On the other side of the train, thousands of new VWs are parked in perfect symmetry across a vast area of tarmac, all covered by what looks like the same black netting they use to protect the cherry orchards. It’s because of the hailstorms we get in summer. There are factories mixed up with modern apartment blocks, the buildings all askew to each other without managing to look quaint: towering industrial silos, rusting cylinders and storage tanks, kitchen gardens with canes for runner beans, fig trees leaning on sagging fences.
A fat man in a white vest cleans his teeth on a balcony. There are sheets hung out to air, terracotta and creosote, solar panels, corrugated iron. A tiny vineyard, just three rows of a dozen vines each, is choked between two cathedral-size warehouses of prefabricated concrete panels. A smaller warehouse is derelict beside. Ivy crawls over wooden pallets, broken masonry. It seems one doesn’t dispose of the old before getting on with the new in Italy.
A tractor toils in the mud around what must be a pile of hay bales under a great white plastic sheet, but the thing has the shape and volume of a prehistoric burial mound. Used car tyres hold down the plastic in case the wind blows. Just here and there, like postcards stuck on a cluttered backdrop, fragments of the old picturesque Italy hang on: a baroque church facade up on the hillside, the ochre stucco of a villa glowing in the morning sunshine, an avenue of cypresses leading no doubt to cemetery gates.
Comes a powerful whiff of burned brake fluid and the train screeches into Rovato. These are the satellite towns of Milan now. Chiari, Romano, Treviglio. Chiari has pretty vine-covered facades to the left of the train and a giant cement works on the other. More people push in. Whole office staffs have formed at different ends of the carriage. Whole university classes have assembled. People who are going to spend most of the day together nevertheless need to talk things through on the train. Somehow our red-booted prostitute is sleeping through it all. She’s used to difficult dormitory conditions. Again I wonder why she has to travel like this. Do people not want sex where she lives?
AT ABOUT EIGHT THE phones begin to trill. The group beside me passes a mobile around, chattering and laughing. The caller is one of their company who is two carriages up the train but unable to push his way through the crowd to join them. ‘Excuses!’ a bright young woman protests. ‘Who are you with? Tell the truth!’ She’s boldly made up, dressed in pink with pink handbag, pink-and-white sweater, pink and white bracelets. The friend sends a photograph through the phone to show how blocked the corridor is. Even the capotreno can’t get through! Everybody is pleased to have found this use for the new technology.
Here and there someone manages to unfold a newspaper, the Manifesto, Unità, Repubblica. The left-wing papers are prevalent on the Interregionali. Somebody reads out an article about the iniquities of the present government. There’s a general strike next week, so that’s one day off work. On Friday, of course.
The train slows as it approaches Lambrate, the first station on Milan’s subway system. This is the station where the Gypsies gather, on the southbound platform of the metro, the Green Line. They take over the stone bench opposite the last carriage when it arrives. There are three or four swarthy men, unwashed and unshaven, half a dozen women, one or two with babies in their arms, and a few adolescents, girls and boys. The boys have violins or accordions. Often they have painted nails, sometimes even lipstick. The girls have an infant in tow. As each train comes and goes, one or two Gypsies get on it. They start at the back carriage and work their way forward, the men in scruffy waistcoats playing their musical instruments, the women begging in their long dresses, repeating their mournful spiel over and over in a high-pitched monotone.
‘SIGNORE E SIGNORI! SCUSATE IL DISTURBO! I AM A POOR IMMIGRANT FROM ALBANIA, WITH FOUR CHILDREN TO FEED, WITHOUT A HOUSE, WITHOUT A JOB, WITHOUT MONEY, WITHOUT FOOD, WITHOUT DRINK, PER FAVORE, SIGNORI, PER FAVORE.’
The word senza, without, is given a queer emphasis, almost sung, as if in a dirge. SENZA CASA, SENZA SOLDI. But what these Gypsy women are really without is conviction. They beg bored, zombie-like, as if not expecting anyone to believe them. This sort of lament is necessary, they appear to be saying, but only insofar as it establishes a narrative that allows some people to part with their cash. The givers need have no illusions that the recipients are telling the truth.
The Gypsy men, too, have little conviction when they launch into the one or two tunes they know on their out-of-tune violins. ‘Alla Turca’, massacred. A little boy sways through the carriage with a collecting cap. He knows exactly how long to stand before each passenger to create the maximum pathos. Sometimes I have seen the same boy playing the violin himself, entirely on his own in the press of the metro, the din of the train occasionally drowning out his abysmal renderings. Then he passes with his cap. On occasion I get out at the first station and move up a carriage to escape the noise, but invariably the Gypsies follow me at the next station and I have to listen to their grim performance all over again. Better just to hear it the first time and be done. As a rule they work the Green Line down to its southern end, then take the train back and spill out onto the platform at Lambrate for a break. No sooner do they stop begging than they cheer up at once.
Sometimes you’ll see
