The 400 steps
The central police headquarters in Ferrara is only 400 steps from our university department. They’re in the same street, and I know it’s 400 steps because I counted them.
So – this it how it went: I’d asked myself many times how far it was, so one day, what the heck, I started counting. So I calculated the distance and gave it a number. That’s not what I really wanted to do, I wanted to grasp the other distance, the legal one, but that I wasn’t able to do, it’s beyond me. Foreigners’ Law is still not a subject of study, not even an optional one, but we find it wherever we look. It says, “A residence permit must be ready and returned in a period of time not exceeding 20 days of its presentation”.
I hand in my documents and say, “Can you tell me when it will be ready?”
“You know what it’s like.”
“What?”
“First they have to go to Rome.”
400 steps down the street: if I were sitting in a chair in front of a commission composed of profs and assistants, I’d say, “A residence permit must be ready and returned in a period of time not exceeding 20 days of its presentation”
400 steps back.
“So?”
“Then they’ll call you, or they’ll send you a letter. It can take them as long as a year.”
“A year? That long?”
“Well, boy, they’re up to their necks with work, what can you do about it?”
“No,” I say. “but it’s supposed to be 20 days.”
“If you say so.”
And I want to shout it’s not me who says so, it’s the law. But I don’t.
Flashback, 400 steps.
“All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction ox sex, race, language, political opinion, or personal and social condition.”
I could express it like that for the exam in Constitutional Law, or in the one in Inalterable Rights.
400 steps back, a year forward.
“That’s right, we have to fingerprint you. It's ... the law on security ... so we know ... where you are what you do, it’s not for ...”.
It’s not very far, if that were all, but there’s more. There must be some perfidious coincidence in the fact that these two buildings are so close to one another. It’s not only 400 meters, there are years of difference. The police headquarters is years behind and – some malicious tongues claim – maybe also a few years to the right. The difference between what is said in Building 1 and what happens in Building 2 is too great to be contained in only 400 steps.
But as I’ve already said, I’m only able to grasp the geographical distance, not the legal one.
n.d.t., An echo of the title of the film ‘The 100 Steps”, directed by .Marco Tullio Giordana, about the life of Peppino Impastato, a young political activist and journalist killed by the Mafia in 1978. 100 steps measured the distance from his home to that of the Mafia boss responsible for his assassination.