John Berger - G.

Set fire to the place!

There were rumours that another crowd had already set fire to the building of the Liga Nazionale. It may have been an Austrian agent who first proposed the newspaper office of Il Piccolo . A hundred or so men, G. among them, hurried there from the Piazza San Giovanni.

A few Italian printers and journalists including Raffaele had arrived at the Piccolo’s office for the evening’s work. Shouts in the street brought them to the windows. They saw a body of men, some waving sticks and others carrying cans under their arms, running across the piazza towards the main entrance of their building. The scourge of the docks! said Raffaele and in doing so coined the phrase he would later invariably use when describing the rioters. Close the shutters and blinds, he ordered. Then he picked up a telephone and asked for police headquarters. It is very urgent, he said.

By standing close to a blind he could see through the slits the first men reach the building. There were blows and the sound of smashing glass. They were breaking the lamp that hung outside the entrance. He could hear others running up the stone steps to the printing shop. Suddenly he laid the telephone down and pressed his nose against the window pane to be sure of what he could see. He saw G. with a small gang round him point at the windows of the second storey and make explosive gestures with his hands. Raffaele’s initial astonishment gave way to a strange satisfaction. In a threatening and unpredictable situation he had found a certitude and this certitude confirmed his own acumen. He could hear them breaking up the furniture on the ground floor.

G. was not only an Austrian agent, Raffaele asserted, he was one of the men employed by the Austrians to mobilize the Slavs. It was now obvious why the Austrians had tolerated his extraordinary behaviour at the Red Cross ball. Everything which had been mysterious about him became instantly clear. With this certitude of interpretation came an equally satisfying certitude of decision. There was no need to consult anybody. He told those who were watching him telephone that they must abandon the building. Make sure everybody leaves, he said. Take this — he took a revolver from the drawer of the desk and handed it to the man facing him. No one else is going to defend us, he added with satisfaction.

He was going to put an end to G. The telephone was still silent. He rattled the earpiece holder violently up and down and asked for another number. I need all of you immediately at the Galleria di Montuzza, he said, I will meet you there. After this call he asked again for police headquarters. He wanted to speak to Major Loneck. He demanded immediate protection for the Piccolo newspaper building which was in the hands of i teppisti who were about to burn it down. Major Loneck evidently temporized. I am not excited or hysterical, yelled Rafaele, it is a question of civil order.

The incendiaries in the print shop worked quickly and systematically. One of them had found a cupboard full of rags dirty with grease and ink. They placed these rags at the end of the room near the largest press. A man doused them with paraffin from a can. Others were breaking up tables and chairs and laying the wood across the rags. G. emptied some drawers of paper and scattered these too on the pyre. Light it! he urged, for the small of the paraffin was choking him. The man to whom Nuša had spoken in the street was standing guard by the doorway. An old man with shining eyes screwed up a torch of paper, lit it and threw it on the rags.

For a moment they all waited to see whether the fire would catch. Almost immediately there were flames as high as a man. It was about to burn the presses which printed the language of the city, the language of law, insult and demand, the language of the overseer. There was the breathing noise of fire with intermittent very light cracks like those which accompany footsteps in dry undergrowth. The man waiting by the door smiled approvingly at the fire they had made. At first the fire reminded them of their villages; it was still a small fire. Later the same night, after three more attempts to set fire to the building, when it was truly ablaze, they would watch fascinated by the dimensions of their achievement; the more uncontrollable the fire then became, the more they would think of themselves as its master. G. stood somewhat nearer the flames than the others, be felt their warmth on his body.

Quick! cried the man in the doorway, the firemen are here. As the incendiaries ran out, the firemen accompanied by soldiers ran in. There was a scuffle but both parties continued on their way and there were no arrests. A cordon of soldiers was placed round the building and the fire was soon extinguished.

Raffaele was remonstrating with Major Loneck on the other side of the piazza by the corner of the Via Nuova. The Austrian police officer argued that he had other buildings in the city to protect and that as soon as the crowd dispersed he would have to withdraw his guard. If your soldiers go they will try again, insisted Raffaele, the safety of the population is your responsibility.

They should have thought of that yesterday in Rome! said the Major, speaking German.

On another corner G. was speaking to several of the men who had started the fire in the print shop. You see, he was explaining, they are using the hydrant from the building next door. You must put that out of order next time.

Raffaele left Major Loneck and went over to a circle of figures standing in the entrance to the Galleria di Montuzza, the tunnel which runs under the hill on which the cathedral and the castle and the Museo Lapidario are built. He pointed out G. (who appeared to have lost his jacket and was easy to identify in his white shirt) and issued his orders.

A false calm descended upon the piazza and the streets leading out of it. There were many people about, but they were not the people normally to be found in these streets. The firemen went away. The crowd broke up into small loitering groups waiting to see whether the platoon of soldiers would remain or march off. The inhabitants of the area were nowhere to be seen.

G. strolled back towards the Piazza San Giovanni. Ahead of him was a woman whom he thought he had seen before. She was dressed somewhat like Nuša but she was smaller. He stopped in his tracks. Further, he said out loud, further still!

The man in the white shirt whom they were following had a distinctive way of walking: he hunched his shoulders and his head so that he had the lunging gait of a bull. Suddenly he stopped and said something out loud to himself. It was not difficult for them to believe that he was a traitor.

G. walked on. The woman’s air of vague familiarity increased his interest in her. Between the two of them he saw his past self hurrying forward to draw level with her. He would recognize her face, he would speak to her. He saw her interest being aroused by his past self. Yet he did not quicken his pace to discover who she was. Whatever it was that separated him from his past self was very slight, amounting to no more than a whim, to no more perhaps than the heat he imagined he could still feel on his body from the fire in the print shop.

If G. had struggled with the four men when they came up to him, their fight might take several pages to describe. He did not struggle.

If, on the other hand, he submitted to them without any resistance at all, several pages might be needed to describe his acceptance of death. He did not submit without resistance.

What happened can be quickly told and the rest can be conveyed at last by my silence.

They forced him to walk out of the piazza past the church of San Antonio. On the way he caught a glimpse of the face of the woman who had seemed familiar: it was from this woman that he had bought this morning the cherries in the Piazza Ponterosso. Two of the men held his arms forcing them against his sides like the arms of a foetus not yet detached from the body. The third man walked in front and the fourth behind. They went along by the canal down to the mole. There they turned right towards the railyards. The waterfront was deserted. From time to time G. tried to release his arms. He could not. They took him to the water’s edge.