There is a big difference between €258 (£220) and €1,549 (about £1,200). It gives a judge considerable discretion between oddly precise sums. Could they have been converted from the old lire? There’s no explanation of the size of the fine, but as always in Italy we are informed as to the legislation that authorised it: ‘art. 19.3 of DPR 753/80, artt.le 2 of L. 561/93, 689/81 and s.m.i’.
A DPR is a decree of the president of the republic. An L. is just a law, that is, when a decree is voted through parliament and converted into law. And s.m.i.? I must have asked a dozen passengers over several months before one older man told me with a perfectly straight face, ‘successive modifiche ed integrazioni’ (later amendments and integrations).
Integrations!
The fact is that despite all this superfluous information there is no one to tell you what you’re supposed to do when you can’t buy a ticket. I can’t remember this ever happening to me before. I suppose I must head straight to the capotreno and confess. However, if you are to enjoy the luxury of a seat on the always crowded Sunday-evening train to Milan, you must grab one when people get off and on at Verona. And that is only three minutes from Porta Vescovo. If you’re still looking for the capotreno after Porta Nuova, you’ll be standing for two hours. If you sit before finding him, he’ll find you and fine you because you haven’t bothered to find him.
Officially, a capotreno hangs out at the front of the train; that’s where he keeps his stuff, his little travel bag and official papers and personal belongings, so I position myself way up the platform. The train is long. As it grinds to a halt, I wait a moment and look along the carriages to see where he will pop out with his peaked cap and the green flag he waves to tell the driver, who presumably watches in a mirror, that he can close the doors and leave. But of course as soon as people start getting off, it’s hard to see where the man has appeared. Certainly not at the front of the train. A number of people have jumped off, lighting cigarettes as they do so to get a few desperately needed puffs before the train departs. Then, just as I’m about to get on, a bunch of Japanese girls start climbing down with their huge suitcases. At once I know these kids are getting off at the wrong place – only locals get off at Porta Vescovo. These girls have seen the big signs along the platform: VERONA PORTA VESCOVO. They know their train is due in Verona at 6.43 p.m. They assume it has arrived three minutes early. Or perhaps it’s already 6.50, in which case they rejoice that their train is only seven minutes late. Understandably they start to pile off.
‘This is not Verona,’ I tell them in English.
They look at me and smile vaguely. Behind me is the huge sign: VERONA PORTA VESCOVO.
Every time I board a train here this scene repeats itself, with English, German, American or Scandinavian passengers.
‘This is not Verona. Get back on the train. It’s the next stop, Verona Porta Nuova, three minutes.’
Some refuse to pay attention. You are one of the thousands of wheeler-dealers taking advantage of tourists in some way. The ladies in the bar tell me that the only strangers they ever see in Porta Vescovo are people who have got off the train by accident and come to ask how to proceed to Verona proper. Why, I wonder, doesn’t Trenitalia do something to make it clear that this is not the main station? After all, they tell us which laws authorise fines we’re never going to risk paying. The station could just be called Porta Vescovo rather than Verona Porta Vescovo.
‘This is not Verona station.’
Does the Japanese girl I’m talking to understand English?
She blinks from weak eyes, looks up and down the narrow platform and across at a wasteland of sidings and rusting freight trucks and decides I’m probably right. So now the bags have to be loaded again. I start to help. The capotreno is getting impatient and blows his whistle. Where is he? The shrill sound is coming from far away – the other end of the train, no less. I’m done. I’ll be standing all the way.
THIS SITUATION COULDN’T GO on. Since tickets for regional trains are valid for two months, the only sensible answer seemed to be to buy a bunch of tickets at once, whenever I was near a ticket window in any station, so as never to be without. It was January when I came to this conclusion. Carnival was round the corner. At carnival time the trains returning from Venice are packed with masked ladies and tiny penguins and D’Artagnans. The worst season to travel. I decided not to be miserly for once and bought first-class tickets to be sure of a seat.
The truth is I have always thought of myself as a second-class passenger. No doubt this is something that comes from early infancy when my carless parents rarely had the price of a train at all, let alone a first-class ticket. Later, when I had the cash to travel how I liked, I decided that people were more interesting for a novelist in second class. What basis I had for thinking this, I do not know. Perhaps it was a question of the kind of novels I was writing. In any case the second-class ticket to Milan was €9, the first €15. I lashed
