FROM AN ITALIAN JOURNAL
whores glumly sitting together go through the girls with unforgiving
eyes like one of those electric signal boxes in a prison corridor that
ring an alarm bell
if
there is any metal on your person. The cigarette
vendors come screeching around like a flock of gulls maddened by
the smell of food off the ship's bow--old, young, sick, every age and
every human condition, each of them with his little suitcase held out
before
him
like a tray.
Sigarette?
...
Nazionali
...
Americane!
Every
five minutes a beggar appears at the table--usually old women with
black shawls and the look of the eternal mother of sorrows, leading little
barefoot girls whose faces are so gray and bent with suffering, whose
arms hang so miserably at their sides as if they had been scratching old
sores, that you find yourself either responding to the situation or reward–
ing the impersonation. Under the table more barefoot kids in dis–
carded GI pants and American
Air
Force jackets, hunting cigarette
ends and storing them carefully in little tin pails; it will all go to make
"new" American cigarettes. In the history of Europe this age should
go down as that of the Pax Americana, or the secondhand butt.
The beggars cover the cafe in waves; they make sure never to
come up together or at too close intervals, and while one makes his
rounds the others stand at the hedge, like actors waiting to go on.
Notice how the Italians give, every time. They may look indifferent
and after the tenth approach exasperated beyond words, but after
shrugging their shoulders or trying the frontal attack method
(Signora!
Have mercy! Do you think I'm the Bank of Italy?)
they come up with
the usual. The crucial test comes when someone at a table tries to look
away. Hopeless. The beggar simply keeps turning with him and stares
him down.
In the brilliantly humming summer night all these cafe dwellers,
each moored in his cultural swamp, gently pushing at the world outside
like a fly caught in a dish of honey. The faces lack that paunchy, pasty
look of the normally overfed at home: here you can actually see the
bony structure brought into the world at birth. The general level of
good looks is amazing: face after face with that focused sensuality that
is always the personal ticket of young actors and actresses. Most of
them emptily looking out to sea, or engaged in a little deal. The air
is damp with sex, but you can hear sums being recited at table after
table; the whole piazza is one great bourse for the black market.
Centotrenta lire
...
centosessanta
...
tremila quaranta.
A fierce-looking
boy in his late teens rides up on a bicycle and unerringly goes straight
to the American faces and clothes. Will you buy American cigarettes–
real
American
cigarettes, not counterfeit? Wanna change your money,
561
