ITALY: The Klaxon Girls

A shapely brunette in sausage-tight skirt stepped from the shadows to the curb as the small Fiat pulled up. “Good evening,” she chirped to the leering youth behind the wheel. “Want to come with me?” Just then a cream-colored Lancia sedan eased alongside the Fiat, horn beeping and headlights flicking on and off. Two well-dressed, well-groomed girls smiled invitingly at the young man. “Hello there, want to go for a ride?” crooned one, ignoring the streetwalker. “Then follow us.” The Fiat roared after the Lancia, and the streetwalker retreated snarling to the shadows.

Such scenes were being enacted nightly last week around Milan’s famed Cathedral Square and in Genoa, Como and Rome. “Klaxon girls,” as the Italian press calls them, are the latest product of Italy’s industrial boom, and they may revolutionize the peninsula’s oldest profession.

The Pickup. Most klaxoners, known by such names as Yvette of the Opel, Rossana of the Dauphine, Maria of the Appia, discreetly toot horns and flash headlights to attract the prospect’s attention. In a favorite gambit, pairs of klaxon girls pull right alongside male motorists; the one at the wheel keeps the car just abreast, the other casually unbuttons her blouse. Blonde “Insurance Nadia,” on the other hand, got her name by her habit of gently jostling a male driver’s rear bumper, then sidling out to coo that her insurance company will pay damages, if any—and making her proposition.

Klaxon girls, though willing to accommodate pedestrians, prefer motorists—not only because in Italy a car is an assurance of affluence, but also because, as one girl said, “you don’t have to take them back where you found them.” Largely self-employed, the most successful of Milan klaxoners take in as much as $160 nightly, charging about $20 for a ride to a 45-minute assignation in hotel, pension or apartment. Some, starting with a down payment on a tiny Fiat 600, have worked up to Alfa Romeos, Lancias and Fords equipped with bar, reclining seats, recorded music and soft lights.

The Lookouts. The klaxon girls are the gaudiest example of an upsurge of prostitution that has occurred since a law sponsored by Socialist Angelina Merlin banned state-supervised brothels in 1958 (Merlin advocates insist it is only coincidence). But last week the Health Ministry reported that cases of syphilis registered in state clinics have doubled since 1957, and Rome’s II Tempo charged that “the number of prostitutes has shown a marked increase.” Since the Merlin law reforms, prostitutes can be jailed in Italy only when caught in the act. To guard against this misfortune, the klaxon girls have begun mounting lookouts on Lambrettas. Last week Milan’s cops nabbed one such Paul Revere whose duty was to ride ahead of the morals-squad patrol car, warning the freewheeling hustlers that the bluecoats were coming.