Perhaps the deciding factor is not just the business of having a public or private employer with all that that entails in terms of job security (and hence freedom to gripe) in the public sector, and more cash under the table (assuming you work your butt off) in the private. No, perhaps it’s more a question of the kind of clientele the different places attract.
The barman in the small street bar has the privileged feeling of being at the centre of a community. He loves to know all his customers’ names and, better still, their jobs. He loves to give you a flattering title as you walk through the door, and to call it out loud right across the bar so that everybody will hear. ‘Salve, Professore!’ all three barmen cry when I walk into the bar near the university. In this way everybody present knows who they are rubbing elbows with. ‘Buon giorno, Prof,’ says the quieter barman on Via Gustavo Modena near where I sometimes stay the night. How he knows I’m a professor I have no idea. They call to other customers, too. ‘Buon giorno, Dottore! Salve, Ragioniere! Ciao, Capo!’ Someone is filling in his lottery card. ‘Play eleven, Dottore,’ calls the barman. ‘The number of the month of the dead always brings good luck.’ ‘Not for a cardiologist!’ the man replies. Everybody laughs. ‘Sciocchezze, Dottore!’ Their voices are a pleasant mix of respect and light irony. And if you greet them warmly and share a word or two about Inter’s tribulations and above all never forget to bid them good day when you leave, they will always serve you well.
This leads inevitably to the reflection that the person who is just passing through is always a second-class citizen in Italy. The barmen in the Gran Bar in Centrale resent the fact that they see most of their customers only once. They will never know their names and occupations; hence, in a certain sense, these people non esistono, they don’t really exist. Only their money proves they were here. Or worse still, their vandalism. For the casual visitor cannot be expected to show the same respect for his environment as the person who must return. Chairs are knocked over, surfaces are scratched and scribbled on.
Away from the bar, in the street and the workplace, this resistance to the bird of passage is one of the greatest hurdles that the immigrant to Italy has to overcome. One of the most common questions still asked me by new Italian acquaintances is, ‘When are you going back [to England]?’ Recently, when the local newspapers felt that I had said something about Verona that I shouldn’t have, the mayor of the town publicly declared, ‘Visitors to our city should be careful what they say.’ The lady in question is also an MP for the European Parliament. She was aware that I had been living in Verona for upwards of twenty years. I pay my taxes.
SO MORE OFTEN THAN not I get my sandwich and bottle of water from the small stand-up bar in the centre of the concourse. I don’t go inside, where you have to pay first and take your receipt to the three barmen chattering and griping around the coffee machines. Outside there is a small stand with just half a dozen kinds of sandwiches and drinks. No coffee. Nothing fancy. This place is constantly manned by just one busy person. I know all four of the people who work here. It’s intriguing how much more generous and cheerful they have become now that they recognise me. Piadina e acqua naturale, I ask. But they saw me coming, they already have the bottle on the counter, the sandwich in the toasting machine. The piadina is a round of pitta bread folded over a wodge of prosciutto crudo and soft Fontina cheese. They smile while they wait for it to heat up. They tell me which are the busy moments and which the slack. There is a tall, vigorous man in his forties, completely bald with a shiny scalp, and three women, all friendly and serious. Some places are so unpromising to look at and so appealing when you become a regular.
OFTEN I TAKE MY piadina to one of the stone benches on the platforms and eat to the sound of the station announcements. Many of the trains have such splendid names – Ludovico Sforza, Andrea Dorea – that it’s really a pleasure to listen to them. Leonardo da Vinci, Tiepolo, Giorgione, Michelangelo. These are not the names of the actual, physical, locomotives, nor of any particular carriages, just the name announced when whatever rolling stock is being used for such-and-such a route at such-and-such a time approaches the station. The Brenner Express, the Gianduia. It’s the name, as it were, of the event that is this train.
The station announcements are pre-recorded in segments and then tacked together, presumably by computer, as appropriate. As a result, the words come in little mechanical rushes – di-prima-e-seconda-classe – pause – con-servizio-di-ristorante-e-minibar – pause – and then a dramatic flourish when one of the big train names is pronounced – MICHELANGELO! – VIVALDI! Apparently it was impossible for whoever recorded the initial pool of information not to read out such glorious names without intense and understandable pride.
The same goes for the names of one or two of the big city stations. At the announcement of Genova Piazza Principe or Venezia Santa Lucia, for example, there’s a sudden increase of volume and urgency that cuts through the monotonous flatness of the PA system. So a typical afternoon announcement at Milano Centrale, listing the train number, name, and details of its time and platform of departure and destinations, echoes around the huge old building thus:
Intercity – Sei – Zero – Otto – UGO FOSCOLO! – di-prima-e-seconda-classe – delle ore – sedici – e – zero cinque – conserviziodiristoranteeminibar – per – Venezia Santa
