And has anyone?
They looked idly about them. The cabin was a tiny space resting against one of the station’s great stone pillars between shops and platforms. There were ashtrays, newspapers and bits of old-fashioned electronics.
‘Doesn’t look like it.’
I have learned to wait in these kinds of conversations, not to seem impatient, just stand and wait. Eventually one of them said:
‘Someone might have taken it to Left Luggage.’
‘Left Luggage? But why would they do that? Isn’t there a Lost Property Office?’
The Italian expression is oggetti smarriti. Objects mislaid. But smarrito can also mean puzzled, bewildered.
Again I had to wait. It’s this quiet refusal to go away that seems to do the trick with Italian officials. Insistence breeds opposition, and friendliness, contempt; only a dogged patience allows them to do their duty without feeling put upon.
‘Naturalmente,’ one of them told me, as if this were quite a different subject. I should have asked at once. ‘Platform three, at the end on the left. It’s the entrance that says Railway Personnel Only, up the stairs, second floor.
I set off. Platform three is the last platform to the left as you emerge at the top of the stairs at platform level, platforms one and two being almost outside the station proper. Along the side of the platform are a row of tall, elegant stone facades, though you’re still well inside the great curved glass roof that shelters trains and passengers. Railway Personnel Only, I reflected; how would anyone ever know to take a lost bag to a place that says Railway Personnel Only?
On the ground floor there was some kind of common room for the station staff. The stone floor, the old glass-and-wood fittings seemed not to have been altered since the station was inaugurated in 1931. But here and there, there were wires tacked and taped to the walls and incongruous light switches, even a flame-red fire extinguisher.
I climbed the stairs. It was the sort of stone stairway you expect to find in an old library or town hall. The plaster on the walls was turning to powder. Sure enough, on the second floor, one of four old wooden doors, all much in need of varnish, bore the legend OGGETTI SMARRITI, and a detailed account of opening hours, different, it seemed for every day of the week. When knocking brought no answer, I pushed the door.
A big gloomy space was piled with bags, boxes, suitcases, parcels, umbrellas. There were a few shelves but no apparent order. Some of the bags seemed to have been left where they had been dropped. It was the sort of place horror-film directors dream of, or playwrights of the absurd, a place of the soul, in limbo.
I looked around, eyes adjusting to the low light. The room was very quiet, an effect that seemed to be intensified by the distant metallic announcements of departing and arriving trains. ‘C’è nessuno?’ I called. ‘C’è nessuno?’
After a few moments there was a rustling noise. A man emerged from a grey door just visible over piles of old luggage. He found his way through to me, a man in his late fifties perhaps, craggy, in dungarees, defensive.
‘I lost my bag.’
‘What kind?’
I described it.
‘There are hundreds of bags like that.’ He gestured to the quiet piles. Judging by the dust, many of them had been there for some time. ‘People lose all kinds of things,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘My bag was stolen,’ I told him.
‘Well, it won’t be here, then,’ he said. He laughed: ‘A thief doesn’t bring a bag to lost property.’
‘I thought, if the thief dumped it, someone might have handed it in.’
He said nothing.
‘Yesterday,’ I offered.
‘No black bags handed in today,’ he said.
I waited.
‘Or yesterday. A bit soon perhaps. Try again.’
It wasn’t an invitation.
Retreating, it occurred to me that I should have asked how on earth these oggetti smarriti came to be handed in, or recovered, for that matter, given that there was no indication of a Lost Property Office in the station. I thought of going back and having it out with him. What on earth was going on? How long had those bags been there? Since the war? But the whole experience had had a troubling effect on me: the lost bags and boxes, the wasted hours and years of their custodian. ‘Non esiste,’ I whispered. I decided to forget my bag, trusting that my students would have backup copies of their theses on their computers.
IN CENTRALE’S TICKET HALL, and on the upper concourse, the Slav immigrants, who never sell things like the Africans or the Chinese, or beg like the Gypsies, hang around the ticket machines. I left out the machines when I talked about ticket buying. About the same height and width as a four-drawer filing cabinet, these machines are also advertised with the red neon logo FastTicket, and they always huddle together in groups of three or four, as if for mutual protection. People do tend to get angry with them. For the miracle of these machines with their touch-sensitive computer screens is that they reproduce all, or almost all, the complications that one can come across when purchasing a ticket in Italy.
You touch the screen and are told to choose a language. Images of flags, German, French, British, apparently wrapped round globe-like balls, help you make your choice. You touch it again to let it know whether you want information or a ticket. A list of a dozen major destinations are immediately proposed, but if you want to travel anywhere else you must touch OTHER. An alphabet appears. You start touching the appropriate letters. V-E-R-O. With each addition, you home in on a smaller list of stations. Now you must choose between Verona Porta Nuova and Verona Porta Vescovo. There is no indication for the uninitiated as to which might
