Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
flies, an oily tin of sardines, a tattered newspaper and something truly unexpected, like a tailor's dummy or a
dead goat.
Even the litter didn't especially disturb me. I know Rome is dirty and crowded and the traffic is
impossible, but in a strange way that's part of the excitement. Rome is the only city I know, apart from New
York, that you can say that about. In fact, New York is just what Rome reminded me of - it had the same
noise, dirt, volubility, honking, the same indolent cops standing around with nothing to do, the same way of
talking with one's hands, the same unfocused electric buzz of energy. The only difference is that Rome is so
wondrously chaotic. New York is actually pretty well ordered. People stand patiently in queues and for the
most part obey traffic signals and observe the conventions of life that keep things running smoothly.
Italians are entirely without any commitment to order. They live their lives in a kind of pandemonium,
which I find very attractive. They don't queue, they don't pay their taxes, they don't turn up for appointments
on time, they don't undertake any sort of labour without a small bribe, they don't believe in rules at all. On
Italian trains every window bears a label telling you in three languages not to lean out of the window. The
labels in French and German instruct you not to lean out, but in Italian they merely suggest that it might not
be a good idea. It could hardly be otherwise.
Even kidnappers in Italy can be amazingly casual. In January 1988, a gang of them kidnapped an
eighteen-year-old named Carlo Celadon. They put him in a six-foot-deep pit in the earth and fed him, but
they didn't bother sending a ransom demand until - listen to this - the following October, nine months after
they took him. Can you believe that? The kidnappers demanded five billion lire (ﾣ2.5 million) and the
desperate parents immediately paid up, but the kidnappers then asked for more money. This time the
parents balked. Eventually, two years and 100 days after they took him, the kidnappers released him.
At the time of my visit, the Italians were working their way through their forty-eighth government in forty-
five years. The country has the social structure of a banana republic, yet the amazing thing is that it thrives. It
is now the fifth biggest economy in the
world,
which is a simply staggering achievement in the face of such
chronic disorder. If they had the work ethic of the Japanese they could be masters of the planet. Thank
goodness they haven't. They are too busy expending their considerable energies on the pleasurable
minutiae of daily life - children, good food, arguing in caf￩s - which is just how it should be.
I was in a neighbourhood bar on the Via Marsala one morning when three workmen in blue boiler suits
came in and stopped for coffees at the counter. After a minute one of them started thumping another
emphatically on the chest, haranguing him about something, while the third flailed his arms, made mournful
noises and staggered about as if his airway were obstructed, and I thought that at any moment knives would
come out and there would be blood everywhere, until it dawned on me that all they were talking about was
the quality of Schillaci's goal against Belgium the night before or the mileage on a Fiat Tipo or something
equally innocuous, and after a minute they drained their coffees and went off together as happy as anything.
What a wonderful country.
I went one morning to the Museo Borghese. I knew from a newspaper clipping that it had been shut in
1985 for two years of repairs - the villa was built on catacombs and for years has been slowly collapsing in
on itself - but when I got there it was still covered in scaffolding and fenced off with warped and flimsy
sheets of corrugated iron and looked to be nowhere near ready for the public - this a mere five years after it
was shut and three years after its forecast reopening. This is the sort of constant unreliability that must be
exasperating to live with (especially if you left your umbrella in the cloak-room the day before it shut), but you
quickly take it as an inevitable part of life, like the weather in England.
The care of the nation's cultural heritage is not, it must be said, Italy's strong suit. The country spends
$200 million a year on maintenance and restoration, which seems a reasonable sum until it is brought to
your attention that that is less than the cost of a dozen new miles of highway, and a fraction of what was
spent on stadiums for the 1990 World Cup. Altogether it is less than 0.2 per cent of the national budget. As
a result, two-thirds of the nation's treasures are locked away in warehouses or otherwise denied to the
public, and many others are crumbling away for want of attention - in March 1989, for instance, the 900-
year-old civic tower of Pavia collapsed, just keeled over, killing four people - and there are so many
treasures lying around that thieves can just walk off with them. In 1989 alone almost 13,000 works of art
were taken from the country's museums and churches, and as I write some 90,000 works of art are missing.
