Danielle Mitzman

The kind of column I’d write (if a newspaper should ever commission me to write one) #2.

It’s exam time here in Italy. 496,000 students sat their written exam in Italian this week for the final high school certificate: la maturità.  The Italian school system sees students graded throughout their final years at secondary school according to class tests, usually oral, known (chillingly to my English ear) as interrogazioni. But the main, national exams are now, each subject taken on the same day throughout the country.

Not being either a schoolgirl or a parent, I’m not usually interested in these exams but yesterday an article caught my eye. It was a full page in La Repubblica, one of Italy’s national papers. There was a photo of a group of diligent students, poring over their books. Underneath the headline in large, bold type read, Sesso, dieta e relax: consigli per la maturità. Sex, diet and relaxation: advice for final exams. According to “the experts” – a sexologist, a nutritional scientist and a psychologist who teach at universities in Rome – shagging, eating a healthy meal and chilling out are the key to writing good exam papers.

Now I know that those sitting their final school exams are, on average, 18 or 19 years old and that it’s perfectly normal to be sexually active at that age, but I found it really odd that experts were giving this kind of advice to, well, school kids! Can you imagine The Times telling A-level students across the U.K. to get bonking instead of cramming?

In the article, there was a list of advice according to which, I quote: “the day before your exam, eat an anti-stress diet: pasta, rice, bread, lettuce, radicchio, onions, soft cheese, yoghurt, boiled eggs, fruit and herbal teas with honey. Avoid coffee, crisps, savoury snacks, chocolate and alcohol. No curry, pepper, paprika, salt or tinned foods. Going out the evening before your exam is ok: to the cinema or for dinner with friends. Sleep at least 8 hours: staying up late to revise doesn’t help your memory. Making love before your exams helps concentration and your psycho-physical well-being. Then there was some advice about how listening to music helps you to relax and concentrate better (like the American soldiers in Iraq?) and a recommendation to wear “sensible” clothes to the exam:  “no outrageous plunging necklines for girls and closed shoes for both”. Bizarre as that last piece of advice was, I was unable to take it in after the bit about “making love”. Yes! Those were the words used: fare l’amore. The sexologist, Chiara Simonelli, elaborated: “sex is important to let off nervous tension and it stimulates the production of endorphins; you sleep more soundly and concentrate better.”

I thought about how confusing this would all be for the young people unlucky enough to read the article. What if they weren’t sexually active? What if they didn’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend? What if they did but couldn’t get together for a bit of nooky the night before their exam anyway? Would this put them at a disadvantage? Then I thought about just how confusing all this advice was. I mean, eat all that food, including onions, and have sex? (To work it off?!) If I followed all that advice I’d need at least 24 hours to fit everything in. How can you eat a healthy meal, go to the cinema, listen to music, have a good shag and still get 8 hours’ sleep in?

Apart from the misery of being told you’ll do better in your exams if you have a shag the night before, when you’ve spent the last 3 years trying and failing to get one (exams are depressing enough, why do the “experts” think it’s all right to add yet another aspect of performance anxiety to teenage frustration?), how exactly will these kids go about making tension-releasing love the night before their exams? Do their mums read this and say, “Francesco, darling, when you’ve finished your tortelloni and the mozzarella salad I left for you in the fridge, you and Elena can pop upstairs and use our bed. Special pre-exam treat, just this once.”? I don’t think so. Italians are notorious for having to do it in their cars because they live at home till they’re thirty. It may be fun but it’s hardly stress-relieving love-making, is it? And no crisps? No chocolate?! Hang on, chocolate releases endorphins too! What kind of evil torture is this? The least they could concede is that, if you’ve got nobody to shag, you can console your lonely pre-exam blues with a large slab of milk or plain.

I’m still reeling from the insensitivity and stupidity of this advice and am almost tempted to write a letter to La Repubblica to complain. Except I reckon the Pope probably already has done.

The kind of column I’d write (if a newspaper should ever commission me to write one).

Today I went for a walk with Irene, a psychoanalyst. Every Wednesday we go for an hour and a half of walking-talking English conversation in the public park of Villa Ghigi. On the hills south of Bologna, you get fantastic views out across the city and, on a good day, you can almost see the mountains. I moan when she makes me walk uphill, she moans when I refuse to take a path because my shoes will get muddy. She says I’m just like her husband. (Sicilian with a moustache?). I like to think I’m like a latter-day Sophist, imparting linguistic wisdom – and gently trying to get her to put her tongue between her teeth to pronounce ‘th’ – as we meander through our itinerant lessons.

Today Irene’s humour was dark, in spite of the weather’s turn for the better. “I’m worried, angry and ashamed”, she told me. “Why?”, I asked. “I believe it’s the beginning of the end for Italy. Democracy is crumbling and the stupid Italian people don’t even realise it.”. Irene says she’s disappointed and disillusioned, like a lot of Bolognese people. This is Italy’s most traditionally left-wing city, and Irene is a typical Bolognese. She told me she believes Berlusconi is destroying Italy’s constitution “a fine, solid constitution”. She thinks his actions bear the signs of dictatorship. She even went as far as to say she was reminded of the start of Fascism. I asked her if she thought perhaps her mood was just a touch over-dramatic and she shook her head sadly. “Even if he died now, he has destroyed the meaning of our constitution. The people who voted for him are not even unhappy about what he’s doing to Italy. It’s incredible. It’s frightening.”

