PARTISAN' REVIEW
He must
be
happy. What can he know of what men need
if
he isn't
happy? We are fighting for this. For men to be happy."
She turned round, leaning on the table with both hands. "Do you
follow what I'm saying?"
"It's simple," Berta replied.
"Very simple," Selva said. "A man who is fighting in order that men
may
be
happy should know what men need in order to be happy. And
he must have a companion. He must be happy with his companion."
"Hasn't he a companion?" Berta asked.
Selva looked again to see
if
the water was boiling. "You ask me?
I hoped you were.... I never knew that he had one." She came around
the table with the teapot and two cups. "The first time I saw you,"
she said, "I thought immediately that you ought to be his companion.
You are just what he would want a woman to
be.
But you," she asked,
"do you believe what I am saying?"
"Why not?" Berta said.
"If
I were young," Selva continued, "I would like to have been
his companion. But I might be his mother. But when I saw you I
thought that you must
be
the one."
If
we
r~d
after this the various passages in
For Whom the
Bell Tolls
where old Pilar eggs the two lovers on, we shall find a
similarity of situations, of atmosphere, of treatment, although no
single passage of Vittorini can be said to imitate Hemingway closely.
In both authors the scenes consist almost exclusively of dialogues.
But the passage from Vittorini's novel illustrates a peculiarity of his
dialogues as compared with Hemingway's. True, there are repeti–
tions in Hemingway's dialogues, as there are in ordinary life, but
we very seldom get from them the impression of exercises in conver–
sation (such as we might find, with all the cases and tenses and moods,
in a foreign-language grammar). There are pages and pages of
Vittorini which read like such exercises. The nucleus of his dialogues
is a triplet. First a statement, then the same repeated with a query,
then repeated again as a stronger asseveration:
-Lui
ora non ha da fare con molte campagne.
-Lui
ha da fare con molte campagne?
-Non ha piu da fare con molte campagne.
Very frequently the echo extends beyond the triplet:
-Sembra che si vedano le montagne.
--Sembra? Si vedono. Sono le montagne.
--Sono le montagne?
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