CENTENARIO

“Then the headmistress will take one step back,” Michele is eagerly explaining, “after which the president steps forward and takes the floor.”

“Does what?”

“Takes the floor.”

“Starts speaking.”

“Teacher said, takes the floor.”

But to me, “takes the floor” sounds ridiculous in the mouth of an eight year old. “Starts speaking,” I insist. “That's what it means, after all.”

Michele shakes his head. “You're not Italian,” he observes sadly.

We are in the courtyard behind his school, where he is showing me a strip of fresh turf a couple of meters wide and thirty meters long, linking three small, newly planted trees in a narrow carpet of pea green, surrounded on every side by swept concrete.

“The grass was laid only yesterday,” he tells me excitedly. Indeed, the gridwork of squares is all too obvious, the last-minute search for a cosmetic effect endearingly evident. For today is the hundredth anniversary of Montecchio's elementary school. It's eight-thirty in the morning, and we have just brought along a big carton full of sodas and munchies for the celebrations later in the day.

“Anyway, then the president takes the floor and . . .”

“Which president?”

Michele thinks. “The president of the republic.”

“What?!”

“The president of the republic.”

For a moment I almost believe him. In one of those hateful pre-election PR jobs where public figures like to be seen mucking in with the people and above all kissing little children, the president of the republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (newscasters must be under instructions never to spare us the Oscar Luigi), turns up in the small village of Montecchio with three thousand bodyguards and journalists to celebrate the centennial of the elementary school and shake everybody's hand while pretending to be unaware of a battery of television cameras. Then the absurdity of it comes home to me.

“No, Michele. If the president of the republic was coming, the place would have been under siege for weeks.”

“Oh.” He looks puzzled, probably doesn't understand “under siege.” Then he remembers. “The president of the circoscrizione,” which is to say, of one of the eight local districts that form the municipal area of Verona. This seems more likely.

“And Poggiolini,” he adds thoughtfully.

“Poggiolini?”

“Yes, he is going to make a speech.”

But the only Poggiolini I know of is a prominent national figure recently arrested for his part in a complex scandal having to do with taking kickbacks for inserting second-rate pharmaceuticals on the list of those medicines that can be obtained by subsidized prescription. Presumably, Michele has been getting the news mixed up with whatever his teacher has been telling him.

We are back in the entrance of the building now, where my son is showing me the commemorative plaque to be unveiled in the presence of various notables.

But not Poggiolini. I explain that Poggiolini is in jail.

“But he is an important man.” Michele is sure he was coming.

“He's in jail. There are lots of important men in jail.”

“But why?”

“For stealing.”

“But why do they steal?”

“Perhaps because they have so much opportunity.”

“But why?”

“Because important people have to spend all the money that people pay in taxes, and sometimes they spend it on themselves.”

This is a conversation we have had to go through any number of times since corruption scandals both local and national started filling up ninety percent of news programs. It's been going on for more than a year now, and I am still not sure if Michele has grasped the mechanics of it. Nor I perhaps. Nor the lawyers.

After a moment's reflection, Michele assures me that when he becomes an important public figure, he will not steal. I say, “Benissimo.”

Maestra Elena arrives, dressed to the nines in dark blue tailleur and puffy flesh-colored blouse, her hair freshly coiffeured, sprayed, fixed, helmetty, the same sort of obvious obeisance to the big occasion as is suggested in the neat geometry of fresh turf. Parents, mainly mothers, are busily coming and going with contributions of wine, chips, and nuts, bowls for putting the food in. Nervously jolly, Elena thanks me for the box of edibles we have brought, but I can see a glint of concern in her eyes at my somewhat bleary, unshaven state and scruffy clothes. There's a jittery, before-the-event mentality in the air, a mixture of elation and worry. Elena wants everything and everybody to be just so. I almost catch myself reassuring her that we still have an hour to get home and brush up before the solemnities begin.

In the event, when we arrived back at the school en famille and in somewhat better shape right at ten o'clock, only a few people have so far gathered outside the gate. We wait. The school is a solid two-story building in fading fleshy yellow stucco with wearily noble surrounds to door and windows. When first built, it seems the central part of the construction was used as a town hall, and only a few rooms in the wings were given over to lessons. Now brushed-steel window fittings seem to leap out from the stone like bright metal in graying teeth. The shutters, which are always closed in the evening against possible vandals, are dark green.

