Tim Parks - An Italian Education

Then on the fifty-thousand lire there’s the delightful Bernini with his extravagant moustache and goatee. More talk. More history. Turning to my wallet, rather than Michele’s, a very intense Caravaggio glares out from the hundred-thousand note, the biggest. Caravaggio, who killed a man, I warn my son, after an argument over a tennis game. Michele also has a filthy temper and after a few knock-abouts with Zio Berto is clamouring for tennis lessons to add to skating and piano…

On every banknote it says, ‘THE LAW PUNISHES THE MANUFACTURERS AND DISTRIBUTORS OF COUNTERFEIT NOTES’. It’s one of those warnings that, rather than instilling terror, just reminds you how common the crime is, suggests it almost, and it’s funny thinking of all the forgers having to copy the different typefaces this is written in on the different denominations.

But now Michele is concerned about other things written on his notes. There are biro scribblings on two of the one-thousand lires. ‘Terroni e statali, siete tutti parassiti!’ Southerners and state workers, you’re all parasites! And on another. ‘Bestemmiare è vilta.’ Blasphemy is vile. On one of my notes someone has jotted down: ‘Pane, vino, Arena,’ L’Arena being the name of the local newspaper.

Does the writing reduce their value? Michele asks. And if so by how much?

I reassure him. It doesn’t matter what people write on notes, they’re always worth just what the number of zeros says they’re worth. Sometimes I’ll scribble down a phone number on a thousand lire myself if I don’t have any other paper. Though it’s interesting to note that people rarely write on the bigger denominations. Some things are still sacred.

We’re on the hill by the old castello . The children turn the notes over and over on a stone. The colours, the heroes, the graffiti. ‘Italy, people of artists, martyrs, saints and warriors…’ Everywhere the culture reproduces itself, reflects itself, as in a hall of mirrors — the landscape, the language, the currency, all bouncing off each other, recreating each other — and in the midst of those mirrors, both reflected and projecting, stands the child, discovering himself in these castle walls, these terraced hills, the liquid words he speaks, and now in this coloured paper, too.

Michele gathers up the notes and organizes them carefully in order of value. Divided Italy. State-bound Italy. Priest-ridden Italy. Bread-and-wine Italy. Inflationary Italy. Operatic Italy. Artistic Italy. Genial Italy. It’s all there in the little boy’s wallet. He possesses it all and is possessed by it. At eight he is Italian, to all intents and purposes. Though actually I should have said that it is very un-Italian of me to be giving the children regular pocket money. Five thousand lire every week, paid on a Sunday, if they have been good, and with always the possibility of that terrible sanction — No pocket money! — if they are not good.

Italian parents tend not to do this. The Italian word for pocket money is mancia , which is also the word for tip. And tips, at least here, are something given absolutely at the giver’s discretion. They might be big, they might be small, or they might not be given at all. There’s no question, as in America, of percentages. Or you might give a tip once, but then not the next time. Or vice versa. Tips are given out of warmth, not routine. Crucially, they are capricious. They depend on mood. And like all things capricious they emphasise the power of the who exercises the caprice, he who feels affectionate one day, perhaps less so the next.

Years ago, when Zio Berto was at university, and later too when he had to work unpaid for some time as so many Italian doctors do, Nonno and Nonna were abroad. With no income, Berto spent money like water. He was always in debt. Nonno supported him. But Berto never knew when the money was going to arrive. Nor how much. In the meantime, he might borrow from us. Or others. Every attempt on our part (not Berto’s, it must be said) to persuade Nonno that an allowance paid regularly into a bank account with the understanding this much and no more would force Berto, allow Berto, to be more responsible was dismissed with the sharp retort: ‘I am not a bank. I give when I want to give…’ So the day came when Berto split up with a girlfriend of long standing and Nonno had to pay her off the very considerable debt that had accumulated. Nonna, it appears, who in this case was Mamma, of course, and hence a crucial element in the equation, had no access to a bank account, but when they were back in Italy, there was always an envelope with all the money she could find in it. She slipped it into Berto’s pocket when Nonno wasn’t watching. If giving is a personal thing, then there are two parents, two sources of income…

So Michele and Stefi’s friends don’t receive regular pocket money, which is a very Anglo-Saxon, puritan thing, with its obsession with system and clarity, benefits and punishments, its perverse desire to have little children learn to manage given amounts of money over given periods of time. No, they get a mancia from Papà, perhaps when they ask for it, perhaps when they don’t, and then a mancia from Mamma, perhaps when they least expect it, perhaps with the express injunction not to mention it to Papà. What better way to learn about life, and about all the intrigues that lie ahead. Then Beppino and Giovanni and Gigi get lots of mance from grandfathers and grandmothers, on both sides of the family. Some clandestinely, perhaps. Some not. And here my children are unfortunate, for visiting rarely as they do, the grandparents are not around to give mance , and they would never dream of sending anything through the post (like their English grannie, my mother, does). No, not even at Christmas or their birthdays. What would be the point of giving a mancia , or anything else, if one were not there in person to reap the reward of gratitude, to enjoy the child’s pleasure? Nonno and Nonna may come twice one month, then not again for six months. Even then they don’t always give something. But sometimes their gifts are indeed spectacular, since spectacle is precisely what they are aiming at. The fifty thousand lire note which still holds pride of place in Michele’s wallet, but which disappeared from Stefi’s the day after it was given, came as Nonno and Nonna were making a sudden escape one visit, announcing, entirely out of the blue, or rather the grey, of a winter dawn, that they had to go down to Rome to see an apartment Berto’s brother Renato was thinking of buying. Nonno had already hurried downstairs with his trilby on to warm the car and smoke a cigarette, and at the door, repeating their excuse to the children, Nonna suddenly reached into a once-elegant handbag she still won’t throw away, rummaged amongst all the odds and ends of make-up she had ‘borrowed’ from Rita and found the two fifty thousand lire notes. By now the children had learnt to show immediate and immense gratitude, and to ask no further questions as to the whys and wherefores of yet another sudden departure.

Then, halfway down the stairs, Nonna turned back and produced a further thirty thousand lire and gave it all to Michele. Yes, all to Michele. She would give the same to Stefi when she came next time, she said. In just a week or so. Inevitably, no sooner was the door shut behind her than this gift was the cause of very serious discord. Should the thirty thousand be equally split now, or not? Would Nonna really come again in just a week or two? Would she ever remember what she promised even if she did come? Stefi wept, Michele was sullen when we insisted he share. Such is the power of he, of she, who gives without system.

But even this kind of capricious giving is not quite the norm here. For rather than a mancia the Italian parent much prefers to give gifts, things. By putting money in a child’s hand, however small the sum, you are giving him power. You are inviting him to compare the price of things in toy shops with the coloured notes in his wallet, an excitement Stefi took to far more quickly than Michele, rapidly adjusting her choice of purchase to the exact and total amount of money in her purse, or, alternately, dividing it into two purchases on the rare occasions when there was something she badly wanted that cost less than what she had. It is understood that when Stefi goes into a shop, she will have no money left when she comes out. And she comes out beaming, delighted. For, whatever Stefi’s money can buy, she is always pleased with it. Chi si accontenta, gode , as the Italians never tire of saying — he who makes do, enjoys — though linguistically the Italian is much closer to the tautological, as perhaps good maxims should be: he who is happy with what’s available, is happy. And Stefi is always that.