Tim Parks - An Italian Education

So the charnel-house pattern spreads outward. So the children learn the importance of having what other people have. Michele thinks it is wonderful. He loves barbecues. But when is Papà going to get one?

And when is Papà going to get a TV?

When is Papà going to get a mountain bike?

Plenty of chance for ricatti here.

Wiser than Donna & Mamma my Frate Indovino , a sort of calendar cum almanac, says:

‘Your son. From nought to five he is your master, from five to ten your servant, from ten to fifteen your secret counsellor, and after that, your friend — or your enemy.’

Well, I can’t wait until Michele’s five.

One year, and still Stefania not only wasn’t sleeping but was still keeping us awake all night. Our paediatrician now suggested a trip to the mountains. The fresh air at a thousand metres and more was supposed to work wonders for a child’s sleep. All our neighbours confirmed this, were surprised we hadn’t gone up there before. So photographs show us blearily pushing a pram on the high plateau of the Alpe di Siusi in Alto Adige, a hundred miles to the north, with Michele sitting on my shoulders or clutching his mother’s coat.

Alto Adige is officially part of Italy, but nowhere could be less Italian. The men wear lederhosen over bony knees and have feathers in felt hats. The women have round, rosy, weather-beaten faces. Orange or pink geraniums, but never both, adorn every wooden balcony, banks and banks of them, in rigidly straight lines. The cobbles are carefully swept. The gates are wooden, and the fences are wooden, and the tables in the bars are wooden, and the road signs likewise. Indeed, if anything can be made of wood, it will be. And if they make a pizza here, they make it with speck, or sausage, not aubergines or artichokes. Ethnically, they’re German. They speak German. They call the place the Südtirol. One evening something happened here that had to do with Stefi’s not sleeping, something that reminded me how different the Italians are from the Germans, and how tolerant, both to babies who won’t sleep, and to parents suffering from babies who won’t sleep.

It was March. Easter. In the afternoon we had taken a ride on a horse-drawn sleigh up on the glacier. They give you blankets for your laps, and we held Stefi between us while Michele sat up front beside the old peasant driver and the horse heaved us through a wonderfully slanting sunshine that sparkled off snow cliffs and turned meadows thousands of feet below to carpets of green gold. Stefi howled the whole way. And howled likewise in the crowded restaurant afterwards, where Michele fell off his chair twice, taking a plate of dumplings with him on the second attempt. Winding up my strudel, I became aware that I was rapidly reaching that point where accumulated tiredness turns into bad temper. Another few minutes and I would do something crazy. In desperation I decided a little indulgence might still save the day, and went and bought a pack of cigarettes. I must say I do this only rarely and only, for reasons I have never understood, when I am away from home. The children still whining, I lit up, deliciously, over coffee and a grappa. Likewise Rita.

We had been enjoying the smoke, nicotine and sundry poisons for about ten seconds, when to my shock and surprise a huge fat woman on her way out suddenly addressed us in demotic Italian: we should be ashamed of ourselves, she said fiercely, ashamed of ourselves, smoking in the presence of our children! The lady’s accent was of the Teutonic variety unlikely to endear itself to anyone born south of Trento. What’s more, there was a definite suggestion of racial superiority in her tone, as if those of German descent would never smoke anywhere near a young child. Her face, after she’d finished speaking, had a frightening severity to it. She didn’t move on but just stared at us, apparently demanding a response. Nor did she try to make her attack more palatable by smiling at Michele or cooing over Stefi, as some elderly Italian bigot might, just told us straight, and she repeated her complaint, that we were behaving badly.

I lost my temper. In an extravagant and quite unforgiveable fit of rage, I shrieked at the woman that I was smoking because of the children, I was smoking because they were making my life impossible , because they refused to sleep, because I myself hadn’t slept for months. For months. For months! Did she understand? Could she even conceive what that meant? And I said that if anybody else came and bothered me about it, I would only smoke all the more. Indeed, I would smoke a million cigarettes tonight if she didn’t mind her own damn business.

The woman was not at all put off by this lamentable loss of self-control, as if she expected no better from someone she imagined to be Italian. If my children didn’t sleep, she told me, still speaking in the same clipped, hectoring tones, it was because I spoilt them. I should leave them to cry , she explained. For however long it took. It would be a far kinder thing than blowing cigarette smoke all over them.

This time I didn’t reply but grimly lit another cigarette, blowing the smoke quite definitely in her direction. She turned and left, speaking loud words to her husband, and one of those words was italienische , which set off a murmur of voices from the tables around us. Appropriately, Stefi howled. For perhaps the first time I was grateful for it.

Children, Rita remarked when the woman was gone, were perhaps healthier in German-speaking countries, but certainly sadder. For my own part, I was somewhat consoled by the fact that I had actually been mistaken for an Italian, if only by a non-native speaker. Or perhaps it was just that after a good argument I felt more relaxed. Ready for another night in bianco , with ‘Lullaby, lullaby, Who shall I give my baby to…’

For neither the fresh air of the mountains nor a whiff of tobacco smoke had had any effect at all on Stefi.

Breaking off her crooning in the dead of night, Rita laughed, ‘I know who we should give her to!’

Who? Was she hallucinating angels?

‘The German befana in the restaurant.’ The old witch. ‘We should let her try and babysit Stefi for a night.’

But for all her difficulties we cared for our dear daughter far too much to abandon her to such a formidable figure. Though I remember we did once try to leave the little girl to cry, giving up after perhaps half an hour of constant yelling. Exactly one year and nine months after our daughter was born, Rita noted in her diary: ‘Stefi sleeps four hours without break. First time…’

When English children begin to crawl they find carpets on the floor, carelessly turned up at the corners. They find walls soft with wallpaper, thick curtains they can haul themselves up on, deep sofas smothered in cushions, big quilts on top of the bed, fluff and dustballs beneath. The English domestic world is a soft, soft place. Perhaps there is a hearthrug. Perhaps there is a cat or a dog on the rug. The child moves from one softness to another.

When Italian children begin to crawl they find tiles, or at best polished wood. Carpets are too hot for hot summers and unhygienic. Every day a wet cloth spreads disinfectant on shiny ceramics. There is no soft paper on the walls but rough whitewash, or solid waxed stucco, which is the fashion now. The stairs to the outer world are polished stone. The windows are shuttered. It’s a harder, cleaner, smoother, more controlled environment, bright by day, jet dark at night. With the shutters tight, no shadows flit softly about the curtain hem. Bang your head on the window ledge and you find marble. Take a tumble, or capitombolo , as they say here, on ceramics and the bruises go deep.