Most parents arrive a respectful ten minutes late. But still the ceremony doesn't begin. It turns out there are logistical problems as to where everybody is to stand. The school is set back from the road and sensibly protected by a low wall topped with tall green railings reinforced with ancient wire netting. Just inside the gate a double flight of stairs leads up, from right and left, to the main entrance where the still-veiled plaque is. Since there is precious little space between railings and school, people are warned that they will have to stay outside the gate for the first part of the ceremony. The children, meanwhile, those who are pupils at the school, have gone inside to put the last touches on the songs and poems they are to perform. A few well-chosen specimens, all girls, are leaning over the balcony above the porch whence the Italian tricolor will be raised at the appropriate moment. The parents mill below as they do when they wait each evening for their kids to come out. I can see Francesco and Francesca, our downstairs neighbors, and Silvio and Sabrina. They tell me they have discovered that Hristo is using a Camping Gaz in the basement. What's more, he's now surrounded by drums of paint, since it seems the imbianchino didn't have enough space for all his materials in his own garage. “Is the paint flammable?” Francesco asks. Could the whole condominium explode when Hristo cooks his beans? Silvio makes the coma gesture, but his smile is grim. We will have to have another condominium meeting . . .

Iacopo the painter calls to me. He's in leather again, but his new woman isn't with him, perhaps wisely, for I saw the wife about somewhere. I notice he's grown a ridiculously tiny beard, which extends no more than half an inch below his lower lip in an inverted equilateral triangle, the rest of the face being unusually clean shaven. Brushing an extravagant curl from his forehead, he complains that they've asked him to paint a picture of the event. “Can you believe it?” he grumbles. That's why he's had to lug along this enormous camera. But he could have spared himself that explanation. Every self-respecting father has at least half a million's worth of Japanese technology strung about his neck.

The band arrives. Its members arrange themselves in a rather cramped fashion by the front steps between the school and the fence. We are now running some thirty minutes late. A man with tweed jacket and red pullover, head of the “parents’ representatives” (is there a secret ballot for this position?), stands on top of the steps by the entrance and, fiddling with a microphone, tells us that the band will play some music until all the various luminaries and authorities have arrived. While he is speaking, the parents chat among themselves, largely indifferent to the exact turn events may take. Our Saturday morning is already lost, may as well catch up on gossip. To a mood of cheerful resignation the band strikes up some unexpectedly slurpy fifties music.

They're a curious lot, the band. Stefi, who's too young for school yet, still at the scuola materna, insists that we get as close as possible. She wants to stand on the wall clutching the fence above as some other little children are doing. I take her over there and lift her up, but in the only space left by a line of other children there's a saucer of milk and a cracked bowl of dirty cat food. The tradition of feeding stray cats is old and strong all over Italy, but it does seem curious to find offerings here on the school wall on such a red-letter day. I manage to persuade another young fellow to move over a foot or two.

There are about a dozen players in the band, and much to my amusement they're known as Il Piccolo Manchester. I grew up in Manchester and Blackpool and remember Whitsun marches behind much bigger bands, much bigger banners. Piccolo seems just about right.

They all have dark blue uniforms, which only accentuate, as uniforms will, what a motley group they are. Playing the flute at the front are two rather attractive girls, a blonde and a brunette, having trouble with the music stands clipped on their left arms. The blonde keeps losing hers, has to break off her playing to put it back. But the flutes are drowned out by the brass anyway. Then there are two or three young men: a trombonist with his hair tied behind in a ponytail that forces up his cap at the back so that the peak tips down over his eyes; a thuggish unhealthy-looking fellow who bangs a snare drum with determined boredom; and a very earnest lad with a clarinet. All the others are oldies, men who learned to play in the army, most probably, patriarchs with noble white moustaches and cheeks blown out round trumpets and horns, solid paunches beneath. Holding two great cymbals in white-gloved hands, a thin and very dry old man wears antiquated tortoise-shell glasses and sports one of those truly huge moustaches that sprout from right inside the nose to fan out downwards across the whole mouth, giving the curious cartoon impression that he has no lips at all. Comically, whenever he gets the chance to clash his cymbals, he does so with great panache, hurling his arms up in the air in grand operatic gestures. Beside him sways a blue banner announcing in silver lettering that the band was formed in 1876. When the thing suddenly sags to one side and you catch a glimpse of the fellow holding it up, he's so old and infirm you feel he might have been there the very day Il Piccolo Manchester sounded its first brassy notes in a newly united Italy.

