CONTENTS

1) The Non- Camillo Books (Introduction)

2) Early Family Stories
- Introduction
.
- "He and She"
- "Age Forty"
- "Venice..."
- "Birthday Cake"
.
- "Travelling..."
- "...Revolution"
- "Prisoner..."
- "Purgatory Cake"

3) Later Family Stories

4) Drawing Room Farces

5) Notes from Prison Camp

The Pasionaria was ready to go out: she was sitting with quiet dignity in a corner of the sofa.

"Waiting," she said.

I got up, took my jacket, and put it on.

"I'm ready too," I said, heading for the door. But the Pasionaria didn't move, and when I reached the landing I turned and saw her still sitting serenely on the sofa.

"Well?" I said.

"Shave," said the Pasionaria in a quiet, even voice. Now remember that I was born in the heart of the province of Emilia, a highly emotional part of the world, and that I am impulsive and prone to say things I hadn't intended to say. Faced by so presumptuous a demand, I reacted violently.

"When your mother met me I was unshaven, and when she married me I was unshaven, and it's never entered her head that if I wanted to go out with her I had to shave. So who do you think you are?"

"I'm me," the Pasionaria answered in a calm, cool voice. I shaved. Then I changed my jacket and brushed my shoes, and I did it all with such an air of superiority and distaste that the Pasionaria, if she didn't have the skin of a rhinoceros, would have understood how I felt.

We walked in silence through the streets in the mild Milanese autumn, and all too soon we arrived at our destination. There were people in the park in front of the school: mothers, fathers, little boys, little girls, school attendants. It was all like a scene from a movie. And I remembered the time before, when I brought Albertino to this same park and there abandoned him, and he melted into the herd like a brick into a wall.

In my hand I felt the warm little hand of the Pasionaria and I saw the mothers and children, and the fathers, but I wasn't feeling tender and sweet. There were harsh words in my mouth but I kept my mouth shut, I chewed the words and tried to swallow them, one by one, but many of them stuck in my throat. Once again I must bow to the tyranny and let go your hand, little girl, and watch you disappear into the hole in the wall.

Goodbye, Pasionaria, you're leaving my life, you're entering the life of the state. They'll teach you public hypocrisy, and even your thoughts will no longer be yours, and you'll begin to see with the eyes of the Minister of Education. Goodbye, goodbye.

Once again, as with Albertino, I must bow to the tyranny.

Leafing through old copies of the Domenica del Corriere, I once smiled as I read about the women in the South who rebelled rather than have their children vaccinated. I didn't understand then, I thought only of the ignorance and superstition that had led those women to imagine the government doctors were some sort of sorcerers. But the women were acting on instinct. They thought they were defending their offspring from witchcraft, but in fact they were defending them from the tyranny of the state.

It's an essential tyranny, granted, but still the doctor's needle that inoculates your child with vaccine is a tentacle of the great monster, the state, goring a fresh young victim.

And I, who become indignant if the train--the train of state--is as much as five minutes late, am now bitterly unhappy because I must hand my daughter to the state to be taught the official ABC's.

Goodbye, Pasionaria.

The lines had formed, the mothers and fathers had withdrawn into the center of the park, and the children were now by themselves, single file against the school wall.

Only the Pasionaria was missing. I let go her fingers.

The doors opened. The children began to go in.

A taxi was at a corner. I ran to it, pulled open the door, threw myself in.

The car pulled away, racing through the streets of Milan on the way to the suburbs. In front of the blue waters of the port the taxi stopped and we got out.

I say "we" because the Pasionaria was with me. The Pasionaria was with the rebel.

The avenues bordering the lake were sun-drenched and empty and we had a very good time. But I knew that waiting for us at home was the state: Margherita. And this knowledge dampened my fun. And when we got back, at noon, Margherita asked the Pasionaria how it had gone, and the Pasionaria replied that it had gone very well, that the teacher was very nice, and so on and so on.

Then she looked at me and winked, in acknowledgment of our unspoken agreement that she was to say this and that. And so, with a wink, ended my October revolution.