My Steam Train from Bassano to Venice in 1974
With my friend Silvana, I travel by train every day. It’s a long trip: it starts in the dark of the mainland and ends at dawn in the oily glow of the Venice lagoon.
In the train compartment I sit among the commuters,
mainly workers on their way to the oil refineries at the docks in Portomarghera. Their faces are wrinkled,
their hands knotted with thick veins. As they doze, cigarette ash dangles like
grey worms from between their fingers. Nobody talks. Only the rattling of the
old steam train. When it comes to a halt, we all troop out and vanish into the caligo, the Venice mist. I can feel its
bitter breath.
Commuters and vendors pack the narrow calli (streets). Silvana and I have to
jostle our way through the stalls and the lazy tourists. Sometimes we get caught
in the middle of protests. It’s when angry workers from the oil refineries storm here in their blue overalls. They
sing the Internazionale, shake their
fists and wave red flags. University students in jeans and green parkas stream
in. They shout slogans. At times they fight one against the other, left against
right, and then the riot cops in their metal helmets rush in. That’s when it
really gets cool: stuck wherever you are and you can’t move.
My school is an ancient building in the
district of Sestiere Cannaregio, with a lovely marble facade.
Yet, a glimpse at the dark shadows of the nearby Jewish ghetto gives me the
creeps. As soon as I push open the solid school door, the darkness inside is
overwhelming. For the first time I’m in a class of both boys and girls. I’m
sitting in the third row on the left, next to Silvana. The warmth from her body
doesn’t help to melt away the tension.
‘Today’s composition is: Write about an experience that changed your
life.’ I flinch at the sound of the Italian teacher’s sharp voice. Miss C,
as we call her, has a serious face with deep brown eyes and dark hair, cut
short. When she is sitting high on her wooden chair in front of the class, she
looks like a Doge in his Palace. She
knows her role.
Miss C is not a conventional teacher,
though. There are rumours that she plays football with the dock workers in the
evenings; that she is at the head of the new feminist movement in Venice and a
Communist herself. She even has a Russian name, Vanya. The students love her. She scares me to death.
Miss C is moving slowly between the desks.
As she comes along, I’m conscious of the swishing of her thighs squeezed in a
tight brown skirt. She gives me a quick flick of her eye and moves on. I bite
my lip: my paper is still shamefully blank. Whenever I try to write, I shiver.
My voice is as dry as the cornfields in the summer heat. I wonder why anybody would
be bothered about what I think or feel. In my family I’m the youngest of nine.
I’ve learnt to keep quiet.
I turn slowly around.
The heads of my classmates are bowed over their pens scratching on the rough
paper. Silvana is among them. She writes beautifully; the Italian teacher
adores her. However, she’s not as good as me at foreign languages. Our
American-born English teacher, Mr. Smith, seems to like me. He is great fun: he
wears red socks which have a big hole in them and has a clownish way of
walking. Roberto mimics him behind his back. Next to Roberto sits Marina. Her
dark shiny hair smells of lemon shampoo. This morning she was humming David
Bowie’s Can you hear me, Major Tom? She
has a lovely voice.
Next to her sits Giuliana. Under her black
apron (we all have to wear it), she wears shorts. She comes from the docks at Portomarghera and seems to know a great
deal about boys. Francesco and Piero are sitting next to each other in the last
row. Francesco, who like me comes from the countryside, wears a pair of
old-fashioned knee breeches. Piero lives in Venice. He often makes a point on
the difference between a Veneziano, a
true descendant of the Serenissima
Republic like him, and the rest of us coming from the terraferma.
His brown eyes flicker and his white teeth
gleam when he smiles. During the break in the school yard Piero sings Je t’aime mois non plus, hidden behind
the chestnut tree because the song has been banned by the Catholic church. In
the summer he chases after young foreign girls on holiday. Once, I overheard
him saying ‘I don’t like thin girls like Twiggy. Laura is more my type.’
‘You, over there, you’d better show me
that you are something more than a pretty face.’ I feel a catch in my throat. I
keep my eyes down. Miss C’s words cut into me like knives. I know she thinks I’m
a nonentity. A sudden blush reddens my cheeks and I want to cry out: No, I’m
not a silly, empty-headed teenager. My fingers grab the pen. And I start
writing:
The most important
experience in my life was the sudden death of my father. My mother was left
alone with nine children to support.
Mum often messes up our names and dates of
birth. Last month my birthday passed unnoticed. But she is no fool. She took two of her eldest children, Luisa
and Matteo, out of school to help her run the shoe-shop, and then gave everyone
else a role. I, the youngest, was to take my father’s place and sleep next to
her, in the double-bed.
At night my mother often sobs and yells at
my father lamenting why he is resting peacefully in heaven with nothing to do
all day, while she has to struggle every single minute down on earth, with no
time left, not even for a prayer to God...
Decades
later in my study in South Wales I look at the teenage girl framed in a Polaroid
picture. I smile thinking of the day I got back my mark for that painful composition
with Miss C’s comment written in red, ‘Yes,
you barely passed.’ I never saw her again.
