The men are clean, their clothes are all clean washed. The rags of the
poorest porter are always well washed. But it is Sunday tomorrow, and
they are shaved only on a Sunday. So that they have a week's black
growth on their chins. But they have dark, soft eyes, unconscious and
vulnerable. They move and balance with loose, heedless motion upon their
clattering zoccoli, they lounge with wonderful ease against the wall at
the back, or against the two pillars, unconscious of the patches on
their clothes or of their bare throats, that are knotted perhaps with a
scarlet rag. Loose and abandoned, they lounge and talk, or they watch
with wistful absorption the play that is going on.
They are strangely isolated in their own atmosphere, and as if revealed.
It is as if their vulnerable being was exposed and they have not the wit
to cover it. There is a pathos of physical sensibility and mental
inadequacy. Their mind is not sufficiently alert to run with their
quick, warm senses.
The men keep together, as if to support each other, the women also are
together; in a hard, strong herd. It is as if the power, the hardness,
the triumph, even in this Italian village, were with the women in their
relentless, vindictive unity.
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