IX.xi. A Broken Contract

"I am damnably sick of Italy, Italian and Italians, outrageously, illogically sick.... I hate to think that Italians ever did anything in the way of art.... What did they do but illustrate a page or so of the New Testament! They themselves think they have a monopoly in the line. I am dead tired of their bello and bellezza."
- James Joyce

Visitors had but come and go. There were four of us in the apartment, taking refuge from the sun during a late spring heat wave, when disaster struck. The tremendous, happy flow of my month of May came to an abrupt end as the power was shut off. With a sick stomach, I made my way down to the fuse box in the ground floor corridor, where a small green notice had been posted.

---

    "Uh, hello, Dr. Caramori? I'm afraid I have some bad news. The electricity in the apartment seems to have been cut. There was a shut off notice posted above the fuse-box when I checked it, saying the bills hadn't been paid." I was speaking from a phone booth near Piazza Maggiore, nothing more than a greenhouse in the baking sun, with my visitors calmly awaiting orders inside the air conditioned public library.
    "Bills, Nicholas? Haven't you been paying the bills?"
    "Me? What bills? I haven't paid a single bill all year. The costs are automatically debited from your account, since they're all in your name."
    "No no no. I haven't paid anything. Weren't you paying those bills?"
    "But Dr. Caramori, you never gave me a key to the mailbox, so how was I supposed to collect and pay them?"
    "The key to the mailbox? I thought the previous renter had long since mailed it to you."
    "Well, maybe, but if he mailed it to me, it would be in the mailbox then, wouldn't it?!"

---

    This was how I realized the extent to which my recent power shut off had been serious. Enel, the state owned energy company, was in fact rather fortunate in disconnecting me when they did, for if they had waited six weeks or so, I would have been able to conclude my visit to Italy without paying a cent for electrical power. As it stood, I was the loser, and something needed to be done.
    Enel has the most complex automated answering service I have ever encountered. After much frustration, I was finally able to speak to an operator in the flesh. She seemed as surprised as I was that so much time had passed since the last bill had been paid.
    "The contract was dissolved three months ago, sir. You'll have to make a new one. What happened? Why haven't you been paying?"
    "There was a, um, misunderstanding with the landlord. How do I make a new contract then?"
    "We can do it right now if you like."
    "Excellent." And so, after lengthy pauses and much devolution of personal information, a new electrical contract was at last made.
    "Ok Dr. Caramori (for the operator simply assumed I was the owner of the apartment), power will be restored within five days."
    I wondered what, in Italy, that meant.

