Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [153]
Suspicion, moreover, is built into the administrative framework, itself the product of social knowledge and a distinctly realistic understanding of how bureaucracy works in practice. Thus, the surveillance of one police force over another-now the polizia in turn also monitors the carabiniericannot depend on the greater probity of any one group, but is motivated by the all too public hostility and mutual jealousy that frequently erupt among these various forces. There is a hierarchy; when a pedestrians' rights activist asked a vigile to challenge a carabiniere who was illegally parked, his response made that clear: "What am I supposed to do about the carabinieri?" And one former policeman told me, in a moment of apparently drunken candor, that if he ever caught his daughter, a member of the city force, extorting bribes for fabricated infractions, he would let the carabinieri cart her off to her just deserts. Trust and mutual respect evidently do not flourish among the various forces.
Extorting Coffee and Campari
More generally, the play of intimidation among the various branches of public administration in Rome both sets an example of aggressive social management to the locals (who also recognize their own habits in it) and plays such havoc with the orderly timing of bureaucratic process that citizens feel free to impose their own rhythms as best they can. A Monticiano opened a large and clearly lucrative bar and cafe in an imposing square abutting Monti. Thieves broke in; and, not content with stealing whole hams and salamis, they poured all the soap they could find over the marble floor and burned the chairs and tables-a deliberate affront (spregio), although the motive for it apparently remained unclear. To clean up the mess, the proprietor had to lift all the marble flooring, but this was prohibited under existing conservation laws; his attempts to get permission produced no results, his establishment remained closed as a result, and so he decided to act. Together with two or three workmen he lifted the slabs and began washing them down with a powerful and abrasive detergent. At this moment an inspector from the sanitary department showed up and told him that he could not do this and that the inspector was going to write him a ticket for using potentially dangerous chemicals in a public place. His protests proving futile, he called the carabinieri, with some of whom he was on excellent terms, and they told the inspector not to bother. When the inspector protested, the proprietor told his friends to "let it go" (lasciamo perdere) because he actually wanted to pay the fine: "If they're right, why should I not pay?" His irony produced the desired effect; the carabinieri told the inspector, "This case is to be let go!" (si lasci perdere!) So the bar proprietor graciously allowed himself to be persuaded, and the humiliated sanitary inspector took himself off, knowing that his authority came to naught before that of the uniformed military force.
This story is interesting for a number of reasons. First, the bureaucracy's slow response to his request for permission to undertake a drastic cleaning operation seemed to him to justify going ahead on his own. Second, the element of chance adds to the sense of risk but also to that of unfairness; he feared the conservation authorities, yet it was the sanitary inspector who created the problem. Most significant, perhaps, is the play of fear between the various services, and especially his own ability to manipulate it to his considerable advantage; his gently ironic willingness to