the mountains. He seemed to have gathered his wife and child together
into another, finer atmosphere, like the air of the mountains, and to
guard them in it. This is the real Joseph, father of the child. He has a
fierce, abstract look, wild and untamed as a hawk, but like a hawk at
its own nest, fierce with love. He goes out and buys a tiny bottle of
lemonade for a penny, and the mother and child sip it in tiny sips,
whilst he bends over, like a hawk arching its wings.
It is the fierce spirit of the Ego come out of the primal infinite, but
detached, isolated, an aristocrat. He is not an Italian, dark-blooded.
He is fair, keen as steel, with the blood of the mountaineer in him. He
is like my old spinning woman. It is curious how, with his wife and
child, he makes a little separate world down there in the theatre, like
a hawk's nest, high and arid under the gleaming sky.
The Bersaglieri sit close together in groups, so that there is a
strange, corporal connexion between them. They have close-cropped, dark,
slightly bestial heads, and thick shoulders, and thick brown hands on
each other's shoulders. When an act is over they pick up their cherished
hats and fling on their cloaks and go into the hall. They are rather
rich, the Bersaglieri.
They are like young, half-wild oxen, such strong, sturdy, dark lads,
thickly built and with strange hard heads, like young male caryatides.
They keep close together, as if there were some physical instinct
connecting them. And they are quite womanless. There is a curious
inter-absorption among themselves, a sort of physical trance that holds
them all, and puts their minds to sleep. There is a strange, hypnotic
unanimity among them as they put on their plumed hats and go out
together, always very close, as if their bodies must touch. Then they
feel safe and content in this heavy, physical trance. They are in love
with one another, the young men love the young men. They shrink from the
world beyond, from the outsiders, from all who are not Bersaglieri of
their barracks.
One man is a sort of leader. He is very straight and solid, solid like a
wall, with a dark, unblemished will. His cock-feathers slither in a
profuse, heavy stream from his black oil-cloth hat, almost to his
shoulder. He swings round. His feathers slip into a cascade. Then he
goes out to the hall, his feather tossing and falling richly. He must be
well off. The Bersaglieri buy their own black cock's-plumes, and some
pay twenty or thirty francs for the bunch, so the maestra said. The poor
ones have only poor, scraggy plumes.
There is something very primitive about these men. They remind me really
of Agamemnon's soldiers clustered oil the seashore, men, all men, a
living, vigorous, physical host of men. But there is a pressure on these
Italian soldiers, as if they were men caryatides, with a great weight on
their heads, making their brain hard, asleep, stunned. They all look is
if their real brain were stunned, as if there were another centre of
physical consciousness from which they lived.
Separate from them all is Pietro, the young man who lounges on the wharf
to carry things from the steamer. He starts up from sleep like a
wild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the start of a man
who has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himself
in prison? He is the _gamin_ of the village, well detested.
He is twenty-four years old, thin, dark, handsome, with a cat-like
lightness and grace, and a certain repulsive, _gamin_ evil in his face.
Where everybody is so clean and tidy, he is almost ragged. His week's
beard shows very black in his slightly hollow cheeks. He hates the man
who has waked him by clapping him on the shoulder.
Pietro is already married, yet he behaves as if he were not. He has been
carrying on with a loose woman, the wife of the citron-coloured barber,
the Siciliano. Then he seats himself on the women's side of the theatre,
behind a young person from Bogliaco, who also has no reputation, and
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