dour landlady, who was quite capable of keeping him in order, there came
in one of those dark, showy Italian girls with a man. She wore a blouse
and skirt, and no hat. Her hair was perfectly dressed. It was really
Italy. The man was soft, dark, he would get stout later, _trapu_, he
would have somewhat the figure of Caruso. But as yet he was soft,
sensuous, young, handsome.
They sat at the long side-table with their beer, and created another
country at once within the room. Another Italian came, fair and fat and
slow, one from the Venetian province; then another, a little thin young
man, who might have been a Swiss save for his vivid movement.
This last was the first to speak to the Germans. The others had just
said '_Bier._' But the little newcomer entered into a conversation with
the landlady.
At last there were six Italians sitting talking loudly and warmly at the
side-table. The slow, cold German-Swiss at the other tables looked at
them occasionally. The landlord, with his crazed, stretched eyes, glared
at them with hatred. But they fetched their beer from the bar with easy
familiarity, and sat at their table, creating a bonfire of life in the
callousness of the inn.
At last they finished their beer and trooped off down the passage. The
room was painfully empty. I did not know what to do.
Then I heard the landlord yelling and screeching and snarling from the
kitchen at the back, for all the world like a mad dog. But the Swiss
Saturday evening customers at the other tables smoked on and talked in
their ugly dialect, without trouble. Then the landlady came in, and soon
after the landlord, he collarless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned,
showing his loose throat, and accentuating his round pot-belly. His
limbs were thin and feverish, the skin of his face hung loose, his eyes
glaring, his hands trembled. Then he sat down to talk to a crony. His
terrible appearance was a fiasco; nobody heeded him at all, only the
landlady was surly.
From the back came loud noises of pleasure and excitement and banging
about. When the room door was opened I could see down the dark passage
opposite another lighted door. Then the fat, fair Italian came in for
more beer.
'What is all the noise?' I asked the landlady at last.
'It is the Italians,' she said.
'What are they doing?'
'They are doing a play.'
'Where?'
She jerked her head: 'In the room at the back.'
'Can I go and look at them?'
'I should think so.'
The landlord glaringly watched me go out. I went down the stone passage
and found a great, half-lighted room that might be used to hold
meetings, with forms piled at the side. At one end was raised platform
or stage. And on this stage was a table and a lamp, and the Italians
grouped round the light, gesticulating and laughing. Their beer mugs
were on the table and on the floor of the stage; the little sharp youth
was intently looking over some papers, the others were bending over the
table with him.
They looked up as I entered from the distance, looked at me in the
distant twilight of the dusky room, as if I were an intruder, as if I
should go away when I had seen them. But I said in German:
'May I look?'
They were still unwilling to see or to hear me.
'What do you say?' the small one asked in reply.
The others stood and watched, slightly at bay, like suspicious animals.
'If I might come and look,' I said in German; then, feeling very
uncomfortable, in Italian: 'You are doing a drama, the landlady
told me.'
The big empty room was behind me, dark, the little company of Italians
stood above me in the light of the lamp which was on the table. They all
watched with unseeing, unwilling looks: I was merely an intrusion.
'We are only learning it,' said the small youth.
They wanted me to go away. But I wanted to stay.
'May I listen?' I said. 'I don't want to stay in there.' And I
indicated, with a movement of the head, the inn-room beyond.
'Yes,' said the young intelligent man. 'But we are only reading our
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