A Season With Verona Read online

  But this is not what the fans are discussing. Or not these fans. ‘It was a fucking disgrace! Dio boia!’ the man leaning on the wall beside me suddenly says, speaking very loudly. He is tall and thin, one eye wild and the other immobile, glass perhaps, and he has a can of beer in every pocket of his big jacket, inside and out. ‘We covered ourselves in shit. Dio boia. In shit! The boss says: “OK ragazzi, explain yourselves! Go on explain.” We were all there. And nobody answered. Nobody answered, Dio boia! Everybody with his eyes on the floor. On the floor, Dio can! I was the only one who said anything, Dio boia, Dio can. The only one, what’s wrong with us!’

  Dio can! Dog God. For best effect the expression is inserted before or after Dio boia. Dio bon, a milder blasphemy, can be used as a soft option when winding up or winding down. And Dio porco is another possibility, though it tends to stand on its own. Dio porco is the only one of the three that can be safely reversed: Porco Dio. The divine can be substantive or attribute. But already, as you can see, the variations are numerous. No need to run through them now: they will be heard often enough in the course of the night ahead.

  I have ended up with the real brigate, that’s the truth of the matter. It’s Gianni who finally explains the situation. Gianni is the shy, broken-nosed figure who arrived in the bar almost half an hour before anyone else. ‘If you buy your ticket at the Zanzibar, you’re in with the real brigate.’

  I tell him that I’ve bought various tickets in the past from the Zanzibar, to go to Bergamo, or Brescia, or Venice, and the crowd were a fairly mixed lot. But he points out that when the venue is only an hour or two away, there will be at least ten coaches and the hardcore are diluted by all kinds of ‘normal people’.

  That’s obvious. In the same way, in the Bentegodi on Sundays, the hardcore are there at the heart of it all, they provide all the energy for the chants, all the humour and the violence, there would be no real excitement without them. But they’re held back and watered down by the vast crowd at the fringes. It’s a big, complex, self-correcting community, the Curva Sud, looked at as a whole.

  But tonight we have only the nuts. Gianni uses the word pazzi, the mad, as if he suspects that I need warning. ‘Only one coach is going from the Zanzibar,’ he says. ‘Who but a pazzo would travel five hundred and fifty miles to watch Verona away? They almost always lose away.’ Then he gives me a searching look from soft eyes. Am I a pazzo?

  ‘I planned to bring a couple of friends from England,’ I lie, ‘and my son. But the friends chickened out, bastardi, and my son has school on Saturday.’

  ‘Bastardi,’ Gianni says, ‘putting our game first.’

  ‘Bastardi,’ I agree.

  ‘BUTEI!’ a voice roars.

  A tall and very handsome young man has appeared, waving a sheet of paper. It’s the paper that begins ‘BARI, BUS. 1. Tim.’

  ‘BUTEI!’

  This is the local strictly Veronese word for bambini, small bambini. The supporters always call themselves butei. Little kids. I butei gialloblù. When one fan calls the others, he shouts: ‘Butei!’ When someone joins the discussion on The Wall, he writes ‘Butei!’ It’s understood, then, that they’re infantile, or that they’re playing at being infantile. The word is affectionate and ironic. And they always speak to each other in the fiercest local dialect. Which excludes everybody who wasn’t born within a thirty-mile radius of the town. However much you can learn Italian, you can never learn the dialect. You may understand it, but you’ll never speak it. Now the handsome man is going to take the roll and my foreignness will be exposed. Quite honestly, I hadn’t thought about this as a problem before now.

  ‘Get your cash out, Dio boia,’ the handsome fellow is saying. ‘Why did nobody pay in advance, Dio can? Che figura di merda!’

  ‘I paid,’ I announce.

  We’re in the streetlight under the portico.

  ‘Tim,’ I tell him.

  ‘Teem,’ he says.

  He stares at me. ‘Yes, you’ve paid.’ He doesn’t know what to say. Who the hell am I? But then our voices are drowned by a huge shout.

  ‘CHI NOI SIAMO?’ Who are we?

  Everybody picks it up. It’s deafening. Chi noi siamo? The Chi and the noi are sharp and staccato. The siamo falls away rapidly.

  ‘GLIELO DICIAMO?’ Shall we tell them?

