Lucilla’s bosom began to heave, it wasn’t clear whether out of love or anger or some dangerous blood-dark cocktail of the two. Then Maria Rosa had herself fallen ill and become infirm. Lucilla had looked after her, as was her duty towards another ‘Christian’, taking her meals which she handed over at the door whose threshold she was never to pass. Because that woman put on airs, while il professore, who might have had good reason to be haughty, was dolcezza itself. And when things got worse, Maria Rosa had come and more or less lived in her own, Lucilla’s flat; slept there for months, being nursed and helped to the toilet and so on. Until, finally, Lucilla could cope no more and the woman had had to go into a home. But towards the end of that period, in a fit of remorse, Maria Rosa had told Lucilla the story of the will and how it had been burnt and had agreed to write a further will herself.
Lucilla fiddles under the flap of a rather oversized new Regency writing desk, bringing out a furry-grey piece of notepaper which she then waves under our noses. ‘Ecco, legga, legga, Signor Tino.’ Her fingers are stubby and impressively bejewelled. I take the documento with due respect. Uncertain handwriting announces the last will and testament of Maria Rosa Griminelli. The whole of Via Colombare number 10 belongs and always has belonged to Lucilla Zambon who built it with her own money. There is a single indecipherable signature, no lawyer, only the beneficiary as a witness.
But Lucilla’s hopes are pinned on that scrap of paper. She raises her voice. She is furious, defiant. Her bony teeth are in evidence. ‘The flat is mine, mine, mine.’ But we are nice people, and when she finally gets hold of the property, on Maria Rosa’s death, she will allow us to stay, although she will have to ask us to buy it rather than rent. But we can discuss all this at a later date.
Would we like a cioccolatino, a San Pellegrino Bitter? Would we like to watch television with her of an evening? She would be grateful if we could adjust her set. There is a programme on Tele Montecarlo with a man just like her beloved husband, here he is in this photograph. Così bello! Why did the men always die first? But she can never get a good picture on Tele Montecarlo. Signor Giampaolo has put up that new motorised aerial on the roof and it is sucking all the goodness from hers. Do I know anything about aerials? And could Rita perhaps phone her lawyer for her to have him explain something she can’t understand, and tell him to hurry up with the case.
Lucilla talks on and on. There is simply no chink in her verbal armour, no hesitation into which one might thrust the dagger of a request to leave. Vittorina watches, silent, dark, with those sudden smiles when she catches your eye, smiles which say she understands your suffering, but this is Lucilla, this is how she is, porti pazienza.
In desperation, we begin our long retreat. First simply getting to our feet, then edging out of the lounge and across the dining-room with its dark, dying plants, its sad canary, heading toward the entrance. Along a low wall is an array of those tiny twisted-glass Venetian ornaments, reminding me of my infancy in Blackpool, when we visited a Great-Aunt Esther who had row upon row of the things on a dresser.
Do we think she should ask for the condono edilizio, the building pardon? You see, she had this wall knocked down, that’s why it is different from our flat, didn’t we notice, between the entrance and the kitchen … So much more space. But without asking for planning permission … and now with this pardon …
Does she have the right lawyer? What do we think? Perhaps he isn’t being tough enough. Surely the rent we are paying should go to her. How much are we paying? Il professore only left the flat to his wife for use while she wanted to live there, but any rent should go to her, Lucilla. And, of course, in that home Maria Rosa is in, Signora Marta is putting pressure on her to sign another will leaving everything to her. But it wouldn’t be right, because Rosa isn’t capable of exercising free will now. She is senile. Though the doctors are all in complicità clearly, with what’s being paid for her to be there. All il professore’s fortune. The priest said …
Finally we make it to the hall. We are repeating arrivedercis, buona nottes, when I finally remember the purpose behind our visit, the subject I had originally come to broach. The nocturnal noises. We hope, I say, that we never, er, bother them, when we play our stereo, when we type late at night, when we have friends over. Noise carries so much in these buildings. One can hear everything. We wouldn’t like … ‘But no, Signor Tino, no, no, no, troppo gentile, troppo gentile! We like to hear noise. We like to hear footsteps, laughter, banging. The more the merrier. We’re two old ladies. It keeps us company. We feel less lonely. Ma troppo gentile, ma che signore!’
And somehow Signor Tino just can’t bring himself to say what he wants to say. The way he can never quite make up his mind to poison that dog.
14. Condono
THE CONDONO EDILIZIO was first mooted in the early 1980s. The idea was to recognise that there are vast numbers of buildings in Italy which were put up without permission: villas and cottages in the north, whole blocks of flats down south. Since, officially, these buildings don’t exist, they aren’t paying the modest property tax (although they do of course receive electricity, water, post and so on, and residency certificates confidently assert that people do live in them and hence enjoy all the rights that go with officially living in a place). There are also, the new law would recognise, even greater numbers of buildings which have been altered in some way without permission: extended, restored, disfigured, rebuilt. Under the terms of the condono, the government would allow people to register these buildings or any changes made to them and thus get themselves in regola as they say, paying in return only a fraction of the fine they would otherwise have to pay if prosecuted. For the government this would mean a considerable ad hoc income and the prospect of larger regular revenues in the future.
No sooner had the splendid idea been put forward than building began in earnest all over the peninsula. Of course, the law would refer only to buildings completed some months before it was initially drawn up. But if a building isn’t registered it is not always easy to say exactly when it was built. And perhaps the government didn’t really care, since finances were such (are always such) that the larger the injection of cash, the better.
The law was passed by decree, quite normal practice, but a decree has to be ratified by parliament within sixty days. The condono was not ratified. Which was curious given the general enthusiasm. Some mischievous newspapers alleged that many of those MPs who voted against it were busy building their own illegal villas and eager to have them finished before the law was eventually passed, as they were sure it one day would be. But at the time, MPs had a secret vote in the Italian parliament, so it was impossible to tell who was involved.