THE road of the pass was hard and smooth and not yet dusty in the early
morning. Below were the hills with oak and chestnut trees, and far away
below was the sea. On the other side were snowy mountains.
We came down from the pass through wooded country. There were bags of
charcoal piled beside the road, and through the trees we saw
charcoal-burners’ huts. It was Sunday and the road, rising and falling,
but always dropping away from the altitude of the pass, went through the
scrub woods and through villages.
Outside the villages there were fields with vines. The fields were brown
and the vines coarse and thick. The houses were white, and in the
streets the men, in their Sunday clothes, were playing bowls. Against
the walls of some of the houses there were pear trees, their branches
candelabraed against the white walls. The pear trees had been sprayed,
and the walls of the houses were stained a metallic blue-green by the
spray vapor. There were small clearings around the villages where the
vines grew, and then the woods.
In a village, twenty kilometres above Spezia, there was a crowd in the
square, and a young man carrying a suitcase came up to the car and asked
us to take him in to Spezia.
“There are only two places, and they are occupied,” I said. We had an
old Ford coupé.
“I will ride on the outside.”
“You will be uncomfortable.”
“That makes nothing. I must go to Spezia.”
“Should we take him?” I asked Guy.
“He seems to be going anyway,” Guy said. The young man handed in a
parcel through the window.
“Look after this,” he said. Two men tied his suitcase on the back of the
car, above our suitcases. He shook hands with every one, explained that
to a Fascist and a man as used to travelling as himself there was no
discomfort, and climbed up on the running-board on the left-hand side of
the car, holding on inside, his right arm through the open window.
“You can start,” he said. The crowd waved. He waved with his free hand.
“What did he say?” Guy asked me.
“That we could start.”
“Isn’t he nice?” Guy said.
The road followed a river. Across the river were mountains. The sun was
taking the frost out of the grass. It was bright and cold and the air
came cold through the open wind-shield.
“How do you think he likes it out there?” Guy was looking up the road.
His view out of his side of the car was blocked by our guest. The young
man projected from the side of the car like the figurehead of a ship. He
had turned his coat collar up and pulled his hat down and his nose
looked cold in the wind.
“Maybe he’ll get enough of it,” Guy said. “That’s the side our bum
tire’s on.”
“Oh, he’d leave us if we blew out,” I said. “He wouldn’t get his
travelling-clothes dirty.”
“Well, I don’t mind him,” Guy said—“except the way he leans out on the
turns.”
The woods were gone; the road had left the river to climb; the radiator
was boiling; the young man looked annoyedly and suspiciously at the
steam and rusty water; the engine was grinding, with both Guy’s feet on
the first-speed pedal, up and up, back and forth and up, and, finally,
out level. The grinding stopped, and in the new quiet there was a great
churning bubbling in the radiator. We were at the top of the last range
above Spezia and the sea. The road descended with short, barely rounded
turns. Our guest hung out on the turns and nearly pulled the top-heavy
car over.
“You can’t tell him not to,” I said to Guy. “It’s his sense of
self-preservation.”
“The great Italian sense.”
“The greatest Italian sense.”
We came down around curves, through deep dust, the dust powdering the
olive trees. Spezia spread below along the sea. The road flattened
outside the town. Our guest put his head in the window.
“I want to stop.”
“Stop it,” I said to Guy.
We slowed up, at the side of the road. The young man got down, went to
the back of the car and untied the suitcase.
“I stop here, so you won’t get into trouble carrying passengers,” he
said. “My package.”