  Again the solo voice is picked up by the group. Chi noi siamo is repeated. Then a huge chorus.

  ‘BRIGATE, BRIGATE GIALLOBLÙ!’

  The words are shouted with fists in the air, the ‘ga’ of brigate is given all the stress in a fierce yell. And from the chant they move straight into a song: ‘Siamo l’armata del Verona!’ We’re Verona’s army. And all at once they’re a group, a single entity. Every time they get together for an away game, this is the first chant. This is the moment when they stop being separate people hanging around in twos and threes, and become the Brigades. ‘Every place we go,’ someone suddenly shouts, ‘people always ask us CHI NOI SIAMO?’ Who are we? Shall we tell them? It’s a declaration of identity, a rallying to Hellas, to the homeland. And I’m a bit out of it. They would never understand how I come to be here. I don’t really understand myself. But at least I’ve paid, Dio bon.

  There follows an hour, under the portico, with the drizzle sifting down, of trying to get people to pay and trying to establish who is coming and who isn’t. Sadly, the girls aren’t coming. And then trying to establish who is going to beg to come without paying. Notably the wildest, the best supplied with beer. The leader with the sheet of paper insistently repeats the expression figura di merda, and even brigate di merda, though this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the figura di merda that Glass-eye is going on and on about quite obsessively. ‘The boss says, OK explain yourselves, and did anyone have the courage to speak up, Dio boia? I was the only one, Dio can.’

  Apparently there has been some encounter between the representatives of authority and the brigate over some unpleasant incident or other. Or at least that appears to be the gist. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood. ‘We can say we made a mistake without covering ourselves in shit, can’t we, Dio boia?’ Glass-eye insists. ‘Porco Dio, can we or can we not? We’re not the only ones to fuck up,’ he starts to scream. He doesn’t seem to need anybody in particular to speak to. ‘Some self-respect, Dio boia,’ he shrieks. Since I’m really not used to these things, it takes me a good half an hour to appreciate that he is coked out of his mind.

  The leader is now on his telefonino. ‘Get out your phones, butei,’ he orders. It seems there are people whose names are on the list but who haven’t turned up. It’s a disgrace! A figura di merda. It’s happening too often. People have no sense of responsibility. They book and they don’t come. The word merda is pronounced frequently and rhythmically, taking all the stress from the words around it. The ‘r’ rolls hard into the ‘d’. The Dio boias abound. There’s an incantatory outrage to almost everything that is said. You can feel it in your blood. We’re warming up.

  Everybody pulls out a telefonino. I am the only one who hasn’t brought a telefonino. They are phoning people at one-thirty in the morning. ‘Cretino! Get your butt along here. No, now, Dio boia, or you’re a dead man.’

  ‘Assenza giustificata,’ someone shouts. ‘The Fish’ it seems is on the night shift. Funnily enough ‘assenza giustificata’ is exactly the formula Head of Faculty uses at the university where I teach when somebody doesn’t turn up for one of our tedious committee meetings: ‘absence justified’. ‘The Fish’ is working night shift but wants to be kept informed about the group’s antics through the small hours. He has his telefonino beside his machine. Am I going to get any sleep?

  Then a squadron of about a dozen Vespas comes racing round the broad road that circles the stadium. They’re in formation occupying the entire street. Ignoring the danger of the big junction they go flying past us. At once someone is livid.

  ‘It’s Fosso, Dio bon. It’s Fosso!’

  ‘Fosso’ means ditch. They all have nicknames. Bastardo
. Fosso! ‘Your name’s on this list, Dio boia!’ Somebody runs after the Vespas waving his hands. ‘Merda!’ The Vespas disappear. Everybody is disgusted. ‘Una figura del cazzo.’ A fucking disgrace.

  One or two more people appear, though whether because phoned or because experience tells them that the coach will be spectacularly late, I’ve no idea. After all, they won’t be coming from very far. Almost everybody hails from the apartment blocks that circle the city.

  ‘The coach!’ someone screams. ‘The coach, butei!’

  A blue bus has appeared.

  ‘They’ve given us white headrests, Dio bon,’ our leader shouts. ‘White headrests, Dio boia. For the brigate. We’re kings, Dio can!’