IX.x. Shakespeare, Soave, Chicago

"Wine gives courage and inclines men towards passions."
- Ovid

Aldous wanted to attend Sunday morning mass in Verona, for some reason that still evades me. Having arrived, we borrowed a pair of bicycles from the local tourist office and made our way through the silent, perfect streets to the monumental basilica of San Zeno. Esther, perhaps tired of our theistic approach to things, wisely chose to sleep an extra few hours and meet us later.
    I felt, at the handlebar of that rickety, bright yellow public bicycle, as though I had simply taken up where I had left off before my departure for Italy, embarking on yet another adventure, reunited with one of my greatest friends. The roots of my friendship with Aldous reach back to the heady days of high school, with our efforts to topple our principal through an underground newspaper, more of a pamphlet really, polemically entitled Socrates. Aldous, incognito at first, accepted my help in getting the pamphlet out to its audience, evading interception and certain banishment. Nowadays we laugh heartily about this and anything else from our past, but we never fail to realize that a beginning, no matter how risible, is a sign of greatness to come. Years on Aldous' responsibilities have certainly shifted but he still works as an editor, still delighting in controversy, still master of his own rag. In my mind, he bears more than a striking resemblance to Aldus Manutius, the sixteenth century Venetian humanist turned book printer. Manutius , in addition to single-handedly recovering many of the Greek classics from obscurity, assiduously studied Petrarch's handwriting, and even engaged the great Bolognese painter Francesco Francia in the creation of what we today know as italic script. Our Aldous is somewhat less of a maniac for typography, but remains creative, contrarian, implacable: a polymath. One day he ought to have his own ex-libris made, like the one from the Aldine press, to insist on the past not being completely dead.
    While we were back at the station waiting for Esther to arrive on a late-morning train, I had the uncanny luck of seeing Simon walking through the arrival hall. Simon and Mila had left Bologna three days ago to go to Bolzano, and, coincidentally, they were now switching trains at Verona. We had a reunion on the platform, all five of us, though it only lasted the length of the stopover. Still, after eight months of distance from my oldest friends, it was a joy just to see them for a few extra minutes before we parted ways and got on with the day.
    Notwithstanding the plurality of glorious marble and granite churches that punctuate the banks of the Adige as it flows through Verona, the highlight of our afternoon was without a doubt our unexpected stopover at the tiny Enoteca dal Zovo, its labyrinthine walls lined with hundreds of dusty jet-black bottles. Much to our surprise, Aldous, Esther and I were greeted by a jovial, corpulent black woman who introduced herself, in a hearty mid-western accent, as Beverly.
    "I call Chicago home," she said to us, hunched over the bar, "but I've been living here for, oh, a good ten years. You'd like to try some local wines, then? Let's see what he has…" With that she began serving us brimming glasses of local wines: Soave, from the vineyards surrounding a little crenellated town to the east, and Valpolicella, from the lush terraces of the valley to the west between the city and Lake Garda. These are the great, serious inland wines of the Veneto that export themselves all over the world like the empire Verona never had. I assumed that they had even played their own subtle part in winning over Beverly.
    "He knows his wines. I'm not much of a connoisseur, myself, but I do what I can," she explained to us just as passersby would occasionally appear at the doorway, soliciting replies in highly accented Italian. "He's friends with the locals."
    He was evidently the owner of the tiny, wine-stocked bar, the man responsible for sealing with red wax the jet black, grime-encrusted bottles that certainly pre-dated Beverly's arrival in fair Verona.
    In a scene reminiscent of Othello, a well-dressed black man and a gracious Arab entered upon the scene, followed by the staggering drunk Italian Beverly had promised us would soon arrive. As the only native out of the seven people now in the room, he put up a rather slovenly, though gallant show, as he approached the bar and handed Beverly a red rose, fresh from someone else's garden. The bar tendress added it to a small vase of wilted cousins and began to pour him a highly diluted spritzer.
    Once we were ready to leave, we asked Beverly to add up our tab, at which point she refused to bill us for anything more than the first round of drinks, an act less Italian than even her accent. "Don't be silly," we said, "here's the rest of what we owe you. You keep it for yourself, since the owner doesn't seem to be around to do any work."
    "The owner? You mean my husband. What's mine is his, love. You can tell him on your way out if you want." As we walked out the door we noticed another rather inebriated local, sprawled out languidly on a reclining chair in the street, chatting with the clientele while his wife, inside, continued to work the bar.

