Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [96]
Restitution and Redemption
Fear, friendship, and illegality: these define an intimacy that must be protected from outsiders and officials. As recently as the i98os it was not uncommon for a local victim of bicycle theft to get the local boss to arrange restitution.' One man recounted how, when he had turned his back on his truck for a moment, a television set was stolen from it-so he found an underworld operator he already knew, paid him 50,000 lire, and got his television set back within two hours. A Monticiano who had gone dancing in Monte del Gallo got his purloined Lambretta scooter back within half an hour because he was able to identity the appropriate boss-who, he said, would interpret the theft as insulting his hospitality: "I don't allow myself to be robbed in my own home" (non mi permett' a fa ruba a casa mia10). Sometimes, the stolen goods have to be sought further afield, since the local clans are also connected through exchange networks. But even then a competent boss could bring about the recovery very quickly.
Residents' own bicycles and motorbikes were usually recognizable, so they would not be touched in the first place; this, I was assured, was a matter of respect (rispetto). People knew better than to padlock their bicycles to traffic signs, which could simply be lifted up out of the ground; they relied on the good faith (buona fede) of the neighborhood thieves. If residents did have to ask a local boss to recover stolen property for them and to do that they had to know which of the local bars specialized in the particular type of goods in question), they also knew better than to tell anyone else of their misadventures, "for fear of retribution." Outsiders often never got their property back at all, especially if they did not have the right connections; locals professed to know nothing-"whoever does not wish to, does not know."
The solidarity that did exist locally, while never absolute, could at times furnish long-lasting benefits. At some point in the 197os a Monti lawyer successfully defended a local thief in court. Since then, despite at least two previous break-in attempts, the visibly prosperous house of the lawyer's wife's uncle, where the lawyer's wife had grown up, has never been robbed. It also helps to have disreputable friends in other places. One night a member of the Trastevere malavita (underworld) realized that a raid being planned on a Monti jeweler's shop was aimed at a friend of his; in the end nothing happened, either because the jeweler's friend talked them out of it or because the criminals realized that someone had betrayed their plans.
Conversely, and predictably, going to the police was a virtual guarantee that one would never been able to recover the stolen property. Recourse to police intervention might be considered acceptable only when the mediator asked for too much money, in which case someone with police connections might be able to get some action. More often, the offended boss would make sure that the stolen object was burned or otherwise damaged as an unambiguous message of disrespect. But these were rare exceptions; most Romans understood the rules and played by them. The occasional act of violence was thus more of a threat held in reserve and used to maintain the system than a frequent occurrence. The mediators were themselves careful not to ask for too high a price for the restitution, since they knew that in many cases the stolen goods could not easily be fenced, or that they were objects of purely sentimental significance and no monetary value (in which case the police would not take the theft seriously in any case. A designer handbag recovered in this way around 1992 contained, in addition to some money, the owner's papers; after a neighbor intervened, she received a telephone