The Guardian’s veteran correspondent explains how he tried to depict a complicated society where what you see is rarely what you get
Some are drawn to Italy because of its peerless cultural heritage. Others come for love. Or because of the food or wine. With me, it was mustard. My first view of Italy was from the deck of a yacht on which I was working. The skipper – an amiable, if strangely reticent German – explained that he had tied up on the Rhone, at Dijon, and rented a bunk to someone working in a factory who had paid his rent in pilfered moutarde. Which was what we had in the hold, and would sell when we got to Lebanon.
My trusting, 17-year-old self believed this nonsense. It was only when I saw the skipper hand an envelope to a customs officer on the quayside at Imperia that I began reconsidering the nature of our cargo. I decided that jumping ship and trying my luck in a country where I didn’t speak a word of the language was a better option than conviction for arms (or would it have been drugs?) trafficking. It was the summer of 1968. Jobs were ludicrously easy to find. In Rome, I tutored the son of an opera singer; in Porto Ercole, I skippered a powerboat (a job from which I was almost instantly removed after nearly turning the damned thing over).
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