I breathe in and out calmly. So it’s true what they say about Italian bureaucracy! “Okay, I’ll go get it and come back,” I say, getting up with the cursed paper in my hands.
“Be quick. The appointment ends at eleven thirty,” she warns me.
I fly down to the tobacco store, which also sells stamp duties, where I wait patiently while half a dozen grandparents buy their scratch cards, one plays the lottery, and another tops up their phone. I buy my coveted stamp duty and return to my tormentor at the secretary’s station.
“Done! Is it okay now?”
She doesn’t say anything to me and sticks a sign on the counter that says: “Coffee break. Service will resume at 11:20.” Then she looks at me, stirring something that looks like anything but coffee. Peat? Tar?
“Are you joking?”
But she doesn’t bat an eye.
Stay calm, Michael. Calm. I pace back and forth in front of the counter, shooting her dirty looks to which she remains impervious.
Once the five minutes have passed, with the precision of an atomic clock, she removes the sign and reopens the window. “How can I help you?”
This must beInception. “I am registering a request for access to building documents,” I repeat, exhausted.
“We don’t accept hand-delivered requests.”
“Then how should they be delivered? By carrier pigeon?”
“By fax.”
“Fax?” I’ve never been this bewildered. “Who the heck still has a fax machine?”
“If you don’t have a fax machine, you can use the one at the tobacco store.”
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight: I’m here, right in front of you, with this original form I filled out by hand, and you expect me to go back downstairs to have it faxed?”
She scribbles something on a Post-it and hands it to me. “That’s the number.”
I slap my palm down on the countertop with a crack that echoes down the stairs and then set off on my pilgrimage.
Sending the fax is harder than expected because the line is busy, and I’m starting to think that maybe it’s a sign that I should forget about the sale entirely.
When I return for the third time, victorious, the secretary-surveyor is on the phone.
“Did it go through?” I ask breathlessly.
She raises a finger to silence me. “No, Eufemia, I told you, I don’t have any coupons left. Yeah, I’m using them all. Two thousand gets me a set of sheets, and I’m getting a coffee set with the rest. Oh, you need thirty-two for the kettle? Listen, talk to Laudomia. She shops for her sister-in-law and should have some extras. Ay-ay-ay, you and Laudomia aren’t speaking? What happened? You told her not to water the flowers on her terrace when your clothes are hanging out to dry, but she keeps doing it?”
Tired of her rudeness and indifference, I reach through the hole in the booth and hang up the phone. “So,” I exclaim in a very unapologetic tone, “I made the appointment, I filled out the documents request, I got it stamped, I sent it with that blasted fax. Now can I have those damned documents or do you need a blood sample too?!”
“Come with me,” she replies dryly, with a sour expression.
“Thank you!”
I follow her back into the surveyor’s office, where she fishes out a file from the cabinet and two bundles of crumpled technical standards. “The copier is down the hall.”
“Did it really take all that?” I snap, seizing the precious documents.
“You’re very rude, you know that?” she tells me.
“And you’re not asgentileas your name might imply.”
It takes me almost half an hour to make copies of everything I need with this photocopier seemingly produced just after Gutenberg’s movable type printing press. It’s so slow that while the collator works, I entertain myself by reading various leaflets stacked nearby:Tax Returns—Everything You Need To Know; Public Transport Timetables; Menopause Awareness; The Consultancy Will Assist You; The Grape Harvest Festival: Social Dinner, Raffle, And Singing Competition. As soon as my copies are ready, I return everything with a triumphant air.
