John Berger: G.

What will your wife say when you tell her that you have installed your mistress and your bastard child in the town?

She will say nothing.

You propose to tell her?

No.

And you imagine she will not know?

Naturally she will know, but she will say nothing.

And you say you are proud of us! You are not a father. You are a man with a weakness for a little American tart.

I beg you not to shout and say words like that. Passeretta mia , what has changed you?

This is what has changed me. (She thumps her stomach.)

Yes, he has changed everything. I want you to live in Pisa. I have seen a villa there, a beautiful villa with a magnificent English garden and tall rooms with painted ceilings. Once it belonged to a Conte . I want to buy it for you, Laura.

And we are to wait there for you to visit us. How many times a week? Every Tuesday and Friday?

Or you could live in Florence, in Fiesole above the Arno which is a corner of paradise.

When you have installed us, what do you propose we do? How can you be so stupid? Can you not see that we would be prisoners in a jail?

Jail! You would be free to go wherever you wished.

Who would we meet? Who would we talk to?

I would arrange Italian lessons for you.

That is why you want to call him Giovanni!

I would like him to speak several languages. Then he will be able to travel. I have not travelled enough in my life.

Umberto, I cannot believe you are being serious. You should know better than I what kind of country Italy is. Nobody would know us. We would be outcasts. A woman who is not married with an illegitimate child.

My dear, you are married.

Not to you I’m not.

One day I may be in a position to marry you.

You mean you will get a divorce?

In my country to make a divorce is almost impossible.

So you cannot marry me.

My wife is a sick woman.

I see. We shall wait in our jail until she dies. And then you will be gracious enough to make us respectable. How do you dare to make such a proposal?

I love you.

Love! What is it? It’s a word you use to get what you want. Like all men.

It is a word you have used too, Laura.

Yes, I was in love with you when we went to Venice three years ago. You were like no man I had ever heard of. You could have made whatever you liked of me. But you did nothing. A woman isn’t like money that you put in a bank and it will bring you interest without your doing anything about it. A woman is a person. How do you expect me to live ten months of the year, kicking my heels until you somehow contrive to make a little trip to see me? That is not a proper life.

All this I intend to change. You will live in Pisa or Florence and we will be together often and without interruption. The boy will see more of me than many boys see of their fathers. And I will make him my heir. Let us try to make a life together for all three of us.

Four!

Four?

You have forgotten you are married.

I have explained to you already.

You say you are proud. Me? I am ashamed. You make me ashamed for all of us. How could I look into the eyes of my child whilst waiting, day after day, year after year, for news of her death? Sit now, passeretta mia , and I will talk to you. I am older than you. I am nearer to the earth. If I compare us to most, we are fortunate. You do not know what their lives are filled with. Life is never as we want it. It is of no use to ask for everything. In the end you get nothing. Our life will not be a perfect one — that is for those who believe in the good God after they are dead. But it will be better, and I will make it better, than you believe possible. We have both been mistaken. I am older than you and I have been mistaken more. But not you either can begin life again like an innocent fidanzata of seventeen. With you I have the last chance of happiness. I know it. No chance will come again. You have come to me like an angel to deliver me. Angels come once only. I will spare nothing to make you happy.

Would you come and live here?

I can try. But how can I? It is too far.

Too far from your home?

From my business.

Your business comes before us?

My business is for my son. He will inherit it. He will not be poor.

You intend to disinherit your wife?

I have told you what will happen.

You are shameless.

No, I am not shameless. I see things for how they are. I want you and my son. Without both of you my life is over. All my life depends on this one chance. I love you as nobody else will love you. Not even a younger man. He will not be as faithful to you as me. I know what you are worth, believe me. Come to Pisa. Give me the opportunity to show you—

— Where I shall be in jail.

I will be a father to our son. If you knew what paternal feelings are filling me, if you knew how patient, how adoring, how proud I will be as a father! In him I will see you. He will have your impatience and your love of dreams.

And what will he have of you?

You know what they call me in Livorno behind my back, I have told you already, they call me La Bestia , That is because I am cunning and close to the earth. Perhaps he will have my realism.

You, realistic!

Yes. You will see. We have one chance now. There will be no more opportunity.

What do you mean?

For you to be the mother of your son. For me to be the father. For all three of us to be happy.

I intend to bring up my child as I choose, not as you choose. I will teach him myself. If he is a boy, he will begin life with the advantage of never having been told lies. If she is a girl, she will be loving and sincere and realistic. No child of mine is going to be satisfied with your half-measures. And to make sure of this, I will devote the next ten years of my life to my child.

You deny me the right to my own son?

You have none.

Laura!

It’s too late to call me now.

The sheets on the unmade bed, the carpets, the furniture, the wrought-iron balcony outside the window, the lake which is the colour of steel and lavender, the Alps — everything within their sight — is unaffected by the rapid beating of each heart.

The principal protagonist was conceived four years after Garibaldi’s death.

Garibaldi was hero.

Garibaldi defeated his country’s enemies. He inspired the nation to become itself: to anticipate its own identity.

Garibaldi was what every Italian wished to be. It is in this sense that one can call him the national genius. There was not an Italian in Italy — not even among the loyal Bourbon troops of the Kingdom of Naples — who did not wish to be Garibaldi. A few hoped to become him by fighting him: some, like La Farina in Sicily, by betraying him. Cavour in Turin became him by using him. What stood between a man and his becoming Garibaldi was not his own identity but the wretched state of Italy: a wretchedness which each interpreted or suffered according to his own theories or position. For the peasant it was the impossibility of leaving his land: for the constitutionalist it was the inefficiency of conspiracy.

When men set eyes upon Garibaldi they amazed themselves: until that moment they had not known who they were. They met him as from within themselves.

He was poorly equipped and almost in rags; he had nothing but a sword and a pistol. ‘What induced you,’ I said, ‘to give up ease and luxury for this life of a dog, in a camp without commissariat, pay, or rations?’ ‘You may well ask,’ he said, ‘I tell you a fortnight ago I was in despair myself, and thought of giving up the whole thing. I was sitting on a hillock, as might be here. Garibaldi came by. He stopped, I don’t know why. I had never spoken to him. I am sure he did not know me, but he stopped. Perhaps I looked very dejected, and indeed I was. Well, he laid his hand on my shoulder and simply said, with that low, strange, smothered voice that seemed almost like a spirit speaking inside me, “Courage; courage! We are going to fight for our country.” Do you think I could ever turn back after that? The next day we fought the battle of the Volturno.’