Italian Ways

entrance is rather incongruously graced with the Italian and EU flags – the two staff members seem surprised to be disturbed for a ticket; no other visitor came while I was there, nor did any guard follow me about to see if I might be tampering or taking photos. The exhibits are all housed in tall glass cases with heavy black bases – practical, no doubt, but of a rigidity and brutal angularity alien to the grace and fluid movement of the art displayed. The captions and supporting panels of information, explaining how the Achaeans founded the colony of Kroton after consulting Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, how Pythagoras founded his school here in the fifth century BC, how Crotone was famous for its doctors, its artists and above all its athletes, how the grand temple of Hera was excavated and its treasures unearthed, are diligent but a little dull, too long, too lame, too dusty and academic. It’s Italy’s eternal dilemma: how to be equal to such a rich tradition on a daily basis, how to preserve beauty without becoming prisoner to the past, how not to kill it with the dullness of a school-trip atmosphere. Yet when you bend down and look closely at these lavishly fashioned earrings, these tiny bronze animals and fish whose stoppered mouths held oils for a beautiful woman’s skin, the humble cooking tripods and the glittering trophies, what strikes you is that these people really did live here all those years ago, on the southern Italian coast, and that they had style. In abundance. Then, in about 290 BC, the Romans arrived, and these indigenous people were no longer masters of their own destiny; they were drawn into something far bigger. Two large marble basins and the base of a statue announce the arrival from the north. It was hard not to think of it as a sad development. Coming out of the place, I felt an immense desire to rush down to the waterfront for another swim before my next appointment with Trenitalia. And I did.

LIKE A VAST BEACHED sea monster, the abandoned chemical plant north of Crotone disfigures the coastline: another failed attempt to do something with the south. Because the conundrum is always this: why is it that the south finds it so difficult to turn its very real assets into tangible success? Here we have smart people, extraordinary landscapes, a beautiful coastline, beaches, seas, art treasures. So why is there so little tourism? Where are the English swarms, the German hordes who invade the coast of Spain? Instead of building hotels, they had tried to introduce a massive chemicals industry. It failed. In Taranto, just across the gulf, they had introduced what is now Italy’s largest steel plant; magistrates are trying to close it because the levels of pollution are scandalously high. In a newspaper this morning, just before boarding the train, I saw that Wind Jet, the Sicilian low-cost airline that one of my hosts was boasting about during our dinner in Modica, has stopped flying, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded. They have failed. They can’t compete. They spent too much money on all the wrong things. The trains are still running but mainly empty, costing the passenger next to nothing, costing the state a fortune. A section of line between Metaponto and Taranto, my next destination, is out of action and has been for more than a year. Damaged by landslides, which will mean another bus ride.

Never mind, I told myself. Sit back, gaze through the smeared windows, enjoy it.

Beaches. Bleached-white riverbeds. Mile after mile of olive groves. The Gulf of Taranto, empty sand with clear blue seas. Kiwi plants, row after endless row of them. Field after field. Broken walls. Stazione di Torre Melissa. Vineyards. Promontories with grey rock against blue sea. Stazione di Cirò. The capotreno’s whistle. An ancient tower on a low hillside. Squat, square masonry. Abandoned factories. Cactuses and scorched grass. Stazione di Crucoli. Graffiti: ‘Ti penso sempre, amore mio.’ Immigrants with cheap merchandise climbing on and off, getting stuck between swing doors. A stocky Slav on the seat behind me organising them. Get off here. Get off there. Stazione di Cariati. ‘Anna e Giulia troie’ (scrubbers). No sign of railway personnel anywhere. In English: ‘Boys 1978. Wanderers Everywhere.’

In the seats across the aisle four children are headed for the beach with bags and towels and snorkels. It seems that Calabrian railways is offering free travel to under eighteens heading for seaside destinations on certain regional trains. Fill in a form, show an ID, get a travel card; a lot of bureaucracy to save a couple of euros.

Stazione di Mandatoriccio Campana. An urgent bell announces the train coming the other way. Once it has gone by we can proceed on our single track. KM 173+863, says a sign. A one-carriage train, a tiny station building, a very long platform. Stazione di Calopezzati. As well as their big boards laden with trinkets, the immigrant vendors also carry backpacks with further supplies. One trusts they have some water with them. Their days must be intolerably hot. It is in the high thirties again. Stazione di Mirto Crosia. ‘Katerina ti amo.’ ‘Piccola, perdonami.’ Forgive me. Stazione di Rossano. Yellow plastic tables on the platform and men drinking wine. In this heat. ‘Domani sarà tardi per rimpiangere.’ Tomorrow it’ll be too late for regrets.

A STOCKY MAN CLIMBS on board with his stocky wife; they are healthy and solid and sunburned. He asks why I’m taking pictures of the stations. The graffiti. I tell him. He’s Albanian, he says. He’s been in Italy fifteen years. Drives a lorry, in Taranto. There is no work now with the economic crisis. In particular there is no work for an Albanian. After fifteen years here he’s still not treated as an equal. It doesn’t bother him now. He came illegally on a rubber dinghy but managed to get his papers in the end. It’s harder these days. He was lucky. His wife