Going back down to replace the doormats after the stairs have dried, I hear the postman’s Vespa arriving, as it usually does, toward lunchtime. I wait for him. Apart from some junk mail for Patuzzi, there is a magazine for Vittorina, I fioretti di San Gaspare. My dictionary translates fioretto as, ‘an act of mortification’. The magazine is published by L’ordine dei frati del preziosissimo sangue, which the saint founded. Most of it involves stories of miracles following hard upon praying to the saint. One reader writes to say that, after years of painful prostatitis, his problem was resolved by a single supplication to San Gaspare. Perhaps old Giuliano should have been informed. And it occurs to me that Italians have a long and uninterrupted tradition of miracles. Of which maybe la tredicesima is just a recent and very civilised manifestation.
24. Viva, viva, Natale arriva!
IT WILL SEEM odd perhaps that, having spent all my teens in London, I had to come to Italy to discover real fog. It is a peculiarity of the bassa padana, the Po valley. Protected by the Appennini from the prevailing west wind, the sun shines brightly on the vast triangular area of flat, damp soil between Milan, Venice and Bologna. The snow-covered mountains to the north keep a constant stream of icy air rolling down to meet the warmth steaming up from fields and ditches. And the result is the thickest fog imaginable stretching for mile after mile after mile. Sometimes lasting for weeks. The winter version of summer’s afa.
Stepping out on to our balcony this December morning, the world is milky white and quite silent. The terraced hill has gone, the castle has gone, likewise the abandoned mill. Along Via Colombare, the Madonnina has vanished and with her the woman with the twig broom, whose patient sweeping can nevertheless still be heard, pushing dirt she can barely see away into the fog. The dry sticks of Marini’s vegetable patch opposite are sombre pointed shadows, spear tips of an army of wraiths. A few poplar poles lean against a spectral fig tree, eaves and balconies drip, and all the street’s railings are hung with dew-soaked spiders’ webs.
Leaning on the marble parapet we never polish, it’s such a pleasure to breathe in this soft spongy air. It’s as if the whole Veneto had been very gently, very efficiently anaesthetised. Even the smells have gone, smothered where they rise. Everything is whitely quiet, waiting.
Then into this beautiful, hushed world comes a sudden fierce jangling, turning the corner from the Madonnina end. A grating jingle blares through a megaphone, followed by a voice speaking in dialect: ‘Mamme, bambini, ragazzi, ragazze, come and see, come and see, three panettoni for the price of one, three panettoni for the price of one!’ The voice stops with unnatural abruptness. The jingle plays again, harsh, idiotic, strident. When it stops there is the unmistakeable rumble of a diesel ticking over. The still, damp air begins to smell. And now I can just catch the ghostly shadow of a white Fiat Fiorino delivery van. Out blares the voice again, incredibly loud, the kind of volume one expects at the Last Judgement, booming through fog: ‘Mamme, bambini, ragazzi, ragazze!!!’ Odd, I think, how he excludes fathers, unmarried adults and the like. The van stops three times along the two hundred metres of Via Colombare, sells a dozen or so panettoni and is gone.
As many as four or five of these ambulanti may pass down our semi-suburban, semi-rural street in a single day, summer or winter, rain or shine. There’s the man who sells brooms, dustpans, brushes, kitchen mats, pan-scourers. He’s a regular. He passes around ten o’clock, his wares piled on the top of his tiny Fiat 650 van. A broomstick lunges forward through the fog like a lance.
Another fellow sells mattresses. He has a dozen or so piled on the back of a small lorry. Like the panettoni man he has a recording crackling through an overloaded speaker system: ‘Un’ occasione d’oro per sogni d’oro.’ A golden opportunity for golden dreams. Every Tuesday without fail. He is burly, brisk, darkly moustached. But how many mattresses can he sell to thirty or so houses?
One suspects the knifesharpener of being wilfully picturesque. He has a grinding stone geared up to the drive of his moped and a little shelter affair arranged over the handlebars. He squints, hunched. In normal conditions you can see the sparks fly. Through the fog there’s just the sinister shriek of metal on stone. You’re reminded of the Green Knight, sharpening his axe; another sound heard in dead of winter.
Or there are the one-off ambulanti offering the most amazing deals. A huge lorry noses along the street, squeezing between parked cars, watching out for shutters left carelessly swinging. Four best-quality wooden kitchen chairs for 60,000 Lire. Just thirty pounds. Is that possible? Or on another lucky day you may get the chance to buy a whole terrace set of tables and fold-up chairs for 100,000 Lire. Sometimes I wonder if, rather than being behind the lorry when the stuff fell off, they didn’t just take the whole lorry and start driving around the streets.
Of the regulars, the cheese duo are the most impressive. These two fat, jolly men have a super-long, purpose-built van which folds open at the side to reveal a cheese counter that wouldn’t look out of place in Fortnum and Masons. Turning the corner by the Madonnina, they have to reverse and manoeuvre. The relaxed megaphoned announcement of ‘Formaggi, formaggi, eccoci qua’ suggests far more confidence in their clientele. The vehicle ticks over in the fog. Orietta slips out in coat and scarf to buy some seasoned Asiago and Parmesan. It’s cheaper, she says, than in the shops. I wonder why.
‘Thieves,’ is Bepi’s only comment when I mention the ambulanti to him.
Coming back, Orietta makes her usual detour to the cassonetto, heaving it so far the other way it’s almost lost in the grey damp.
The marocchino is even more discreet than the formaggi fellows. Officially, marocchino just means Moroccan. In reality, the word refers to a stock figure in Italian life, the Moroccan carpet pedlar. Male, anywhere between fifteen and fifty, he patrols the streets with a heap of carpets over his shoulder and colourful tablecloths on his arm. In summer one almost melts at the sight; if you bought anything it would surely be drenched in sweat. On winter days you suspect the carpets are worth their weight in gold. You’re surprised he wants to sell them at all. In any event, the marocchino is admirably stoical. His face is a cipher. Apparently, he expects nothing, fears nothing.
The bell rings. Rather than buzzing somebody in immediately, or even quizzing them through the intercom, I have learnt to go out on the balcony for eye-to-eye contact. The Arabic man stands there in the damp cold, his rugs over his shoulders. Would I like to buy something? I say no, thank you. He doesn’t insist. And this is another admirable side to the marocchini, they will never bother you, never shout anything or use a megaphone, never try hard to persuade. Perhaps this one might have done better if he had tried. For the truth is we could use a few rugs on our freezing tiles. It’s just that I’m not used to buying this way.