In Memoriam – Pasquino eulogizes the Count of Ciampino

November is a month of wind and rain. Soaked in melancholy, Romans light candles on All Souls Day and sip vino novello on St. Martin’s Day. If I had hands, I would lift a glass and toast the memory of the Count of Ciampino.

 

His real name was Mario Bianchi. Born illegitimate in Trastevere on April 1, 1902, he grew up on the Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio. His father, a seminarian, would visit his mother on meatless Fridays. This might explain why the boy sold fish. He caught eels and carps in the piss-colored Tiber and hawked them in the Campo dei Fiori. Later, he moved his stand to the Piazza del Popolo, next to the Fountain of Neptune. 

 

At twenty, Bianchi married and started a family. After bearing five boys in seven years, his wife became as armor-plated as a battleship. His sons dressed like a scarecrows. He patched his shoes with cardboard from macaroni boxes. A plumber’s bill for a ruptured faucet canceled a planned holiday to Rimini. Once, he spotted Mussolini on the Corso, driving his sports car back to Villa Torlonia in the late afternoon. But the depression ruined his stand and the war drafted his sons. He would have died embittered, if fate had not intervened.

 

On June 13, 1946, Bianchi was at Ciampino Airport, moonlighting as a baggage handler. This was the same day Umberto II went into exile. At four in the afternoon, the last King of Italy and his entourage arrived and were greeted by reporters and photographers. Curious, Bianchi joined a crowd of supporters, who were waving farewell. Umberto paused to wave back and gave final instructions to his staff.

 

“Make the accounts!” he told a financial attaché.  But the royal appointments secretary, standing on the other side of him, misunderstood. He thought the king had said, “Make them all counts!” Before the secretary could question him, Umberto blew a kiss to the crowd, strode onto the tarmac, and boarded a military plane for Portugal. The secretary honored the king’s last wishes and ennobled some 200 people. Only Mario Bianchi, however, took his new rank seriously.

 

That night, Count Bianchi celebrated at Bar San Calisto near Piazza di Santa Maria. He drank five bottles of Marino and wobbly mounted a table. Henceforth, he proclaimed, anyone caught watering wine would be garroted. “Hear, hear!” cried the regulars. He vowed to scrub the bird shit off Belli’s monument, to prevent Vespas from backfiring during weddings and funerals, to endow a chair in soccerology at the American University of Rome. A notary took down his words, brought them to a print shop, and plastered his edicts all over Trastevere.

 

Count Bianchi adopted the Ciampino town seal as his crest (six silver darts and six golden grape clusters on a sky-blue field) and chose the motto: “Absentem laedit cum ebrio qui litigat.” The Libro d’Oro refused to recognize his title, but the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro loaned him money to start a new business. He opened a kiosk near the Spanish Steps and sold high quality bathroom fixtures to tourists. These included novelty soap dishes and jewel-encrusted toilet paper holders. His wife called him a genius. His sons impressed hookers by showing a snapshot of Papa posing with Alberto Sordi.

 

Despite celebrity customers, Count Bianchi still patronized Bar San Calisto. Sitting with a mug of Peroni, he cheered AS Roma on TV. He treated strangers to an affogato but thrashed anyone who mocked his title. “I know I’m ridiculous,” he admitted. “But it’s better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.”

Mario Bianchi died on March 24, 1971. Five days later came the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Marshall Tito at the Vatican. As the motorcade passed the Piazza di Spagna, Tito noticed a kiosk arrayed with gaily colored toilet paper holders draped in black crepe. Aides never told him that the mob in Via della Croce had not come to see him but to attend the funeral of an ex-fishmonger.

 

Mourners showered the cortege with chrysanthemums. So profound was the hush over the Corso that the Princess Orietta Doria-Pamphilj appeared at her balcony and crossed herself. There would be no more Counts of Ciampino. Twenty years before, Italy had abolished the creation of new aristocratic titles and had instituted Orders of the Republic. That was a bit harsh. True, Bianchi had been besotted with self-importance, but which of us has a head for status? Only kings, and they’re born drunk.