south was Rome while to the north were London and Paris. He would hear snippets of news from there; sometimes strange words, unfamiliar accents, even foreign languages as travellers and businessmen passed through Carpi.
Sometimes, too, visitors would come to the piazza and Dorando would sit open-mouthed in wonder as the first flickering silent movies gave him glimpses of a world beyond even the wonders of Rome and Paris. Here was America, a new land of promise where any dream seemed possible. His father was a labourer while his mother looked after them all by scouring the markets for food, and although Desiderio and Maria had never learned to read without effort, they could add up well enough. They understood enough to know that this new century might offer the chance to make more lire by your wits than by your hands.
They had seen the frustration in the eyes of the two elder brothers, Antonio and Ulpiano. Carpi, it seemed, was always too small for them. The builders and developers were beginning to pull down the city walls, but for Antonio and Ulpiano, the place seemed like a prison and they couldn’t wait to leave.
While Dorando’s father sold apples and roasted chestnuts close to the market in Carpi, Antonio, who was six years older than Dorando, tried to make his way by working in the hat factory. But he hated it, for it was noisy and it reeked of sulphur, while the constant need to lift heavy parcels was too much like hard work.
‘I feel trapped, it’s like being a slave,’ Antonio would complain restlessly.
Ulpiano, four years older than his brother Dorando, had no intention of being a slave. He was restless and ambitious. Even as a boy, those who knew him would say there was something shifty about him.
‘He looked like a little fox,’ said a boyhood friend, who’d spent a lifetime making shoes in Carpi. ‘He had the face of someone full of cunning so he went to England – he’d do anything to get out of Italy. Ulpiano was on the make. He learned English, got to know what life was like out there in the world. He was always going to make a fortune, one way or the other.’
Dorando’s mother and father had seen how their elder sons had felt about staying on in Carpi, and they didn’t want Dorando to go the same way. They clung onto him.
‘You’ll never be hungry here at home,’ his mother would say, while his father, also small and wiry, was forever pointing out to him the important men who ran the hotels, the hat factory, even the big sports club La Patria in Carpi.
‘Look,’ he’d say, ‘you can make something of yourself here in Carpi. You don’t have to spend your life selling fruit and bread like me. You’re a little boy now, but you can be a big man. You don’t have to leave. Show them you can do it, right here in Carpi.’
It was as if a torch had been passed into Dorando’s hand, like a gift from father to son; it lit up his life. He looked at those people in Carpi with new eyes and saw the ones who represented something grander than others renting a shop here or a stall there. They were big men and he studied their every move, watched what they represented. As his father’s words stiffened his ambition, Dorando toyed with the idea of perhaps getting an apprenticeship or at least something more ambitious than helping with the shop.
Ultimately, it was his father’s idea. He knew a man called Ferrari, who did watch and clock repairs, and soon Dorando was signed up as his apprentice. But Dorando had seen his brother Antonio wither over a job that kept him imprisoned; now he too found himself hunched for endless hours doing repetitive work.
‘I can’t stand it,’ he admitted, and he made a bid for freedom. Bur he still harboured the dream of making a mark there in Carpi, and when a wealthy new shop owner moved to the town, he seized his opportunity. The name was Pasquale Melli and he was well known locally as the manufacturer of the famous Nazzani sweets, a company renowned throughout the whole of the Emilia region for the quality of their chocolate.
Melli was a real gentleman with a distinguished and elegant wife. He set himself and his family up in a fine shop just on the edge of the piazza. It was decorated throughout with sumptuous red velvet and with white seats, and there they sold chocolates of a kind never before available in Carpi. One of the specialities was an exquisite chocolate drink, but of course the only people who could afford such delicacies were the gentry. They could pay for home delivery too, because when they ordered blocks of chocolate, sweets and pastries, they wanted the luxuries delivered to their doorstep.
Fourteen-year-old Dorando got a job with Melli, who needed a shop boy. There, he learned how to whisk zabaglione and he enjoyed putting the eggs and sugar into his mouth – now there would be no more crusts of bread for him. He busied himself delivering parcels and packages, wore a smart white overall and apron, and congratulated himself on finding his ideal job. He had the freedom to roam the city streets and he could eat as much as any boy might want.
His job would take him to the doors of the great villas that stood around Carpi, where he would meet the men and women who lived inside, smile at them and make the extra effort to try to deliver items on time. Nothing seemed too much for the energetic delivery boy and he took huge pleasure in what he was doing. Often, he had to deliver a package of luxury pastries to the station to be taken off the train for a customer further up the line.
On one occasion, so they say in Carpi, he got to the station to find that the train had already left for Reggio, which was nearly 15 miles away. Dorando actually saw the train slowly pulling out of the station and thought about running back to the shop to tell the owner what had happened, but then he changed his mind, whipped off his apron and set out to run the 15 miles, package in hand. When he arrived at the town centre, he took a handkerchief, dipped it into a horse trough and wiped away his sweat. He smoothed down his hair and presented himself at the door with the package of confectionery.
The door was answered by a maid, who told him to wait to see if there was a repeat order or a message for the shop. Then the master of the house arrived, intrigued by the hand delivery. He scribbled a note, pressed a tip into Dorando’s hand and the boy set out for the return journey. Back in Carpi, the shopkeeper was at first amazed and annoyed, but when he heard what had happened, he was to dine out on the tale for years. Signor Melli realised, too, what Dorando’s father had always known: this boy was very special.
The seasons changed and Dorando grew stronger. But he didn’t grow any taller; he was always small, standing just 5 feet 3 inches tall. For him, the shop and the piazza – Victor Emmanuel Square – seemed to be the centre of all life in Carpi.
In 1903, there was a huge gathering in the piazza. A statue was to be erected to a general, Manfredo Fanti, and to celebrate the event thousands of gymnasts came from all corners of Italy to give a display. Dorando was dazzled by their appearance, their agility and their strength. With all the sudden enthusiasm of a 17-year-old, he decided that sport was the thing: here was a way that he might make his mark.
His brother Ulpiano had already joined the local sports club. He found that waving Indian clubs, the fashionable aerobic exercise, went down well with the girls. Also at that time, Italy, like the rest of Europe, was in the embrace of a huge cycling boom. Dorando and his friends would read about cycle races and talk to each other about their heroes; he was excited by the thought of bike racing, and so, like Ulpiano, he joined La Patria. He was young and strong, so perhaps he too could make a name for himself in Carpi as a cycle racer. Why not?
Some of the more well-to-do boys had bicycles of their own. Dorando would stand and stare at these machines; he would see the sparkling spokes and catch the smell of India rubber and freshly polished paint. He would run his fingers along the enamel of the tubing. Sometimes Signor Melli would give him a few sweets, and instead of eating them himself or sharing them with his younger brother Armando, Dorando would use them to bribe one of the boys who had a bike to let him try to cycle.
