(scene 1)

Aldo sprang up from his chair, stepping a few paces away from the table on which several books were lined up and where, in one corner, a little Olivetti held a half-filled sheet nocked onto its roller. He moved a few steps towards the window that opened onto the green of the park of Villa Balestra. What he was about to express seemed not a remark made on the spur of the moment but the fruit of a considered reflection. “Yes, I agree we should mark the differences between Gramsci’s councilist vision and Togliatti’s centralist, authoritarian one, but without setting Gramsci against a democratic conception and practice of transition towards socialism …” He left the sentence half-finished, turning to his interlocutors, the tone of his voice calm and untroubled but with a bearing of the body that expressed an attitude of challenge. Around the table sat three people. On the shorter side, at the head of the table near the typewriter, Rodolfo, a young university assistant already set out along what could be glimpsed as a brilliant academic career. To his left Filippo, a raven-black beard and flowing hair, a Gauloises forever stuck to his lips, a slightly frayed brown jumper, his inseparable green parka hooked over the back of the chair; he seemed to embody the archetype of the revolutionary. A wooden, schematic mind, yet an intellectual liveliness of the very first order. To Rodolfo’s right sat Lucrezia, sharp and perceptive but also of a truly enviable argumentative poise. Yet she had much else that was enviable. With the same ease she alternated the slovenly dress typical of committed women in those early years of the Seventies with extremely elegant, refined outfits that she showed off now and then in class. In either case she could not go unnoticed. A very beautiful face, grey-green eyes, full lips, dark-blond hair; had she been a few centimetres taller she could even have gone in for a beauty contest, one of those so reviled and abhorred. She was in any case a star in the department. It was Filippo who reacted to Aldo: “What matters is that the sense of a political position should not come out dulled, a position that makes the voluntarism and the leading role of the working class, in an obviously anti-system sense, the fulcrum of revolutionary action today … a voluntarism that must not even rule out, if necessary, the use of violence as a lever of proletarian emancipation.” Lucrezia was the only one of the four at home with economic matters; she slipped into the discussion also with the intent of preventing tempers from flaring too far: “But let neither of you two underestimate the real conditions of the balance of power within which the revolutionary dialectic has to unfold …. And these relations are defined first of all by economic and social conditions, by the relations of production …”
They had worked all afternoon but had managed to fill only two pages of what was meant to be the draft of an entry for a dictionary of the history of the European workers’ movement, which the holder of the chair had entrusted to them as the most brilliant students in the course, under Rodolfo’s coordination. The work had been long but the output scant; above all they had racked their brains in exhausting ideological discussions, as thrilling as they were unproductive. “Let’s leave it here, comrades” – Rodolfo meant to take part in a five-a-side match arranged for half past eight – “it’s got late. See you on Sunday around midday at Piazza del Popolo; we have to be in Urbino by dinnertime, the conference begins Monday morning.” Lucrezia and Aldo set off together; they had a stretch of road in common, he bound for his small rented room in Via della Lega Lombarda, she for the fine apartment of her notary father in the Parioli. Out in the street they were enveloped, almost struck, by the soft amber light of the Roman sunset in the month of May. They stayed silent for a long while, then, as the piercing wail of an ambulance siren sounded in the distance, Lucrezia asked him in a cheerful, slightly teasing voice, “But what are you thinking about, so absorbed? That earlier discussion really doesn’t go down with you ….” “Don’t make fun of me … I’ll tell you the truth … I was thinking of the swallows that, back in my town, on evenings like this cut across the sky around the towers and the bell towers with their shrill, lively cries … it’s a sight I could watch for hours.” “I didn’t take you for such a romantic” – she said in a new voice, one that sounded a little strange to Aldo – “do you miss your town?” “Oh no, after all I go back every weekend … it’s strange, when you’re there, after a while you feel as though you’re suffocating, you feel hemmed in, then once you’re away you miss that sense of community which, in the end, is perhaps nothing other than a sense of protection.” “You have a fine soul, Aldo,” she said, taking her leave with the sweet caress of a finger on his cheek as she darted onto the tram.

