The Museum of Things Left Behind. Seni Glaister
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beer without being drained by the full force of the sun. On the other hand, Il Toro Rosso, while only ninety degrees away, offered a very different climate: it enjoyed full afternoon sunshine on its apron, offering clients a distinct advantage in the winter months and early evening, when a drinker might enjoy the last of the sun as it reached over the mountains and into the valley. A free man, in a different city, in a different country, but faced with the same choice, might choose to spend his lunchtime at Il Gallo Giallo and his evenings at Il Toro Rosso. Or his winters at Il Toro Rosso and his summers at Il Gallo Giallo. But this wasn’t a different city, or a different country, and where you chose to drink wasn’t a simple matter of ergonomics or personal comfort.
Inside, the bars barely differed. An equal number of bar stools had popped their red vinyl seat covers to reveal tired yellowing foam. The twelve or so tables in each were topped with thin slabs of a similar red stone, probably quarried from the same pit in the nearby foothills. During the summer months the cool stone offered respite, and it was said that by leaving your bottled beer atop any of the tables for just a few minutes, the beer’s temperature would actually drop by a degree or two. During the winter months the stone was a curse but the patrons of both bars knew better than to lean their exposed wrists or hands on the inhospitable surface. Both bars were decorated in a similar fashion – that is to say, minimally. A few sparse mirrors shouting the copy lines of long-forgotten tobaccos and liquors hung on nails, and similar drab once-white curtains, never closed, were suspended at the window of each bar, sharing the view of the dark alley between them. The ninety-degree angle at which the establishments sat ensured that the drinkers in one bar couldn’t view those in the other, although when the outside tables were occupied in both, it would be easy to imagine that the occupants were all patronizing the same place: the chairs often spilled over the boundaries and met across the alley.
Most residents of the city rarely referred to the bars as either Il Gallo Giallo or Il Toro Rosso, knowing the first as ‘Gallo’ or the Old Bar, and the second as ‘Rosso’ or the New Bar. There was little to choose between them as far as age went either: although Il Gallo Giallo was older by a full five years, they had both opened to custom in the mid-1800s, which meant that their shared history had them as close siblings, rather than relatives separated by a generation.
Il Gallo Giallo, the Old Bar, was run by a taciturn landlord, whose job it was, he felt, to slam beers down in front of his customers, allowing the top centimetre to slop onto the table below, and to leave teas cooling on the counter before delivering them at a less than satisfactory temperature. The tea was never strained, but drunk so dark and bitter that to the uninitiated it would be completely unpalatable. Those drinking in the Old Bar, however, had earned their right to consume their tea there, and to issue one word of complaint either about the manners of Dario Mariani, their landlord, or the temperature of the tea was unheard of.
By contrast, a young man, with traces of naïve optimism still visible on his face, ran the New Bar. He had inherited his position from his father, who had taught his son everything he knew before retiring, and then dying, both gracefully and considerately. His son, Piper, had been an attentive student and had learned the lessons of beer, tea, and of the illegal but much practised habit of fortifying the local wine into something that would chase the cold away from your kidneys in the winter. But he had aspirations above and beyond those he had acquired from his beloved father. Piper had a secret ambition to beat his rival. How he could judge his success in a battle that the other showed no interest in entering, he had not yet ascertained – perhaps by a gradual migration of loyal customers from the Old Bar to his, or through some as yet unimagined innovation … He lay awake at night, considering it.
In truth, though, a truth that Dario took for granted and Piper refused to acknowledge, there was no competition between the bars. A century and more of tradition was so firmly rooted that it was unlikely that anything would shake the unwritten rule that, come lunchtime, the men of government, heads of state, the police and the army – anyone who donned a uniform – made their way to Il Gallo Giallo. Within its yellowing walls you would find, too, those who aspired to a life in government and who were considered – either by themselves or others – as on the up.
Il Toro Rosso, on the other hand, was home to the labourers and farmhands, the teachers and health-workers, the artisans and musicians, and the students who lacked political ambition.
There was no edict that suggested this was where you belonged, and those whose instinct drew them to one or the other were probably unaware, at the time, of the partisan statement they were making when they went, at any age, for the first time to order a drink. But the distinction was inherent and abided by comfortably without the prejudice that similar apartheid might afford in other European countries. That is not to say that one could not choose to drink with a man from the other bar, but habitual practice suggested they were probably more likely to meet on the three or four tables that inhabited no man’s land between the two establishments. As such, these were often the most prized positions to occupy.
Today Remi entered Il Gallo Giallo, breathing in the scent of hops and tea while looking around to see who might be there to hear his news. He hung up his hat next to those of Mario Lucaccia and Giuseppe Scota and sauntered slowly, luxuriously, to the bar with affected patience and the quiet smile of a man who knows he has a story to share with a willing audience.
He told his tale in the smallest detail, with only the tiniest embellishment, describing the onion-skin quality of the perfumed paper and the gold-leaf emblem of the royal stamps, his immediate ascent through Parliament Hall and his private audience with the president, who had read to him, word for word, in the flawless hissing articulation of the English language as if he himself had been raised among the British nobility.
‘Oh, yes, the president’s English is word-perfect. Not a thotthage in thite for the president.’ The postman mimicked a peasant’s pronunciation of the country’s second or third language, depending on the number of years they had been immersed in pursuit of a full and useful education.
Remi continued to regale his audience with the contents of the letter, that none other than the royal Duke of Edinburgh, brother, he thought to the King himself or uncle to the Queen. One of the two. Anyway, a senior royal, certainly, who had set his sights on visiting their country, for he had heard such fine stories about it around the globe.
Draining his cup of tea, and pushing it back across the bar, he waited for a refill. Immediately speculation was rife, and the topic of conversation bubbled across the bar and out onto the adjoining pavement, trickling to those standing at the mouth of the alley and across into the New Bar. It was as if Remi himself were being carried above the heads of the drinkers, a victorious matador at the annual Bull Fling. His words seeped through the New Bar, gathering a momentum and meaning all of their own as they were taken, doubled and passed on.
By the time the president greeted his audience from the balcony there were very few who hadn’t heard one of the many unofficial versions of the extraordinary news.
CHAPTER 5
In Which a President Addresses His Nation
Angelo, Sergio’s chief of staff, had masterfully managed to intercede just in time to pull the president back from the potential error of donning full military uniform. However, Sergio’s smart black suit was decorated with a scattering of medals to add a sense of sobriety to the occasion. As the president slid open the long windows of his sitting room and stepped onto his balcony, he felt his mood lifted by the formality of the occasion and the splendour of pageantry. Behind him filed Angelo, Mario Lucaccia, the minister for the exterior, and his ten other senior ministers who now fanned out at either side of him. They stood to attention, their arms straight at their sides, their feet shoulder-width apart, as was the custom when the president made any public address.
Despite the dull spring day and the ceaseless drizzle, a curious crowd had assembled in Piazza Rosa, propelled by the contagious enthusiasm of Remi the postman. By the time the president had taken his position, at least fifteen hundred people were gathered in the piazza. As he approached the front of the balcony, the onlookers allowed