THE CICERONE
at other tables as though in hope of succor or release, was a tone of
unshakable, impolite disbelief. "Ah, I am not such a fool," his pretty
face would almost angrily indicate
if
they told
him
that they had
spent their morning in the castle-fort of the Sforzas, where beneath
the ramparts bombed by the liberators, a troupe of Italian players
with spotlights lent by the American army was preparing to do an
American pacifist play. Every statement volunteered by the two friends
broke on the edge of Mr. Sciarappa's contempt like the very thinnest
alibi; parks and the public buildings they described to him became
as transparent as falsehoods-anyone of any experience knew there
were no such places in Milan. When they praised the wicked-looking
Filippo Lippi Madonna they had seen
in
the Sforza Gallery, Mr.
Sciarappa and his disaffected brother-in-law, who was supposed to
speak no English, exchanged, for the first time, a fraternal, sidewise
look: a masterpiece, indeed, their incredulous eyebrows ejaculated–
they had heard that story before.
That Mr. Sciarappa should question their professions of enthu–
siasm was perhaps natural. His own acquaintance with Italy's artistic
treasures seemed distant; they had had the reputation with
him
of
being much admired by English and American tourists; the English
and American air-forces, however, had quoted them, as he saw, at
a somewhat lower rate. Moreover, it was as if the devaluation of the
currency had, for Mr. Sciarappa's consistent thought, implicated
everything Italian; cathedrals, pictures, women had dropped with the
lira. He could not imagine that anyone could take these things at
their Baedeker valuation, any more than he could imagine that anyone
in his right mind would change dollars into lira at the official rate.
The two friends soon learned that to praise any Italian product, were
it only a bicycle or a child in the street, was an insult to Mr. Scia–
rappa's intelligence. They would be silent-and eventually were–
but the most egregious insult, the story that they had come to Italy
as tourists, they could not wipe away.
He felt himself to be the victim of an imposture, that was plain.
But did he believe that they were rich pretending to be poor, or poor
pretending to be rich? They could not tell. On the whole, it seemed
as if Mr. Sciarappa's suspicions, like everything else about him, had
a certain flickering quality;" the light in
him
went on and off, as he
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