Tim Parks - An Italian Education

‘ Sì , Papà, sì !’ Michele is leaping and hopping at my elbow.

But this is one sacrifice I have no intention of making. Absolutely not. For secretly I loathe fishing, I loathe even the idea of fishing, of pulling up live and scaly creatures by a hook in their mouths. Frankly, I’d even prefer mountain cycling to fishing; and my unconfessed, unconfessable, long-term strategy is to get Michele started by exploiting the help of my friends, in particular Stefano, then, as soon as he is old enough, to send him off fishing on his own or with his schoolmates.

Alternatively, Silvio says, we could go to one of the gravel pits where they actually put the fish in the water themselves and you pay each time you go. The expression almost of pain on Silvio’s face as he mentions the gravel pits shows what he thinks of such places. ‘But it is easier,’ he says.

‘Oh,’ says Michele. He’s puzzled, because his reading of Huckleberry Finn , in Italian, has given him the impression that you only have to leave a hook in any river overnight and a huge Mississippi catfish will come and grab it. I know otherwise. Indeed, here Silvio has touched on another half hope that remains unconfessed: that Michele will find the realities of fishing so disheartening that he will give up the whole idea, or at least until he is old enough to try again on his own. Though I feel a bit of a worm feeling this.

Which brings us to the question of bait.

It depends what we’re going for. Silvio waves his arms vaguely. How can he be expected to sum up a lifetime’s experience in a few words. It could be maggots, it could be worms from the garden. It could be a certain type of worm — he uses a dialect word — that we can only get in the shops. Or it could be as simple as a couple of pieces of sweet corn. There are any number of factors, of combinations of factors. But the first problem to solve is what sort of fish you’re going for and where and when, and that brings you back to deciding whether to get your licence or not, and again he explains the complicated procedure and the various documents required — the certificato di residenza, certificato di stato di famiglia , and, since Michele’s not old enough for a regular identity card, a certificato di nascita , a birth certificate. Without forgetting the problem that I should really get a licence myself if I’m going to be with him…

If only Santa Lucia could have sorted all this out, too! Michele hops from foot to foot impatiently. I note in Silvio’s innocent face that complacency Italians have when they have completed a bureaucratic procedure and you have not, the secret desire they have that you should go through the same hell they did. Not unlike the way parents of more than one child always want everybody else to have more than one child, too.

‘But do these inspectors really come along?’

As with every discussion about laws and rules, there comes the moment when one must examine the question of enforcement…

For example: Do I really need a regulation child seat for the back of my car?

No.

Do I have to wear my safety belt?

Only if I don’t want to be thrown against the windscreen…

Do I have to have a TV licence?

Not if they don’t bother me about it.

Do I have to get an official sign on my gate saying that it is illegal to park in front of it?

Yes. Yes, amazingly, yes. Because this particular rule involves a local tax, and the local government is desperate for cash, and because it’s the easiest thing in the world to see whether you’ve paid or not: a vigile rides around checking if there are official no-parking signs on your driveway gate. I must pay this tax.

Now Silvio is insisting that it’s the same with fishing. The inspectors are terrible. Just when you least expect it, there they are. They even work odd hours! After dark. Sunday mornings…

Michele, who has already fretted through the cold winter months barely kept at bay with the sop of weekend sledding, who has cast his rod from the top of his bunk bed to fish toys from the floor and examined all the worms in the garden, is nearly out of his mind with impatience. ‘But Papà, Papà, I want to go now .’

Upon which, with extraordinary charm, Silvio belies all he has just said and announces: ‘ Va bene , let’s go now!’ A little ‘raid’, he says, as Italians will, pronouncing the word‘ride’ and meaning, a sortie, a brief adventure. Apparently, some element in Michele’s hot-headed boyish character has called to Silvio. He too wants to go fishing now .

It’s a March evening. Spring is already in the air. And it must be a Friday, since every other day Michele is skating or playing the piano or riding round the BMX course. Silvio doesn’t take us far. We load the rods and tackle in his second car, the new Panda, and drive no more than a kilometre round to the other side of Centro Primo Maggio. Here, following an untarred track, we arrive at a big ditch, perhaps twenty feet across, with some miserable and unpromisingly weedy water in the bottom, all hedged about by huge bulrushes. It must be part of the village’s flood overflow system, picking up a mix of rainwater, effluent and surplus from the local streams. An old wheelbarrow tyre is half submerged in scum. We scramble through tall grasses down a steep bank and tuck in amongst trees and bushes on the mud at the bottom. There’s myself, Michele, Silvio, Silvio’s ever-mischievous Giovanni, and Stefi, who threw a fit when we almost didn’t take her, though I can see Silvio is decidedly against the presence of little girls on fishing expeditions.

It’s past five and almost twilight. In a delirium of excitement Michele has forgotten — and this is rare — to ask whether there are vipers here. He doesn’t even have his viper stick, for heaven’s sake. He extends his rod. Then Silvio shows him how to arm it, while Giovanni gives a running commentary in the urgent stutter he has and shouts and chases up and down the bank, and Stefi asks how many fish we are going to catch and crosses herself as she always does now when she is excited. Our feet sink into the mud. I realise that when I get back there will be something like hell to pay, since an Italian father can make no greater mistake than not making sure his children have the appropriate footwear for any trip that takes them away from their mothers. The kids’ school shoes are already filthy. Worse, their little feet will be damp.

‘What if the inspectors come?’ Michele asks breathless.

‘They won’t,’ Silvio says. He slips two bright yellow pieces of sweet corn on the hook.

But how can he be so sure? I want to know. After all he just said…

Silvio turns to me and, over Michele’s busy blond head, winks and pulls a face, as though to say, I don’t want to explain why in front of the children, but believe me it’s okay, no inspectors will come. Then he shouts at his own son to shut up and stay still, he’s frightening the fish away by yelling and running about. Everybody starts to say SHSHSHSHSH! so urgently I imagine even the fish will feel chastened. ‘Shush!’ screams Michele. The murky water is obediently silent.

The light is failing. A chill creeps into the air. And the problem with casting here, Silvio explains, is first the overhead trees, then getting the hook to go down in an area without weeds, and lastly the fact that the depth varies a great deal, so you often have to reel in immediately and raise or lower your float, because the bait has to sit just above the bottom for these fish…

Michele isn’t listening to any of this. He’s suddenly become afraid that it will be too dark if we don’t get going now.

‘ Presto, presto, presto! ’ he urges in a super-hushed, super-fierce voice. Already I’m suffering for his imminent disappointment, savouring it sadly ahead of time. ‘Michele,’ I say, repeating what every father must sooner or later say to every son. ‘Michele, remember fishing is a question of patience. You may have to wait hours and hours. This isn’t the Mississippi in 1860.’