Only when it's far too late do I realize that the fence is filthy. And rusty. Stefi is getting dirty. The cosmetic effort for the centenary got no further than the one or two strips of fresh turf. “And we know what will happen to that this summer!” Stefano has arrived and come to stand beside me, portly and in good spirits, relieved that Beppe is out of their hands and thus doesn't have to be worried about. “Nobody will ever come and water it once the big occasion's over.”

This time I manage to get in with a Sai com'è before he does and lift Stefi down.

“Still it's the big occasion that matters,” he then goes on to reflect. “Who really cares what happens to the turf in summer?”

The band finishes its preliminary medley. The luminaries, however, have still not arrived. The musicians strike up again. Stefano tells me that the fellow with the dramatic manner with the cymbals and the big moustache is known as Il Pesce, the Fish, apparently because of the harelip his moustache is hiding. But everybody has a nickname here. Michele recently told me that he is known as Fax. Partly because the Italians pronounce Parks as Pax, and partly because Michele once tried to explain to his friends that his father had bought a machine that sent paper through the telephone.

Stefi turns round to tell me that her favorite member of the band is a very plump chap with cheeks like two big salad tomatoes. I try to draw her attention to the handsome, earnest young clarinettist with his polished black hair and shining eyes, but Stefi is adamant.

Finally, the bigwigs are all assembled at the top of the steps: the head of the parents’ representatives, the president of the district, the headmistress, the priest, two teachers, and a local politician who is councillor for traffic in Verona.

The parents’ representative kicks off. It is desperately important, he says, gripping a red microphone and after almost no preliminaries, that we citizens come along to give support to “one of those very few public institutions that are still sound.” The reference to the political scandals that recently led to the collapse of Verona's local government is clear enough and would be deeply embarrassing, one imagines, for the councillor, who is implicated, if people were paying attention. But they're not. I can see Silvio's and Francesco's heads together, no doubt over the interminable Balkan crisis. And Iacopo has now taken something from his pocket to show it to an attractive young mother. On official occasions Italians come out of a sense of politeness, and to be part of lo spettacolo, but not to listen. The headmistress's speech suggests why.

The headmistress wears a dark tailleur with brightly fluffy cravat and has a hairstyle reminiscent of early Thatcher days: medium wavy and lacquered to death. But any possible likeness to the Iron Lady dissolves when it comes to performance. She takes the microphone, smiles nervously, almost trips over the wire, then gets hopelessly tangled. The parents’ representative has to crouch down to sort her out, unwrapping the wire from around her white tights. Then after a few words of nervous welcome, she moves the thing too far from her mouth, so that one has that curious effect of illusion interrupted, as when an opened door allows light into a cinema. Her voice is suddenly natural and distant and touchingly incomprehensible. Again the representative, who appears to be the factotum of the event, springs to her aid.

“I'm so emozionata,” she apologizes, which is to say, at once excited and nervous and moved. A very Italian word. “After all, it's not every day that one celebrates the centenary of one's school, is it?”

Nobody laughs at this delightful truism, for once again nobody is paying attention.

The headmistress opens her handbag and pulls out her speech. There are various sheets of typewritten paper. And she proceeds to read, as all public speakers do in Italy, for there is no merit attached here to the ability to think and speak on one's feet. On the contrary, it's as if the effort of writing the piece down word for word were a guarantee of gravitas rather than ineptitude. I always find it curious that though Italians are wonderful performers in their private lives, in public they actually strive to plod.

The headmistress reads. With the slight spring breeze she finds it difficult to keep the papers in order in one hand while holding the microphone in the other. She drops the papers. The microphone wanders nearer and farther from her mouth. The parents’ representative does what he can.

She is reading a history of education in Italy and at this school in particular. The school leaving age in 1894 was ten. . . . School became obligatory for girls at the turn of the century. . . . Nationwide state-controlled schooling came only in 1959 . . .

