The Pillars of Hercules

“Oh, sure,” he said. “The bottom of the Adriatic is sandy and muddy because of the rivers that empty into it. Triglia from the Adriatic are best in soup or baked. But the Tyrrhenian Sea has a rocky bottom. Triglia from that rocky bottom are best grilled.”

As I walked along the harbor I saw a gathering of men, three men apologizing and explaining something to an older man, who was complaining. Then, having finished explaining, the men told him how much they liked him, and when the first one finished, he goosed him by driving a finger into the man’s buttocks. The startled man jumped in anger. The second man did the same—a declaration of friendship and then a goose. The third man took a handful of the man’s ass and twisted it, all the while talking in mock sincerity. Finally, they walked away from the man, laughing in triumph, and muttering “He can shove it” (Va fan cul) and “Unnerstan?” (Eh gabeet?) and “To hell with it!” (Mannaggia la miseria!)

Few words are more vulgar than “ass” in Italy, and “shove it” sounds very coarse in Italian. Nevertheless, it was a fairly common refrain. I thought of the young men on the train (“What a bike” … “What an ass”) and how, ever since Sicily, whenever I bought a morning paper I was struck by the pornography on newsstands, not the fact of it—because of course it was everywhere, as common as postcards and devotional literature—but the kind of pornography; its themes and emphasis. There were videotapes and picture magazines. Most of it was prominently advertised as sodomy.

“Top Anal” and “Sex School (100% Anal)” were displayed along with the “Donald Duck” comics and the Sacred Heart prayer cards. “Capriccio Anale” was stacked next to Italian-English dictionaries, and The Sights of Ancona—or wherever. Some of it was euphemistic: “A View from Behind.” Much of it was blunt: “The Seeker of a Deep Ass.” Often these combined women and animals, dogs mostly, in such videos or magazines as “Moscow Dog,” “Three Women and a Dog,” “Animal Instincts (Anal),” “Super Animal,” and so forth, displayed for anyone buying a newspaper to inspect. In Italy pornography was as publicly proclaimed, and as inescapable, as religion.

In Spain I had reached the conclusion that a country’s pornography reveals an inner state and gives clues to a society’s unconscious: its predilections and compulsions. What sells as pornography in one country would be laughed at in another. I happened to be in Ancona, but Italian pornography was pretty much the same all over the country. There were also unambiguous advertisements in Italy, such as the lovely woman appearing to fellate a penis-shaped fudgicle (motto: “Me and my Magnum!”). But what did this Italian obsession with sodomy and bestiality indicate? It was not a delicate subject but it was a delicate question.

I risked asking it in Ancona, in a bar the night that I arrived. I was among students—Ancona seemed to be full of schools and colleges. One was reading a thick book, Il Fenomeno Burocratico. On the little piece of paper she was using as a bookmark were scribbled the words “Chi si considera—vale poco; chi si confronta—vale molto.” I fell into conversation with some of them, who were talking about the war in Bosnia, and after I said that I was an American they practiced their English with me. Eventually they got around to asking me what I thought of Italy.

“The food is wonderful, and I am grateful for the hospitality,” I said. “People are also gentle with children, open-minded and appreciative. The newspapers are lively, the bookstores are excellent. Most of all Italians are pleasant to be with because they are pleasant to each other.”

I went on in this way, meaning what I said, and then, choosing my words carefully, I asked about the emphasis on sodomy in the porno I had been noticing.

“That’s an old Italian method of birth control,” one boy said, and they all laughed.

On my way to Rimini the next day I passed the seaside towns of Senigallia and Fano, the beginning of what Italians call “The German Coast,” La Costa Tedesca, because of the annual visitation of Germans in the hundreds of thousands, from May until September. There were German trailer parks at Marotta, and signs in German on most beaches. The train passed so near the sea I could clearly hear the sluggish Adriatic slosh against the jetties and the breakwaters that ran parallel to the shore. It was as heavily developed and as tacky as the Spanish coast, but unlike Spain far lusher inland: hills of black pines, meadows bounded by junipers and poplars, modest vineyards and orchards, fields of hay being cut and baled.