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[...] In any case it was useless to talk any more about Mussolini, no one was thinking about Mussolini now. Now there was the King, the collector of coins, who gradually had pulled himself together and wanted to try and take command. The King would dig out goodness knows what old ministers, because Italy had had quite enough of Fascists with big muscular torsos and of athletic processions and had a great longing for white-haired, mild old gentlemen with crooked, trembling knees. In a short time Italy would certainly be flooded with mild old gentlemen, dressed as generals and ministers and dragging behind them elderly wives, trembling and white-haired, and Italy would clap her hands at these elderly wives, sick as she was of the women that Fascism had brought into fashion, bronze breasts and thighs crowned with ears of corn on the bridges and the fountains. The King would go about Italy sometimes on horseback and Italy would clap her hands at him, he had never imagined that the King’s crooked knees could be pleasing to Italy and yet now it was just those crooked knees that Italy was greeting with joy and relief, and the wizened, disdainful, monkey-like little face under the peaked cap that was too big for him. If anyone fired a shot in the air the little monkey would run off and hide himself in the place where he had been for so many years, the little monkey would run off to the cellar where his collection of coins was kept, but at present Italy was pleased and was not thinking of firing any shots immediately. The police-sergeant made as if to rise, because he could not bear to hear the King called a little monkey. His father had received a medal from the King’s own hands. Cenzo Rena held him firmly by his cloak and poured him out some more wine, perhaps later on he and the police-sergeant might become enemies but not yet, not that day, that day they must drink together over the downfall of Mussolini. Later on, after the little monkey had also been put aside, they would have to begin to do something really fine, but he did not want to tell the police-sergeant what, because he did not want to cause him pain that day.
lol
[...] And Giustino, said Anna, what on earth had become of Giustino and Concettina, there were always stories about Rome but about the North no one knew anything, Concettina’s last letter, a little before the armistice, had said that Giustino was at Turin, but after that no more letters had come and Cenzo Rena said it was useless to write, Italy was all broken up and a letter took days and days to arrive and when it did arrive what was written in it had ceased to be true.
[...] One day the Fascists went into the forest guard’s house and started shooting at the looking-glass in the way the Germans did, and then they took the forest guard’s boots, the forest guard himself had for some time been in hiding at a farm-house and there was only his wife in the house, and when she wept and screamed a German came to see what was going on. The German stayed all night with the forest guard’s wife, and the Fascists ran off with the boots, and next day the forest guard’s wife ate some rat poison, but the doctor came and made her vomit in time. When she was better, the forest guard’s wife packed a bag and went off to her parents at Teramo, the German gave her a lift in a lorry.
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The German stood looking on while they dug the hole, he went on repeating how hard he had jammed on his brakes, his whole back was still hurting him because of the jar that sudden braking had given him. Then he sat down in the kitchen and began playing with the little girl, the child had a little bucket full of horse-chestnuts and he started carving faces on the chestnuts with his penknife. The German was tall and young, with a long, glossy, brown head, and he told them that before the war he had been a waiter in a small restaurant at Freiburg, and after the war he would start being a waiter again if there was still a need for waiters after the war, and he wondered if he would still be able to turn and twist among the little tables with the dishes, it was a job that needed a great deal of patience and he had lost his patience in the war. He had deep white scars on the backs of his hands, Cenzo Rena asked him if they were war scars, but he explained that one day in the kitchen of the restaurant he had upset some boiling soup on his hands out of a tureen. It was the fault of the under-cook, who had knocked into him as he was coming forward with the tureen. The under-cook used to go to bed with him and she made a great lamentation over his hands. But then she had left him, because she couldn’t help weeping every time she looked at his hands. Women were like that, he said, they hurt you and then they ran away out of remorse. Men were very often like that too, said Cenzo Rena, but the waiter said no, men were different, for instance he had killed the dog and had not run away. [...]
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[...] Cenzo Rena said he would have started thinking that the Germans were all waiters, poor unfortunates with some sort of a job at the back of them, poor unfortunates whom it was not really worth while killing. And this was a thought that in war-time had no sense, it was an idiotic thought but he himself might happen to have an idiotic thought of that kind. [...]
[...] Emanuele had now come downstairs, and he was all red and sweaty because he had been asleep, they had no idea of the life that he led in Rome, he said, he spent his nights at the newspaper and during the day he had all kinds of meetings and never could he spend an afternoon sleeping, In order to sleep he had to come home. But in a short time he would be giving up the newspaper and leaving Rome for good, because he did not know how to produce newspapers. He could produce secret newspapers but not newspapers that were not secret, producing secret newspapers was easy, oh, how easy and how splendid it was. But newspapers that had to come out every day with the rising of the sun, without any danger or fear, that was another story. You had to sit and grind away at a desk, without either danger or fear, and out came a lot of ignoble words and you knew perfectly well that they were ignoble and you hated yourself like hell for having written them but you didn’t cross them out because there was a hurry to get out the newspaper for which people were waiting. But it was incredible how fear and danger never produced ignoble words but always true ones, words that were torn from your very heart. [...]
[...] And they laughed a little and were very friendly together, the three of them, Anna, Emanuele and Giustino; and they were pleased to be together, the three of them, thinking of all those who were dead, and of the long war and the sorrow and noise and confusion, and of the long, difficult life which they saw in front of them now, full of all the things they did not know how to do.
"Your mother and I don’t make trouble,” said Laurence’s father. “We make other things. Because we’re adults.”
“What?” Laurence shoved his casserole away and took a heavy swig of cola instead. “What do you make, exactly? Either of you guys.”
“Don’t talk back,” said Laurence’s father.
“This isn’t about us,” said Laurence’s mother.
“No, I want to know. It occurs to me, I have no clue what either of you produces.” Laurence looked at his dad. “You’re a lower middle manager who denies people’s insurance claims for a living.” He looked at his mom. “You update instruction manuals for obsolete machinery. What do either of you make?”
“We put a roof over your head,” his father said.
“And delicious liver-and-peas casserole on your plate,” his mother said.
“We’re leaving now.” Laurence’s mother touched his arm.
“Great,” Laurence said. “I’m ready.”
But they meant a noninclusive “we.” Not for the first time, Laurence thought this was one of the annoyingly incommunicative features in the English language. Much like the inability to distinguish between “x-or” and “and/or,” the lack of delineation between “x-we” and “in-we” was a conspiracy of obfuscation, designed to create awkwardness and exacerbate peer pressure—because people tried to include you in their “we” without your consent, or you thought you were included and then the rug got pulled out from under you. Laurence dwelled on this linguistic injustice as he watched his parents walk back to their car, across the crunchy parking lot, without him.
“I need help,” she wrote. “I wish you could think for yourself. I feel like you almost can.”
“Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other,” CH@NG3M3 said.