ricordati

In a month I’ll be leaving Italy, and a couple of months after that I’ll be leaving Europe, and I don’t know when I’ll be coming back. With every passing week my mental picture of Australian life acquires depth, texture and colour, as I unconsciously prepare to re-enter that atmosphere. At the same time, daily life here is also becoming super-saturated, rich beyond endurance. My mind is dividing its attention between the pleasures of the here and now and those to come. The best analogy I can find is the way those great film soundtrack composers—Rota, Williams, Jarre—weave different themes in and out of a score and allow us to hold conflicting allegiances in our minds.

My memories of Europe are parading all their gorgeousness: like a Venetian palazzo with its window boxes brimming with geraniums and pinwheels. I put Interpol on the stereo and I’m hurled almost bodily back into a stifling metro carriage on my way to an English lesson with a sulky Parisian clerk. But then a second later I’m getting off the metro at a strange suburban station and it’s night, and I’m trying to find a cinema that’s rumoured to be showing Sullivan’s Travels for three euros a ticket. Then I’m in Macgregor’s apartment eating salmon he’s poached, and it’s squeaking slightly against my teeth as I chew, and we’re discussing Catherine Breillat, and then we’re at the bar on the corner drinking kir under the liquidambers, then it’s morning and I’m in the same square, at the patisserie, snorting a chocolate croissant to fortify me for another oppressive metro ride to another English lesson with another sulky clerk…

There are a few really important people from whom I know I will feel much more profoundly absent in Australia than I do here, even if they’re in another province, even if they’re in another country. To me, Europe is a place, a single address, and I feel that all these people are within reach even if I don’t see them for a year at a time. Even if things have already changed and, when I see them next, I won’t be the same I nor they the same they. But all those first meetings happened here, and geography is history, and it’s going to be weird to be off the emotional map. Well va beh. When you move to a different place the cost of the ticket is a split life. Definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Here is a list of some things I will miss about Italy, in no particular order:

gesture
My favourite of all time corresponds roughly to the concept of ‘precise’ or ‘correct’: thumb and forefinger delicately pinch together a bit of empty air and draw it downward in a line parallel to the speaker’s body, from the sternum to the navel. This gesture involves an indescribable alteration of carriage, expression, even breathing, as if the gesturer were, for that single moment, embodying the very spirit of correctness. Other highlights include ‘sedate me now’ (slapping the vein on the inside of the elbow, rolling the eyes) and ‘mmm, yummy!’ (pointing toward an imaginary dimple at the side of your mouth: works best if cheeks are distended with a big mouthful of food at the same time).

the scary old people
who run everything and do exactly what the hell they want. For various economic and cultural reasons, it’s very difficult to be an effectual, independent adult at age thirty here. Bureaucracy is king, you have to stand in line for everything, and that includes respect. When your last hair goes grey, you know you’ve made it. People of seventy and eighty dress with daring and panache, groom and tan, stalk the highstreet in precarious heels. Their gorgon stares part crowds of loitering yoof, they have the power to make even a crazy Italian driver stop at a pedestrian crossing. In short, they’re visible. They’re in the shops, in the cafes, they ride bikes, they go dancing. Their presence in public points out Australia and England’s great sin of omission: where are our old people? What do they do all day? If they’re smart, they’ve moved to Tuscany. Or maybe Florida.

talk
Smoothing hand on the rough edges of life. If you go into a shop smaller than a Target, you’re obliged out of etiquette to describe to the clerk what you are looking for. If they have it, they will discuss its attributes and benefits with you before concluding the transaction. If they don’t have what you want, they will fetch out various items that are similar but not right, caressing each one regretfully, and descanting at length on its unsuitability. This one is too this, this one lacks that, this other is not waterproof, or not organic, or in some other way deficient. If you have the good manners to go through with the conversation, they will be as happy when you leave as if they had supplied your need and you had purchased after all.

time made visible
Every street is a babble of history. Medieval crucifixes hang in renaissance churches with electric votive candles that you screw into place to light up. Clusters of towers compete in height, a reminder of a time when important families or guilds sought to describe their status in metres above sea level. They’re still impressive, even if a lot of them are listing dangerously and closed to the public (a vision of New York in 2300: Sears Tower, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, all off-kilter like metronome needles arrested at the furthest point of their swing). Battlements at the top provide hiding spots for archers, the better to take out rivals. These self-important little henges are marred by the odd truncated stump: a bankrupted family’s public shaming.

Fascism leaves its mark in the odd train station or government building. In quiet corners of overlooked villages you can still occasionally find a fascist slogan (live dangerously; Mussolini is always right) carved into a façade. Most have been painted or plastered over but some remain, either where the effort to remove them was too much, or where the new owner felt motivated to remember and remind.

If there is a certain lassitude about things; if the simplest arrangements need to be approached in circuitous ways; if you sometimes feel the chilling edge of non-negotiablity when someone gives you some friendly advice, you have to remember the burden of history pressing down on everyone here. It’s a treasure beyond price, to be sure, but it’s a treasure you have to carry on your back, like Munchausen’s giant. Like trying to walk on the bottom of the sea.

the kinder, softer sun
the luxe of green, the birds that actually go tweet and the bees that bumble. Coming to Europe is like stepping into one of the cartoons from your childhood that you thought somebody had made up. Don’t get me wrong: I love the Australian environment, and how it’s so much bigger and older than us and just barely tolerates our presence. But you’ll forgive me if once or twice I’ve stepped into the hush of a beech forest, and heard the little birdies twitter, and said, ‘Now this is quaint, this is actually quaint.’