How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays (2 page)

She teaches me a few tricks; she urges me to track down an old receipt from Avis or Hertz, where the number of my license should appear on the carbon copy. In one day she helps me fill out the preliminary forms, then she tells me where I have to go, namely the license office of the prefecture, an immense hall, teeming with a desperate and malodorous crowd, reminiscent of the station of New Delhi in the movies about the revolt of the sepoys; and here the postulants, telling horrible tales ("I've been here since the first invasion of Libya"), are encamped with thermoses and sandwiches, and when you reach the head of the line—as I personally discover—the window is closing.

In any case, I have to admit, it adds up to a few days of standing in line, during which every time you reach the window you learn that you should have filled out a different form or should have bought a different denomination of tax stamp, and you are sent back to the end of the line. But, as everyone knows, this is the way things are. All is in order, I'm finally told: come back in about two weeks. Meanwhile, I take taxis.

Two weeks later, after climbing over some postulants who have by now gone into irreversible coma, I discover at the window that the number I had copied from the Avis receipt, whether through an error at the source or through defective carbon paper or through deterioration of the ancient document, is not correct. Nothing can be done if you give them the wrong number. "Very well," I say, "you obviously can't look for a number that I'm unable to tell you, but you can look under Eco and find the number."

No. Maybe it's ill will, or stress, or maybe licenses are listed only by number. In any case, what I ask is beyond their capabilities. Try at the office where you first got the license, they say: the city of Alessandria, many years ago. There they should be able to reveal your number to you.

I don't have time to go to Alessandria, especially now that I can't drive, so I fall back on a second shortcut: I telephone an old school friend, now a Highly Placed Person in local financial circles, and ask him to telephone the city's Bureau of Motor Vehicles. He makes an equally dishonest decision and, instead, privately calls a Highly Placed Person at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, who tells him that data of that sort cannot be given out, except to the police. I'm sure the reader will realize the risks the State would run if my license number were to be given out right and left: Qaddafi and the KGB would desire nothing more. So it must remain Top Secret.

Another stroll down memory lane and I come up with another schoolmate, who is now a Highly Placed Person in a division of the government, but I warn him immediately not to get in touch with any important officials of the Motor Vehicles Bureau, because the matter is dangerous and he could end up being summoned before a parliamentary investigating committee. My suggestion, on the contrary, is to find a Lowly Placed Person, perhaps a night watchman, who can be bribed to take a peek at the files under cover of darkness. The Highly Placed Person in government is lucky enough to find a Medium Placed Person at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, who doesn't even have to be bribed, because he is a regular reader of
L'Espresso
and decides, out of his devotion to culture, to risk this dangerous favor for his favorite columnist (me). I don't know exactly what feats this daring figure performs, but the fact is that, the following day, I have the number of the license. My readers will forgive me if I refuse to reveal it: I have a wife and children to consider.

With this number (which I now copy down everywhere and conceal in secret drawers against the next theft or loss) I pass through other lines at the Milan license office. I wave it triumphantly before the suspicious eyes of the clerk—who, with a smile that has nothing human about it, tells me that I must also display the number of the document with which, in the far-off 1950s, the Alessandrian authorities communicated the number of my license to the authorities of Milan.

More telephone calls to old schoolmates, and the hapless middle-rank figure, who had already run such risks, returns to the scene, commits several dozen additional crimes, purloins some information that—apparently—the police would give their lives for, and conveys to me the number of the document, which I also keep well hidden, because, as everyone is aware, even the walls have ears.

I return to the Milan Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and with a few days of waiting in line, it's done, the fait is accompli: I am promised the magic document within about two weeks. By now it is late June, and finally I get my hands on a preliminary document stating that I have presented an application for the issuing of a license. Obviously there exists no form contemplating loss or theft, and the document is the kind that is issued to learners, before they are given a proper license. I show it to a traffic cop, asking him if it entitles me to drive, and the cop's expression depresses me: the good officer makes it clear that if he caught me behind the wheel with that piece of paper he'd make me rue the day I was born.

