BLOG: sterile punctuality or mates running late?
I recently caught a train from London to Bristol, where I attended an author event at Stanfords book shop before returning to London the same day. I spent four hours on that clean, bland bullet; four flavourless hours during which time the only person I spoke to was the guard who checked my ticket. All the other passengers either had iPods in their ears or laptops before their eyes.
Ironically, part of the talk I had prepared for the author event contained a reading about my trip on a southern Italian train, a crippled caterpillar which took eleven hours to limp from Milan to Lecce. During that epic journey on the Adriatic 'Express', I longed for the kind of slender speed machine that several years later was racing me towards Bristol. And several years later on that slender speed machine, I longed for the crippled caterpillar.
The apparent beauty of technology is that it allows us to communicate from wherever we are, but only, it would seem, with people who aren't with us. Though I heard far too much detail about fellow passengers' private affairs from their phone conversations, I made no one's aquaintance between London and Bristol. On the Adriatic Express, however, I found a job, a dozen pasta recipes and a long term friend - the guy sitting next to me, Renato, just happened to be from the neighbouring village to the one where I was heading, albeit at a crawl.
Unlike the 15.30 from Paddington, I had an arduous yet humorous journey on the Adriatic Express, memorable for the characters I met rather than for the places which limped by the window. Here's what happened in our cramped compartment on the Adriatic coast between Rimini and Pescara.
An edited extract from chapter 14 of HEAD OVER HEEL: Seduced by Southern Italy.
When I returned to the compartment they were discussing Australia and what the concept of open space must be like. I fielded all sorts of questions, some of which were easier to answer than others: What's the population? How long does it take to fly there from Italy? Are your politicians honest? How much does meat cost? What's the most popular dish? Is it true that Australians are cannibals or is that the New Zealanders? Do you ride the kangaroos?
This last question was posed by Silvia, the attractive young woman travelling with her mother. I deduced that Silvia hadn't seen much of the world, not only from the naivety of her question but because, as Renato suggested when she later left the train, she had perhaps spent all her pocket money on a boob job. Renato's theory wasn't a stab in the dark but based on certain 'hard evidence' which, since leaving Rimini, had snuck out of Silvia's shirt. Her top buttons must have slipped during bumpy track changes, either that or because of the train's constant vibration. Had we been travelling on a smooth Eurostar the sensuous stowaways might never have surfaced.
Sitting directly opposite, Renato and I immediately noticed what looked to be the most comfortable spot on the train. But Renato's unabashed staring soon alerted the girl's mother, who, with a subtle signal, made her daughter aware of the slippage. I had seen a Ruth Orkin photograph of an American girl on an Italian street being ogled by men who made no effort to disguise desire. Hands in pockets they smile and stare as the girl fastens her collar and flees. At first I disliked the photo because the woman looks distressed. But now, after living in Italy, I have realised its vulgarity is accurate.
Like several other passengers who walked into the wall when spotting Silvia, Renato found it impossible not to stare at a beautiful woman, or in this case, parts of a beautiful woman that were staring at him. Renowned bottom-pinchers, Italian men are candid about their cravings and refuse to accept that a natural urge can be considered a vice. But many foreigners find their blatancy disrespectful, as I found the Orkin photo at first. They desire respect while the Italians respect desire. But who is the more honest? I pretended not to look at Silvia's chest in case she spotted me and objected, while Renato fixed his gaze like a missile locking onto a target. We both desired the same thing, only Renato didn't deny it.
Italian men and women are comfortable with sex. To them sesso is not a dirty word but a human necessity, perhaps even more essential than food. When Roberto Benigni appeared on stage at the San Remo Song Festival and begged the ravishing female host for 'just a few seconds under your skirt', he was applauded by both male and female spectators. It took me a while to get used to a society which considered such behaviour decent. I had been somewhat uneasy when I went to the cinema in Lecce to see the film Malèna, in which the beautiful and buxom Monica Bellucci plays a sexually deprived war widow who squeezes lemons across her breasts on balmy Sicilian evenings. I wasn't uncomfortable because of what I was watching but because of who I was watching it with. The ten-year-old boy next to me licked his ice-cream indifferently as Bellucci all-but masturbated. Such a film would have carried either a 15 or 18 rating in the UK. In Lecce it was for general exhibition. Why should the boy's parents have hired a babysitter just because Bellucci took her daily dose of vitamin C differently from most people?
Italian television has done little for the feminist cause. So why don't Italian women mind? When Daniela and I watch TV, I'm the one who finds the nudity excessive. We'll be having lunch with her mother, Valeria, while two women mud-wrestle, and Valeria - retired schoolteacher and regular church-goer - will actually barrack for one of them. It's a question of culture. Daniela has grown up thinking women come out of cakes. My Australian ex-girlfriend didn't think women should even bake them.
Renato would have had little in common with my ex-girlfriend, as indeed did I in the end. Italy would have been far too sexist for her liking. But for many women, and even for a famous feminist, its stance on sex is liberating rather than lewd. 'What do we find in Italy that can be found nowhere else?' asked Erica Jong in My Italy. 'I believe it is a certain permission to be human that other countries lost long ago.' Renato would have agreed with her, although he'd much prefer to examine her thighs than her theories. He fell asleep after Silvia buttoned her blouse. The only scenery he was interested in had been locked away.