***

It had stopped raining a short while before, and Urbino was wrapped in a haze of low clouds that seemed to chase one another. Rodolfo’s little runabout climbed slowly up the steep rises that led from the main road towards the historic centre; the air grew ever more rarefied. Through the clouds one began to make out glimpses of the superb Renaissance lines of the palaces that drew the city’s profile. In the car they had also taken in the chair’s second assistant, who was further on in years, having just passed thirty, and whose political opinions were decidedly different from those prevailing in the group. He was close to the circles of the integralist clerical right and, in his own way – and this united them in an underlying inspiration – an alternative to the system. On the back seat three of them were crammed into a really narrow space. From Aldo’s point of view, the discomfort of the journey had been amply repaid by the warmth and the shape of Lucrezia’s thigh. After a brief but impassioned discussion about the differences (someone spoke outright of opposing elements) between the philosophical works of the young Marx and those of his maturity, they had decided to tune the radio to “tutto il calcio minuto per minuto”, discovering that each supported a different team: Rodolfo for Roma, the other assistant for Milan, Lucrezia for Lazio, Aldo for Juve, and Filippo of course hated football almost as much as religion. They emerged onto the open square from which the splendid façade of the Ducal Palace could be seen standing out against the sky. They stopped the car and got out to contemplate Laurana’s masterpiece. After dinner they agreed to meet at eight in the morning to prepare for the debate that would be held in the course of the conference. Aldo alternated spells of reading “A Farewell to Arms” with long stretches in which he switched off the light of the room and contemplated the outline of the roofs and bell towers he could see through the window. Four or five times he amused himself with this alternation between the novel, which with its throbbing rhythm shook him and flung him towards adventurous spaces, and those lines of nocturnal and sunlit equilibrium that spread over the soul like a soothing balm. All at once he gave a start; a slight noise made him flinch, a hand was brushing lightly against the panel of the door, as if uncertain whether to make up its mind and knock. It was her.

***

After they had made love, Lucrezia stretched out on her side, her left arm thrown back beyond her head. Silent, absorbed. Aldo never tired of gazing at the outline of her body. That splendid body stood out within the frame of the window, which framed the roofs of the houses and the façade of the church on the square. A halo of light of a pale honey colour entered the room in the knowing, exclusive function of enveloping that balance of eroticism and sublime harmony. Which, among those perfections, was the true work of art? He did not doubt it for even a moment.

***

During the proceedings of the conference, Aldo felt, more and more mounting, a sense of estrangement that at a certain point began to verge on indifference. As though he were an outside observer, landed there by chance. “The further the discussion goes, the plainer it becomes that no one sees the confrontation as a moment for growing a shared inquiry in the direction, I won’t say of truth, which would be too much, but at least of a shared conviction. Each one moves along his own predefined path, and the only pressing concern is to dismantle the other’s arguments.” He was confused, on edge. He realised, as he spoke, that he was spiralling in on himself, that it cost him an enormous effort to convey to the others the full sense of what he was mulling over. The more he laboured to communicate, the clearer it appeared to him, with plain evidence, that they had by now slipped into a sort of gymnastics of ideas, a self-referential intellectualisation that was breaking loose more and more from what was supposed to be the real content of the opposition or the divergence. He took advantage of the coffee break for a series of separate group meetings, a kind of teams’ locker room mid-match, to sharpen their respective arguments. The more the refinement and subtlety of the considerations grew, the more the content appeared abstruse to the point of speciousness. The boundary between right and wrong, between the wishful and the realistic, grew ever thinner and more blurred. At that point no one knew any longer what the sense and the object of the discussion were. The eroticisation of words and concepts loomed like a leaden pall. Aldo no longer felt up to taking part in that senseless carousel. His intervention to call attention to the risks of that approach had produced no result. The drift appeared ever more unstoppable. He ended up misunderstood even by his own side, who with a few malicious quips branded him with pliancy. He decided to go out into the open air. He felt rising within him a feeling of being summoned by the territory. As if the territory, his own territory, were synonymous with reality, were the effective antidote to that intellectualistic drift. An uncontainable need for a practical wisdom, for an entity reasoning upon reality, an anchorage to the factuality of things. The necessity, as he saw it, that all the participants in that conference be compelled to undertake preliminary, preparatory work, an apprenticeship that would make them immune to that unstoppable formalisation of thought. An individual or collective apprenticeship. A glare crossed his mind, a flash of blinding light made him lose his balance for a moment. He leaned his shoulders against the stones of a palace that had stood there for centuries: what if that individual and collective apprenticeship were bourgeois democracy? He shook himself at once; the night and the morning had already been full of too many emotions. On the square he saw a notice board with the timetables of the intercity buses. In half an hour one would leave for Rome; along its route it would also pass close to his home town. To his own territory. He went up to the hotel, gathered his few belongings, and went down the street that led to the bus station. A flame-red coach with the word “Roma” written on it seemed to be waiting for him alone. He bought his ticket and climbed aboard. As soon as he had sat down, the vehicle moved off slowly. Aldo felt better at once.

