THE FOUNTAINS OF ROME
393
on; the name of Mussolini's mistress has had a letter added-De
Gasperi's, they say, is named
Pretacci,
rotten priests. But Carolina
is first of all an actress.
"All priests ordered to take wives!" she calls waving a paper over
the potted-hedge railing of the restaurant. "All priests must marry by
Monday!" "The Chinese take Rome!"-meaning Americans; or she
may be only making fun of all war. "Giuliano takes over the govern–
ment!" "Scelba drowns in the Tiber! Terrible misfortune! The Min–
ister of the Interior is dead!" At a table of her better acquaintances
she will stop to toss off a glass of wine, standing, and make longer
recitations, in a mumble if they are risky, or loud enough to be heard
all around, though she has the great gift of not eyeing her audiences;
they always think she is talking for herself. Then she moves on
stolid and thumping on her heels through the crazy streets, as
though wearing a tiara of cabbages, to cry her crazy wares some–
where else. It
is
impossible to think of her growing old or having
ever been young, and surely she was there once shouting: "Tarquin
is sick!" "Nero gives birth to a frog!" "The Pope chased out of
Avignon! Everybody out to welcome the Pope!"
She is the best Roman comedian of the present time; the only
one in the theaters who is better
is
a Neapolitan and he is not con–
cerned with politics. Besides she is making it all up, with only a hint
of a gleam in her tough fifty-year-old gamin face, as handsome as
her queenly friend's, but round and wicked, with a texture like an
earthenware jug; and she is a power too; nothing will ever shut her
up, though she might have to run a pushcart again as she did under
fascism instead of selling papers.
"If
I had only learned to behave
myself," she says. "That's the way to be rich and strong. I never
could behave myself."
But she can improvise just as well on life in general, and her own
life, and in one way she certainly outdoes the great Neapolitan,
Eduardo de Filippo, who is sometimes guilty of a real tear over
romance, and death. Carolina's act stays pure to the end; her nearest
approach to a real tear is because she has been sick recently and is
not supposed to drink any more, but this
is
fabricated too, she will
do as she likes anyway. Around the time her friend is going home
she can finally sit down at a corner table of the cafe in Piazza
Navona, where they will serve her something free at that hour-it