  My heart sinks. This is no luxury vehicle. It’s one of the old blue buses they use to bring kids to school and workers to town from outlying villages. We must be renting from the local government. Who else would rent a vehicle to the Brigate Gialloblù? I’ve travelled on these buses. I know them of old. Stiff upright seats, no radio, no TV, no toilet, no suspension, no speed. And in fact the vehicle idles up to the corner at an incredibly slow pace. But then, we do still have thirteen hours before kick-off. The two drivers climb out: a wiry, waxy-faced kid who looks no more than eighteen and a man about my own age, moustached, wry, taciturn, ready for the worst. With reason. Even as we bundle on, the insults begin.

  ‘Autista di merda!’ (Shithead driver.)

  ‘Autista del cazzo!’ (Fucking driver.)

  ‘Autista cornuto!’ (Your wife’s having if off with someone else.)

  ‘Autista frocio!’ (Queer.)

  Then a steady chant: ‘Allerta, autista, la figlia è stata aperta’ (watch out driver, your daughter’s been fucked).

  As we settle in our seats there are about five minutes of this, five minutes of the most violent abuse. Clearly it’s something that has to be got through. The drivers don’t appear to notice. The drivers are the authorities in our midst, impotent, abused, spat-on. They will never answer back, but they will never take instructions from us as far as the driving is concerned. Thank God for that.

  Our leader climbs on to the bus to make an announcement, though now it appears that he himself is going to go down to Bari by car. ‘Butei, you can do anything you want, OK? Coke, grass, booze. Anything. Have a good time, butei. Do what you like. But you’re going to leave this fucking coach as you fucking well find it. OK? Anyone who damages this coach answers to me, in person. To me! And the headrests stay white OK. White headrests, butei!’

  ‘Gialloblù. Gialloblù. Gialloblùùùùù!!!’ The boys are singing and clapping. It’s the triumphal march from Aida. The bus is rocking. The youngest kids have chosen the seats at the back. ‘Lights off, autista di merda! Dio boia.’ ‘Turn the lights back on, autista del cazzo.’ ‘Turn the red light on, cornuto autista.’ ‘The nightlight, not the main light.’ ‘What the fuck have you turned the nightlight on for, autista di merda?’

  The coach finally pulls away. ‘Drive straight, driver. Dio boia.’ ‘What d’you turn for driver?’ ‘Your daughter fucks niggers, driver, she takes it up the ass from niggers.’ ‘From gypsies, Dio can!’ The drivers are completely unperturbed. They have done this before of course. Perhaps it’s a joke. Meantime, nobody, I reflect, trying to make myself comfortable, absolutely nobody has mentioned Verona’s last-minute purchase of the eighteen-year-old striker Alberto Gilardino, already in the national under-twenty-one team. Nobody has mentioned the game, Bari–Verona, the first game of a season starting almost a month late, the first game of, as the papers always say, il campionato più bello del mondo, the best championship in the world. Try to sleep, Tim, I decide. Try to sleep.

  Forget sleep. I’m sitting in the middle of the coach on the left. The seats are rigidissimi. The big dark window is hard and icy. Originally, I had planned to bring such luxuries as a change of clothes, some washing kit, etc., but at the last minute I saw the folly of this and left them in the car. All I have is my sweatshirt, with hood fortunately, a couple of hundred thousand line in my pocket, and a two litre bottle of … water. I’m fully aware that if I took such an obscene thing along with a group of Manchester United supporters, I would probably by lynched. But Italy is a different place. About an hour into the trip, the bloke in front of me who is taking swigs from a bottle of Amaro Montenegro, a sour after-dinner spirit, politely asks if he can drink from my water bottle. ‘Go ahead.’ Then the guys behind me, who are smoking dope, also ask if they can drink from my water bottle. ‘Go ahead.’ Water is respectable in Italy.

  But what is mostly being drunk is beer, the majority stewing slowly and in the end quite modestly, one can a little while after another among innumerable cigarettes. Just a couple of guys have bottles of fancy liqueurs, the kind of things advertised on the TV with glamorous women in evening undress.

  After insulting the driver and then singing, mainly in praise of deviant behaviour (‘we go everywhere, we fight everywhere, barricades, charges, urban warfare, we’re not afraid of the police’) – after perhaps an hour of this, most people are ready to settle down and sleep. But three or four are high on coke, and these guys are not going to calm down. There’s something demonic about them. Quite deliberately, they are not going to let anyone sleep.

