It was another of those days in modern Italy that have become depressingly familiar. Poor people stand around an ugly public building mourning their dead to the accompaniment of various “state” representatives and volunteer workers.
Carabinieri, traffic police, finance police, the local mayor, the Red Cross and even the minister for transport are all on hand for a ceremony in which solidarity is not only genuinely expressed (by many) but in which solidarity must be seen to be expressed.
Run-down reality
However, it was hard not to conclude that the massive presence of the state in a run-down, southern reality like Monteforte Irpino yesterday contrasts sharply with the reality of an absence that tends to last for the other 364 days in the year.
As we stood listening to the minister for transport, Maurizio Lupi, it was hard not to notice that his five-car caravanserai was keeping the motors running just to get out of this place as quickly as possible.
This is a handsome corner of Campania, notwithstanding an obvious lack of anything remotely resembling what we used to call “town and country planning”.
This is a part of the world where the evening streets are lined with men who would seem to have an exclusive on the sidewalk, unlike their women folk who tend to watch from their balconies.
For all the obvious insincerity of the usually absent state, however, these are people who give a genuine expression to their old-fashioned solidarity. Flowers, applause and long silences marked the afternoon in Monteforte Irpino yesterday. Given the nature of the tragic incident, people could not even find it in themselves to get angry with the bigwigs.
In a land that has long suffered, they will suffer this too. That is the fatalistic southern Italian way.