In fact, I rue it, and I return to the license office, where, in a few days' time, I learn that the document issued me was, so to speak, only an apéritif: I am to wait for another document, one that will say that, having lost my license, I can drive until I receive the new one, because the authorities have ascertained that I previously possessed the old one. Which is precisely what everybody knows, from the Dutch police to the Italian authorities, and the license office also knows it, only they don't want to come right out and say so until they've given the matter some thought. Mind you, everything the office might wish to know is what it knows already, and no matter how much thought they give it, they'll never manage to know anything further. But that's life. Towards the end of June I make repeated return visits to inquire about the vicissitudes of promised document number two, but its preparation apparently demands a great deal of work. I am ready to believe this. They ask me for so many documents and photographs that I can only conclude that this paper will be something like a passport, complete with watermarked pages and seals and so on.

At the end of June, having already spent mind-boggling amounts on taxis, I look for another shortcut. Look, I write for papers with national circulation; perhaps someone could help me, on the pretext that I have to travel for reasons connected with the public weal. Thanks to two Milan offices (of
La Repubblica
and
L'Espresso),
I manage to establish communication with the press office of the prefecture, where I find a kindly lady who expresses her willingness to look into my case. The kindly lady doesn't think for a moment of reaching for the phone: bravely, she goes in person to the license office and breaches the sanctum from which the profane are excluded, advancing amid labyrinthine rows of dossiers, lying there since time immemorial. What the lady does, I don't know (I hear stifled screams and cascades of papers; clouds of dust blow from beneath the door). Finally, the lady reappears, holding in her hand a yellow form, of tissue-like paper, the sort that parking attendants slip under your windshield wiper, nineteen centimeters by thirteen. No photograph appears on it. It is written by hand, with some ink smears from nibs dipped into inkwells straight out of
Dombey and Son,
the sort filled with lees and mucilage, causing streaks on the porous sheet. There is my name, with the number of the vanished license, and some printed lines declaring that the present document replaces the "above-described" license, but that it expires on December 29 (date obviously chosen to catch the victim as he is maneuvering along the tortuous curves of some Alpine locality, if possible in a blizzard, far from home, so he can be arrested and tortured by the highway police).

The paper authorizes me to drive in Italy, but I suspect it would confuse a foreign policeman considerably if I were to display it outside the country. Oh, well, at least I'm driving again. To make this story shorter, I'll add that in December my license isn't ready, I encounter some resistance when I try to renew the temporary one, I fall back once more on the press office of the prefecture, I receive the temporary document back with, written in a crabbed hand, what I could have written myself, namely that it is renewed until the following June (another date chosen to catch me out while I'm winding my way along a coast road), and I am also informed that a further extension of the document's validity has been approved, since the issuing of the actual license will take a long time yet. The choked voices of my companions in misfortune, encountered in the course of my waiting in lines, have informed me that there are people who have been without a license for a year, or two, or even three.

The day before yesterday I affixed the required annual tax stamp to the document; the tobacconist advised me not to cancel it, because if my license were to arrive, I'd have to buy a second stamp. But in not canceling it, I believe, I would be guilty of a crime.

At this point, three observations must be made. First, I received the temporary document in two months, but only because, through a series of privileges I enjoy thanks to my social position and my education, I was able to disturb a series of Highly Placed Persons in three cities, six public and private institutions, plus a daily paper and a weekly magazine, both distributed and read nationally. If I were a grocer or a clerk, by now I would have had to buy a bicycle. To drive with a real license you have to be Luciano Pavarotti.

The second observation is this: the document I preserve jealously in my wallet is of no value and is very easily forged, and the country must therefore be full of drivers in circulation whose identity is difficult to establish. Mass illegality, or mass pretended legality.

