DIARY
ALLAN MASSIE nunigration is one of the questions of the day, with riots and disruption in reception camps. Much of the argument recalls the sort of debates on the subject which we used to have in the late Fifties and the Sixties, around the time of the first Immigration Acts. Some of the conversations I heard reminded me of Auberon Waugh's remark that his mother 'who had lived all her life in large country mansions felt a distinct sympa- thy for the rumbles of the indigenous urban population against Commonwealth immi- gration'. Does immigration take work from Italians? The proposition was put to the Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, by Alain Elkann, a fashionable television interviewer. No, Prodi replied, because the immigrants were doing night shifts in factories, and took jobs as cleaners etc. 'Wouldn't it be better that this work was done by Italians?' Elkann (described to me as Italy's Jeremy Paxman) persisted. 'Would you', Prodi asked, 'get your son to take a night-shift job in a factory or picking tomatoes?' Elkann was visibly embarrassed. No wonder. He is Gianni Agnelli's son-in-law, and his own son Jacopo is already, in his early twenties, on the advisory board of Fiat. No doubt Prodi's reply was unfair, but it is nice to see Italy's Islington equivalents put in their place.
Twenty-five years ago I used to spend winter afternoons in a little wine shop in Piazza del Pasquino, just behind Piazza Navona, drinking Marino wine with a Pol- ish prince and a red-faced English Augus- tinian. The wine shop is no more, alas, transformed into an ordinary trattoria, doubtless more profitable. Still, the statue of Pasquino himself remains and continues to perform its traditional function, which is to serve as a noticeboard for critics of whichever regime is in power. It was dug up at the beginning of the 16th century, and very soon afterwards it became customary for those who resented papal rule to attach lampoons and satires, usually in verse, to the battered and sceptical-looking Pasquino. This week it bears a little poem declaring that the poet and film-maker Pasolini was murdered 20 years ago by the secret services. `Un mistero ancora fitto grave intorno a quella notte' CA seriously deep mystery about that night'), it begins.
Italian scandals have the legs and lungs of long-running soaps. Like the old Wind- mill Theatre, they never close. All the same, most people are now bored stiff with Tangentopoli, Italy's own cash-for-access. The boredom is only one reason why Silvio Berlusconi, the media magnate turned would-be Mussolini-in-a-blue-blazer, will not serve the prison sentence imposed on him. (He claims that the charges brought against him were all the result of a commu- nist plot; well, he would, wouldn't he?) Meanwhile the Greens have come forward with the proposal that the way out of Tan- gentopoli is to abolish prison for all those charged with corruption, abuse of office and illicit financing of political parties. Instead they should make full confession, full restitution, and be forbidden to hold public office of any sort for ten years. It is doubtful if this horse will run; certainly it's unlikely to have the staying-power of Tan- gentopoli itself.
The new politicians may be more hon- est, perhaps, but I miss the old gang of Christian Democrats, so adept at the involved, partner-changing dance of the political game. Whatever their faults Fan- fani, Moro, Andreotti, and the rest were men of some stature. Andreotti has of course been destroyed by the allegations of complicity with the Mafia. Naturally, in the South, every political party made deals with Mafia bosses, but the charges are ridicu- lous, whatever the courts say. First, most of the anti-Mafia legislation was put through by Andreotti; second, he was far too canny an operator and, in his sibylline Roman way, too honourable a man to engage in undeniably criminal acts; and third, the only evidence of the famous or infamous Mafia kiss comes from a pentito, that is to say, a Mafia man seeking immunity or reduction of his own sentence by offering evidence of Mafia activities. The evidence of pentiti is, to put it mildly, unreliable. In Andreotti's case it is also incredible.
Iused to spend a lot of time in the Caffe Greco in Via Condotti. It was a good place to read or write; I even used to give lessons in English literature there for a bit. I wouldn't be able to do so now. It has fallen victim to political correctness, and you are no longer allowed to smoke in the caffe, even though the photograph of Buffalo Bill, who frequented the Greco when he brought his Wild West show to the Borgh- ese Gardens, shows him with a cigar in his mouth. I was once photographed in the Greco with Giorgio de Chirico, who went there at noon every day. 'Promising Scot- tish writer meets Italian maestro,' said the American journalist who was writing a fea- ture on the painter. He spoke somewhat sceptically, I thought. De Chirico dressed very correctly, like a senator. It struck me as odd. Then I thought that anyone who had lived through the nightmare cities he painted in his great years might feel safer if he disguised himself as a senator.
Italy remains agreeably anarchic. The woman behind the ticket-window at Termi- ni shakes her head and lights a cigarette, though a big notice just behind her head proclaims Vietato Fumare. Almost everyone rides his or her scooter or light motor-bicy- cle bareheaded, though the law declares that the wearing of safety helmets is com- pulsory. (Seat-belts too, I am told; can that be true?) All this shows why Britain can never be truly European. The Latin nations, at least, regard a law as the expression of an ideal, rather than as something which must be obeyed. We, poor obedient creatures that we are — think and act differently.
Rome is a southern city, its bustle scarcely disguising its innate languor. It is, like Naples, where the expression originat- ed, a place where it is dolce far' niente. So, although I have bestirred myself sufficiently to accompany my daughter to the splendid Bernini exhibition at the Museo Borghese, and to renew acquaintance with some of the Caravaggios scattered round the city, I spend much of my time sipping coffee and mineral water outside a bar in Campo dei Fiori. It's too hot for movement anyway, and Campo dei Fiori is full of memories. So I think of the past or wonder whether any painter could capture the changing and innumerable shades of red, pink and gold- en brown of the buildings across the piazza. Or I idly scan the Italian papers. 'Who has been evading his environmental taxes?' asks a headline in La Repubblica, and gives the answer, 'the Minister for the Environ- ment'. Very reassuring, that, just as it was reassuring to find that the louche little bar just behind the offices of II Messagero — a bar which stayed open all night and saw many disgraceful scenes — is still in busi- ness. To be kept clear of now, of course, in sober and respectable maturity. So instead, I light another Toscano cigar, and wonder if there might be a novel to be written about Caravaggio. Of course there must be. . . .
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