IX.ix. The Cold War

"Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal."
- Voltaire

As the weather heats up, so too does the Gelato War, an unspoken but plainly fought campaign to win over the estival loyalty of nearly every citizen in Bologna. The battle for the best paletta, or scoop, becomes Bologna's own take on the fervent neighbourhood based rivalry of other Italian cities, the only difference being a much freer, though no less earnestly considered, choice of camp. The city has no great geographical rivalries, no horse race, no jousts, but it takes its culinary mission seriously, and Gianni, one of the more famous frontrunners, has even set up a chain of franchises throughout the region in an attempt to evangelize and fatten the Emilian masses.
    Gianni's, in fact, is the original, the gelateria most worthy of status as a local institution, though it dates back only to 1976. Its founder and namesake has acquired a sort of mythic status since his death several years ago, and the main branch displays over fifty flavours with such notoriously non-specific names as Purgatory, The Animal in the City, The Lawyer, The Saint, Giotto, The Two Towers, and so on.
    The Sorbetteria Castiglione, in the south end of the city, is, in terms of sheer volume, Gianni's principal competitor. It is also elegant, one of the few places in Bologna confident enough to store its gelato in covered steel bins, away from prying eyes, delighting in the unappealing, unaltered colours of its product. So serious are the Sorbetteria's owners that they name flavours after their children; Michelangelo, Edoardo and Karin thus take their places beside the darkest ciocolato and the richest crema in the city.
    More down to earth is Moline, in the university district. Somewhat of an underdog, it is noteworthy for producing unadulterated, smooth gelato as well as extremely intense granita. Close to my apartment, my friends and I have finished many a stroll in front of its fluorescent counters, discriminately choosing our scoops before retiring to the plastic chairs outside.
    Il Gelatauro, a relative newcomer with its gelato-eating beast as mascot, has created a great deal of commotion considering its rather poor location in a dimly lit, run-down portico. The flavours here have an exotic, southern flair while the décor speaks of American influence; one of the three Figliomeni brothers who together own the place is married to a girl who was first in Bologna as part of the Brown University exchange program. As for the brothers, they own their own organic citrus grove in Calabria that provides a key ingredient for the unsurpassed orange chocolate. Other flavours, such as the proudly named Prince of Calabria or King of the Two Sicilies include such exotic ingredients as jasmine, fennel and bergamot. Any server will also gladly confirm the plurality of factors that make the Bronte pistachios, grown only on the western face of mount Etna, the best in the world. Umberto Eco, who keeps house nearby, is a known regular, as his waistline would testify.
    The possibilities are almost inexhaustible, and it is only possible to detail the best of the best. I would even venture to say that Bologna, in a general sense, has the best gelato of any northern Italian city. As with the city's art and architecture, the median quality is high. There are, of course, countless superlative gelaterie all over Italy, small holes in the wall that seem to appear out of nowhere to outnumber even churches during the summer months. Other cities also have their own touted flagships, such as Nico or Alaska in Venice, Vivoli in Florence, and the Bottega del Gelato in Pisa, a place I had recently discovered with my friends while on a day trip. In the end Bologna has the highest concentration of worthwhile locales, each trying to trump the other, each a little different from the last.
    The consequences of such fierce competition are far reaching, because gelato in Bologna is world-class. London's Observer pronounced Il Gelatauro's product the best ice cream in Europe, while international culinary references constantly site one of the aforementioned concerns as a front-runner. Scarcely a day goes by when I don't treat myself to a gelato. Still, I refuse to play favourites. I am a citizen of the whole world, and I can do nothing but bask in delicious impartiality.


The range of flavours at Gianni's


A detail view of some of the more popular choices

IX.viii. Ambitions

"My travels in Italy make me be more original, more ‘myself’. I am learning to
look for happiness intelligently."
- Stendhal

It wasn't without ambition that I had my friends visit, for I had taken it upon myself to convey to them, even in the most fragmentary, summary of ways, the wonder that I felt in the face of history's creative masterpieces. I had long since decided that what I have to share with the world isn't easy to convey, isn't particularly proletarian or immediately useful, but remains important, and can still serve to change humanity, albeit in a small, arcane, and counter-intuitive way.
    My friends are not ordinary people, because we had long since abandoned the idea of associating with normalcy. This is not to say, by any means, that I chose them, or that they chose me. Rather, we became friends, some through the unique odyssey of high school, others in later years, by shared experience and a certain collective aversion to plainness. We are a circle, a kind of informal, unannounced, but still plainly existent order that has become one of the chief pillars my life. I wouldn't tell a single one to his or her face, but they are the heroes that inhabit the fantastical theatre that consciousness has created around me.
    The way I wanted to explain Italy's wonder to my spring visitors is a microcosm of what I want to show the world, to make people aware of the greatness that has preceded them and throw into doubt this stable confidence in the present. No easy task even for my inner circle, those people I feel such a connection with as to assume that we must share at least some part of the same psyche.
    The month of May, then, was a key moment of opportunity in my youthful life. Beyond art, or maybe bound up together with it, I wanted to show the highs and lows of culture that make life in Bologna worth living. "This is the land of plenty," I couldn't help repeating as we strolled through the vegetable markets alive with spring colour and then stopped to look at the immense variety of fish, still squirming, freshly plucked from the Adriatic. I also insisted on a detour through the insalubrious Via Petroni, the chaotic clothing market, and the areas of the city notorious for the line of grime, a pronounced, consistent, and unexplained black smudge visible at about knee level on the sides of buildings. We even stopped for the requisite aperitivo, which eventually became a free dinner, at the Café dei Commercianti, where we saw former prime minister and European Commissioner Romano Prodi swiftly walk past surrounded by a large posse of suited men.
    I organized two trips into Tuscany for my friends, one to Pisa and Lucca, and the other to Florence. Our two groups met up on a Monday morning train from Florence to Pisa, somewhat a somewhat unremarkable setting for such a reunion. Two days later we were in Florence together, jumping unpredictably from the least serious of chatter to earnest sightseeing. I couldn't help divulging just some of the twaddle my studies had taught me.
    "The technology to replicate this six hundred year old feat, to cast such huge doors in one piece, does not exist today."
    "Pisano was the first artistic personality of the modern world."
    "Savonarola turned the most sophisticated place in the west into a fundamentalist theocracy overnight."
    The platitudes kept flowing from my lips. I found that my desire to be didactic was often foiled by my, by our, tendencies to act outrageously funny when in a group. It had been, after all, a long eight months of living in different yet parallel worlds. Having collided together in central Italy, the old and new were having a ball.