I must admit that I do wonder what made the Italians re-elect Berlusconi in spite of the blatant way in which he manipulates his political position to protect his own interests. My English friends often ask me “why do the Italians vote for Berlusconi?”; just last week a BBC TV journalist who was over here filming asked me this now familiar question. But I’m always at a loss for explanations. I honestly don’t know. From our British perspective – and also from that of the anti-Berlusconiani – he’s a criminal with almost certain Mafia connections, driven purely by self-interest rather than the interests of Italy. If you ask most of those who don’t fly his flag, they’ll tell you “Berlusconi went into politics because it was either the chamber of deputies or prison.” In his last 5 years in office, he certainly managed to pass some very handy laws for himself. Cooking the books is no longer a crime and inheritance taxes will be much less of a blow to his kids. He avoided prosecution by claiming all the judges in Milan were prejudiced against him and making sure his trials dragged on so long that they went into prescrizione: in other words, past their sell-by date (yes, in the Italian legal system, it seems this is possible).

Today’s latest chapter in the rise of the Berluscocracy was the news that he’s almost certain to get a law passed which will protect him, as Italy’s P.M., from being put on trial for anything. He will be above the law. Irene says he wants to “curb the powers of judges and gag journalists like in a dictatorship”. I wonder if, after five more years of Berlusconi, I will find myself in a non-liberal state? ’Tis a gloomy thought.

***

On a cheerier note, today I had two amusing phone experiences. The first was when someone cold- called me from Liguria to sell me some olive oil. She asked me if my mother was home. I liked that, aged 36. I witheringly told her I was the owner of the house before curbing her embarrassed response with a curt “thanks but no thanks”. But it was quite nice. Not as nice as being asked what I study though… which still happens! I love that. The other was when I phoned my boyfriend from my bike (on my hands free – need 2 hands to cycle) and got the answerphone. I left him a message. Then I phoned his mobile and he told me, “I’m at home”. I realised I’d dialed my home number. Don’t worry, that’s not the funny bit. When I got home, I listened to my messages and didn’t recognize myself in Italian at all. I had to play it twice because I’d forgotten I’d left myself a message in the first place, and I couldn’t work out who the hell the kid on the answerphone was.

(published 16th November, 2007 on the Radio Netherlands Worldwide website)

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/thestatewerein/otherstates/tswi_071116_volterra

Volterra. A typical Tuscan hill town. Romantic archways, cobbled streets, postcard sunsets… oh and a maximum security prison. In fact, the prison is Volterra’s landmark but, since it’s located in a 500-year-old Medici fortress, it actually looks perfectly in place. And it seems almost symbolic of the way the prison’s presence manages to blend in with the local community.

The majority of the inmates at Volterra’s prison are serving long sentences for Mafia related crimes, armed-robbery, even murder.  But unless they are high-risk or dangerous, none of them is excluded from joining the prison’s theatre group, the Compagnia della Fortezza (the Company of the Fortress). Ironically, director Armando Punzo tells me that this gives him the advantage of having plenty of time to work with his actors. And they really do work: 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, 11 months a year. Every July they put on a new performance and it’s always the highlight of the Volterra Theatre Festival.

There’s a tremendous spirit of acceptance that you really notice in Volterra. I felt it when mingling with the inmate-performers in the prison courtyard, witnessing their animated conversations with the complimentary public. But I got a true sense of the depth of this local acceptance an hour or two after the performance. Sitting at an outdoor café table, who should walk past but Santolo Matrone, one of the cast of Pinocchio I’d been speaking to earlier. Unaccompanied, he was trotting down the street, listening to his mp3 player. “Hi, Santino!” I called out, using his nickname. He broke into a broad smile and came over to the table. “I’m on my way to work,” he said, “I work in an alabaster workshop in the afternoons.” Volterra is famous for its alabaster stone. We exchanged a few more words and then he said he’d better be going or he’d be late for work. I spotted him again in the early evening walking back towards the prison, talking on his mobile phone.

It was a perfect example of Volterra prison’s ethos. Since the success of Armando Punzo’s theatre project – which built the initial bridge between prison and local populations – Volterra’s become a model of social reintegration programmes. Once prisoners are considered ready, they can go out to work during the daytime in local businesses, where they earn a wage and perhaps learn a profession. And the prison authorities have recently experimented a new project: exclusive dinners inside the prison chapel with gourmet meals cooked and served by the inmates.

It’s all about social rehabilitation, yes, but it’s also about self-respect. The actors I met in Armando Punzo’s Compagnia della Fortezza read books, work out in the gym, listen to music, hold down jobs, and have hopes and aspirations for the future. Several tell me they would like to continue as professional actors when they finish serving their sentences. Volterra’s given them the opportunity to turn their lives around and the spirit to realise their dreams.