Ferragosto
From MICHAEL ADAMS
ROME
ROME in August is a city under foreign occu- pation. From the beginning of the month, in a movement which reaches its climax on the 15th (the Feast of the Assumption), the Romans pour out of their city while the tourists pour in. For a true Roman it is worse than a crime, it is a matter of brutta figura, to be seen in the capital after the middle of the month, while no one, it seems, has yet told the tourists that the latter half of August is in most respects the least agreeable period to spend in the Eternal City.
In most respects—but not in all. The cross- migrations lead to a sad decline in sartorial stan- dards in the streets of Rome, and the streets themselves are noticeably less well cared for; but the standard of driving goes up as the foreigners edge their Volkswagens and their Dor- mobiles along under ancient walls which nor- mally echo to the screaming tyres and open exhausts of the native motorists, and pedestrian- ism, if exhausting in the heat, becomes at least a shade less mortally dangerous.
The Church claims August 15 for its own, but the festival has in reality, an older, pagan origin. Known as the Ferragosto, it commemorates the triumphant return of the Emperor Augustus from his campaign in the East, and the feria.? augustales which he ordained in celebration. In advance of it, the postman, the dustman and anyone else who feels he has a claim on your indulgence come round to wish you luck--and hang about until you show your appreciation in the proper manner. With the proceeds they, too, will get out of the city if they possibly can on the 15th, when life comes to a total standstill in Rome, to be resumed raggedly and reluctantly two or three days later when pockets are empty again.
Even then it is a curious and absent-minded kind of life, in which only the tourists in their shorts and their vivid beach shirts seem real, while the remaining Romans drift sleepily about their half-remembered business, past shuttered shops and cinemas announcing 'Closed for the Summer,' and restaurants where fretful waiters try to satisfy the demands of outcasts who can- not tell the difference between fettucine and lasagne. The atmosphere is one in which you feel that nothing can happen; it is virtually im- possible to conclude any kind of business, be- cause the man you want will be fuori Roma, out of Rome, and if he is not he will pretend to be, for form's sake or to avoid the fatigue of meet- ing you—and if you do succeed in making an
appointment with him, he will not keep it, whether from indolence or distaste (and even if he does, nothing will result).
Parliament, of course, closes down, but this year there was a dreadful moment when it looked as though the nation's legislators would have to forgo their holidays and join the shame- ful band who for one reason or another were tied to the city. An angry debate was in progress over the nationalisation of the electric-power in- dustry, and it became clear that if the debate were allowed to run its course it could not be over before the 15th. The issue was one which involved the very basis on which the present coalition government had been created, and on which the government's opponents could not honourably make any concession. At the last minute a compromise was reached, as a result of skilful manceuvring by the Speaker of the House, by which, in theory at least, the essential points of the measure were debated while the final vote was postponed until . . . September.
Without this happy outcome the restive deputies might have been tempted to join in the endless roundabout of strikes which have preceded and accompanied the holiday period (can this be altogether an accident—especially when the strikes seem so often to take place on a Saturday or a Monday?). Nor would they have been in bad company, for it is not only the bakers and the milk distributors, the typesetters and metal workers and railwaymen who have taken a few days off in recent weeks, but also the doctors in the city's hospitals (who now threaten another, nation-wide, strike) and even the senior civil servants, including heads of de- partments. Most of these have grievances enough in an Italy which has been developing fast and furiously but most unequally—but it is notice- able that these grievances tend to become in- supportable only when the thermometer climbs into the nineties and so many more fortunate Romans are already disporting themselves on the beaches at Ostia.
The fact is that progress and industrial de- velopment and the 'economic miracle' are matters which primarily concern the north of Italy—Turin, Milan and the prosperous Po valley—while Rome, for all its clerical history, remains at heart part of the pagan South, a Mediterranean city which finds it hard to take life too seriously or to discard the notion that work is best left to the barbarians (that is, any- one who is not a Roman). And this feeling is at its strongest in the height of summer, when the city's climate as well as its deep-rooted in- stincts lend it more obvious kinship with Athens or even Alexandria than with the cities of the north—and when the irruption of great hordes of strangely clad northerners with strange dialects on their lips convinces the Roman that, for the time being. Rome is no place for him. So for the tourist who comes here in August and who can support the heat, there is the reward in store that he can see the city, suddenly emptied of half of its inhabitants, standing proud and open to his gaze as it does at no other time of the year. He can hear its fountains, and see its monuments, and stroll through its great squares—which in winter become merely rather grandiose car parks—and catch at least some- thing of the glory that was Rome before it was swamped by the twentieth century.
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