Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 1388

Something was happening all right, slowly it is true, but you could feel it.

The Italians felt it.

Little things.

An Italian poet had noticed plainclothes policemen lounging around the area of Quirinal Palace, the first time since the war.

At least they hadn't stepped up and asked to see papers in the hated, flat, dialect mispronunciation of Mussolini's home district -- Dogumenti, per favore.

But, who knew, that might be coming one of these days.

There were other Italians who still bore scars they had earned in police station basements, resisting.

They laughed and, true to national form and manners, never talked long or solemnly on any subject at all, but some of them worried out loud about short memories and ghosts.