaller parties try to have us all imagine that behind the scenes Christian Democrats and Communists are planning to get together and change the electoral system in such a way as to exclude all the others. There is an enormous amount of talking, much of it deployed about the furthest outposts of comprehensibility, and absolutely no debate. Nobody mentions interest rates, or inflation, or unemployment, or defence spending, or levels of housebuilding, or anything that might remotely have any bearing on day-to-day life. Nobody presents a programme or manifesto. As for the government’s record, it is never considered, since each party in the coalition always claims that the other members were responsible for everything bad. Oddly, there are no opinion polls, no suggestion that things are running one way or another. If I could vote, I reflect, I would have absolutely no idea who to vote for.