Milan in the Heat

How to procrastinate in the capital of Italian Fashion

It’s a stunning June day in Milano. I’ve just done an exam on war studies, and the sky is a lovely blue. There were two questions, one on maritime strategies in the world wars, the other on the French conflict in Algeria in 1954.

As a Brit and avid reader of the period Niall Ferguson calls ‘the Thirty Years Crisis’ (named after historian E.H. Carr’s work), the first question was so enjoyable I wished all exams were like it. However, equally as a Brit, maintaining a healthy and jovial dislike for all French things apart from bread, mille-feuille (equally as difficult to pronounce as it is to eat, and often producing the same sounds) and fraternité, the second question was rather troubling, and made worse by the fact that the French had carried out a ridiculous amount of campaigns in Algeria over the colonial period, ensuring that my answer was about as anachronistic as a Neanderthal with a beret.

Having adequately blamed the French for another British misstep on the European continent, continuing a long and noble patriotic tradition, I checked into my breezy Airbnb and planned to begin studying for my economics exam in two days’ time. Only, I really could not be bothered. I found myriad ways to procrastinate, and eventually decided that I ought to collect groceries for my stay now, as it was incredibly urgent and that it would take me away from studying only a short time.

I threw on a white t-shirt and let my feet breathe in sliders, donned the shades, and headed out into the fine Italian sunshine. The heat was wonderful, the same steady glow you feel on a beach at early evening, and the Milanese metropolis was teeming. Milano is very different to all Italian cities. It’s very Americanised, the streets are wider and the drivers seem relatively competent. The cost is much higher, for while Rome may be the actual and spiritual capital of the country, Torino may be its first capital, and Florence may be the birthplace of the Italian language, Milano is the economic capital. And in these moral times it’s the money which counts the most.

Here the pecuniary is in the beauty of the women and how they dress, the English on the shop signs rather than the Italian, the way people don’t say hello to you when they see you. Many of my Italian friends hate Milano, they find it to be without culture and community; the benevolence of strangers is rarer here, and you notice it. It seems more like the rest of the developed world in that sense, that is to say, worse. However, much like the rest of Italy, it is still full of the most beautiful churches and cathedrals that one could ever wish to see.

Right next to the large wooden door of my apartment building was the Chiesa di Santa Maria Suffragio, and like most Italian churches, notwithstanding my staunch dislike for religion, I found it irresistible. I entered through its large doors which had small religious images made into the metal, as though it had once been liquid and then frozen like so. The air inside was refreshing, but there was a shock. Like so many cathedrals here, it was breathtaking, with an architecture and attention to detail, a care and passion in the craftsmanship, of a bygone era. Sculptures of Christian faces performed eternally in their sections, windows of superb colour, arches and pillars of lush marble.

The shock was not its wonder, though, that much is to be expected from these exquisite buildings. No, instead, the shock was to find that it was not empty, and that there was in fact a choir of children, led by an instructor of some sort. I am accustomed to being alone in these places, or unfortunately sharing them with terribly dressed Americans with a Nikon around their neck. The singing was not the best, and it finished with a strange religious interrogation by the instructor, who handed a microphone to the little 8-year-olds after leading a question on the values of Christ. I peeled away from the Tuesday afternoon Sunday School and back out into the Lombardian heat.

There was a little market for women, selling beads, jewellery, necklaces and even knitted handbags. I meandered through it gently, very much out of place, but enjoying their enterprises all the same. I supposed it was time to carry on towards the supermarket when a trap was sprung upon me: a bookshop! Once again, the fresh air within was very welcome, but not as much as the smell of books.

There were all sorts of histories of Milano and of Lombardy, an illustrated Bible the size of a spaniel and, much more interestingly, there were large tomes dedicated to fascism. Some of these, large, heavy-set works had upon their cover engraved metal plates with the unmistakable chin-jutting profile of Il Duce. One smaller book advertised the history of Milan and the epic of fascism. For a good ten minutes I perused it, trying to find anything critical of the 20th century’s lowest gift to modernity.

Italy has a strange relationship with fascism. It was born here, under the opportunistic stewardship of Mussolini, a man whom Hemingway found to be irascibly unremarkable, yet Italia found irresistible. It’s important to note that fascism here, while terrible, was not the same malaise as its German mutation. The sheer villainy of Hitler’s regime would eventually consume its weaker antecedent, and introduce it to the infamous extent of its murderous anti-humanism. Yet that cult of personality, that intrusive police state and imperial longing casts a smoke-like shadow over Italian society. It is the convicted uncle of Italian politics.

All of the Italians I know are anti-fascist, and even while they struggle to articulate what exactly Italian fascism was, they know of its caprice. Some Italians I don’t know are fascist. Beneath my apartment, University security guards have been caught on camera giving the ‘Roman salute’. Unlike Germany, which was ‘denazified’ after the war, many of Italy’s fascist politicians continued in local and national government well into the 50s and 60s. I have walked into shops with busts of Mussolini at the front; the overriding apology being that for a Mediterranean country that seems almost phobic to organisation, at least when he was there there was order.

I found a book to buy, Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature 1870–1918, and after having skimmed from the naughty brilliance of Kipling to an imperial lecture by John Ruskin, I was happy to continue on my way.

One terrible poem, An ABC for Baby Patriots by Mrs Ernest Ames, is too much fun not to quote:

A is the Army
That dies for the Queen;
It’s the very best Army
That ever was seen.

It is mostly as bad as this, but there are however some gems:

K is for Kings;
Once warlike and haughty,
Great Britain subdued them
Because they’d been naughty.

‘The subdual of the monarchy’ ought to be the apt historic term for describing the ‘process’ between the first two Charles’. For your pleasure, I will include also P and S:

P is our parliament,
Commons and Peers,
They will talk if permitted
For months — nay for years.

S is for Scotland
The home of the Scot!
It’s wetter than England
And isn’t so hot.

Armed with Mrs Ames’ alphabet of imperial stultification, I wandered to the supermarket with newfound alacrity. I bought fish and salad, and managed to stay my rage at Italians who haven’t yet mastered the art of saying thank you when you let them past. I sweated walking home in the heat, passing once again the bookshop, the church and the market.

The large wooden door of my palazzo was opened for me by a typically pretty woman, hefting five bags behind her.

“Do you need a hand?”
“No thanks, I’m stronger than I look,” she smiled.
“No, you look strong.” I reassured.

And with that idiotic, soul-devouring response I called the lift to the third floor and decided to exclude myself from open society for the rest of the day.