She reads quickly, giving the kind of details that might be interesting at an academic conference but making no attempt to have them come alive for her present audience. Then after a tricky, breeze-blown turn of the page, she starts talking more generally about the goals of education today. We have to reaffirm our indirizzi culturali—our cultural orientation—within the framework of una civilità umanistica—a humanist civilization. They are the sort of buzz words of contemporary orthodoxy that are on everybody's lips all over the West. I remember when I went to the parents’ meeting held prior to the children's starting at the school, I asked what my son would be doing if I signed for him to be exempted from religious instruction. “Something similar,” the headmistress replied mysteriously. Then she explained that all the children who opted out, of whatever age, were put together in one class, some seven or eight out of two hundred. “But what will they do exactly?” I asked. “Peace Studies, for example,” she replied, as if this subject had long been a well-established academic discipline. I was unable to hold back a smile, almost a laugh. It was entirely spontaneous, perhaps rather rude, but I couldn't help it. The headmistress was most upset. What, she asked me, as if I were a naughty child, was so funny about Peace Studies? But it seemed pointless trying to explain my sense of the emptiness of those words in front of twenty parents for the most part concerned as always with the quality of the food. I made a gesture of apology and begged her to continue.

Now she is explaining how children's education is structured in a modern elementary school. For one cannot have, she says, or rather reads, a percorso educativo—a curriculum, one presumes—without progettualità. Progettualità! Never heard that word before! I ask Stefano what it means. Planning ability, he explains. And indeed the headmistress says that whereas when the school first opened they taught only religion, Italian, and mathematics, now they have a full range of subjects to timetable, including, as from this year—and for the first time she reads with a little more animation—Computer Studies!

Ah!

The children on the balcony are making faces at their mothers and fathers below. Two members of the band have sidled round the corner of the building out of sight of the luminaries to light a cigarette. Brass players, too. . . . The headmistress is just pronouncing the words “recent advances in didactic methodology” when a bus passes, entirely drowning out the inefficient P. A. At which it occurs to me that, for better or worse, the most important thing that children bring home from these events is a profound indifference to the content of public discourse. It is important for the headmistress to speak, of course. But who cares what she says.

“Hope this is the last page,” Stefano mutters, as the woman once again flusters with her script in the wind, though her hair is majestically still. She waves the microphone about as the papers refuse to behave. But barely has Stefano made his remark than she has finished, without any forewarning, any sense of conclusion. And quite suddenly it is just as Michele predicted. The headmistress takes one step back and the president of the district steps forward to take the floor . . .

The president of the district is a postman from a nearby village. His long speech is dedicated to a meticulous reconstruction of the district's decision to support the celebration and sponsor the wonderful exhibition of “A Hundred Years of Elementary Education,” which we will find in the assembly hall. But I lose most of this in crouching down to tell Stefi that she will, honestly, get chips and Fanta at the end if only she holds on. I promise. Then just when I'm least expecting it—BOM BOM B-BOM!!! BUM BUM B-BUM!!!—the band explodes into a rendering of the national anthem made all the more feisty for the twenty minutes of tedium we have just put up with—BOOM BOOM B-BOOM, BOM B-BOOM BUM B-BAMMM!

The parents’ representative tells us the great moment has come, the plaque is now being unveiled by the youngest child in the school. Unfortunately, we can't see this, because it's inside the entrance, but he will give us a running commentary. “So, yes, the little boy has grabbed hold of the cord. Yes. He is pulling it. Now! Now! Yes, well, the drape seems to be more firmly fixed than expected. Oh. But the little fellow is still pulling. Is it, is it, yes! There it comes! A handsome white stone commemorating a hundred years of the Cesare Betteloni Elementary School! And now for the flag raising!”

The girls on the balcony are busily doing their stuff. The tricolor runs up a flagpole that points forward from the parapet, as if from the bow of a grounded ship. It flutters handsomely in the breeze. The anthem strikes up again. The band goes for it with renewed vigor. Il Pesce clashes his cymbals in great style. Then unexpectedly a second flag appears, not on the pole but draped over the parapet as is the style on Liberation Day: the yellow stars and deep blue background of the European Community! What a wonderful ideal Europe is! Only yesterday I heard that four new countries were to be added, four new stars in a great constellation of political correctness. And indeed instead of Peace Studies what they finally decided to call the lesson for those who opt out of religion was Osservazione all'Europa—Looking to Europe.

The anthem ends abruptly. The priest, Don Guido, steps forward in a fine black cassock and purple patterned stole. He reads a long prayer, then puts the headmistress to shame by displaying an enviable ability to juggle missal and microphone as he whips a phial of holy water from his pocket, unstoppers it, and, holding it in the same hand as the microphone, turns to the doorway to make sprinkling gestures over the portals. Since this involves stretching his arm out suddenly in the direction of the amplifier, located immediately inside the porch, each sprinkle of holy water is accompanied by a sudden sharp squeal of feedback. Unless it was the demons in flight. Though frankly you would have thought they'd have left long ago, out of boredom.