Tim Parks - An Italian Education

However sad, it is amusing to hear Marta complaining about this, since her own protectiveness, which so often prevents Beppe from going out (he cannot sleep over at our house because ‘he has never spent a night away from his mother’), is very much part of the same mentality that framed that rule.

Along with another couple of parents and Maestra Elena, Michele’s teacher, we fall to discussing the bizarre case of a couple in Trento who are being denied the right to adopt. The local social services object that the man, a successful interior designer, wears an earring and openly states that he does not believe in God, while his wife has recently shown signs of capricious imbalance by giving up a steady job in one of the town hall offices.

How dangerous it is to put yourself outside the group mentality in Italy! To declare that God doesn’t exist, to jump off the gravy train of a state job! (Is it just me, or is there something similar about these crimes?) For all comment, Marta merely insists that her husband does not wear an earring, that they do go to church, and that she would never give up her job and the security it brings her. Then, although Stefano is clearly a little nervous about this, she tells everybody that they are thinking of going to Africa or South America to find a child to adopt. It’s a major and very courageous step. There’s a moment’s silence as people grope for the right response. At the same time we turn a corner of stones and brambles to arrive at the outer wall of the castle where somebody has painted the ambiguous graffiti PORTARE I NEGRI NEL VENETO È SCHIAVITÙ— Bringing blacks to the Veneto is slavery. Above and below this are the more forthright and commonplace ‘Foreigners out of the Veneto’ and ‘ Eviva la Repubblica Veneta ’, with a primitive lion, symbol of the old Venetian Republic, sketched above one crumbling portal. Somebody has even invented:

Ruggisce il leone

Trema il terrone

The northern lion roars

The southern peasant trembles

I wish Stefano and Marta all the luck they will need…

Gathering the children to talk on the clearing inside the castle walls, Maestra Elena makes no comment on the disturbing graffiti, but tells us that the castle used to have nine towers, not just three as at present, and that the beautiful cypress trees around it had not even been introduced into Italy when the first settlement was started on this hill.

An Italy without cypresses. I had never imagined.

We stop for a picnic further along the ridge of the hill where, in the general drift yuppiewards, an old farm is being turned into a riding school. They have agreed to let us sit on their benches, which is kind of them, though the grass is quite dry now. The weather, generally commented on as miserable, is a soft breeze shunting puffy little clouds back and forth above, while a thick haze has obscured the mountains to the north.

Out comes the tupperware, the knives and forks. Some of the picnics are quite elaborate. Aubergines in oil, zucchinis, salads. Many of the mothers have wisely told father to arrive at the top of the hill with the car so that big bottles of wine, dishes and cakes can be easily provided. Someone has brought a guitar. After lunch the children sing:

Io son contadinella

alla campagna bella

se fossi una regina

sarei incoronata

I’m a little farm girl

In lovely fields around

But if I was queen

By now I would be crowned

Stefi loves this song. She gets so excited, as her own drawings suggest, by the idea of transformation, country girl to queen, Mummy and Daddy to prince and princess. Perhaps growing up is waiting for metamorphosis. The same song then continues, unaccountably, with this little riddle:

E cinquecento cavalieri

Con la testa insanguinata

Con la spada rovinata

Indovina che cos’è!

Five hundred cavalr-ee

Their heads all bloody

Their swords all broken

Riddle me riddle me ree

And then the riddle’s answer:

Sono solo le ciliegie

Sono solo le ciliegie

Sono solo le ciliegie

Che maturano al sol .

They’re only cherries

They’re only cherries

They’re only cherries

Ripening in the sun.

Are they the cherries the farm girl was picking perhaps? Was she planning to crown herself by weaving their stems together, the way little girls do sometimes in this country of cherry trees? It’s a lovely song. The children yell it out to a slightly mistuned guitar (Marta is singing very loudly and happily, too), while some of the men have gathered together to discuss football over the wine and one or two boys are sneaking off into the bushes with their sticks and catapults. Then between a song here and there from the adults, the children start telling jokes, most of insuperable silliness, most about carabinieri , often in voices breathless with embarrassment. Finally, it’s Stefi’s turn. She stands on a stone in the middle of the circle. She is younger than the others, not a member of the class, only here because she is a little sister. She has short dress, plump knees, big red boots. Like most Italian girls of her age she wears earrings already under tight pigtails.

‘There are a Frenchman, an Englishman and an Italian,’ she begins excitedly, ‘in a train compartment. And a terrone …’

My first reaction is dismay. Terrone — a southern peasant — is just too derogatory, the territory, as we have seen, of graffiti and insult. It’s going to be a racist joke. Nobody seems upset.

‘They’re in a train compartment and the Americano pulls out…’

‘The who?’ Everybody laughs.

‘The Americano …’

‘But there was no…’

‘The Americano ,’ Stefi insists, ‘pulls out a cigar and he smokes a couple of puffs’ — she imitates, delightfully, making a big pouting round of her lips — ‘and then he pulls down the window and tosses it out, and the Italian says, “Why did you do that, you hardly smoked it at all,” and the Americano says, “Oh, we’ve got so many cigars in America!”’

For the moment here she seems to forget what comes next. She scratches her head, tugs a pigtail. ‘Then the Scotsman…’

‘The who?’

‘The Scotsman pulls out…’

Again there are light-hearted protests, though everybody knows perfectly well that the only two who matter in this joke are the Italian, in whom popular wisdom recognises a northerner, and the terrone . The others are only there to symbolise that First World, which tradition always has it is richer and more plentiful than home.

‘The Scotsman pulls out a bottle of whisky and he drinks a couple of sips,’ again the imitation, ‘and then he pulls down the window and tosses the bottle out. And the Italian says, “Why did you do that, you hardly drank any of it at all,” and he says, “Oh, we’ve got so much whisky in France.”’

‘Scotland,’ everybody shouts.

Stefi gets annoyed. She puts her hands on her hips, it’s a gesture she’s learnt from Zia, and bellows, ‘ Santa patata , let me finish! And then,’ — but she stops now and smiles sweetly, perhaps remembering to be more the princess than the farm girl. For my own part, I have already seen the end coming. I feel amused and appalled.

‘Then the Italian: the Italian suddenly picks up the terrone and tosses him out of the window. And the German says, “Why did you do that, he didn’t do anything,” and the Italian says’ — here Stefi holds both hands out, palms upward, in the age-old Latin gesture of explanation, conciliation, regret — ‘he says, “Oh, we’ve got so many, many terroni in Italy.”’