the paper, or perhaps simply because of the slight breeze and less oppressive weather.
He could see that the paper was filled with bad news, a familiar sight in the spiral toward disaster that had begun months earlier. But the city felt normal; people were out in the streets; the cars glided by, brass and nickel plating glistening in the sun; the striped awnings of the shops were lowered to protect the shop windows from the sun; the traffic police waved their arms at street corners, directing the cars. But as Sergio took a side street containing a morning market, he saw that there were only a few food stands selling meager provisions, a sign of the shortages to come. A bit farther down, a huge throng of women stood outside a grocer. A guard watched the crowd, the women yelled, and a shop boy inside the shop wearing a white smock surveyed the crowd indifferently. Sergio walked past the crowd at a brisk pace,his mood still light and slightly aggressive. For some reason, a song from the Risorgimento, about the fall of Venice to the Austrians, came into his head: “
Il
morbo infuria, il pan ci manca, sul ponte sventola bandiera bianca
” (the plague rises, we’re short of bread / and over the bridge the white flag spreads). He had seen these words inscribed on a print that his father, faithful to the memory of the Risorgimento, had hung in their foyer. It depicted a bridge with a white flag fluttering in the wind and several uniformed men, some of them still fighting, amid groups of wailing women. Above the scene one could make out the profile of the city beneath a dark, scowling,
190
tempestuous sky. But this time, Sergio reflected, Fascist Italy would fall, defiantly waving its black flags with childish gold skulls, beneath the serene, joyful summer sky. There was not enough bread, and what little there was had an unpleasant taste, but the only plague rising was skepticism and rhetoric. The truth was that it was the regime, not Italy itself, that was falling, along with the society that had ushered it into power twenty years earlier. He once again felt a wave of hatred toward the people he considered responsible for Fascism, the war, and Italy’s defeat. And he was proud that he had published an article entitled “Who Is Responsible?” He would shake Maurizio’s hand, but he was also happy that his friend would see the article and know what he really thought of the society to which he belonged.
Maurizio lived not far away, in a neighborhood of villas and gardens that, thirty years earlier, had been the newest and most elegant in the city. Now the wealthy families had emigrated to other, moreoutlying areas filled with houses built in the so-called Novecento style. Maurizio’s neighborhood, which by now had practically become part of central Rome, was a bit shabby, with its large, dreary nineteenth-century houses. Walking toward his friend’s house, where he had last set foot years earlier, Sergio suddenly felt a strange sensation, as if he were no longer himself but the poor boy who used to rush to his rich friend’s house each day after lunch. He had walked past these houses every day for years, and recognized the oleanders with their lush pink-and-white flowers, the garden gates, and the stolid façades of the houses. How promise-filled, luxurious, and mysterious those streets had seemed to him, coming from his miserable neighborhood of office workers; how melancholy, mediocre, and lacking in real elegance they seemed now, on the eve of a historical catastrophe. He remembered that at the time he had felt intimidated, fascinated, and attracted by the people he met in Maurizio’s villa, elegant women and girls and dignified, well-dressed men. He was sure that if he saw them now he would feel about them as he did about the streets of this neighborhood.
He was beginning to feel a resurgence of the hostility
1911
which he had experienced as a boy. At the time this sensation had been a mystery to him; he knew
He could see that the paper was filled with bad news, a familiar sight in the spiral toward disaster that had begun months earlier. But the city felt normal; people were out in the streets; the cars glided by, brass and nickel plating glistening in the sun; the striped awnings of the shops were lowered to protect the shop windows from the sun; the traffic police waved their arms at street corners, directing the cars. But as Sergio took a side street containing a morning market, he saw that there were only a few food stands selling meager provisions, a sign of the shortages to come. A bit farther down, a huge throng of women stood outside a grocer. A guard watched the crowd, the women yelled, and a shop boy inside the shop wearing a white smock surveyed the crowd indifferently. Sergio walked past the crowd at a brisk pace,his mood still light and slightly aggressive. For some reason, a song from the Risorgimento, about the fall of Venice to the Austrians, came into his head: “
Il
morbo infuria, il pan ci manca, sul ponte sventola bandiera bianca
” (the plague rises, we’re short of bread / and over the bridge the white flag spreads). He had seen these words inscribed on a print that his father, faithful to the memory of the Risorgimento, had hung in their foyer. It depicted a bridge with a white flag fluttering in the wind and several uniformed men, some of them still fighting, amid groups of wailing women. Above the scene one could make out the profile of the city beneath a dark, scowling,
190
tempestuous sky. But this time, Sergio reflected, Fascist Italy would fall, defiantly waving its black flags with childish gold skulls, beneath the serene, joyful summer sky. There was not enough bread, and what little there was had an unpleasant taste, but the only plague rising was skepticism and rhetoric. The truth was that it was the regime, not Italy itself, that was falling, along with the society that had ushered it into power twenty years earlier. He once again felt a wave of hatred toward the people he considered responsible for Fascism, the war, and Italy’s defeat. And he was proud that he had published an article entitled “Who Is Responsible?” He would shake Maurizio’s hand, but he was also happy that his friend would see the article and know what he really thought of the society to which he belonged.
Maurizio lived not far away, in a neighborhood of villas and gardens that, thirty years earlier, had been the newest and most elegant in the city. Now the wealthy families had emigrated to other, moreoutlying areas filled with houses built in the so-called Novecento style. Maurizio’s neighborhood, which by now had practically become part of central Rome, was a bit shabby, with its large, dreary nineteenth-century houses. Walking toward his friend’s house, where he had last set foot years earlier, Sergio suddenly felt a strange sensation, as if he were no longer himself but the poor boy who used to rush to his rich friend’s house each day after lunch. He had walked past these houses every day for years, and recognized the oleanders with their lush pink-and-white flowers, the garden gates, and the stolid façades of the houses. How promise-filled, luxurious, and mysterious those streets had seemed to him, coming from his miserable neighborhood of office workers; how melancholy, mediocre, and lacking in real elegance they seemed now, on the eve of a historical catastrophe. He remembered that at the time he had felt intimidated, fascinated, and attracted by the people he met in Maurizio’s villa, elegant women and girls and dignified, well-dressed men. He was sure that if he saw them now he would feel about them as he did about the streets of this neighborhood.
He was beginning to feel a resurgence of the hostility
1911
which he had experienced as a boy. At the time this sensation had been a mystery to him; he knew
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