You hear Monza before you see it. We had taken the regional train out from Milano Centrale, a carriage so full of red shirts it felt like a terrace on wheels, and walked the last stretch through the Parco di Monza under old trees, past joggers and families carrying folding chairs, following a sound that came and went through the leaves. The Italians have a word for it: il rombo, the roar. The same word can also mean a rhombus, and a turbot. But at Monza it means only one thing: a low, rising tear in the air that arrives a fraction of a second after the car has already gone.
The older men around us were not impressed. Non è più come una volta, one of them said to nobody in particular, it’s not what it used to be. He meant the engines, the screaming V10s and V12s of his youth, before the hybrids. He said it the way people say it about bread, or summers, or football, and then he stood up with everyone else when the next car came through.
Monza is called il Tempio della Velocità, the temple of speed, and the liturgy is mostly vocabulary. There is il rettilineo, the long straight where the cars pass well over three hundred kilometres an hour. At the end of it comes la frenata, the braking, violent and late, into la prima variante. Elsewhere in the world they call it a chicane. In Italian it is a variante, a variation, as if someone had simply decided the road should go differently and the road obeyed. And then there is the word every tifoso is waiting for: il sorpasso, the overtake. Dino Risi made a film called Il sorpasso in 1962, Vittorio Gassman tearing down the Via Aurelia in a Lancia, honking, overtaking everything on the road, and it became a portrait of a whole country in a hurry. It doesn’t end well, which is also part of the point.
Tifoso, by the way, comes from tifo, typhus. A fan, in Italian, is someone with a fever. You understand why when the race ends. When la bandiera a scacchi, the chequered flag, falls the fences open and the crowd pours onto the straight like water through a broken dam, tens of thousands of people running on the asphalt where the cars just were, gathering under the podium that hangs out over the track.
Later, walking back through the park, we passed the old banking, la sopraelevata, a curve of concrete rising out of the trees like a frozen wave. Cars once raced up there at angles that look impossible now. It hasn’t been used for racing since the late sixties, and the moss has taken over the work of slowing everything down.
What stayed with me, though, was not the speed. It was how much of this language walks out of the circuit and into ordinary life. The next morning in Milan, the traffic on the ring road crawled a passo d’uomo, at walking pace. A colleague who rushes into things parte in quarta, starts in fourth gear. Someone exceptionally good at their job ha una marcia in più, has one gear more than everyone else. A politician who changes his mind fa retromarcia, puts it in reverse. And someone buzzing with excitement, too much coffee, good news, a long night, is su di giri, high on the revs. Italian, it turns out, uses the engine as a way of describing temperament. A person can stall, accelerate, brake, overtake. A person can run out of fuel.
On the way back, the rain started to tap against the train windows. The cars on the motorway had slowed to nothing, red lights in a long line towards the city. The engines at Monza had gone quiet hours ago. We hadn’t.
Qualche parola
rombo /ˈrombo/ (s. m.) — roar. The deep, rolling sound of an engine, felt as much in the chest as heard. The same word also means a rhombus and a turbot.
rettilineo /rettiˈliːneo/ (s. m.) — straight. From retto (straight) and linea (line). Also used for the final stretch of anything: siamo sul rettilineo finale (we’re on the home straight).
sorpasso /sorˈpasso/ (s. m.) — overtake. The verb is sorpassare. On Italian roads both a manoeuvre and a statement of character. You’ll see it on road signs: divieto di sorpasso (no overtaking).
tifoso /tiˈfoːso/ (s. m.) — fan, supporter. From tifo, typhus: a fan is someone with a fever. Fare il tifo per means to root for: faccio il tifo per la Ferrari (I support Ferrari).
giro /ˈdʒiːro/ (s. m.) — turn, round, lap. One of the most hard-working words in Italian. On the track, a giro is a lap: il giro più veloce (the fastest lap). In an engine, the plural giri are the revs. In everyday life, fare un giro means to go for a spin, a walk, a little tour with no particular purpose: facciamo un giro in centro? (shall we take a turn around town?). And every May, the word belongs to the whole country: il Giro d’Italia, the great cycling race first ridden in 1909, three weeks of riders circling the peninsula while Italians line the roads to watch them pass in a few seconds.
su di giri /su di ˈdʒiːri/ — revved up, buzzing. Someone su di giri is running high on the revs: excited, wound up, sometimes a little overexcited. Works for good news, nerves and the third espresso alike.
partire in quarta /parˈtiːre in ˈkwarta/ — to rush in, literally to start in fourth gear. Full enthusiasm, no warm-up. Admiring or critical, depending on how it ends: non partire in quarta (don’t rush into it).
avere una marcia in più /aˈveːre ˈuːna ˈmartʃa in ˈpju/ — to have an edge, literally to have one gear more. One of the nicest compliments in Italian: quella ragazza ha una marcia in più (that girl has something extra).
fare retromarcia /ˈfaːre retroˈmartʃa/ — to reverse, and to backtrack on a decision. Politicians do it often, and it is rarely meant kindly: il governo ha fatto retromarcia (the government backtracked).
a passo d’uomo /a ˈpasso ˈdwɔːmo/ — at walking pace, literally at a man’s step. The traffic report’s favourite phrase, and the sign you see at the entrance to old town centres: in tangenziale si va a passo d’uomo (the ring road is crawling).