Tim Parks - An Italian Education

Iacopo the painter calls to me. He’s in leather again, but his new woman isn’t with him, perhaps wisely, for I saw the wife about somewhere. I notice he now has a ridiculously tiny beard, which extends no more than half an inch below his lower lip in an inverted equilateral triangle. The rest of his face is unusually cleanly shaven. Brushing an extravagant curl from his forehead, he complains that they’ve asked him to paint a picture of the event. ‘Can you believe it?’ he grumbles. That’s why he’s had to lug along this enormous camera. But he could have spared himself that explanation. Every self-respecting father has at least half a million’s worth of Japanese technology strung about his neck.

The band arrives. They arrange themselves in a rather cramped fashion by the front steps between the school and the fence. We are now running some thirty minutes late. A man with tweed jacket and red pullover, head of the ‘parents’ representatives’ (is there a secret ballot for this position?), stands on top of the steps by the entrance and, fiddling with a microphone, tells us that the band will play some music until all the various luminaries and authorities have arrived. While he is speaking, the parents chat amongst themselves, largely indifferent to the exact turn events may take. Our Saturday morning is already lost, may as well catch up on gossip. To a mood of cheerful resignation the band strikes up some unexpectedly slurpy fifties music.

They’re a curious lot, the band. Stefi, who’s too young for school yet, still at the scuola materna , insists that we get as close as possible. She wants to stand on the wall clutching the fence above as some other little children are doing. I take her over there and lift her up, but in the only space left by a line of other children there’s a saucer of milk and a cracked bowl of dirty cat food. The tradition of feeding stray cats is old and strong all over Italy, but it does seem curious to find offerings here on the school wall on such a red-letter day. I manage to persuade another young fellow to move over a foot or two.

There are about a dozen players in the band, and much to my amusement they’re known as Il Piccolo Manchester. I grew up in Manchester and Blackpool, and remember Whitsun marches behind much bigger bands, much bigger banners. Piccolo seems just about right.

They all have dark blue uniforms, which only accentuate, as uniforms will, what a motley group they are. Playing the flute at the front are two rather attractive girls, a blonde and a brunette, having trouble with the music stands clipped on their left arms. The blonde keeps losing hers, has to break off her playing to put it back. But the flutes are drowned out by the brass anyway. Then there are two or three young men: a trombonist with his hair tied behind in a ponytail that forces up his cap at the back so that the peak tips down over his eyes; a thuggish unhealthy-looking fellow who bangs a snare drum with determined boredom; and a very earnest lad with a clarinet. All the others are oldies, men who learnt to play in the army, most probably, patriarchs with noble white moustaches and cheeks blown out round trumpets and horns, solid paunches beneath. Holding two great cymbals in white-gloved hands, a thin and very dry old man wears antiquated tortoise-shell glasses and sports one of those truly huge moustaches that sprout from right inside the nose to fan out downwards across the whole mouth, giving the curious cartoon impression that he has no lips at all. Comically, whenever he gets the chance to clash his cymbals, he does so with great panache, hurling his arms up in the air in grand operatic gestures. Beside him sways a blue banner announcing in silver lettering that the band was formed in 1876. When the thing suddenly sags to one side and you catch a glimpse of the fellow holding it up, he’s so old and infirm you feel he might have been there the very day Il Piccolo Manchester sounded its first brassy notes in a newly united Italy.

Only when it’s far too late do I realise that the fence is filthy. And rusty. Stefi is getting dirty. The cosmetic effort for the centenary got no further than the one or two strips of fresh turf. ‘And we know what will happen to that this summer!’ Stefano has arrived and come to stand beside me, portly and in good spirits, relieved that Beppe is out of their hands and thus doesn’t have to be worried about. ‘Nobody will ever come and water it once the big occasion’s over.’

This time I manage to get in with a Sai com’è before he does, and lift Stefi down.

‘Still, it’s the big occasion that matters,’ he then goes on to reflect. ‘Who really cares what happens to the turf in summer?’

The band finish their preliminary medley. The luminaries, however, have still not arrived. The musicians strike up again. Stefano tells me that the fellow with the dramatic manner with the cymbals and the big moustache is known as II Pesce, The Fish, apparently because of the harelip his moustache is hiding. But everybody has a nickname here. Michele recently told me that he is known as Fax. Partly because the Italians pronounce Parks as Pax, and partly because Michele once tried to explain to his friends that his father had bought a machine that sent paper through the telephone.

Stefi turns round to tell me that her favourite member of the band is a very plump chap with cheeks like two big salad tomatoes. I try to draw her attention to the handsome, earnest young clarinettist with his polished black hair and shining eyes, but Stefi is adamant.

Finally, the bigwigs are all assembled at the top of the steps: the head of the parents’ representatives, the president of the district, the headmistress, the priest, two teachers, and a local politician who is councillor for traffic in Verona.

The parents’ representative kicks off. It is desperately important, he says, gripping a red microphone and after almost no preliminaries, that we citizens come along to give support to ‘one of those very few public institutions that are still sound.’ The reference to the political scandals that recently led to the collapse of Verona’s local government is clear enough and would be deeply embarrassing, one imagines, for the councillor, who is implicated, if only people were paying attention. But they’re not. I can see Silvio’s and Francesco’s heads together, no doubt over the interminable Balkan crisis. And Iacopo has now taken something from his pocket to show it to an attractive young mother. On official occasions Italians come out of a sense of politeness, and to be part of lo spettacolo , but not to listen. The headmistress’s speech suggests why.

Like Maestra Elena, the headmistress wears a dark tailleur with a brightly fluffy cravat and has a hairstyle reminiscent of early Thatcher days: medium wavy and lacquered to death. But any possible likeness to the Iron Lady dissolves when it comes to performance. She takes the microphone, smiles nervously, almost trips over the wire, then gets hopelessly tangled. The parents’ representative has to crouch down to sort her out, unwrapping the wire from around her white tights. Then after a few words of nervous welcome, she moves the thing too far from her mouth, so that one has that curious effect of illusion interrupted, as when an opened door allows light into a cinema. Her voice is suddenly natural and distant and touchingly incomprehensible. Again the representative, who appears to be the factotum of the event, springs to her aid.

‘I’m so emozionata ,’ she apologises, which is to say, at once excited and nervous and moved. A very Italian word. ‘After all, it’s not every day that one celebrates the centenary of one’s school, is it?’

Nobody laughs at this delightful truism, for once again nobody is paying attention.