Along Via Colombare somebody knocked down a handsome old barn and began feverish work on a luxury extension, which pretty well amounted to a second house. Passing of the law was again delayed. Almost opposite the luxury extension, the woman who swept the road regularly with her twig broom began to lay the foundations of a two-car garage with terrace roof leading through French windows to the first floor of her house. Wielding her broom, she bustled about the old workers in their dungarees with their bottles of wine and tupperware boxes full of cold pasta.
The law was now passed. But then the deadline for applications for the condono was waived on two or three occasions. To give a little respite. All over Italy the cement mixers rumbled; work went on apace. And I remember walking back along the more than usually dusty street one day, to find in number 10’s postbox one of those magazines that somehow always find their way to ex-pats: Investment International, or some such title. They tell you how to send your children to English boarding schools, how to invest your money in offshore tax havens, how to prepare for the mental shock of return, how to let your Mayfair flat in your absence, etc. etc. On this particular occasion a review of European stockmarkets remarked, of la Borsa di Milano, that one could do no better than invest in Italcementi, the state-controlled cement company. Cement in Italy, the article said, had miraculously out-performed all other kinds of stock, thanks to the vigour, the creativity and the enterprising spirit of both manufacturers and building contractors. So much for the foreign perspective.
In Via Colombare we got a new fence to protect the really rather attractive beige-stuccoed, copper-drained three-bedroom extension which had replaced the old barn (beautiful, full of swallows nests, but no longer functional). The fence was made of tall, spiky, brown-painted iron railings sunk into a marble-topped cement wall, and it ended in a sheltered, terracotta-tiled entrance way complete with video-camera security. The tiny garden between the fence and the villa extension respected the cemetery style of dwarf cypresses and biblically inspired stucco statues. Opposite, the woman with the twig broom now swept her terrace of a morning, as well as the remaining half of the patio and a fair stretch of road outside.
But in the end this was a fairly innocuous form of anarchy. For around this time we took a week off to visit friends who live in the suburbs of Rome. Their house, a legal part of a new development, had simply been smothered by new building, much of it of the crudest variety, breeze blocks placed one on top of another with prefab roof, just enough to claim the condono and have the authorities accept the existence of a building which could then be developed in the future. Many houses were without utilities. Next door, the owner had converted the ground floor of his house into a bodywork repair outfit, blocking the narrow road outside with dented cars. Our friends had called the local vigile about the noise, the smell of spray paint, the inconvenience, reminding him that this was a residential area. The vigile went to talk with the culprit and apparently took a bribe.
Italian stories. One hears them more or less daily.
Back in number 10, there were various reasons for asking for the condono. The palazzo was a metre or so too near Negretti’s house. Then the solai, for example, had tiled floors, whereas to remain in the tax bracket the house was in, they should have been left bare and ‘non-inhabitable’. The same was true of the garage and the taverna. One has a building inspected, is the trick, its tax bracket declared, and then one changes it at wilclass="underline" peeling shutters in the city centre conceal luxury window fittings; pitted, flaking stucco is a front for polished parquet, granite and gold bathroom fittings. Everybody’s at it. The humble façade, the lavish interior. Tall, glass-topped walls. Secretiveness.
Eventually, it was decided at condominium level (that is, by Lucilla) that number 10 would not ask for the condono. Because in the end it wasn’t free, was it? However small, the fine would still have to be paid. And why bother? Lucilla was indignant. Nobody had really done anything wrong, had they? Nobody had hurt anybody. Anyway, the chances of the authorities ever catching you were infinitesimal; otherwise they would never have introduced the condono in the first place. And it was so dangerous to draw attention to yourself. Once they had your name in black and white, heaven knows what they might find out.
Lucilla was right. Some years later an income tax condono was passed by decree. People would ‘reconstruct their tax careers’, paying a modest fine. Thus the government would know how much tax to expect from such people in the future. But almost nobody applied for the pardon, since the very fact that the government had introduced it was an admission of their inability or unwillingness to catch anyone. Parliament then voted out the decree after the sixty days. This meant that while, over the previous two months, it had officially been the law, it was now considered never to have been the law at all. Upon which a few zealous magistrates attempted to prosecute those guilty few who had somewhat hastily confessed to their tax crimes in the hope of getting in regola. A lesson for the rest of us if ever there was one.
15. Discreto, valido, relativo
IF LUCILLA’S MOST common expression was the flattering and subservient, troppo gentile, troppo gentile, a social tick she had presumably picked up in her deprived girlhood of floor-scrubbing and straightforward begging, Giampaolo Visentini’s most characteristic utterances were always built around the three words: discreto, valido, relativo.
Imagine you are sitting in the Visentinis’ tastefully and above all cautiously furnished sitting-room. You are drinking excellent prosecco which Giampaolo bottled himself, which he has put in the fridge three or four days before your planned evening get-together (in the back of the fridge, not the door, since that would involve its getting knocked around too much). Upon your arrival and acceptance of the offered treat, he has carried the bottle from kitchen through dining-room to sitting-room with the concentration of a bomb disposal expert shifting primed Semtex, has released the detonating cork ever so gently to prevent explosion, then tilted the bottle painstakingly slowly over an attractive pottery carafe bearing the name of some Sardinian seaside town — all this because it’s so desperately important to avoid disturbing the sediment which is both the hallmark and curse of home-bottled wines. Giampaolo watches intently as he pours, brow knitted, long pale fingers strong and steady, his whole attitude conveying the slightly glazed worshipful concentration of the devotee. The contents froth out, the carafe fills, the sediment, which would have given the wine an unpleasant acidy taste, remains safely in the bottle and — ecco fatto, done it! Being bourgeois, it might be said, is never an easy way out in Italy.
Of course, if this is your first evening with the Visentini, if this is the first time you have drunk home-bottled prosecco, the whole elaborate rigmarole will seem nothing short of ridiculous. You can barely hold back a giggle. The caricatures are true, you’re thinking. These Latins are obsessive about food and wine. What’s going to change your mind is when you actually taste the prosecco.
And here at last it is. Lovingly as ever, but more relaxed now, Giampaolo pours from the carafe into tall slim glasses. ‘Salute.’ You raise a crystal stem. The cold sharp taste stings the lips, demands attention. It’s desperately dry, cutting like a knife through the sweetness of whatever goodies are being handed out. And as it fills your mouth, you become aware of wanting to hold it there. Bubbles froth on the palate. You are drinking something special.