The third observation requires the reader to concentrate and try to picture an Italian driver's license. Since it no longer arrives in its slipcase (which the driver has to purchase on his own), a license consists of two or three pages of cheap paper and a photograph. These little booklets are not produced at Fa-briano, like the volumes of Franco Maria Ricci, they are not hand-bound by skilled craftsmen, they could be printed in any printing shop, of the humblest sort, and from the days of Gutenberg Western civilization has been able to turn out thousands and thousands of such things in a few hours (for that matter, the Chinese had already invented fairly rapid procedures with wood blocks).

Would it be so hard to make thousands of these booklets, paste the innocent driver's photograph into them, and distribute them, even by coin-operated machine? What goes on in the maze of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the license office?

All of us know that any ordinary terrorist is able to produce, in a few hours, dozens of fake licenses—and remember, it takes more time to produce a fake license than a genuine one. Now, if we don't want citizens who have lost their licenses to start frequenting murky taverns of ill fame in the hope of making contact with the Red Brigades, there is just one solution: employ all repentant terrorists in the license office. They have the know-how, they have plenty of free time, and work—as is well known—is good for the soul; thus with one fell swoop we empty many prison cells, we make socially useful people out of former criminals for whom enforced idleness might cause relapses into dangerous fantasies of omnipotence, and we do a service both for the motorized citizen and for the national petroleum industry.

But this may all be too simple. If you ask me, in this driver's license business there's the finger of a foreign power.

1982

A simple journey by air a few years ago (round trip to Amsterdam) cost me in the end two Brooks Brothers neckties, two Burberry shirts, two pairs of Bardelli slacks, a tweed jacket bought in Bond Street, and a Krizia waistcoat.

All international flights observe the commendable ritual of serving a meal. But, as everyone knows, the seats are narrow, the tray likewise, and the ride is sometimes bumpy. Furthermore, the napkins offered by airlines are skimpy and, if you stick one inside your collar, it leaves your abdomen vulnerable, whereas if you unfold one in your lap, your chest is exposed. Common sense would suggest that the foods served should be compact, not the kind that make spots. It is unnecessary to resort to vitamin tablets. There are such compact foods as breaded veal cutlet, grilled meat, cheese, french fries, and roast chicken. Spot-making foods include spaghetti with abundant, American-style tomato sauce, eggplant parmesan, pizza straight from the oven, and piping hot consommé in little bowls without handles.

Now, a typical in-flight menu comprises some long-cooked meat smothered in brown gravy, generous portions of tomato, vegetables finely chopped and marinated in wine, rice, and peas with sauce. Peas are notoriously elusive—not even the greatest chefs can produce petits pois farcis—especially if, deferring to the insistence of Miss Manners, the consumer is determined to eat the peas with his fork rather than the more practical spoon. Don't tell me that the Chinese are worse off. I can assure you it is easier to grip a pea with chopsticks than to pierce it with a fork. It is also pointless to rebut that the fork is used to collect the peas, not to pierce them, because forks are designed for the sole purpose of dropping the peas they pretend to collect.

Furthermore, peas in flight are duly served only when there is turbulence and the captain turns on the "fasten seat belts" sign. As a result of this complex ergonomic calculation, the peas have only two alternatives: either they roll down your shirtfront or they fall on your fly.

As the ancient fabulists taught us, to prevent a fox from drinking out of a glass, the glass must be tall and slim. Glasses on planes are short, squat, rather basin-like. Obviously, any liquid will spill, obeying the laws of physics, even when there is no turbulence. The bread is not a French baguette, which you have to tear with your teeth even when it's fresh, but rather a special friable roll which, the moment it is grasped, explodes in a cloud of fine powder. Thanks to the Lavoisier principle this powder vanishes only in appearance: on debarking, you will find that it has all accumulated under your behind, managing to stain even the seat of your trousers. The dessert tends to the meringue genre, and its fragments mix with the bread, or else it dribbles over the fingers immediately, when the napkin is already steeped in tomato sauce and hence unusable.