(scene 2)

The pizza was one of the proper kind, tall, soft, doughy. Nothing at all, in short, like those flat, crackly ones people usually ate in Rome. Then again, Filippo came originally from Sapri and had an almost obsessive taste in pizza. He often said that the mozzarella and the tomato should not be laid on like a hat over the base, but should penetrate and fertilise the soft, slightly spongy dough. That evening he had persuaded Aldo to follow him to that little place he was a regular of. They had all been back from Urbino for a few days but had not yet gathered again in the apartment near Villa Balestra where they were working on drafting the entry for the European dictionary of the workers’ movement. The line-up had not yet re-formed, a line-up that Aldo had broken in a most conspicuous way with his walkout. Filippo was very curious to learn the reasons for the turmoil that had swept over Aldo that morning and the deep motives that had led his friend and comrade to that decision. He had no intention of waiting for it to be discussed in the group, assuming that would ever happen. A permanent restlessness was splitting the souls of individuals and taking shape as one of the features of the spirit of the age. The conversation, laboured and clipped, struggled to get going. Both of them knew why they were there, but it seemed that neither wanted to be the first to broach the subject. Filippo had not even taken off his parka, although it was by now clearly out of season, and what is more he kept it buttoned to the neck even at the table. He looked even more wooden than usual, ill at ease, as if something were gnawing at him inside. His gaze was evasive, gloomy. His hair was tousled and visibly in need of a wash. To Aldo he gave the impression of someone who over the last few days had rested badly, or had not slept at all. It was he who resolved to face the subject. “That morning was terrible for me. I don’t quite know what happened to me, but as the discussion went on I felt more and more uneasy … like a knot rising from my stomach towards my throat … a feeling of growing anxiety, of total intolerance for what was happening before my eyes. It was as if I’d come there with the idea of getting a little closer to the truth, at least to clear up my own thoughts a bit, and instead I found myself faced with a ballet, a kind of eighteenth-century minuet wholly detached, cut off from the real problems … a terrible disappointment …” “I was very uneasy too, and I still am … I don’t quite know what’s happening to me, but I feel ever more urgently the need for an all-encompassing commitment .. the need to make myself totally available to the cause, instead of going on with these inconclusive discussions … the work of study and reflection is no longer enough for me .. preparing for a tomorrow that no one ever knows when it will come … I feel the need to act, to do something, to move to action …” Aldo looked at him with an expression of subtle worry. He kept his eyes fixed on those of his friend, who, however, did not meet his gaze. They were evasive, in continual movement, now aiming downward, now slipping to the side, but never straight into Aldo’s. They seemed in the grip of a nervous shock. “What do you mean, do something, move to action? I too am thinking of committing myself more, of putting my intelligence at the service of a common action … these past few days I’ve been wondering whether the moment hasn’t come to get involved in politics on the ground, in the territory. You know that for a long time I’ve been running a film club and a cultural circle in my home town, I’ve even brought together a great many young people … I’d like to take that experience to a more directly political level, to see whether there’s any room to leave a mark on the social reality of the territory.” “Aldo, we’re two Marxists, we stand on the side of the proletariat and of history, which will necessarily prove us right … we want to change the world, but the problem is when, at what pace and by what means. The world has begun to run, new subjects are appearing in Latin America and Africa. The Communist Party here at home is by now an ossified subject, gone bourgeois, wholly unusable for the purpose of a revolutionary break. I no longer believe, as you’re saying, in commitment on the ground, in a march inside the democratic system that’s democratic no longer. The world has begun to run in the direction of socialism; we too must do something, act … today, now.” “It’s a good thing that the world has begun to run, as you say. It’s good that new revolutionary subjects are stepping onto the scene, look at what the Vietnamese people are doing … but things have to reach their own ripeness; the movement of students and workers has to arrive at ever higher forms of collaboration and coordination, it can’t all happen at once …” “Oh no” – Filippo snapped, at last driving his eyes into Aldo’s with an almost feverish glint – “this is where we don’t agree … this is the moment, we have to bring in an element of rupture, a voluntarist one … otherwise it’ll be the reaction that acts; not a day goes by without the rumours of a coup d’état growing louder, of a violent backlash to silence us for good. It’s to Cuba, to Guevara, to General Giap that we must look, not to the ossified and standardised social democracies of Europe!”

