Some articles are born faster than others. The one you’re reading now would not reveal itself until I’d cleaned every room in the house. In fact, it held out until I’d emptied all the heavy clothes from the closet and loaded them up into boxes labeled inverno. Some deadlines simply cannot be met until one has done every chore invented since Cinderella was first stuck scraping the hearth. At the worst of times, cleanliness is a condition for creativity. Italian women are, however, the exception to this universal axiom. Even the ISTAT statistics agency agrees: le italiane clean their houses even without imminent deadlines.
The TV keeps me company at chore time, for they say it’s best to put two things one hates together. The most decent thing on was ‘Forum’, an Italian talk show/small claims court that does quite well when it comes to putting its finger on the pulse of public concern. The generally conservative, highly sentimental Rita della Chiesa leads the ‘debate-‘til-you-drop’ session after the judge steps out to ponder the case. Despite the fact that Rita is a quasi-obsessive canine lover who thinks that dogs are people, too, most of her opinions hold a good bit of water. On the whole, she makes sense. Fino a ieri, that is.
The head of a company producing eccellenze italiane blamed la crisi economica for his firm’s financial woes. Specialty foods are not flying off the shelves these days, he said. Hard pressed to keep his employees, the man had devised a plan to pay his workers’ salaries in food products rather than money. Long story short, the entrepreneur wanted to pay the plaintiff in pasta.
And me? Well, I wanted to step into my wardrobe and stay there, because Rita took the business man’s side, congratulating him on having found una soluzione interessante for balancing his budget.
Still on the witness stand, the company secretary protested, ‘I can’t pay my rent in tomato sauce.’
‘That’s true,’ Rita conceded. ‘But perhaps you can sell these products to friends or give them as gifts to relatives.’
The woman was beside herself. ‘He can’t make sales during working hours, how am I supposed to sell once my shift is through?’
Brava, Signora, così si fa. You go, girl. We were immediate friends, this signora and I. But instead of taking the television set into my arms and cradling it to give her comfort, I scolded Rita instead. ‘Beh, there is nothing else to say except-siamo proprio alla frutta.’ We have arrived at the end, my friends, there’s nowhere else to go but rock-bottom. It is bad enough that the ex-minister of economic development tells news reporters that he ‘doesn’t know’ if someone else bought a house for his family without telling him. Or that politicians make their laws only once parliament shuts down for the day. ‘Pasta rather than pay’ speaks for itself: we’ve reached the last stages of the banquet. It’s over-we’re at the fruit.
‘I watched Forum today,’ I confessed to Filippo at dinner. The house sparkled; he would have known it anyway.
‘Why’d you do that?’ he asked. ‘E’ tutto finto quel programma, it’s all fake.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Those people are paid to go there.’
‘I certainly hope so. It’s the most authentic thing on television.’
He shook his head, ‘Well, that’s una triste realtà.’
‘No, the sad reality is that no one but the politicians is getting paid in this country.’
‘Hmm,’ he agreed, stacking plates. ‘The politicians are the real reason Italy has the world’s highest life expectancy.’
‘Why’s that?’ I wanted to know.
‘With benefits like theirs, they refuse to die.’
I smiled, temporarily amused. ‘I can’t believe that no one protests.’
‘What-about letting them live?’
He was kidding, but I was still too upset about Rita to laugh. Somehow, I found the topics linked and felt they affected me personally. ‘Protest about them making 19 times what everyone else earns.’
‘I think it’s 17,’ he corrected.
‘Oh, right,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Sorry.’
‘Besides, in Italy, we don’t protest. We complain.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well, one has social validity. The other is kitchen talk.’
Our kitchen talk continued until Filippo started to get impatient. ‘Listen, what can I tell you? Siamo alla frutta, you’re right. Nessuno li ammazza quelli, only the good die young. But every country has its scoundrels; we’re just slightly more public about it.’
I changed the subject. ‘You need to bring those boxes down to the basement sometime before July.’
He grinned. ‘Only if you pay me in pasta,’ he said.
Deal.
