Tim Parks: An Italian Education

‘ Bella zona ,’ he says automatically of the dusty street outside, ‘ bella palazzina, bell’ apartamento. Molto bello .’ His voice is nasal, obstructed, adenoidal. We offer him the sofa, but he would prefer to sit at a table. His leg isn’t comfortable on sofas. Not the right position. Then he must take notes, of course. Yes, the kitchen table is fine. ‘Many a family I go where the kitchen table is the only surface to write on,’ he laughs. No, he can’t accept a coffee, his blood pressure is too high. Got to be careful. Had to have a bypass last year. Looking at him carefully, he doesn’t look a day over forty. The baldness is premature.

‘Bene, allora?’ He has pulled out a notebook, a series of brochures, an impressive pocket computer. He puts his hands together in a pantomime gesture of attentiveness. Every few seconds a tic obliges him to twist his neck to the right, together with a slight down-and-up rotation.

I explain that we are about to have our second child, and we thought…

‘Però!’ He exclaims, which is as much as to say, Who would have thought — what courage! ‘Complimenti, Signora,’ he adds to Rita, smiling generously and blowing his nose.

Then he begins to expound his various life insurance schemes. The point is, hmm, with my still being so young, hmm that if, he hesitates, if… He hesitates again, he looks at me across the kitchen table, squinting, smiling, ‘Yes, if anything should, er, happen to you…’ Immediately he says this he lifts both hands from the table and makes two fists but with the forefingers and little fingers protruding and pointing upwards. ‘If anything should happen to you — facciamo le corna — it’s likely to be an, er, accident — facciamo le corna — rather than, er, an illness. Isn’t it?’

Facciamo le corna , literally tranlated (‘let’s make horns’) refers to his gesture of the closed fists with pointing fingers at each side. For some reason this is supposed to ward off evil luck. One might make it, for example, when seeing a hearse pass, or when contemplating the possibility of one’s favourite football team losing a big match, or just at the mention, during dinner table conversation, of some normally unmentionable disease (pregnancy?). Ragioniere Nascimbeni must combine expression and gesture, often simultaneous with the tic that twists his neck to one side, about a hundred times a day…

‘Yes, I mean the most common cause of, er, yes, decease, among men of your age, is a road accident, facciamo le corna .’

And he does. The fingers point quite automatically but always eloquently from his two fists, accompanied by an apologetic smile. He is trying to explain to me, it seems, that it would be wise for me to take out a special kind of policy that would pay out very large amounts if something happens to me , above all in my car, and rather less, or at least in the early years, if I die a natural (that word again) death. But I am so mesmerised by his constant corna punching the air across the table that I’m finding it hard to concentrate. Without thinking, I ask, ‘And do they pay out if it’s the result of drinking?’

‘What?’

‘If I’m drinking and driving. Or, I don’t know, if I didn’t have my safety belt on and should have. Would they pay just the same?’

He looks at me with the concern of someone whose job is to be understanding but who finds this difficult when he hasn’t understood. It’s something to do with my being a foreigner perhaps. Then he gets it. He laughs. ‘ Per carità , nobody ever checks whether anybody’s been drinking and driving when there’s an accident! O dio, no .’ Then he frowns. ‘Actually the insurance companies are presently taking the government to court precisely because they don’t enforce the drink-driving law. But not so that they can avoid paying out. Oh no no no, per l’amore di Dio . But because if the government did enforce the law, there would be fewer accidents, there would be fewer sad occasions on which they were obliged to pay out…’

‘Ah.’

‘Now, where were we, yes, accidents. Hmm. Yes, so if, on the other hand,’ he picks up his thread, ‘if you should, er, be, er, be disabled in some way — facciamo le corna naturalmente — then the…’

Smiling, Rita intervenes. He doesn’t need to beat around the bush so much and keep making his corna . We know that insurance is about illness and death. We just want the appropriate coverage for the children. We’re doing this for the children.

Ragioniere Nascimbeni squints at her through his thick glasses, then relaxes. He has a round, pleasant face, rounder still for that receding hairline. He seems relieved. There are many houses he goes to, he explains, where people actually get angry if he even uses the word death, because they think it can bring them bad luck. He blows his nose. It is almost the hardest part of his job, he says earnestly. Blowing his nose yet again, he apologises that he suffers from allergies, against which, it seems, one cannot insure.

Much cheered by our non-superstitious attitude, he now proceeds more brutally. Yes, my most likely death would be in a car accident, though he can’t imagine that I drink and drive, ha ha, hmm, anyway, no, in the event of such an accident, I, or rather, he laughs apologetically, no, my wife or children, would receive exactly, under this particular policy, four times the amount I would get by death from illness. Good. Well, if one accepts this kind of policy there is no need for a medical. If one wants a larger amount for death by illness, then one has to accept a medical. He looks up sadly: ‘Not because we imagine you are trying to trick the company, already having an illness and not saying anything, but just in case, facciamo le corna , you have a condition without being aware of it.’

Holding back my laughter, I ask him if he has children, and if so what provision he has made. I do this because an article in Il Sole 24 Ore , the financial paper, once suggested that the best way to deal with any investment or insurance agent is to ask them how they behave. They know all the best deals. Nascimbeni, however, shakes his head. He and his wife long ago decided that children were too risky a business. Too many things can happen. But having said this very solemnly, he suddenly becomes aware that it could be understood as foreseeing bad luck for ourselves. Rita comes to his rescue. ‘ Facciamo le corna ,’ she says. Out spring her forefinger and little finger. I’m stifling laughter. And at exactly the same moment Michele begins to cry in the other room — furiously, a great bloodcurdling yell. Nascimbeni comes out with a nervous cough, as if to suggest that our irreverence might somehow be responsible. He blows his nose again and, as my wife goes off to get the boy, begins to talk about a saving scheme for children. One of the major problems with children, and again he deprecates the fact that he always has to be imagining problems, is that when they get to eighteen or so one has to pay for their university education, which could last what, five, six, even seven years, and then help them to set up home when they get married, buy an apartment and so on. Well, by paying a fairly modest amount monthly into an entirely tax-free investment fund, one can be sure that come their eighteenth birthday…

‘Nobody bought me an apartment,’ I remark. ‘We don’t own this one.’

‘No, of course not, me neither.’ Nascimbeni twists his neck to one side and smiles. He looks about him, apparently appreciatively, at the window fittings, the quality of the tiles, the workmanship. ‘Perhaps you should buy it now. Or another apartment.’ He hesitates. ‘I mean home ownership is the only way really to insure yourself against, er, against the event of eviction, which with young children, of course, would be, er, disastrous. Anyway, if you did want to buy a house, I would certainly be willing to help you with the mortgage…’