One of the many engaging things about Italy, my favourite country in Europe, is the cheerful insouciance of their railways. Italian trains, particularly the regionali (regional), are always ritardo (late), an immutable fact of life, like the sun’s proclivity to rise in the east and set in the west, which the Italians accept with a neo-Latinate shrug. Allora, such is the nature of things.
And so it was, until a bald, bullet-headed man with psychotic eyes called Benito Mussolini goosestepped onto the scene and turned the Italian world topsy-turvy, embroiling it in wars it didn’t want, and making the trains run on time.
After Il Duce had been suitably disposed of, Italian trains reverted to their normal nonchalance. Till now, when an ideological descendent of Benito, Giorgia Meloni, is on course to becoming Italy’s first woman prime minister, and the head of a government billed to be the most right-wing regime since that of Il Duce himself.
With Meloni at the helm will Italy witness a right-wing Risorgimento II – referencing the 19th century Risorgimento (Rise Again) movement that culminated in the unification of Italy as a kingdom and aroused the ‘national consciousness’ of the Italian people?
Apart from bringing the hammer down on immigration and the medical termination of pregnancy, her two bugbears, will she make the trains run on time again? That’s the big question further energising the already animated activity of gli aperitivi – the cocktail circuit, if you will – taking place all over the country every evening.
Up until now, one of the topics of discussion during the aperitivo – generally between the hours of 6 pm and 9 pm, though, like train timings, these can be flexible – was aperitivi. Which aperitivo is the best in town? The one on Via Garibaldi, or the other one on Cavour? Where was the aperitivo invented?
There are numerous contenders. Bologna, the self-proclaimed gastronomic capital of Italy, claims to be the originator. This is stoutly refuted by Milano, which lays patent rights on it. Venice, in the way that only Venezia can, nimbly sidesteps the question by calling its aperitivi cicchetti – side dishes – which is unique to the fabled city of canals, because no one else has cicchetti. But then everyone knows that Venice is weird, including the Venetians themselves, so that doesn’t really count. Building roads made of water? How off-the-wall can you get?
‘Which makes the best piadina – a kind of thin Italian flatbread – filling?’ Not infrequently, such colloquies can take on theological overtones, reminiscent of medieval quiddities, like, ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ or ‘Can an omnipotent creator build a wall so high that even he cannot jump over it?’
With Hurricane Giorgia hurtling towards Italy now, will such colloquia descend to more mundane matters? Will the traditional greeting of ‘Buongiorno’ (Good morning) be replaced by the politically appropriate ‘Buonrisorgimento’? Now that the PM is of the female persuasion, should, in the cause of gender parity, the name of her party be changed from the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) to Surelle d’Italia (Sisters of Italy? And what title will the incoming PM bestow upon herself – or have bestowed upon her by acolytes? She can’t be Il Duce (The Duke). But what about La Duchessa?
Will there be daily parades, involving the general populace, in which (Armani?) blackshirted participants will goosestep march in formation, proferring stiff-arm salutes to La Capa Suprema? Will Verdi’s opera ‘La Traviata’ (The Fallen Woman) be officially redesignated ‘La Donna Risorta’ (The Risen Woman) and the libretto suitably redacted to portray the ascension of La Duchessa?
With all this hurry and flurry will there be time left for aperitivo? Oh Dio mio. Risorgimento? Ritardo! Indefinitely.