THE FOUNTAINS OF ROME
389
of Marseilles; Rome is their port, and as long as they are together you
would not think they could ever be touched by that other life throng–
ing around them all along the beautiful ridge of the Passeggiata. It
is an element; they just paddle through it; and may well, being
pensionnaires of the greatest real estate firm in Europe. In return
they provide a spectacle,
.a
note of variation in the scene, and Romans
will support anything for that. Their main hold, as a city sight,
is as a tremendous sexual image in reverse, which would be sorely
missed; even the smaller groups, and most noticeably ones of
adolescent boys with tonsures, always leave a special animal exhilara–
tion in their wake.
You can see another kind of procession here sometimes, aside
from the permanent one of Garibaldi's soldiers in marble busts among
the trees, down by the lighthouse. The young Communists, because of
that heroic association of a hundred years ago, tend to hold their
parades and meetings in the neighborhood, and afterwards drift about
with a sullen, surprised look, all ready to pull some big handle like a
brakeman's switch that will change everything and not seeming to
find it in the piazza.
If
an American makes the mistake of being
friendly to one of them in that mood he is liable to get insulted; you
can tell them from the young fascists by whom they pick on.
At the cafe there is a subtler play of differences, the proprietor
and his sons, all good fascists once, now of the right-wing Liberals,
having rather more incentive than the Senate and Chamber of
Deputies to play up the common denominator. There is the Royalist
hobo who sleeps across the road in the gate and for a free glass of
wine will tell tall tales of his courage in fighting Communists; the
scowling fascist lawyer who explains the newspaper every afternoon
to anyone who will listen-he seems for some reason to have no
family; the Communist masons building the new monastery down
the road eat their lunch under the arbor. There are the usual cafe
"characters" too: the starving barefoot young man with black hair
to his shoulders and a briefcase, who gave away an inheritance last
year and thinks he is Christ; the old prince who comes up from
downtown every afternoon and holds court at one of the rickety
tables, leaving his car and chauffeur twenty yards down the street.
But it is hard for eccentrics to be of much interest in Rome; they
would be more talked about if they had kidney trouble instead.
