Milan, Italy a classic street performers tale

It was raining in Geneva and I couldn’t get off a show. I stared at the big departure board at the train station for a long time wondering where to go before I bought a ticket for Milano. I had been playing the tough streets of Paris for six months but had not yet played anywhere else. I bought an Asterix comic book in Italian and studied it while tunneling under the Alps.

I bought a hotel room with my last money — in any currency — then headed for the Piazza Duomo.

The center of every Italian town is the cathedral and Milano, despite its industrial city reputation, has a beauty. There was a fire eater playing in front of the cathedral. I waited until he was done. As soon as I started a huge enthusiastic crowd gathered around me — much easier than Paris. The fire-eater was screaming and blowing his whistle, trying to steal my audience. That didn’t work so he came right into my show and started screaming at the crowd and blowing his whistle and blowing fire but it was no good. I was new and the crowd wanted to see me. I used the only Italian I knew — Asterix vocabulary. “Cingiali!” (wild boar) I would shout like a swear word. “I Romani sono Patsi” I kept repeating, just like Obelix. (These Romans are crazy) The Italians are a loud, appreciative crowd. I felt like a rock star instead of a juggler. Hat packed tight with bills.

After the show the fire-eater came up and screamed nose to nose at me for at least four minutes. He was my size and thin build but a bit more muscular, bare chested, with tattoos. I didn’t understand a word of it, except every once in a while: hospedale, hospedale —1 hospital. Afterwards a Lebanese guy translated for me: “ Mustapha says he’s going to kill you.”

Yeah, I kind of understood that.

“You got a hotel room”

Yeah.

“Well, maybe you should go there”

I took his advice, showered and counted my $100 hat. Way better than Paris.

The next evening I placed myself completely across the huge Piazza from Mustapha and had three great shows. Again Mustapha came over to scream in my face for a while. The Lebanese guy was part of a set of North African and Southern Italian unemployed guys who were my regulars They would watch every show and try to chat with me afterwards Every day Mustapha would come over for a tirade but I started to figure out that it was just theatrics. (My shows were always much bigger than Mustapha’s) Everyday the Lebanese guy, who spoke the best English, would translate for me: “Mustapha says he’s gonna kill you” he would always say.

I watched Mustapha’s show. Here was a rarity, a hard nosed fire-eater with a sense of humor. He would play the Queen song “Mustapha” and prance around like a madman.
He was dark skinned and would scream that he was terrone, which is the pejorative word for Southern Italians who are discriminated against in the North.

I decided the fifth day would be my last. After three more great shows Mustapha came over to scream in my face again. The Lebanese guy took up his customary role as translator: “Mustapha says if you don’t leave soon he’s going to kill himself.”


Milano, round two, the cops

One year later I come back to Milano. Now I could kind of speak Italian and had rolled off some great shows in Florence, Treviso, Venice, Messina. Last time was June and it was hot. Now it was August and really hot. And there was no Mustapha.

Those Italian crowds can roar. The first show was going great gonzos. Just as I lit the flaming torches for the finale, two Carabinieri marched in and shout that the show is over and put those things out right now! Well, any juggler can tell you that freshly lit torches can’t be blown out until they’ve burned themselves down awhile. I tried to blow them out. The angrier of the two policeman grabbed them and tried to blow them out, huffing and puffing. He put them on the ground and stomped on them. The crowd howled with laughter. I grabbed the torches back and managed to blow them out. The angry cop grabbed me by the lapels. The whole crowd surged in on us. As we were pushed around in a mass of bodies the cop held me by the shirt and slapped my chin back and forth with the other hand.

They took me and stuck me in the back of their police car. The crowd surrounded the car at a distance. A few guys from the crowd bought my bag with my props packed in it and the cops threw it in the trunk. They sat in the front and smoked cigarettes. When they were done the driver put the siren on the roof, floored the gas pedal and the crowd parted to let us peel away.

It’ was less than a kilometer to the police station but we rocketed along with the siren blaring, screeching tires around the corners. The calm cop turned back me to me to brag about their car: “ Alfa Romeo,machine molto forte, eh?”

They held me for a couple of hours. The angry cop screamed at me endlessly. I seemed to have seriously undermined his manhood. The other one placidly writes out three citations totaling 600,000 lira. ($350) I have almost 2000 dollars worth of Italian cash in my pocket, my entire summer savings to get me through another winter in a seventh floor walk-up unheated chambre de bonne in Paris, but they don’t try to get any money out of me. When I finally walk out there’s a group of Piazza regulars waiting for me. C’mon back to the square, you’ve got to finish your show they insist. No thank you I wag my finger at them. One of them claims that the only reason I wasn’t stopped by the cops on my first visit was because of Mustapha. He’s been arrested over and over but he keeps going back to the Carabinieri and the Municipio to scream about his rights until they've been cowed by him.

Once again I stare at the train departure board wondering where the heck to go. Inside my performing bag I find my hat filled with $100.

Two years later I received at my mother’s house a couple of souvenir threatening letters from the Italian Consulate demanding that I pay my fines.