IX.vii. Peacocks

"I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love most."
- William Morris

Leaving my visitors alone for the day, I woke up early for the swan song of professor Cavina's modern art class, the long anticipated field trip to Parma and the Villa Magnani-Rocca foundation. At the ungodly hour of seven thirty in the morning we met at Bologna's bus station, where two coaches had been chartered for our purposes. Cavina arrived in the usual fashion, on bicycle, fashionable but not as late as some.
    In Parma we visited the Camera di San Paolo, frescoed by Corregio for a rather secular-minded abbess. Cavina asked me if I had visited this room before, and when I replied that indeed I had, she jokingly questioned the use of my spending a year in Italy. In return, I said that I had never visited Italy accompanied by the eyes of an expert.
    Continuing our itinerary, we arrived at the Villa Magnani-Rocca in time for a much vaunted pastoral lunch break. Walled in and planted with huge sycamore trees, the sun-drenched grounds of the villa enthralled most of us visitors more than the collections of the late musicologist Luigi Magnani, whom professor Cavina had known well. Surprised by our presence, half a dozen glorious peacocks jostled with our class of eighty or so students for prime spaces on the expansive lawns of the English-styled gardens. Seeking refuge in a treetop, a pure white specimen enchanted all of us with its long feathers, rustled by the May breezes, resembling the flowing hair of a maiden, while in the formal garden some of the more brazen classmates tried to provoke a display of the many-eyed plumage. A group of schoolchildren joined in, less inhibited, and openly took to chasing the poor birds. Even while professor Cavina tried to speak to us seriously on the steps of the villa after our long picnic break the pompous avians continued to crow, creating a humorous, raucous, and beautiful counterpoint.
    I think that one of Cavina's goals as expressed in the teaching of our course is to motivate the impending generation of art historians with glamour. Quite apart from her impressively encyclopedic and playful knowledge of all manner of art, she exudes a sense of elegance and assuredness all her own. Based solely on her lessons, it would seem that the world of the art historian is one of private villas, jet-setting, high stakes acquisitions, and passionate intrigue. This is probably as far as possible from the truth, but the ruse is worth the reward, and if the next great Italian art historian is born of Anna Cavina's influence I won't be at all surprised.

