Notebook
Last April 1 told in this column the sad story of a stray dog I befriended in Ita- 1Y. After finding it abandoned and starving at our house in Tuscany, I fed it and looked after it for a few days until one evening it disappeared. The poor animal, a handsome black and brown sporting dog of enormous charm, had been captured by a Sardinian shepherd who accused it of massacring his sheep and wanted two million lire (about _;1,000) from me in compensation. The u°8's innocence, which I never doubted, was subsequently proved; for the sheep Massacres continued while it was still tied up at the shepherd's house. Being now in a state of unbearable frustration, the shepherd began to suspect every dog in the neighbourhood of criminal tendencies. He shot an innocent pet with an unlicensed gun and was hauled up before the carabinieri and charged. 1 reported last April that 'my' dog had ended up doing service as a guard °g in a nearby village, for this was what I h' lad been told. But on returning to Tuscany tnis summer I found that the story had an even happier ending. The shepherd's wife went with her children to the maresciallo of , carabinieri and, weeping copiously, Pleaded with him to drop the charges against her husband. The maresciallo took ,ft` and told her that if the shepherd could satisfy the owner of the dog he had shot, by av,2,11g him money or whatever, the pro- dings against him would be stopped, The ih"elTherd, having no money to give, offered e Plaintiff 'my' dog as a substitute for his ead pet, The offer was greeted with understandable scepticism, but then a miracle happened. The plaintiff turned out
be a Passionate hunter of wild boar, and T Y: dog revealed himself as a boar hound ,
the highest calibre. Such hounds are rare tand highly prized. The dog is now thought be worth about two million lire, the very s° unl that the shepherd had wanted from me as Payment for his dead sheep. Both the Telhg and its new owner are blissfully happy. h e shepherd, too, is, greatly relieved. I, 111)3,Wever, have been rightfully punished for weakness in disowning the dog when it :as first accused of sheep-killing. If 1 had ireed it was mine, as the shepherd insisted was, I might eventually have sold it and no be two million lire the richer.
I° Italy in the Thirties there was a great st earoPaign against pastasciutta. It was Marinette, by the Futurist poet, Filippo ,de$cribin who startled the country by g pasta as 'an 4.)bsolete food'. 'It is _rleavY, brutalising and grOss,' he said. 'Its neutritive qualities are deceptive; it induces swaentieism, sloth and pessimism.' Marinetti ons.arfascist, and the publication of his book Cooking' was celebrated by a message from Benito Mussolini `to my dear old friend of the first fascist battles, to the intrepid soldier whose indomitable passion for his country has been consecrated in blood'. Mussolini himself, despite his girth, was not a great eater or drinker, but there is no evidence that he shared in Marinetti's contempt for pasta. There were other fascists, however, who did. 'Heavy con- sumers of pastasciutta have slow and placid characters; meat eaters are quick and ag- gressive.' Spaghetti is not food for fighters.' Pastasciutta is anti-virile . , A weighty and encumbered stomach cannot be favourable to physical enthusiasm towards women.' These are some of the comments by doctors and others which were quoted by Elizabeth David, former cookery correspondent of the Spectator, in her excellent book Italian Food. Well, pasta not only survived this onslaught but since the fall of Fascism in Italy has grown into a food of worldwide popularity. Every Italian still eats on average more than 59 lbs (or more than four stone) of pasta a year. But what is more remarkable is the fact that in the United States the per capita consump- tion of pasta has now reached I I lbs a year. Imports of Italian pasta into the United States have increased fivefold during the past two years — to the alarm of both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. According to the Italian newspapers, America's National Pasta Association is so concerned about the com- petition of Italian imports that it has gone blubbing to President Reagan, asking for protectionist rritasures. One of the reasons for the popularity of pasta in America is that it has received the blessing of the nutri- tionists. In particular, the nutritional ad- viser to America's Olympic team has advis- ed athletes to eat pasta rather than steak before competing. And the American women's champion in the 1500 and 3000 metres, Mary Decker, has attributed her success to spaghetti. In Italy, however, Marinetti's message seems finally to be get- ting through. While Italian consumption of pasta has been static for ten years, con- sumption of meat has been growing rapidly. According to the latest statistics I can find, Italian expenditure on meat in 1981 was ap- proximately £10,000 million, which was an increase of 20 per cent on 1980, which in turn showed an increase of 23.5 per cent on the year .before. Despite their enormous consumption of pasta, the Italians still manage to eat more meat than we do. In, 1980 every Italian ate on average about 173 lbs of meat, compared with 163 lbs in Bri- tain. While Italian meat consumption has been rising, Britain's has been declining. This is all the more remarkable, given that meat is much more expensive in Italy than it is here. This all indicates that the Italians are much richer than we imagine them to be. You see old peasant women cheerfully ordering £40 or £50 worth of meat at the butchers. Where on earth do they get the money from? This is one of the many mysteries of Italy. Another mystery is how they manage to eat so much.
Tust outside Arezzo, which is the nearest J town to our house in Italy, stands a gloomy 19th century villa belonging to Licio Gelli. Gelli was head of the notorious masonic lodge called 'Propaganda-2' which was revealed as the centre of a web of cor- ruption implicating an important section of the Italian establishment — lawyers, politi- cians, bankers and businessmen. Roberto Calvi, the banker with Vatican connections who was found hanged last year from Blackfriars Bridge, was one of Gelli's associates. While I was on holiday in Italy last month, Gelli escaped from a prison in Geneva where he was being held pending. extradition to Italy on a number of fraud and corruption charges. Naturally the Italian newspapers were full of little else.. Panorama, a normally respectable weekly. magazine, contained an astonishing article about Gelli's attempts to tebuild his masonic connections since his escape. The astonishing thing about it was the following paragraph: 'On Friday 19 August, at Con- stance in West Germany, Prince Michael of Kent, cousin of Queen Elizabeth of England, Grand Master of the English freemasons and friend of Gelli, founded the "Grand Orient of Italy in exile". Accor- ding to Panorama, this new masonic lodge was designed to boulster Gelli after at tempts by other Italian freemasons to cleanse the movement of his pernicious in fluence. The report of Prince Michael's in volvement is impossible to believe, but un, doubtedly large numbers of Italians now believe it. It is a pity that stories about freemasonry are so difficult to check.
Alexander Chancellor
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