The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton Page B

two-wheeled Sicilian cart, made of iron oak with oak wheels rimmed with iron, painted pink and blue and covered with sweet religious sayings, and when the hands released him he fell off and had to be caught once more and put back up onto the seat, where they propped him up so that he wouldn’t fall again. It was at this time that he said the eight words that were the occasion for the greatest single sound in the history of the city.
    Before telling you the words, it is necessary to tell one thing about this place and the people who live in it. Life here is hard, harder than outsiders can ever see. No one gets anything here without working for it, and many work hard and get nothing. It sometimes seems in truth that the harder the people work the less they have to show for it, as if work creates loss. Who knows where the fault begins or where it lies? The only truth is that there is never quite enough of anything here. Why do they stay? For the same reason that all peasants stay. They hold on to hunger, which they are accustomed to, because they are fearful of starvation.
    Because of this, the greatest fear of any peasant is that someone will take something from him that he has worked for. The pain of it is too unbearable.
    It is one reason all peasants are ungrateful. If someone gives a peasant something, he can only assume that it is a trick, or that the person doesn’t want the thing he has given, or that the person is crazy.
    All of this, then, is why the greatest joy of Italian peasants, and maybe peasants all over the world as well, is to get something they didn’t work for: to get something for nothing. And the best things to get are the things that are sweated for each day. A pearl is good to get for nothing, but its value isn’t known in terms of sweat. Pearls are good, but bread is better.
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    So the shout, then; this noise—now it can be understood. They put Fabio in the back of the cart and Bombolini was propped up in the high front seat and they began to push on the heavy wheels, back and forth at first to gain momentum to start the cart back up the Corso Mussolini, when he motioned to them. They didn’t hear him clearly at first.
    â€œSay it once more,” a man shouted at him. “Clearly.”
    He made a last effort. He swallowed and cleared his throat and called out.
    â€œFree wine for the people of Santa Vittoria.”
    He slumped down in the seat, face forward, and it is doubtful if either he or Fabio ever heard the sound itself that greeted the words, although it soared up the Corso and it cascaded into the Piazza of the People and it thundered against the door of the Leader’s Mansion and it caused the stained-glass windows of Santa Maria of the Burning Oven to tremble.
    The Corso is steep and narrow, and it was hard to get the cart moving, because not enough people could get behind it. But a crowd also has a will that makes itself felt, and just the sheer pressure of people, the desire of the crowd, seemed to be enough to start the cart moving upward. At the stone steps the men were forced to stop and rock the big iron-rimmed wheels back and forth to get up over the stones, and as they did they began shouting— “Bom” as they went forward, “bo” as they rolled back, “li-i-i-i” as they strained up over the stone, and a short, explosive “ni” when they made it over the lip to the next step. The people behind the men pushing the cart took up the shout, and soon the Corso and then the whole of Santa Vittoria was vibrating with it. They could hear it in the highest part of High Town— “Bom bo li-i-i-i ni! Bom bo li-i-i-i ni!” —and over the walls and in the high pastures. One old woman who was watching oxen said it sounded like the start of a great storm and made her afraid, and Luigi Longo, who was coming back from another town after fixing a pump there, said it sounded like a trombone