This Is Life Under Lockdown in Italy
生活在封锁中的意大利

MILAN — You glance at the headlines, just before going to bed on a Saturday evening, to discover your town has been put in lockdown. Or is about to be. It’s not clear. Apparently, the order hasn’t been signed yet. Social media shows people rushing to the station, mainly for the last trains south. This is Milan, economic dynamo of Italy, the only city in the country that has grown stronger and richer through the long years of stagnation since the financial crisis of 2008. An enormous number of people who work here are from the south. If the city is shutting down for the coronavirus, they want to be home.

米兰——在周六晚上睡前浏览一下新闻头条，发现你自己的城镇已经被封锁了。或者即将被封锁。说不好。显然，禁令还未签署。社交媒体显示，人们急忙赶到车站，主要是为了登上去往南方的最后一班火车。米兰是意大利的经济发动机，是这个国家自2008年金融危机以来的长期经济停滞中唯一一个越来越强大和富裕的城市。大量的南方人在这里工作。如果城市因冠状病毒而封锁，他们想回家。

On Sunday morning, my partner and I eat breakfast listening to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte addressing the nation. A recording made in the small hours. It was utterly irresponsible, he tells us, for someone to leak a rough draft of the order before it had been finalized. It caused immense confusion. Still, the fact remains that 14 million people in northern Italy are now in lockdown — and we’re among them. But thousands of people have already left, very likely taking the virus with them. The governors of the southern regions of Calabria, Campania and Puglia are furious and announce that these arrivals will face restrictions.

周日早晨，我和我的伴侣边吃早餐边听朱塞佩·孔特(Giuseppe Conte)总理的全国讲话。这是在深夜录制的一段录像。他告诉我们，有人在禁令最终定稿之前将一份草稿泄露了出去，这是极其不负责任的。这引起了极大的混乱。不论怎样，意大利北部目前有1400万人被封锁——其中就有我们。但是成千上万的人已经离开，很可能携带着病毒。南部卡拉布里亚、坎帕尼亚和普利亚大区首长大怒，并宣布这些抵达者将面临限制。
 

That’s the kind of world we’re in now. In just two weeks, all the usual certainties have gone. It’s been a spiritual exercise in letting go. You paid for season ticket on the subway, now you realize subway travel is the surest way of getting the disease. You have a subscription to the gym, the gym is closed. So is the cinema. Your tickets for concerts and football games are useless. Your children can’t go to school. Or university. Even mass is canceled.

这就是我们目前所处的世界。在短短两周内，所有日常的确定性都消失了。这是一场断舍离的灵修练习。你买了地铁季票，现在发现坐地铁肯定会得病。你买了健身房会员，而健身房关门了。电影院也是一样。你的音乐会门票和足球赛门票都用不上了。你的孩子去不了学校。或去不了大学。甚至弥撒也被取消了。

What’s the mood? Initially, indignation. Two weeks ago, when the first restrictions came in — banning all kinds of gatherings and closing pubs, though not actually restricting our movement — we were sure they’d overdone it. A cafe owner in downtown Milan told me angrily that one of the best weeks of the year had been blown: carnival, Fashion Week. Hoteliers complained of 90 percent cancellations. Then we saw the number of infections shoot up: a hundred a day. Two hundred, three hundred. On Sunday, 769 in Lombardy alone. On Saturday, Antonio Pesenti, the head of Lombardy’s intensive crisis care unit, predicted that “by March 26 we will have 18,000 sick people, 3,000 of whom will be needing assistance to breathe.” The places in intensive care in particular are under pressure. The hospitals in Milan are already planning to move non-coronavirus patients in intensive care to hospitals in other regions.

这是一种什么心情？起初是愤慨。两周前，当第一个限制到来——禁止各种聚会并关闭酒吧，尽管实际上并没有限制我们的行动——我们确信他们做得过头了。米兰市中心的一家咖啡馆老板生气地告诉我，一年中最棒的几周告吹了：狂欢节、时装周。酒店经营者抱怨90%的订单取消。然后我们看到感染数量猛增：一天一百例。两百例，三百例。周日，光是伦巴第就有769例。周六，伦巴第危重症监护病房负责人安东尼奥·佩森蒂(Antonio Pesenti)预测：“到3月26日，我们将有1.8万个病人，其中3000人需要呼吸辅助。”重症监护室将尤其受到压力。米兰的医院已经在计划将重症监护中的非冠状病毒患者转移到其他地区的医院。

This is sobering. Day by day there has been a greater awareness of the need to keep your distance from people, the importance of not shaking hands. Suddenly the elevator stinks of disinfectant. A man opening a door for you stands way back. You realize the girl on the cash desk in the supermarket is wearing rubber gloves. She apologizes when she sneezes and assures you it’s only a sinus condition. A manager complains to a boy at the deli counter that he should have said at once that his next-door neighbor has tested positive.

