HEMINGWAY IN ITALY
like drops in a vacuum, creating an atmosphere almost by the signifi–
cance of the pauses, by barely hinted gestures and actions-when–
ever you come across this, you may depend on it that an American
influence is at hand. Take for instance this passage in
Il cielo
e
rosso:
"They're obstinate," Tullio said. "The most obstinate people I ever
saw. Sometimes they stand in front of the town hall or in front of the
military command and wait. They wait from morning to night. They
don't ask them what they want any more; they'll go on waiting all the
same. Maybe some day something will turn up, because they are so
obstinate."
Or this:
"Then there is the girl's father," Tullio said. "He's a druggist, the
owner of a big pharmacy. The girl will be a druggist too, like her
father. I do not know how many years she still has to study, but she's
sure to become a druggist, because she's a clever girl. She helps out
now once in a while in the store."
A single word is the keynote of both these passages: it is repeated
over and over again, so as to give the listener the maximum impact.
The bare word is occasionally used in incantation, as if, by sheer
repetition, it could take on all the life of the thing itself. Passages
like these I have been quoting may not be typical in themselves:
but the repetitions, the short sentences, give in the long run the im–
pression of simplicity, of elementariness, of closeness to nature, which
we associate with American novels, in particular Hemingway's. An
episode of the American soldiers who are distributing food to a crowd
of beggars is too long to quote, but a small portion of it will indicate
some characteristics of Berta's prose:
"Whom have you got at home?" the sergeant asked.
"Two sisters," replied the boy. "They're smaller than me. Tr,ey'll
be very happy
if
I bring home some white bread."
"You've no father?" the sergeant asked.
"He died in the bombardment," the boy said. "My mother died in
the bombardment, also."
The sergeant came over to the boy and put his hand on his head,
then sat down on the box on which the old man had been sitting. "Sit
down," he said. The boy sat down again. The sergeant did not speak,
and he felt a little embarrassed. "They're singing," he said.
"Yes," said the sergeant.
The melancholy song of the soldiers, with a few notes of a guitar,
reached their ears.
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