Free G. by John Berger Page B

by the events he is describing. She too has come to demand—not for herself, but for her son—the share which is his right. The word JUSTICE , silently spoken in her mind, is spoken with the characteristic intonation which her son has noticed.
    Why hasn’t your government a plan for solving the problem of poverty? All over the world people—
    The problem of poverty! Umberto interrupts, repeating the words very loudly and laughing. In our country, he says, poverty isn’t a problem. It’s a life. There is only one way of being rich but there are a thousand ways of being poor.
    And look what happens! snaps Laura.
    Both parents frequently glance at their son as though appealing for his support. His father looks at him protectively, his mother seeking protection. The boy senses that the three of them have met too late; he is no longer the child who can receive what each of them, independently, wishes to give, and what he might once have welcomed. In the history of his own life he is older than they: about the history of his own life their innocence makes them like two children.
    As he watches his parents, he returns again and again to the same question: what was his mother like before she was so shapeless andhis father was so fat? How is it that she, who rejects him in every word she utters, every gesture she makes, must once have accepted him? What force then disarmed her? Or could she have yielded of her own accord? He cannot find the answer.
    Meanwhile they talk of the alternatives to Revolution.
    Towards evening clouds mass above the city. The leaden light makes the cathedral look like a gigantic piece of shrapnel. The canals in the suburbs appear to turn black. The open spaces are airless as though the whole city had been placed in a box.
    Milan is noted for the violence of its thunderstorms and during the moments preceding them one can experience this strange sensation of a distorted, inconsistent size-scale. The scale of the buildings and the extent of the city remain overwhelmingly large in relation to one’s own size; one feels dwarfed; and yet, simultaneously, one has the sensation that the city—with oneself in it—has been reduced to the size of an exhibit in a glass case in a museum. The experience may be related to dramatic changes in air pressure. This evening the sensation of distortion is particularly strong.
    In the hotel more and more electric lights are switched on. The bulbs are a sulphuric yellow. The colonnade of the Scala is visible from the first-floor hotel lounge. The colonnade is lit up; evidently the evening’s performance has not been cancelled.
    Guests stand at the tall windows looking out. There is the sound of distant shouting. The Piazza is unusually empty. A man wearing a stock runs his hand up and down the velvet curtain at his side; the texture of the material reassures him.
    The Head Porter hurries up the stairs and into the lounge with the news just delivered to the Junior Porter at the front entrance. He whispers to an old man in an arm-chair who, having received the news, raises his head and announces in a high voice:
Signore, Signori!
Whereupon the Head Porter delivers the news in themanner of a Master of Ceremonies. The workers of the Pirelli factory have seized a police barracks. A column of insurgents from Pavia is marching upon the city. The anarchist leaders are inciting the workers to attack the centre. They have already set fire—
    Another old man shouts out to his two sons standing near by (one of them is in officer’s uniform): The cavalry! Don’t delay! Martial law and the cavalry! The sons shrug their shoulders.
    A few seconds later thunder rattles the tall windows and the force of the rain is such that it sounds like fire. The guests look towards the streaming dark windows. The lights on the colonnade of the Scala have gone out. Laura whispers to Umberto that she wishes to lie down in her room.
    The boy stares at the dark life-size portraits on the opposite wall: