ABSTRACT
An Italian engineer regularly obtains contracts for consultancy services from a provincial councilor valued at around €50,000 a year. In exchange, he pays the councilor a bribe equal to half of his profit. The deal is still convenient, and the engineer is not tormented by any moral scruples. He is faced with another kind of headache however. Here are the words he used to vent his anger in a blog:
I’m an engineer, what the hell do I understand about these affairs? I’ve never been interested in political ideas, I don’t care at all, but I can’t go on this way. The problem is that to make friends, with these cowards, it isn’t enough to pay them: you have to speak to them too and get on well. But apart from construction techniques, I don’t have any hobbies. I’m not even particularly interested in women. What can I say to them? What can I talk about? I was born here, but it’s as if I didn’t know anyone. I’ve always minded my own business. I don’t go to dinners, and now I have to. I don’t know the names of wines. I don’t even have a tie, for Christ’s sake! Grappa di mirto, cars, football, family histories, mushroom dishes, tenders, cheats and concussions, jokes, trends [...] none of that, I don’t know anything. Why is money not enough? What do they expect from me? 1
The bribing engineer has experienced firsthand the fact that corruption does not always peter out into an aseptic passage of money. Corruption also requires other types of investment—of time, knowledge, social relations, and friendship—which, given his character, are the source of his personal unease.