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Giulia saw with a comic relief that she was stronger than he. That was the way it was
that They shouldn’t be wasted, that Having Things should never dominate my
but to fight them. It makes no difference who attacks
we had most of the riches of the modern world, but very little of its soul. We were nice enough
was war, and I wanted it to be conducted with honor. I suppose that’s as phony
against the Neapolitans was selling them our PX rations.
American point of view in itself offered no peace or solution for the world. So I began to make friends with the Neapolitans. And it didn’t
Neapolitans were like everybody else in the
if they have enough to eat and are free from imminent annihilation.
heart broken
come to a day when we too, we rich rich rich Americans, would pay for this mortal sin of waste. We’ve
sentimental that they refuse to have a whore for their girl — if they can help it. That’s the schizophrenia of our civilization, with its
and the Bad Girl. Consequently after a few tries, with
be smashed
loveliness that reassured me in my agony. I saw it in some Neapolitans. I saw it in
He remembered the Galleria in past evenings:
enema of spite. Then he knew a stinging worse than he remembered from
doing it. I’m fed up with the idea of sex without love and ideas without deeds. . . . You shouldn’t run with these Neapolitan girls . . . the ones, on Via Roma, I mean. They don’t offer you anything without a price. There are nice Italian girls, but you won’t stand
realities I’d all but forgotten. There are three of them: tears, art,
love. Most people in the world live their lives with at least two of these
presumed to be a gay affair. Even when it wasn’t gay, a man mustn’t cry. But the old maxims
the Italians because they were still able to do some of both. I wasn’t satisfied with the easy song and dance that Italians
himself, for that would ruin the barometer
the plumbing of the soul. Chromium and plastic. But the
Neapolitan artists taught me by knowing them. They said that the artist is also a teacher. The striving must
the middle of a war it’s easy to forget how to love, either another’s body, or just humanity.
two human beings taking their pleasure together. In America
Sex, this ejaculation without tenderness as the orgasm of a frigidaire.
many Americans kept their love of women in a tight compartment. And the women in their turn thought the men graceless bulls.
ear. Or just brushes her lips along my
Wouldn’t ya feel she knew a little bit too much to be ya wife? . . . If ya had a mouse in ya house
a virulent disease. And we only jested about it. They taught us the anatomy
hygiene, football, and business ethics. The Neapolitans taught us that love’s as necessary as eating and excreting. It’s a game in which music and cruelty and peace are all at stake. People are only admirable in ratio to their susceptibility to love. Laughter and good manners and wit are all trappings of love. Even when they aren’t in love, the Italians ape the mannerisms of the lover. Thus they can be joyous at eighty. Italian love is both articulate and silent. The lovers quickly knock down any barrier between them. It’s the only
the chasm between hearts. Those physical manifestations of love, the touches and glances and kisses and confessions, are all deceits that we invent to hide our own loneliness. — When ya walk down Via Roma, the corporal said, ya can tell by their eyes whether they will or won’t.
intellectual rules or by betraying what your own heart tells you to do. I remember how easy and fluid the
looking for is here for the asking. Everything we say to each other means more than our words denote. For love is
understanding. And the solace! For a night, for a week, for a month, for a year two people are able to forget the riddle of being alive in the greater delight
Sex. There’s none of the
to please my love. And I end by being pleased too.
articulated a word I’d been striving to pronounce
we kissed. In
other for every hurt the world had ever inflicted: I am with you to comfort me, and I will comfort you. For I love
only carried us slowly and steadily up to that place where there is understanding. Higher and higher. We didn’t say much, only one another’s
all those who’ve ever loved and lived at all.
For no one can live very long up
Thus in Naples I and other Americans loved. In a war one has to love, if only to reassert that he’s
reaffirmation
delusion, that all happiness
people are together and perfect in each
that brings us together for its own ends and tricks us into a joy and an equality.