IX.vi. Of Barrels, Batteries, and Balsamico

"Culture is Italy's oil, and it must be exploited."
- Gianni de Michelis

Deep in the dusty countryside south of Modena is the agrarian crossroads of Spilamberto, a settlement of a few thousand ageing inhabitants unremarkable with the exception of a small museum dedicated to balsamic vinegar. Early on a Sunday morning, after briefly stopping in a noiseless Modena to see Willigelmus' stone carvings on the Duomo, we traveled by bus to the town, which was fortunately rendered less sleepy than usual by a sprawling, not very serious antique fair, doubtless timed to coincide with the weekly tasting that was to be offered, we thought. Simon, blessed with a palate beyond his years, had the idea to visit this haut lieu of culinary rarity, with Mila and I obviously consenting. The balsamic museum requires a special reason to visit; it is as difficult to locate on a map as it is to reach by public transportation.
    A temple to the most rarified liquid in the world, we entered the place and were asked to sit and watch a short film relating to the production of Balsamico Tradizionale, the unique product the small museum works to elevate above all others. Cinematographically, this introduction seemed worthy of the sacred balm, employing all the most sophisticated production techniques: time-lapse photography of the stormy local countryside, rough-grained focus shifts between laden vines and aged harvesters, and a subtly panning interview with the suit-sporting director of the museum, grave as Gorbachev or Kissinger in describing the superiority of the local vinegar.
    Finally, we made our way up several flights of stairs to a small room in which a group of sexagenarian men had us taste the fruits of their labour in the form of tiny spoonfuls of vinegar older than any of us youngsters. Clearly among the few visitors that day, we seemed to receive extra attention from the masters who regarded the small attic as a sort of after work club. We were shown the particular qualities of their quarter century old production; it's clear, red colour, lack of impurities, particular odour and, lastly, exquisite taste. The process for scoring each variety at the annual competition was described in detail, and we were shown a huge table laden with half a thousand samples awaiting judgment. The entire daftly complex procedure for cooking, pouring, and curing the grape resin was expatiated with the utmost earnestness, as though we were the heirs of the mage-like knowledge accumulated within these men.
    The museum's workshop is not unique. It so happens that in countless unassuming attics across the small area that lies between the alluvial banks of the Reno and the outskirts of Modena men and women tirelessly tend to their own eight barreled batteries of balsamic vinegar, for profit, pleasure, or pride. Only once a year, fifteen percent from each barrel is moved down the chain to the next, constraining production to a mere litre or two per battery, the entire region's aggregate totaling no more than sixty thousand tiny vials of the ruddy-black liquid per annum.
    No one can plausibly make a living from producing Balsamico Tradizionale; its magic lies in its extreme frivolity, its absurd level of refinement. Enjoying the acid in anything less than its purest form becomes an exercise, mostly in vain, of finding ingredients to match. The masters in the attic are akin to DaVinci or Joyce in their deliberate lengthiness of process, their refusal to compromise, and the unassailable quality of their final product. All this for a few drops of elixir, tasted and gone.

IX.v. Venice Absurd

"Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice, she has had the good fortune to become the object of passion to a man of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has made her the world's."
- Henry James

my visits to Venice, Florence, and other major cities, that these places will only become increasingly crowded until my departure from Italy. I had been too spoiled during the winter months when even Venice was largely empty of tourists, turned over instead to meeker, more sensitive travelers. Still, despite the masses of heedless individuals in Saint Mark's square, the scaffolding, the hawkers, the pigeons, we still found the space and time necessary to admire something set apart from the crowd. Dizzy and enthralled by their imagery, we spent a good half hour admiring the intricately carved capitals of Istrian stone that support the first level of the Ducal palace, the pages of a petrified encyclopedia ignored by nearly all and drowned out by the crass outdoor orchestra in front of one of the cafes in the square. It seemed as though we were the only ones to have taken notice of the glorious sculptures ever since Ruskin lavished a good ten pages on them in The Stones of Venice. Still, we had fallen victim to Mary McCarthy's now famous assertion that nothing in the floating city can ever be looked on with any degree of originality. Well aware of this irony, I had taken Venice Observed along with me, and read out loud a humorous passage while we ate our lunch on the steps of Campo San Beneto:
    One thing is certain. Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. One gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. One accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin.
    What could one do but concur and give up the childish protests against other tourists that necessarily reflect back upon any foreigner here, however sensitive? I surrendered and found it difficult as ever to conceal the passion that grips me when talking about the mirrored marble sheets, the distant spolia, the holy relics, the gold that adorns Saint Mark's. I went through all the glorious catalogue of thievery and pride; the columns from Tyre, the porphyry tetrarchs from Alexandria, the Chinese bronze chimera that somehow made its way here in the twelfth century, the Constantinopolitan horses briefly in Paris, the granite, the alabaster, the stone, as if I had captured it all myself and it belonged to me.