这让人一下警醒起来。日复一日，越来越多的人意识到与他人保持距离的必要性，不握手的重要性。突然间电梯充斥着消毒剂的刺鼻气味。一个为你开门的男人站得远远的。你发现那个超市收银台的女孩戴着橡胶手套。她打喷嚏时向你道歉，并向你保证这只是一种鼻窦疾病。一位店长向熟食店柜台的一个男孩抱怨说，他应该早点说他的隔壁邻居的测试结果呈阳性。

Everybody is being asked to think not just for themselves, but also for the community. Milan is a highly fragmented city. There are all kinds of ethnic groups — Chinese, Arabs, Hispanics, Filipinos, Indians, any number of Romanians and Slavs, Italians from every region. Even the locals are quite sharply divided between working and middle classes. And of course many of us communicate more online than on the street, speaking to people like ourselves in other countries and continents. But inevitably the virus is bringing a new awareness that we all share the same physical space, Milan, Italy. We really live here, and we sink or swim together. Perhaps we will even have to get to know each other, albeit without shaking hands. I sense a new spirit of unity.

人们不仅需要为自己，还要为社区着想。米兰是一个高度分散的城市。有各种各样的种族，包括华裔、阿拉伯裔、西班牙裔、菲律宾人、印第安人、还有一些罗马尼亚人和斯拉夫人，以及来自各个地区的意大利人。即使是当地人，在工人阶级和中产阶级之间也存在隔阂。当然，我们中的许多人在线上的交流比在街上的多，与身在其他国家和大洲的、和我们相似的人交谈。但是不可避免地，这种病毒正在带来一种新的认识，即我们都在意大利米兰，共享着同样的实体空间。我们是真实地生活在这里，我们一同沉浮。也许，我们甚至必须彼此了解，即使不去握手。我感受到了一种新的团结精神。

The fallout for the economy will be huge. But paradoxically the government is very likely to be strengthened. The governing coalition is an association of two main parties (the center-left Democratic Party and the maverick Five Star Movement) who disagree on so much that their only reason for staying in office together has been to avoid an election that would favor the right-wing League party, led by the authoritarian and xenophobic Matteo Salvini. But now they have a major issue that’s easy to agree on and that will give them a chance to be united and decisive on behalf of the nation. Support for Mr. Salvini has begun to dwindle.

对经济的影响将是巨大的。然而吊诡的是，政府很有可能因此得到加强。执政联盟是由两个主要政党（中左翼的民主党和特立独行的五星运动[Five Star Movement]）组成的，它们之间的分歧实在很大，以至于他们保持连任的唯一理由是避免举行有利于右翼政党联盟党(League)的选举，联盟党由专制和排外的马泰奥·萨尔维尼(Matteo Salvini)领导。但是现在，他们很容易在所面临的主要问题上达成共识，这将使他们有机会团结一致并代表国家发挥决定性作用。对萨尔维尼的支持已开始减少。

The government can also spend money. The Stability and Growth Pact, an agreement shared by all members of the European Union, requires Italy to keep its deficit within strict parameters. Even when every economic indicator would suggest the need to invest and spend, as in the present prolonged period of near-zero growth, the government is obliged to beg Brussels for the right to introduce this or that incentive. These requests are frequently denied, and the politicians appear powerless.

政府还可以支出。经欧盟所有成员国同意的《稳定与增长公约》(Stability and Growth Pact)要求意大利将赤字控制在严格范围内。即使每一项经济指标都表明有必要进行投资和支出，比如当前已经持续很长时间的接近零增长，政府也不得不乞求布鲁塞尔赋予它这种或那种刺激经济的权利。这样的要求经常遭到拒绝，政客们似乎也无能为力。

But in an emergency as dramatic as this, the government is in a position to seize control. The importance of the nation-state is suddenly obvious: Italians must decide for Italians. Measures to spend 7.5 billion euros, around $8.4 billion, have been announced. More, probably much more, is to follow. Businesses are to be compensated, parents with children of school age are to be given babysitting vouchers, a huge investment is being made to purchase medical equipment and increase hospital capacity. One suspects that when, God willing, the emergency is over, there will be those who will not want to relinquish this newfound power and the sense of identity and responsibility it brings.

但在这样的突发紧急情况下，政府有机会掌握控制权。民族国家的重要性突然变得显而易见：意大利人必须自己为意大利做决定。政府已宣布了价值75亿欧元（约合84亿美元）的措施。接下来还会有更多，或许更多。企业将得到补偿，家有学龄儿童的父母将得到保姆代金券，一项巨大的投资正用于购买医疗设备和医院扩容。人们怀疑，如果情况允许，当紧急状态结束时，会有一些人不愿意放弃这种新掌握的力量，以及它所带来的身份认同和责任感。

For the moment, though, it’s us — ordinary citizens — who feel powerless. Again and again the word “fight” is being used. The metaphor of battle is deployed: We must combat the virus. Yet it turns out the best way to do so is to stay home, which hardly feels like fighting. All the same, when you do run into people, heading for the shops or the pharmacy, the awareness that you must avoid each other is creating a new complicity, like a dance where you can’t touch. One can only hope something of this shared understanding will remain.