party read and smoked and practised, exposed to the empty darkness of
the big room. Queer and isolated it seemed, a tiny, pathetic magicland
far away from the barrenness of Switzerland. I could believe in the old
fairy-tales where, when the rock was opened, a magic underworld
was revealed.
The Alfredo, flushed, roused, handsome, but very soft and enveloping in
his heat, laughed and threw himself into his pose, laughed foolishly,
and then gave himself up to his part. The Alberto, slow and laborious,
yet with a spark of vividness and natural intensity flashing through,
replied and gesticulated; the Maddelena laid her head on the bosom of
Alfredo, the other men started into action, and the play proceeded
intently for half an hour.
Quick, vivid, and sharp, the little Giuseppino was always central. But
he seemed almost invisible. When I think back, I can scarcely see him, I
can only see the others, the lamplight on their faces and on their full
gesticulating limbs. I can see--the Maddelena, rather coarse and hard
and repellent, declaiming her words in a loud, half-cynical voice,
falling on the breast of the Alfredo, who was soft and sensuous, more
like a female, flushing, with his mouth getting wet, his eyes moist, as
he was roused. I can see the Alberto, slow, laboured, yet with a kind of
pristine simplicity in all his movements, that touched his fat
commonplaceness with beauty. Then there were the two other men, shy,
inflammable, unintelligent, with their sudden Italian rushes of hot
feeling. All their faces are distinct in the lamplight, all their bodies
ate palpable and dramatic.
But the face of the Giuseppino is like a pale luminousness, a sort of
gleam among all the ruddy glow, his body is evanescent, like a shadow.
And his being seemed to cast its influence over all the others, except
perhaps the woman, who was hard and resistant. The other men seemed all
overcast, mitigated, in part transfigured by the will of the little
leader. But they were very soft stuff, if inflammable.
The young woman of the inn, niece of the landlady, came down and called
out across the room.
'We will go away from here now,' said the Giuseppino to me. 'They close
at eleven. But we have another inn in the next parish that is open all
night. Come with us and drink some wine.'
'But,' I said, 'you would rather be alone.'
No; they pressed me to go, they wanted me to go with them, they were
eager, they wanted to entertain me. Alfredo, flushed, wet-mouthed, warm,
protested I must drink wine, the real Italian red wine, from their own
village at home. They would have no nay.
So I told the landlady. She said I must be back by twelve o'clock.
The night was very dark. Below the road the stream was rushing; there
was a great factory on the other side of the water, making faint
quivering lights of reflection, and one could see the working of
machinery shadowy through the lighted windows. Near by was the tall
tenement where the Italians lived.
We went on through the straggling, raw village, deep beside the stream,
then over the small bridge, and up the steep hill down which I had come
earlier in the evening.
So we arrived at the café. It was so different inside from the German
inn, yet it was not like an Italian café either. It was brilliantly
lighted, clean, new, and there were red-and-white cloths on the tables.
The host was in the room, and his daughter, a beautiful red-haired girl.
Greetings were exchanged with the quick, intimate directness of Italy.
But there was another note also, a faint echo of reserve, as though they
reserved themselves from the outer world, making a special inner
community.
Alfredo was hot: he took off his coat. We all sat freely at a long
table, whilst the red-haired girl brought a quart of red wine. At other
tables men were playing cards, with the odd Neapolitan cards. They too
were talking Italian. It was a warm, ruddy bit of Italy within the cold
darkness of Switzerland.
'When you come to Italy,' they said to me, 'salute it from us, salute
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