---

    Our day in Venice had gone seamlessly. It was only upon leaving the city that disaster happened upon us. Half an hour into its voyage, our train ended its run unannounced. The redoubtable Italian sciopero had struck us a severe blow. We were stranded, more than I had ever been in this country, in front of the unwelcoming train station at Padua. It was late, and no further trains were to operate for the next twenty-four hours. We weren't quite alone, and some were public enough with their discontent to require a police escort for the departing railway employees who so promptly left the confines of the station at precisely nine o'clock.
    Almost despairing, we had nearly taken the painful decision to book a room at the youth hostel located at the other end of town. Just then, a kindly man in his thirties asked us if we were trying to get back to Bologna. He informed us that he, too, had to return home tonight no matter what the cost. His car was parked in Ferrara, some one hundred kilometers away, and he had no choice but to take a taxi in order to recuperate it. If we split the cost of the taxi with him, he could then drive us on to Bologna, as he needed to go even further, on to Reggio Emilia. We consented fearing this was the only plausible option, though it was expensive, and were finally able to find a taxi less outrageously priced than all the others. We reached Ferrara, found our friend's car, and eventually returned to the security and comfort of Bologna. In the meantime, the personable though slightly absent-minded man who so altruistically assisted us, Luca by name, had even offered to chauffeur us around the Emilian countryside on Sunday when we planned to visit various outlying villages. We politely declined, saying that he had already gone far enough out of his way for us. Before parting, he insisted on giving us his number on the off chance that we would require his vehicular help once again. Tired, happy to be back in Bologna after yet another long day, we collapsed into our respective bed and did not wake up until late the next morning.

IX.iv. The Grand Tour

"Travel is not compulsory. Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all—certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia."
- James Morris

When they stepped off the bus, they looked a little bit worse for the wear but happy at least to have finally arrived in Bologna. Simon, is his usual dandy style, was wearing a linen blazer with a ruffled pink and white pocket square. Mila, his companion now for almost five years, looked pretty as ever, skipping along even with the heavy luggage they had brought along with them.
    It so happened that on this Tuesday afternoon these two worlds of mine collided. I had long anticipated this day, actually, when the first of my long cortege of friends would arrive in Bologna, taking advantage of my apartment and its free accommodation, tasting Emilia-Romagna for all it was worth, braving my often too earnest expatiation on the subject of unappreciated grandeur, underrated gelato, or ecclesiastical art.
    Simon and Mila, two of my greatest friends, were at the beginning of a European sojourn that would include stops in Bolzano, Paris, Antibes, and London. I had been used to spending time with them, spending inordinate amounts of time together doing nothing, since high school, when life was simpler and richer in a naïve sort of way. I hadn't seen them for eight months, but they looked roughly the same, except that Mila had finally convinced Simon to change his mop-like combed over hair for a more up to date tousle that matched his impeccable flâneur-like style.
    "How are you ever going to come back?" Mila said to me several times, first on seeing my apartment, then on setting foot in Piazza Maggiore on our initial stroll through the city centre. I answered that it would be difficult, I knew it would, but that it wasn't something I needed to face for some time, and that my long lonely months in this still foreign country had made me long for some of the most banal aspects of North American life.
    It's true that the quadrilatero, the tangle of streets that are home to Bologna's most upscale and beautifully presented food shops, opening onto the great russet-toned square are seductive to the point of disbelief. My apartment too, in its brilliant white, minimalist, and recently cleaned state, looked worthy of a stay extending far beyond ten months. My friends though, those with me along with others I wouldn't be fortunate enough to see before my return, made me long for other, plainer places. Culturally, academically, even socially, I was an honourary Bolognese, but in truth I was still a visitor, still just passing through, and still far, far away from home.

