A FLORENTINE CONFERENCE
305
"They?
Oh yes, the Communists... Of course... In twenty–
four hours, you know so? Not even a few days, eh?" The Marchese
suddenly turned quite red with humiliation. His fine eyes blinked
sadly and he looked shyly, cautiously, about the room, as
if
to say,
"Dear friends, you are mad with me, perhaps? No... No, really?
Many thanks, please!"
An American who made propaganda films for the American
government, a sharp-chinned man with a faded, clever face and a
faded brown mustache, glared at the empty white and gold coffee
cups with a fury somewhat bored by its own violence. This photog–
rapher felt deeply the stab of professional insult common to people
who have lived in a foreign country for a few years and
still
find
their opinions not asked for at home. His little face, all of it, all at
once, frowned with injury. "Our policy is hopeless! De Gasperi's
hands are tied because he needs the financial support of the land–
owners and when you depend upon that support you aren't likely
to set about land reform with any great speed-"
"Ah, yes, slow and modest . . . but a very good man, a good,
honest fellow, I understand, De Gasperi?" the Marchese said vaguely.
"We
ought to back De Gasperi with some of the money we're
pouring into the wrong places, back him and tell
him
to go ahead
with the reforms." The photographer's eyes now menaced the heavy
silver ornaments on the desk before him. He sighed and shrugged,
bone weary with his government, that fractious wife driving him to
divorce.
"But have we the right ... the right?" an old American ex–
patriate wondered, a large, wrinkled woman in a worn, spotted fur
coat from some animal strange to modem eyes. "It's easy to say come
in and divide up a bit of land here and there, yes ... but is it? Can
we, just like that? It's not our country and the interference-"
"My dear goose," the photographer said icily in that awful
tone of passionate domestic quarrel, raw with the ultimate provoca–
tion, "it isn't as
if
millions of dollars to the Fiat Company weren't
interference !"
The fire was almost out. A hoarse-voiced Italian with magnif–
icent wavy hair, tough, durable and fierce as cactus, said to the
photographer's sister who had just arrived for her first visit to Italy,
"Are there any interesting writers in Italy! Horrors, what a question!
Bah! Does a dead man write? . . . We're just a few old rattling
