How had he made his money? Bepi laughs. He taps a finger on his temples. All in here, he says, all in here. He tells the picaresque story of his entrepreneurial career. You know they’re always saying Italian wine has no added sugar? Yes. And it’s illegal to add sugar to wine in Italy? Yes. Well, I drove the truck that took the sugar to all the wine producers from Vicenza to Verona. At night of course. There are no police about at night. They only work office hours. He grins, he is very pleased with himself. For this was an act of furbizia, of cunning, and it paid very well. Spent all the money setting up a restaurant with a friend, near the main road to the lake, a big restaurant, for coach parties and the like. The mistake was doing it with somebody else. The friend couldn’t see reason. Didn’t have it up here. Bepi taps his forehead again. They went bust. There followed two or three other restaurants, then finally the licence for the shop. He had wanted a supermarket, but local shopkeepers always gang together and bother their political contacts to make sure no new licences are given. This is common practice, they have the politicians in their pockets, or they are the politicians. But Bepi will beat them at their own game in the end. Yes, he will. Sooner or later he’ll have the knife by the handle …
As so often in conversations here, one notes this assumption of a fundamental lawlessness. The law is only one of the arms the individual uses in his essentially lawless struggle. Bepi talked at length about various court cases he was engaged in: with the phone company about stupidly high bills, with a neighbour about his (Bepi’s) dog kennels, with INPS, the national-insurance people, about unpaid contributions for the girls in his shop, and there were others too which I forget now. Far from any desire to reform or change the situation, Bepi seemed pleased to have these various fights going on and not at all concerned he might lose them. As Negretti had seemed pleased when Visentini called the police about the stench of dog filth rising from his garden, as Lucilla was galvanised by her fight with Signora Marta. It is a bellicosity one finds hard to take at first, but which constant contact with other people, and above all the authorities, gradually tends to make more comprehensible, and even attractive. If there is an anarchical tradition here, there are certainly reasons for it.
Towards nine o’clock, his dinner barely over, Bepi simply falls asleep in the middle of a conversation on Patuzzi’s cheap synthetic couch, one of the only modern items of furniture in the flat. The chandelier now has five small 6o-watt bulbs casting sharper shadows from the fancy mouldings on the bookcase. But Bepi snores just the same. When we wake him he looks at his watch. Diamine, he has to drive thirty kilometres to Rivoli now to feed his dogs. Fifteen of them. Tomorrow he will be up at five to get to the vegetable market and pick up stuff for the shop, then in the evening he teaches a gym class at the abandoned church by Laghetto Squarà which he rents from Don Guido (the source of their quarrel perhaps?). Yes, he teaches gym on Mondays and Wednesdays, karate on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Do we want to come?
How can I say that after a day’s teaching and translating I’m not sure if I’ll have the energy?
12. L’uomo rinascimentale
WE GO OUT running with Bepi. He gathers about fifteen young people by the abandoned church beside the laghetto. Most of the group are girls, more than one with their eyes on Bepi. Off we trot out into the country, up the valley towards Mizzole. The evening air is cool. We run by the cherry orchards, leaves limp with a first suspicion of autumn. We run past the first long, low poultry farm. The stench is unbelievable. And on an empty box by the side of the road, I read: ‘BEST CANADIAN CHURKEY EGGS — SEALED CONTAINER — FOR INCUBATION FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.’
Jogging (or ‘footing’ as the Italians unaccountably call it) along tractor paths, we pass through a large vineyard, the purple fruit almost ripe around our ears. Here, beneath the dense foliage, Bepi stops for some exercises, barking out orders with an unmistakeably authoritarian ring to his voice. Flessioni! And he’s down on his stomach doing press ups. Addominali! He’s on his back doing sit-ups, hands behind his head, legs bent at the knee. Dorsali! Over on our stomachs again. Such a desire for leadership! He flogs us. Showing off his macho dynamism. It’s endearing. The girls titter, most of them making only token efforts. Footing again, we pass through a delightful old wine-stuccoed farm. There’s an ancient well in the garden with stone top and swallows mustering for departure on the roof of the barn. Panting now, we run on through the picturesque village of Mizzole with the golden onion dome on its church. Posters tell us about pollution from pig farming, courses in secretarial skills, the imminent grape festival and the most recent deaths: Magnagatto Marta: ninety-two anni, much missed by her family. Graffiti on the stone walls, however, is mainly directed against a group of southerners from Reggio Calabria who have formed a co-operative and plan to build themselves some villette a schiera — terraced houses (a brand new fashion in Italy): ‘Benvenuto a Reggio Mizzole’, has been scrawled over a road sign. Italians have a gift for grafitti. In the central square by the war memorial we read: ‘Long live the government, long live taxes, long live the South … or no?’ The work of the local separatists. Opposite, a sign over one of the village’s two bars announces: Real American Cocktails, by Gianni.
We arrive back puffing and panting. Bepi wants to do some more exercises, but I’ve had enough. Perhaps anyway he is only waiting to see which groupie will hang on the longest. A process of natural selection. Walking home, past the millwheel, past a Roman arch, under which heavy trucks pass to two huge silage containers in a small yard, we reflect that if he votes at all, Bepi probably votes MSI, the not very reformed fascists.
Another evening we drop by the gym where he is teaching karate to a mixed group of all ages. Italians take their sport very seriously. Black belt tight round his waist, Bepi barks out commands in what we presume is Japanese, his body squatting low, making the impressive ritual movements with concentration etched on his features. ‘All here,’ he tells us afterwards, ‘all here,’ and he taps his forehead.
A few weeks later we are invited to the house Bepi has repurchased and is now renovating up in Rivoli. He drives us west through Verona and then strikes off north up the Valpolicella. It’s vendemmia time, the grape harvest. The Alfettas and BMWs fret and fume behind tractors inching along with their cartloads of grapes; it’s important that the fruit doesn’t get too knocked about, so they’re taking the road as slow as they can. The air is heavy with an extremely pleasant drunken smell, an almost tangible sweet stickiness. Midges swarm in quite unbelievable numbers. Storms and clouds of them. These vendemmia days, you find yourself breathing midges the way the whale simply swallows his plankton as he swims along.
We arrive in Rivoli, perched high on the hills above the Adige, site of one of Napoleon’s famous victories. Bepi turns his grocery van into a narrow track, bumping steeply down. At the end, the old peasant house that has focused his enterprising mind for so long is unprepossessing: a humble two-storey rectangle divided into two small dwellings with chickens pecking about outside. Buying it back can have had only symbolic value. Especially seeing as Bepi doesn’t want to live here himself, and can’t even get on with the ancient grandmother he has installed there. On our arrival they exchange fierce insults, much as he did with the priest.