itself consisted only of five men, rather like beggars in the street.
But Giovanni was the strangest! He was tall and thin and somewhat
German-looking, wearing shabby American clothes and a very high double
collar and a small American crush hat. He looked entirely like a
ne'er-do-well who plays a violin in the street, dressed in the most
down-at-heel, sordid respectability.
'That is he--you see, Signore--the young one under the balcony.'
The father spoke with love and pride, and the father was a gentleman,
like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law also peered out to
look at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of repute, in his
sordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure of
repute blew himself red in the face, producing staccato strains on his
cornet. And the crowd stood desolate and forsaken in the cold, upper
afternoon.
Then there was a sudden rugged '_Evviva, Evviva_!' from the people, the
band stopped playing, somebody valiantly broke into a line of the song:
_Tripoli, sarà italiana,
Sarà italiana al rombo del cannon'._
The colonel had appeared on the balcony, a smallish man, very yellow in
the face, with grizzled black hair and very shabby legs. They all seemed
so sordidly, hopelessly shabby.
He suddenly began to speak, leaning forward, hot and feverish and
yellow, upon the iron rail of the balcony. There was something hot and
marshy and sick about him, slightly repulsive, less than human. He told
his fellow-villagers how he loved them, how, when he lay uncovered on
the sands of Tripoli, week after week, he had known they were watching
him from the Alpine height of the village, he could feel that where he
was they were all looking. When the Arabs came rushing like things gone
mad, and he had received his wound, he had known that in his own
village, among his own dear ones, there was recovery. Love would heal
the wounds, the home country was a lover who would heal all her sons'
wounds with love.
Among the grey desolate crowd were sharp, rending 'Bravos!'--the people
were in tears--the landlord at my side was repeating softly,
abstractedly: '_Caro--caro--Ettore, caro colonello_--' and when it was
finished, and the little colonel with shabby, humiliated legs was gone
in, he turned to me and said, with challenge that almost frightened me:
'_Un brav' uomo_.'
'_Bravissimo_,' I said.
Then we, too, went indoors.
It was all, somehow, grey and hopeless and acrid, unendurable.
The colonel, poor devil--we knew him afterwards--is now dead. It is
strange that he is dead. There is something repulsive to me in the
thought of his lying dead: such a humiliating, somehow degraded corpse.
Death has no beauty in Italy, unless it be violent. The death of man or
woman through sickness is an occasion of horror, repulsive. They belong
entirely to life, they are so limited to life, these people.
Soon the Giovanni came home, and took his cornet upstairs. Then he came
to see us. He was an ingenuous youth, sordidly shabby and dirty. His
fair hair was long and uneven, his very high starched collar made one
aware that his neck and his ears were not clean, his American crimson
tie was ugly, his clothes looked as if they had been kicking about on
the floor for a year.
Yet his blue eyes were warm and his manner and speech very gentle.
'You will speak English with us,' I said.
'Oh,' he said, smiling and shaking his head, 'I could speak English very
well. But it is two years that I don't speak it now, over two years now,
so I don't speak it.'
'But you speak it very well.'
'No. It is two years that I have not spoke, not a word--so, you see, I
have--'
'You have forgotten it? No, you haven't. It will quickly come back.'
'If I hear it--when I go to America--then I shall--I shall--'
'You will soon pick it up.'
'Yes--I shall pick it up.'
The landlord, who had been watching with pride, now went away. The wife
also went away, and we were left with the shy, gentle, dirty, and
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