Читать книгу Mistress - The Italian way - Delilah Jay - Страница 10

In Germany, we know the Molise Region predominantly from Jan Weiler’s humorous descriptions in “Maria, He Doesn’t Like It”, where, with the utilization of every possible bit of love for Italy, he depicts Antonio Marcipane from Campobasso in a way that moves the German soul to tears. Panettone. If you don’t eat, you don’t like it. That’s logic, isn’t it? Italian logic. Yes, it is the smallest region of Italy and one of the poorest. Dot-tore Amos, my hero, didn’t have enough to eat as a child, was left on his own as both parents had to work. They didn’t even have a loo in Molise. His place of birth, synonymous with the misery of an entire region.

”My parents loved me,” he tells me, tears in his eyes.

“Even though they beat you all the time?” I ask, provocatively and disgusted, while applying dark red nail varnish.

“Of course! You don’t understand! That’s love.”

Love, the Italian way, I think.

“And paint your nails more delicately. White or pink. Natural-looking. I want you soft and fragile.”

Then the emigration to Emilia Romagna. A career created in Ferrara: father working in the factory, on one of Bellarosa’s many production lines. His mother is a housemaid. Maybe she’s trying to see herself in the role of the signori for whom she works.

“That’s why she chose this name,” Amos explains to me.

The beloved, the lover. Amos, the lovely! It’s not that hard to move up. The real challenge is to behave as though that’s where you already come from - UP THERE - not from down here. Amos learned well. And turned into a carbon copy. A bad copy. The replica of Bellarosa and her way of life.