In 1992 the FS, as it is usually called, was transformed again, into a private company, but with the state retaining a majority shareholding. This meant that it now had the freedom to hire and fire and invest, with state money but without any state-appointed authority to control it. Needless to say, the politicians pushed the railway men to do what was politically convenient for each and all of them in their own constituencies, and very soon there were accusations of corruption and legal investigations. In the meantime, to reduce overmanning, the government offered early pensions to all railway men over forty – an uncle of my wife’s was a beneficiary – reducing the workforce from 216,000 to 120,000 at ruinous cost to the taxpayer and without helping the railways very much since many of those who went were the more capable workers, men confident they could get work elsewhere to supplement their pension, while those who remained and found themselves working harder immediately went on strike for higher salaries; by the end of the nineties the company was paying the same wage bill for half the workers.
In the mid-1990s the European Community began to press all member states to open up public transport to private competition. So, as I wrote earlier, in 1999 Ferrovie dello Stato became a group comprising Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), which would run the lines and smaller stations, and Trenitalia, which would run the trains. Theoretically, the aim was to allow other entrepreneurs to compete with Trenitalia for use of the lines; but since top executives from the RFI and Trenitalia continued to sit on each other’s boards, this seemed unlikely; for the most part people thought of the development as an ugly tangle of bureaucracy and cosmetics. It was at this point that we began to hear that mocking farewell when each train reached its terminus: ‘Thank you for choosing Trenitalia.’
WHAT WAS THE CHOICE at Verona Porta Vescovo if I was going to use this station to get to Milan? Exactly four slow but direct trains a day – Interregionali – and a fair number of Regionali that ran as far as Verona Porta Nuova and contrived never to connect with onward trains to Milan.
Four penitential trains it was, then: the 6.50 a.m., the 12.36 p.m., the 16.36, and the 18.37.
There is no ticket office in Porta Vescovo, but in the waiting room you have to pass through from road to platform there is one ancient grey machine issuing regional tickets only, that is, for destinations within a range of something less than a hundred miles. There’s no touch-sensitive screen here, just a few sticky old buttons. Everything is coded in numbers. In particular, each station, and there are hundreds of them, is represented by three digits that you have to check on an interminable list to the side of the machine and then punch in with the buttons. Not to worry, though: five days out of seven this machine is not working. In which case you can buy your ticket in the station cafe.
Porta Vescovo has the most charming railway cafe I know: old wooden chairs and tables with red-and-white-checked tablecloths, windows with lace curtains looking out onto the platform; two bustling, shrill-voiced women who know their customers of old, for no stranger would ever come to catch a train from Porta Vescovo; then their two shapely daughters (I presume), both with attractively and very differently lopsided smiles, plus an ancient, plaintive old man whom the women trust only to move boxes and perhaps take the money, but certainly not to make a cappuccino or operate the ticket machine they have behind the bar. Get in here at 6 a.m. and the girls will have a coffee in front of you in thirty seconds, together with an obscenely calorific croissant full of sticky custard. Return around seven in the evening and the two signore will pour out a chilled Custoza and slap a bowl of crisps in front of you for just a couple of euros. Most of the conversation is strictly in local dialect, with guys working in the nearby bus depot dropping in for robust salami sandwiches and glasses of red wine at any time of day.
But on Sunday the cafe is closed. And on Sunday the ticket machine never works. Sunday afternoon is when I now travel to Milan, to be there on time for a lesson Monday morning. Since I now make only one journey a week, sleeping over in the city for a couple of days, I no longer buy a season ticket. So the malfunctioning machine is a problem.
Loud announcements ring out along the deserted platforms of Porta Vescovo. My favourite is the one that tells people, two or three people, to spread out along the whole platform to speed up boarding. Another very peremptory voice tells us we must ‘provide ourselves’ (munirsi) with a ticket before we get on the train; it is a criminal offence, we are reminded, to board a train without providing ourselves with a ticket.
I look around. Who is playing these announcements? Is there anyone in the station, or are they triggered remotely? If there is anyone, they are presumably hiding in the tiny office to the left of the waiting room on platform one, its glass door protected by venetian blinds. Dirigenti, says an ancient sign above the door to the left. Directors. When I knock there is no response. Are the directors aware, if there are