A long moment of silence fell, as if that gallop had worn them both out. They concentrated on the pizzas. Filippo lit one of his cigarettes, took a drag and leaned back against the chair. He seemed relaxed now, at peace with himself. Aldo, by contrast, had grown more tense, on edge. His friend’s words had disturbed him and somehow put him in check. At last he managed to pick up the thread of the talk again. “So you’ve no faith any longer in the role of the masses … in a path of activation and progressive widening of powers from below … in an action of collective emancipation … ” “Those are words for beautiful souls, Aldo, you’ll never manage it … it’s the vanguards that make history, only they can lead a revolutionary process … the game’s turning hard now, the conflict is worldwide, on one side the revolutionary forces, on the other the imperialist metropolises .. you have to choose which side you’re on. And here in Italy the only source of inspiration we’ve got left, given the total embourgeoisement of the forces that appeal to the workers’ movement and given the hegemony of the PCI, is the Resistance alone. Today a new Resistance, but the real one, ours, not the one betrayed by socialists and communists.” They were seated at a corner table; the place was crowded, but around them there were a few free tables. Despite this, Aldo lowered his voice, almost as though he were afraid to pronounce those words. “But where are you trying to get to? Are you thinking of the armed struggle?” he said all in one breath. Filippo lit another cigarette and drew a long puff from it; all at once a strange expression had traced itself on his face, almost one of superiority and haughtiness, like that of someone who has come to an important choice and now feels himself to belong to a superior category, to the elect. “What I’m about to tell you, the moment we’ve stepped out of this place you’ll have to forget it, or rather you’ll never have heard it. I’ve joined a cell of the GAP … you know what the GAP are, don’t you?” Aldo nodded almost with sorrow; he would never have thought that an evening like this, begun in order to learn the reasons for his flight from Urbino, would end in such a manner. Filippo, as if wishing to give still greater force to his statement: “It’s that group founded by that Milanese billionaire; I’ve only been in for a few weeks, I haven’t taken part in any action yet …” It was clear that the evening ended there; they left the pizzeria and set off in opposite directions. A few days later the working group’s meeting was held. Filippo took part with great involvement; his contribution was sharp and particularly perceptive. At moments he even seemed cheerful, an utterly singular thing for him. Towards the end of the meeting he informed the other three, in an almost indifferent tone, that his father had been struck by a debilitating illness and was therefore no longer able to work and to keep him at the University of Rome. He would have to return to Sapri to look after his father and do a few odd jobs to support himself. He would transfer to the University of Salerno. They said goodbye with great warmth, promising to stay in touch all the same. They would never see him again.