  The kid two rows up from me on the right is a good-looking twenty-year-old in dark glasses, with a neatly trimmed, even dapper beard, an expensive haircut, a dapper jacket. He’s a million miles from the image of the soccer hooligan. But his head is swaying, he has a wild grin on strangely red, very full lips. ‘Bomba!’ he suddenly shouts. ‘Stop driver, Dio boia, there’s a bomb on the coach.’

  For reasons I can’t understand everybody finds this hilarious. The kids at the back are laughing uncontrollably. Gianni is smiling. Then the boy begins to repeat rhythmically. ‘C’è una bomba! C’è una bomba!’ There’s a bomb. There’s a bomb. Every time he says bomba, he puts all the stress on the om until the phrase has become madly rhythmical. And he begins a thousand variations. ‘Sul pullman c’è una bomba. Nelle mutande c’è una bomba.’ There’s a bomb on the bus. There’s a bomb in my pants. He goes on and on. Others join in. Needless to say the chant is punctuated with endless Dio boias. The kid jumps up and begins to run wildly up and down the aisle between the seats, hands flailing, chanting rhythmically: ‘C’è una bomba, Dio boia.’

  ‘Who’s got some dope?’ he demands. I wonder how much he can see in the dark coach with his sunglasses on. He asks me for dope, then drinks from my water bottle. ‘Dope, I want dope.’ In the other hand he has a bottle of the treacly almond liqueur Amaretto di Saronno. He runs up and down, pulling faces, jumping like a dog in a cage. ‘Sulla strada c’è una bomba! Drive straight, autista di merda. Your daughter’s a bomba. Your wife fucks like a bomba. With a black who’s a bomba.’ It goes on for hours.

  He’s called Fondo. A fondo is the bottom of something and senza fondo means bottomless. Could it be some reference to his drinking? But you never know how someone got their nickname. Nicknames are not like the crass things you hear about English supporters, Paraffin Pete, Jimmy-fivebellies. They go way back, even to infancy, and they are cryptic and secretive. Someone is called Peru, somebody Rete, goal, or net. There’s Penna, feather, and II morto, the dead man. And when these people do at last die, the little poster that appears to announce that death on the walls of the neighbourhood will give the baptismal name, and then in brackets beneath, ‘detto Locomotiva’, otherwise known as The Train.

  Fondo hangs upside-down from the luggage rack, he takes his sweater off, then his T-shirt, then puts his jacket back on together with his Verona cap and his expensive sunglasses. Swaying from side to side, he pours beer all over himself. His face gleams. ‘In the can there’s a bomba. Drive straight driver, Dio boia! autista di merda!’

  The others started by applauding, but now they’re getting bored. The four or five older men want to sleep. I in particular really want to sleep. On the other hand, this is a group who have invested all their collecti
ve identity in the idea that they are incorrigible. So how can they correct each other?

  Again, Fondo hangs upside-down on the racks, feet on one side of the aisle, hands on the other. This time he arranges himself so that his face, upside-down, is almost touching mine. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demands. ‘I’ve never seen you.’ I pull off his gialloblù cap and throw it to the boy sitting opposite me, a sensible kid who is pulling one thick sandwich after another from his backpack. He throws it to somebody further up the aisle. Fondo runs off waving his arms cartoon fashion. ‘My cap, Dio boia! In my cap there’s a bomba.’ It’s three in the morning.

  Then somebody else, somebody older, is standing in the aisle, looking down towards the back; in a loud voice he shouts: ‘So what about the Jew. What about him, butei. What do you make of the Jew? Bastardo!’

  This man is small and squat, with thick glasses, and he’s wearing a T-shirt that says: ‘I’m proud to be one of the five thousand guilty ones.’ A date beneath the writing allows me to work out that this must be a reference to a notorious away game with Cesena some years ago. Verona would be staying up in Serie A if they won, going down if they drew or lost. Five thousand went down to support them. Verona lost. There was havoc.

  But now he’s talking about something that interests me. What about Marsiglia, butei? What do we think about the Jew? I can see I shall have to open a long parenthesis.