Tim Parks - An Italian Education

It’s his favourite and impregnable cover.

As we’re walking to the house, in response to some imperceptible dwindling of the twilight or thickening of the fog, five globes of halogen ignite simultaneously in the garden. Mario and Silvio insisted that the garden must be lit, partly for the ornamental effect but, more importantly, to prevent intruders from creeping near the house unobserved. Nonno laughs at this ludicrous expense, as older Italians do laugh at their young before giving them everything they want. Under Perspex fishbowls on metre-high poles, the halogen gives off the kind of blaze that blinds without illuminating. Even the trench collecting the gutters is thankfully invisible. The fog is suddenly thick as milk.

Upstairs, Stefi has run off to her room with a Sicilian doll and Michele is playing with a huge battery-operated jeep, clearly bought in the same auto-grill where Nonno and Nonna had such (and they’re still talking about it) an excellent lunch.

‘Do you like your present?’ Nonno flops on the sofa. He has taken his overcoat off, but not his trilby. His body is remarkably spherical, yet taut. He doesn’t give an impression of flabbiness, more of a properly inflated balloon. Or serious salami.

‘Do you like it?’ he repeats.

Michele now finds time from having the thing crawl over a sofa cushion, in reverse, to say yes.

‘Your grandad bought it for you,’ Nonno says. He scratches the baldness where the trilby rubs.

Michele plays on, fascinated by the lever that toggles forward and reverse gears.

‘Do you like what your granddad bought you?’ Nonno enquires.

After another pause filled with Michele’s splutter and spittle — the noise the thing makes itself clearly isn’t enough — Nonno again insists: ‘You wouldn’t have had it if Nonno hadn’t bought it.’

The boy doesn’t appear to have noticed.

‘Your nonno ,’ my father-in-law begins again…

‘Michele!’ I scream. I can’t bear it. ‘Michele, for God’s sake, say thank you and give your nonno a hug.’

The little boy turns in surprise, his infant mind trying to make the necessary connections. Then he leaves his toy, rushes to his grandfather, kisses him, thanks him, and heads straight back to the jeep.

The scene reminds me, particularly as the February evening proceeds, of the surprise I experienced the first times I was present at Baldassarre family reunions; before, that is, I knew Italy or Italian or the Italians. For these people, mother and father, sons and daughters, all criticise each other endlessly, all and always have something to complain about, often bitterly, even resentfully; yet when they meet, when the Baldassarres are actually face to face, the gestures of affection, the extravagant fare festa , the gratitude expressed when gifts are exchanged, could not be more voluble or enthusiastic.

My wife embraces her mother rapturously. And her father. Michele watches them. Everybody does seem perfectly happy and delighted to see each other. The nonni are here! Evviva! Yet Michele is surely aware, even at five, that we complain a great deal about these unannounced trips, about not knowing how long Nonno and Nonna are going to stay, about the problems that arise if we have other guests. And surely when alone with his grandparents he will have heard them levelling all kinds of criticisms against ourselves, for they are nothing if not indiscreet. Then as we sit down together at table, everybody will talk critically about Rita’s brothers, Uncle Berto here in Verona, Uncle Renato down in Rome, will complain of the former’s love of expensive clothes he can’t afford, the latter’s tendency to send his mechanic’s bills to his father. Why do these boys have to borrow so much? Why do they never pay back? Why do they apparently believe that everything is owed to them? Yet later in the evening, when Roberto arrives — orange Benetton sweater loosely tied round the collar of a Gianfranco Ferrè shirt, beautifully creased wool trousers, shoes he might even now be trying on in some expensive store in central Verona — when Roberto arrives with his fierce mane of hair and proud Roman nose, everybody will rush to give him those same rapturous embraces they recently gave each other, everybody will laugh themselves silly, hand-clapping, back-clapping, hugging and kissing. Wine will be poured and then more wine, and Nonna, almost expiring with pride at having such a tall handsome son, and a doctor to boot, will notice that there’s only a ‘finger’ left in the brandy bottle in the glass cabinet. And she will complain what poor taste it is to leave just a finger in a bottle of brandy: her grandmother always said never to leave a drop in the bottom of a bottle, it brings bad luck, though of course nothing good can be thrown out… So then she will drink the brandy herself, she feels obliged to, or she will share it round, and the grappa too, seeing as there’s some grappa, and everybody will be the best of friends, passing young Stefania from arm to arm and turning her upside down and picking Michele up to tickle him and toss him on the couch and so on, despite its being far too soon after their dinners for that kind of thing.

Yes, no doubt the children take all this in, this wonderful spettacolo of affection, this carefully choreographed festa . And perhaps somewhere deep down they are learning to associate it with the fact that they must remember to say a huge and quite extravagant thank you to Nonno when he remembers to bring them a present, albeit picked up on an exceedingly full stomach as he staggered out of his favourite auto-grill. Yes, they must put on a good show of gratitude, they must give Nonno his reward and his due, then everything will be given and forgiven them, as everything is given and forgiven to Zio Berto.

I have often wondered, in this regard, whether Italians can really appreciate a story like King Lear . Why didn’t Cordelia put on a bit more of a show for her foolish old father? Surely that was wrong of her. For there are times when a little falsehood is expected of you, and can be engaged in quite sincerely, because appearance has a value in itself, indicates, precisely, your willingness to keep up an appearance. All the world is appearance. Cordelia was wrong. Equally, those heart-breaking modern American short stories where family members finally and painfully confess to each other the sad truth about their infidelities and resentments, can mean little in Italy, where people are instinctively familiar, from the kind of childhood Michele and Stefania are now enjoying, with all that unpleasantly and inevitably underlies our getting on together. They know this, but are wise enough to put on a good show and enjoy it.

‘Don’t send the children to bed!’ Nonna protests. ‘It’s so early! How can you do that? You know, Michele, my own grandmother always used to say how important it was for children to experience the fun of being up at night. She said that if…’

The children love this. Michele, like Gigi in that condominium meeting of time ago, like children all over Italy, is helping himself to everybody’s wine, grabbing pieces of a panettone left over from Christmas. The huge brightly red box, complete with silvering and ribbon, in which this insubstantial and rather dull cake was presented, speaks tinsel worlds. Another spettacolo . When I insist it’s their bedtime and I’ve had enough of them, Nonna starts muttering about that notorious English coldness, that awful British reserve. Why can’t the children have some more cake? Why can’t they stay up? Listen to the poor things wailing! They don’t want to go to bed. It’s only nine o’clock.

But I long since learned how to get round this one. I lean over my mother-in-law’s excessively perfumed shoulders and hug her. I tell her how wonderful it is to see her again, which actually it is. Then I tell her, laughingly, lovingly, to mind her own damn business. She responds well to this. She laughs. She admires a man who can be frank and speak his mind, she says. Then she entirely forgets the children despite their tortured yells as they’re dragged away to the horror of a warm bed, and concentrates instead on telling Roberto how a doctor should behave. Because a doctor is a doctor, she suddenly announces very severely, and should cut a certain figure, even when he’s a urologist.