IX.iii. A Dressing Down in a Small Chapel

"The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection."
- Michelangelo Buonarotti

"I have been reading your journal, Nicholas, and I must say I disapprove. Just last week you wrote about how saints mean nothing to you, how it is entirely the artist that counts."
    "Well, not exactly… wait, you can go online?" Saint Cecilia glared at me as I responded, with the little sacristan in the booth at the entrance joining in, visually admonishing me for mumbling at the painted wall.
    "Of course I can. What, you think I live inside this fresco? The point is, Nicholas, how can you possibly say such things. Myself for example, I was painted by grumpy old Francesco Francia, in part at least. Some assistant painted my dress, in the next scene I'm by a completely different artist, and in the following yet another. What does that mean to you? The artist is just part of the story, you know. The artist isn't God."
    "I understand. Is that all?"
    "Absolutely not. Your journal… have you taken a look at your style?"
    "My style?"
    "Yes. How convoluted it is. So many commas, improper agreements, prolonged clauses. I believe one of your friends once described it as 'verbose'."
    "Well, perhaps I'm just verbose then. I can't help it. I write that way. I suppose I can try to reform a little bit, consult Fowler or something, but in the main I can't really change how I write. English is quite awkward when it comes to expressing difficult concepts, like Italy. At least I don't take myself too seriously."
    "You're so young, Nicholas. So very young, and you have so much to learn."
    "Why does everyone tell me that?" I responded to her as she shrugged, nonplussed, and returned to her important and perpetual business of accepting her fiancé Valerian's golden ring.

IX.ii. A view through the trees

"St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden when someone asked what he would do if he were suddenly to learn that he would die before sunset that very day. 'I would finish hoeing my garden,' he replied."
- Louis Fischer

The pre-modern imagination considers nature antithetical to civilization. In this same spirit, Bologna remains completely urban in its character. The few square meters within the city walls that are given over to plant life are either nineteenth century incursions or the result of systematic neglect. A select few are able to afford small terraced gardens, becoming ever more Babylonian in their appearance as spring progresses. Private courtyards, too, when they can be glimpsed fleetingly from the street through an iron gate or closing door, are often alive with palms and colonies of ferns, though this can often be an illusion, propagated by one of Bologna's many trompe l'oeil murals.
    Bologna, though almost claustrophobically civilized itself, is surrounded by greenery. To the east, west and north it is ringed by the underappreciated expanses of Emilian countryside, and to the south a string of parks and, further, semi-wild hills surround it. Not as spectacularly backdropped as certain other cities, the green mass of gardened hills is still visible from most neighbourhoods, and beckons as May exacerbates the annoyances of the inner city.
    On the lawns of the Giardini Margherita, Bologna's largest public park, every sector of society comes to play. Children, so rare on the streets of the city proper, rub shoulders with seniors, fashionistas, and punks. A circle of Rastafarians join in an impromptu drum beat session, a child looses a kite to the springtime air, and an elderly couple walks noiselessly, all in this playground of green on the fringes of the red city.
    Further afield, more aloof, is the convent and park of San Michele in Bosco, Saint Michael in the woods. Here, atop a crest of towering pine trees, a terrace looks out onto the city below, but is obscured by the conifers grown too high. From this spot, in younger days, Stendhal looked out over Bologna. Now, only a few patients from the nearby Rizzoli institute pause to point out the city beyond the trees. Continuing along, the mogul-like Colli Bolognesi begin, some planted with vines, others almost completely wild. Hiking an unpaved road, the city becomes somewhat like a distant memory.
    I spent an entire afternoon walking these paths, whiling away the lull of early May, preparing for more eventful days to come.


A view from the terrace of San Michele in Bosco

IX.i. May Day

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned."
- Antonio Gramsci

If there were a holiday most emblematic of Bologna, it would be the first of May. Working holiday extraordinaire, by day the city still seemed to function without any undue sense of celebration. The youth, of course, had been discouraged in their evening revelry by the new drinking laws and in order to distract them from violence a concert was organized in Piazza Maggiore. The main act consisted of an overzealous jazz troop fittingly clad in bright red uniforms. Their presence became known to me as soon as they began, as I could hear the steady thump of amplified music even from the open window of my apartment kitchen. It brought back memories of living in a place ten times as large as Bologna, where the rumbling sound of the city is ever present and goes almost unnoticed.
    Safe among the thousands in the square, it was almost as if the new law had been repealed. The police kept their distance, as they often do when tensions run high, and left the square to the students, who seemed far less interested in the concert than in the prospect of drinking Moretti from glass bottles unmolested. It seemed a fittingly absurd tribute to a largely irrelevant holiday, just another occasion to band together, defy laws if possible, and unwittingly indulge in the laughable.