Foreign News: The Queen

“They keep talking about the iron curtain,” complained a Rome cab driver last week, “but it’s not the iron curtain that worries me. It’s the green curtain that comes down every morning between me and my cabbage.” In the argot of workaday Rome, the green curtain is the term used to describe the veil of mystery behind which the shrewd middlemen in the city’s huge wholesale vegetable market operate to send the prices of simple foodstuffs soaring.

Only a handful of insiders know precisely what happens between the first wisp of dawn, when 500 to 600 lorries loaded with farm produce roll into the Rome market, and the morning hours when the loads are distributed among the city’s retailers. But the prices soar sometimes to triple those paid the wholesaler, thanks to the manipulations of the few insiders. They are the “captains” and the “queens” of the market, middlemen who tightly control prices but seldom keep the food in their own possession for more than half an hour. A wholesaler or retailer who dares to defy his captain or queen may find himself boycotted throughout the market, or, failing that, stuck with a stock of spoiled potatoes or worm-ridden apples.

A Touch of Frost. Of all the queens in Rome’s market, none was tougher or shrewder than a tall, thin, hard-jawed woman in her late 20s known as Nannarella. Left motherless at five, Nannarella worked the market with her father for years, and when he went off to war she carried on alone. Nannarella had an un canny ability with figures, and an innate feel for market values. A touch of frost on a dark morning in Rome was enough to tell her that the first strawberries would be meager and command a high price. By the time Nannarella reached 24, she was a market queen with 25 obedient “subjects.”

One day amid the worst of last winter’s snows, Nannarella stole a march on the other captains and queens by bribing a railroad official to sidetrack a trainload of potatoes from Germany for her own use. “Providence will provide,” she told the other captains when they began to wonder what had happened to the potatoes. But as winter wore on and Providence seemed to provide only for Nannarella, the others grew suspicious. At last, her archrival, a tall, handsome ruffian named Gigi, sent some of his subjects to infiltrate Nannarella’s realm. “Gigi is finished anyway,” they told her. “If you let us have some potatoes, we’ll come over to you.” Soon afterward, when she saw one of the would-be defectors in deep confab with Gigi himself, Nannarella knew she had been tricked.

A Slap in the Face. From then on, Gigi worked his revenge. Nannarella’s trucks met mysterious accidents, and the potatoes in her warehouse started going bad. A shrewd marketman knows well how to ruin his rivals’ stock. Her resources dwindled, and one by one her subjects abandoned her. By spring she was facing bankruptcy. Nannarella sought out Gigi. “Give me back my subjects,” she said, “and I’ll let you have all my remaining potatoes.” Gigi only laughed, so Nannarella slapped him hard across the face. One of Gigi’s brawny henchmen seized her arm and began to twist it, but the victorious captain only smiled, “Let her go.” That evening as Nannarella wandered disconsolate and alone, she met Gigi again. “Thank you for stopping that man,” she said, and Gigi smiled again. The two wandered along together in the moonlight. A month later, Gigi proposed marriage, and Nannarella’s response was instant. “We shall control two sections of the market,” she said.

By last week, Queen Nannarella, three months pregnant with Gigi’s child, reigned more powerfully than ever in Rome’s market. And just in time, too. Rome’s mayor was preparing to investigate profiteering in the market, threatened her and all her kind with price control. Nannarella merely snorted. “Let him. We live by our wits here, and no mayor can fix them. My child isn’t going to have the hard time that I had.” As for the consumers who complained about her prices, “What do they expect?” said Nannarella. “Where are they at 4 o’clock in the morning? If you want to lie abed, you have to pay for that privilege.”