Tim Parks - Italian Neighbours - An Englishman in Verona

When a couple of condominium families get together to invite their friends to eat here, on the Bank-holiday evening of ferragosto perhaps (15 August), or on 25 April, la festa della Liberazione , they expect these furnishings, particularly the splintery pine benches and fake oil-lamp light fittings, to induce a mood at once of merriment and traditional wholesomeness, the rightness of family and friends enjoying the fruits of their labours around the common hearth. As if for the space of an evening, the office worker, or shopkeeper, or pharmaceutical salesman could enjoy the healthy repose of the contadino after the grape harvest; as if, like some Jungian subconscious, the taverna could be used to store away a primitive past and all its richness.

My own experience is that, like so many dreams, the taverna is better in the dreamer’s imagination than in the realisation. Happier the Veronese choosing his fireplace and barbecuing instruments, than the same irritated fellow trying to enjoy them. You go to a taverna party in a damp basement, unheated and un-aired since the last binge, and quite possibly you will catch your death despite the most stifling weather above ground. The chimney doesn’t draw properly because it is rarely used. You eat off a miscellany of plates, survivors of other dinner services once used upstairs; you drink from dusty glasses that no amount of rinsing will clean, perhaps because there is no hot water in the basement sink. Items of cutlery are found to be missing. Your knife doesn’t cut very well. Conversation booms about the bare cement walls. After about an hour or so, just when the wine and barbecuing are beginning to take the chill off the place, the condominium dog-in-the-manger comes downstairs to complain that the noise is making it impossible for him to follow the latest episode of some favourite telenovela , i. e., a recycling of Dallas, Dynasty or whatever. He is reassured, amidst much contrition and invitation to join in (for this is by definition a wholesome party), then promptly forgotten, though remaining perhaps as a nagging subconscious irritation.

The food begins to arrive. You eat the flesh and sometimes it seems the bones and feathers too of blackbirds and small pigeons, crushing, as instructed, Malteser-sized heads between your molars so as to suck out the brains inside. Which are indeed toothsome. But pitifully small. While all around the table people are trying too hard to be jolly.

Out come the carabinieri jokes (right angles boiling at 90° and so on), the shaggy dog stories of bureaucratic odysseys (‘so when I went back for the third time he says that since my birth certificate was from another province and dated prior to 1959, the whole procedure should have been done by post with the office in Rimini …’). There is much loud guffawing, head shaking, glass filling. ‘No, you must have another uccellino . You must. They’re squisiti and I’ve already cooked it now.’ The thing falls on your plate with a definite resemblance to those hapless little corpses one finds on wet pavements in spring. Accordion music strikes out from the stereo. Six couples launch themselves into traditional dances in six square metres. Loud giggles. Somebody burns themself on a hot poker left sticking out of the hearth, etc. etc.

The taverna seems to induce this behaviour, this determination to be festive at all costs. Indeed, almost any taverna party has the flavour of those New Year’s Eves when you simply can’t feel there is anything to celebrate and wish you had stayed at home. But then my wife constantly tells me I’m a gufo , an owl, a spoilsport. She thoroughly enjoys these occasions. In my defence, I would merely say that, whatever the surroundings, I always love the wine, I can even tell with my eyes closed more or less which of the local varieties I’m drinking, and if only we could be having it in well-ventilated accommodation upstairs with some tortellini al dente , followed perhaps by a plate of finely sliced rare horsemeat and a tiramisù straight from the fridge, I would be in heaven.

Throwing open the iron door, drawing me to the threshold to gaze inside, Giampaolo Visentini was obviously a taverna fan. Perhaps for him the taverna represented some unthinkable loosening up, or an occasion when the more difficult social skills could be replaced by simple prowess with the barbecuing fork. In any event, showing me the gloomy place (I remember antlers and crossed ski poles on thin whitewash) he began to betray the first signs of life and enthusiasm. Did I like barbecuing? Did I like grilled aubergine? And bruschetta (toasted bread with olive oil and garlic)? I said, yes, yes I did. And was I interested in bottling my own wine? The people in his company always clubbed together to bring a truck-load of casks from a particularly good vineyard in Friuli. If I would like to split a cask of Cabernet or prosecco with him I should let him know in good time. We could buy in October and bottle next spring. The price was low and the quality excellent. I said to count me in at once, I was always ready to give something a try. By the time we were climbing the stairs again there was a feeling we might just make it as neighbours.

Then, running the gauntlet of Lucilla’s door to get back through our own, we heard our phone ringing for the first time. Signora Marta, perhaps, having forgotten to tell us where the serious books and spare light bulbs were kept. Or one of the numerous schools and agencies we had immediately passed the number on to.

‘ C’è il dottor Patuzzi ?’ a confident older man’s voice asked.

I froze.

‘ Parla Giordano. Una questione di documenti .’

‘But Patuzzi’s dead. He’s been dead two years and more.’

‘But his name’s in the phone book,’ this voice objected.

‘He’s dead,’ I said.

‘ Ah. In quel caso non insisto .’ And the phone went, well, dead.

Rita said: ‘It’s if they say, “Patuzzi speaking”, you should start worrying.’

But somehow it seemed that when you had just cleaned all of a man’s junk out and read a few of his letters and seen his well-thumbed girly magazines and his boyhood skis and a crucifix by his parking space, then fantasmi were not an unreasonable proposition.

IT WOULD HAVE been some weeks later we tried to change that entry in the phone book. We phoned SIP, the telephone company and were told that in order to have our names in the phone book with that number we would need a recent certificate of residenza in bollo (that is with a few thousand Lire’s worth of special stamps on it) and signed renunciation of the number by Patuzzi, or his heir. The contratto for the phone would then be shifted, for a small charge, into our name and the bills would be addressed to us.

By the standards I have grown used to, this seemed something of a breeze. A check at our local comune , a pleasant enough little office with the inevitable crucifix, an impressive collection of rubberstamps and a large computer on line to the city registry, provided the information that for certificates of residency we would need either proof of ownership of the said flat as first home, or a written statement from the owner that we were tenants there. This should be on carta bollata — legal paper with, again, a few thousand Lire’s worth of stamps on it.

So we rang Singora Marta. She was very polite but unable to understand why we wanted to change the name, ‘referring to the number in the phone book’. Couldn’t we simply tell everybody we wanted to phone us what our number was? We explained that there might be people who wanted to track us down for work. We were liberi professionisti . But if, she objected, they knew of our names, then they could ask the people they’d heard of us from. Non è vero ? People who would surely have our telephone number or know someone who had it. Telephone directories were thus demonstrated to be entirely useless.