“The osteria is the finest refuge from the all-encompassing pneumatic hammering of today’s pseudo-social, media-driven disintegration and counterfeit togetherness.”
Prof. Jean-Baptiste-Cyrille de la Mondeuse-Musigny – EHESS /
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

I. HOW TO STEAL AN OSTERIA

They say, 
“Opportunity makes the thief.”
No.
Let’s get rid of that cliché at once: a true thief – a professional – must invent occasions, one after another. Otherwise, he puts at risk the very thing that sustains him: his reputation, the credibility of his ancient Craft.

Take our pickpocket here. After parking his car, he slung his laptop backpack over his shoulder, unaware that the first thing one notices upon stepping inside this establishment is a sign screaming in block letters: “DO NOT LEAVE VALUABLES UNATTENDED IN YOUR VEHICLE.”
Irony, case in point.

It’s the last place where one would expect such a warning: a roadside refuge along State Highway 755, just before the road launches itself across the eight iron spans – early 20th century – stretching over the Great River.
This is the Ponte della Gerola, between the Lomellina and the Oltrepò.

“Vampire in the vineyard” and “pilferer in the kitchen,” as Vinicio Capossela would put it, this weasel of a man has just laid eyes on the right kind of Osteria.

A voice echoes in his head:
“The Osteria… is you.”
No – “is you,” in that guttural, Northern Italian second person.

To make the impression all the more vivid – that of someone who looks more like a barnyard thief than a regular patron (meaning: not one of the workers from the colossal ENI refinery in Sannazzaro, nor a technician on lunch break from the sprawling agrochemical plant in Mezzana Bigli, nor even a traveling salesman) – he silently recites this small prayer of gratitude to the God of Fortunate Tables, intentionally choosing that Northern pronoun.
A way of underlining, to himself, the sensation of being a fish out of water.
A freshwater fish, certainly – though here, without doubt, polluted.

Or, at most, he is simply someone who has ended up exactly where he was meant to end up.
Because there are still those who wander like this, for the sake of wandering.
Fugitives, escapees, deserters from the small prisons of the everyday.

“I think we’re in the right place,” he tells himself, this odd, makeshift disciple of Papillon.