I know I promised you the mayor of Delia first thing today, but I decided to post this first. Think of it as part of the overture before the curtain goes up.
There are so many facets to daily life in this extraordinary interval that it may be pointless to try to keep up. And I’m not sure a daily “Cyrano’s Gazette” would even be interesting after a while.
Still, a riffle through the newspapers today shows that too many people in the Veneto still haven’t grasped the basic concepts of quarantine. The first basic concept is “Do not exit your front door.” Second concept: “This is going to annoy and inconvenience you.” Third concept: “This isn’t just about you, buddyroe.” Yet too many people are clearly annoyance-and-inconvenience-intolerant, if not openly allergic.
As for the blithe spirits who continue to wander far from home and hearth in blatant contravention of the order (note: It’s not a request, it’s not a suggestion, it’s not an opinion) to stay home? We don’t have to look far to find them.
The Carabinieri of the province* of Venice have stopped some 30 wanderers to inquire why the hell they (the wanderers) are not only outside their house, but even outside their province? “My garden has immediate need of topsoil (terriccio).” (I realize people have to care for their animals’ needs, but you’ll just have to muffle the demands from the begonias.)
“I have to meet my lover near the stadium.” (Standard practice here would be that the Carabinieri immediately check on the whereabouts of the lover too. So two people are now in the soup.) This swain was not only outside his province, but outside his region — he lives in Friuli.
A bar in Favaro Veneto, six miles from Venice, was open at 9:00 AM (the hour is immaterial: it was open) serving drinks to a merry gathering of nine. All of them were reported — that’s the official denunciation, plus undoubtedly a fine — including the owner of the bar.
The same case in a bar in the town of Santa Maria di Sala, and also in Passarella, a little postage-stamp of a village outside San Dona’, whose complaisant owner opened his bar for some people (it’s a small town, they could even all be relatives) who were found playing cards. The classic excuse of “I wasn’t there, and if I was, I was sleeping” cuts no ice at all these days. All of them were fined, and the bars are now what the police mean by “closed.” In these cases the Carabinieri typically attach a notice to the door: “Sotto sequestro” — impounded. If you try to sneak into an impounded place to have a nightcap, this would indicate that your passion for gambling — not with cards, but with your next few years — has risen to a whole new level.
In other fragments of the hinterland, the respective owners of a pizzeria, a bar, and a pastry shop were all discovered to be conducting business as usual, and now they’re not. To paraphrase the song, what part of “closed” do you not understand?
Speaking of which, for the next two Sundays the supermarkets will be closed. Translation: Get your shopping done early, because that reason for being out has been removed. You will have no motive whatever, apart from relieving the dog, to be outside your house, or driving around in your car, on your unicycle, on waterskis, on your feet, on anything.
I feel sorry for the dog, though; he’ll be worn to a nub by how many times he’s going to be taken outside on Sunday. Now that I think of it, I’m waiting to hear that some clever dog owner (or ten) has offered to rent their pet for a small consideration. It will happen.
This morning I went to do some topping-up shopping in order to remove any necessity of going to the store tomorrow on the eve of the first supermarket closure. Too bad I can’t go out and photograph the lines, they ought to be considerable.
Our trash collection service has accelerated. The old routine was that two men (both adorable, I have to say), each with his big handcart, would arrive in our little side street between 8:15 and 8:25. Maybe 8:30. One cart was for kitchen garbage, the other for the recyclables of the day, either paper or plastic/glass/cans.
The past two days, though, the two have disappeared, and one new man (probably also adorable, but his mask makes it hard to tell) shows up at 8:00 or 8:05 with just one cart into which everything goes. And he doesn’t wait around.
I asked him why he’s suddenly passing by so early, and he said — in a rather rushed manner — “We’re short-staffed, and also we have to finish by 10:00.” First we were running low on doctors, now it’s garbage collectors. And coming up are the officers of the law — the Carabinieri, etc. are thinning out, which is one reason why the Army will be joining the quarantine control brigade.
The mayor of Conegliano is ready to take on his citizens who can’t resist (God, they’re everywhere!) going out walking or running or bicycling among the lovely vine-draped hills of the surrounding Prosecco-producing area. Starting tomorrow, the police are going to be sending up drones, three at a time, to surveille the landscape. The mayor’s pretty conscientious to have fired this warning shot. I’d have just sent the drones up and then hauled in the nets, full of thrashing quarantine-breakers.
It appears that there’s one thing we are never going to run out of, and that’s the special cases who are totally incapable of changing their routine, or hearing anything outside their own cranial cavity. These people remind me of the horses I used to ride in Central Park in New York, long years ago. They were so broken-down mentally from doing the same circuit all day that only by near violence could you make them respond to your commands and not those of their muscle memory. “At the second oak tree we’ll trot,” their inner voice said, and it would take a while for them to notice the outer voice, which was me, saying “Actually, no, WE WON’T.” I bet they talked about me once they were back in their stalls.
“Why doesn’t she want to trot at the oak tree? Does she want to wait till we reach the ginkgo? Why?”
“Boy, I’ve had some weird ones, but she was the worst.”
“She’s coming back tomorrow.”
“Maybe she’ll forget….”
- A “region” in Italy (there are 20) corresponds roughly to the states of the United States. The Veneto is a region. The regions are sub-divided into provinces, a large area surrounding a major town, which gives the province its name. The Veneto is made up of 7 provinces, Venice being one of them.
