It was a room eight by eight feet – no benches, no comfort, no design – with a single ticket window and a jolly man sitting behind giving information to four or five customers. Lots of information. Long explanations were necessary, I discovered, because FSE, which I had never previously heard of, ran a complex criss-cross of ancient lines, most dating back to the nineteenth century and never relaid; to get to almost anywhere you had to change twice, and the timetables, posted oddly high above eye level on the wall, were set up in a rather novel way that allowed you, theoretically, to follow your connections by tracing your finger along the columns, then jumping from one to the next where appropriate; apparently the trains themselves were scheduled to meet at stations where the line doubled; here they could pass each other and take the opportunity to redistribute the travellers as they did so.
I couldn’t follow it; it was too complicated. I realised that without Trenitalia’s actually rather impressive information system, I was lost. Trains for me had become Trenitalia. My mind had integrated with Trenitalia logic, as my fingers on the keyboard had capitulated years ago to Microsoft. Italo had been simple enough: one fast train after another hammering down the same stretch of fast line, no changes, connections or branches. This, on the contrary, was something old, provincial, almost botanical in its branching.
The bigliettaio laughed. He was in shirtsleeves, spared the Trenitalia uniform, spared that bureaucratic look. He seemed at ease with his exile out on the last gravelly yards of platform one.
‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘It’ll all be clear once you board.’
The ticket cost not €60, but €3.20.
Then, handing me a small square of printed paper, he added, ‘Though we have problems with a driver off sick, I’m afraid.’
He scratched his head.
‘But …’
‘I’m sure we’ll work something out,’ he said with a smile. ‘We always do. Perhaps not quite on time, but you’ll definitely get there.’
‘And back?’ I didn’t want to be marooned out in Otranto.
‘Why not?’ He smiled again. ‘Have faith!’
Once more the problem of baggage presented itself. If I was going to enjoy my trip to Otranto, but without having a hotel there, since I’d be spending the night on the train to Milan, I needed to find some place to leave my bag. Wikipedia had told me that the station in Lecce did have a Left Luggage Office, but I couldn’t find it anywhere and in the end had to ask at the ticket window.
‘Outside the station, turn right.’
The station had a long, low facade featuring a series of arches in a creamily stuccoed wall, almost a Brighton Pavilion look. The Left Luggage Office was a good hundred yards beyond anything you would have thought of as part of the station, or even to do with the station. There was a door with an improvised sign. I knocked, then put my head in. The room was mainly empty. There was not a single bag in it, nor shelves on which bags might be set. But on either side of a wooden table in the far corner two men in orange jumpsuits were playing cards.
‘Chiedo scusa, I need to leave my bag here tomorrow. That OK? Will you be open at eight?’
One of them looked up: ‘You’ll need an ID.’
Apparently it was an engrossing game they were playing.
OUT OF CURIOSITY THAT evening I typed ‘Lecce deposito bagagli’ into Google and found a short chat:
‘It’s a shithole that left-luggage place, they steal everything, forget it and go somewhere else.’
But there was nowhere else.
I also did a little research on Ferrovie Sud Est. I had imagined a small provincial operation taking over disused FS lines in an attempt to breathe some life and sense back into local transport. Instead the FSE was constituted in 1933 and brought together a number of local lines that for some reason or other had never been nationalised. They were 100 per cent publicly owned and always had been, but locally. In short, an anomaly. Why wouldn’t the line have been nationalised and integrated with the Ferrovie dello Stato? Why wouldn’t its services be at least evident and advertised in one of the main stations it ran from? Why was it possible to book a ticket connecting with French or German railways through Trenitalia’s website – to go, say, to Paris or Munich – but not connecting with another state-run Italian line, to go to Otranto or Gallipoli?
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, HAVING taken a very early train from Brindisi, I again knocked on the door of the Lecce Left Luggage Office, which actually looked more like a door to a private home than anything else.
Inside, two men in orange jumpsuits were sitting at a table playing cards. But not the same two men. This time one seemed vaguely embarrassed to be seen playing cards at 8.15 and hurried out. The other, a surly young man, made a photocopy of my ID and told me I could leave my backpack on the floor, right there at my feet. In it were my computer, my Kindle and an assortment of dirty laundry.
Not seeing any description of the service or price list, I asked if I had to pay now or later.
‘On return. Five euros for the first five hours; seventy cents for every additional hour.’
The young man spoke good Italian but with no frills, like politeness. I thanked him warmly.
At 8.53, then, on
