2023-05-01 09:56:04
The writer recalls the porter of the house in Trieste where he lived as a boy: he wore a jacket and tie to join the procession and take part in what for him was a party for everyone
In the house in Via del Ronco, in Trieste, where I lived as an almost newborn and until the beginning of my marriage, there was for many years a porter to whom I owe the meaning of May Day. His name was Sior Carmelo; he was old – perhaps less than it seemed to me, thanks to the age difference – and in any case certainly elderly, the years had left their traces in the wrinkles that marked his face similar, at least so it seemed to me, to the trunk of a tree .
Respectful and severe, he intervened only when he deemed it necessary in the disputes between the tenants; early warning – even for a child – relating to difficulties of almost any form of coexistence. He intervened more decisively with regard to those who, returning late in the evening, slammed the car doors; once, it seems, even with regard to a young man who had allowed himself some liberties or attempted liberties with a maid. During the war, in the event of an air raid, he would try to order and establish shelter in the cellar; he knew how useless those flimsy walls and poor wooden doors were, but he did what, in such cases, was expected and stipulated. I vaguely remember once, during a rather long night alarm, he had put away a tenant who claimed to be taking up too much space for his family.
But I remember it mostly for May Day, of which he seemed and also was an embodiment. He was a communist, but he didn’t allow this conviction, inseparable from his person, to interfere with him with others. May Day put on a suit, gray jacket and slacks, shirt and tie, and went to join the procession. What huge First Mays, the band playing O sleeping people… May Day was for him a celebration for all, the happy and proud feeling of what being together should be — in a house, in a country, in a Party, in a Movement of all, even of those who did not share its ideology. Maybe for him May Day was the symbol of how we can and should be together. With that respect for others which should be the rule of every coexistence, given that we are called, whether we like it or not, to live together, which is far from easy and often unpleasant. I never remember him in a menacing attitude; strict yes, as well as cordial during nights in the cellar during the alarm, but severity has close links with respect.
When he went out on May Day, with his good suit, he commanded respect because he radiated respect for others. Luckily for him, I don’t think that events and history have confronted him with so many terrible human and political contradictions of the Party, a tragedy and often a crime of the twentieth century. But the values u200bu200bof May Day they had taught Sior Carmelo to celebrate them by wearing that dress, as in a famous passage Machiavelli recounts that he put on a worthy dress when he read great books that taught him life and history, so terrible, and he said that by reading them, with this dignity, everything was transferred to them. In that dress worn by Sior Carmelo on May Day there is, to the extent of him, something of those clothes. It was a tragedy when in the history of Italy and not only of Italy that Sior Carmelo dress was replaced by another look.
May 1, 2023 (change May 1, 2023 | 09:37)
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