but as he came with me on to the hillside, looking down the high-road at
Lugano in the distance, he knew that his old order was collapsing by a
slow process of disintegration.
Why did he talk to me as if I had any hope, as if I represented any
positive truth as against this great negative truth that was advancing
up the hill-side. Again I was afraid. I hastened down the high-road,
past the houses, the grey, raw crystals of corruption.
I saw a girl with handsome bare legs, ankles shining like brass in the
sun. She was working in a field, on the edge of a vineyard. I stopped to
look at her, suddenly fascinated by her handsome naked flesh that shone
like brass.
Then she called out to me, in a jargon I could not understand, something
mocking and challenging. And her voice was raucous and challenging; I
went on, afraid.
In Lugano I stayed at a German hotel. I remember sitting on a seat in
the darkness by the lake, watching the stream of promenaders patrolling
the edge of the water, under the trees and the lamps. I can still see
many of their faces: English, German, Italian, French. And it seemed
here, here in this holiday-place, was the quick of the disintegration,
the dry-rot, in this dry, friable flux of people backwards and forwards
on the edge of the lake, men and women from the big hotels, in evening
dress, curiously sinister, and ordinary visitors, and tourists, and
workmen, youths, men of the town, laughing, jeering. It was curiously
and painfully sinister, almost obscene.
I sat a long time among them, thinking of the girl with her limbs of
glowing brass. Then at last I went up to the hotel, and sat in the
lounge looking at the papers. It was the same here as down below, though
not so intense, the feeling of horror.
So I went to bed. The hotel was on the edge of a steep declivity. I
wondered why the whole hills did not slide down, in some great natural
catastrophe.
In the morning I walked along the side of the Lake of Lugano, to where I
could take a steamer to ferry me down to the end. The lake is not
beautiful, only picturesque. I liked most to think of the Romans
coming to it.
So I steamed down to the lower end of the water. When I landed and went
along by a sort of railway I saw a group of men. Suddenly they began to
whoop and shout. They were hanging on to an immense pale bullock, which
was slung up to be shod; and it was lunging and kicking with terrible
energy. It was strange to see that mass of pale, soft-looking flesh
working with such violent frenzy, convulsed with violent, active frenzy,
whilst men and women hung on to it with ropes, hung on and weighed it
down. But again it scattered some of them in its terrible convulsion.
Human beings scattered into the road, the whole place was covered with
hot dung. And when the bullock began to lunge again, the men set up a
howl, half of triumph, half of derision.
I went on, not wanting to see. I went along a very dusty road. But it
was not so terrifying, this road. Perhaps it was older.
In dreary little Chiasso I drank coffee, and watched the come and go
through the Customs. The Swiss and the Italian Customs officials had
their offices within a few yards of each other, and everybody must stop.
I went in and showed my rucksack to the Italian, then I mounted a tram,
and went to the Lake of Como.
In the tram were dressed-up women, fashionable, but business-like. They
had come by train to Chiasso, or else had been shopping in the town.
When we came to the terminus a young miss, dismounting before me, left
behind her parasol. I had been conscious of my dusty, grimy appearance
as I sat in the tram, I knew they thought me a workman on the roads.
However, I forgot that when it was time to dismount.
'_Pardon, Mademoiselle_,' I said to the young miss. She turned and
withered me with a rather overdone contempt--'_bourgeoise_,' I said to
myself, as I looked at her--'_Vous avez laissé votre parasol_.'
She turned, and with a rapacious movement darted upon her parasol. How
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