Laudator Temporis Acti

Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, tr. Frances Frenaye (New York: Time Incorporated, 1964), pp. 95-97:

Most important of all, in compensation for even the worst defect, the late priest's comfort-loving spirit had endowed the house with one priceless treasure: a toilet, without running water, of course, but none the less a real toilet, equipped with a porcelain seat. It was the only toilet in the village, and probably there was not another one within a radius of fifty miles.

[....]

The complete absence of this simple apparatus in the region created almost ineradicable habits, which, entwined with other familiar ways of doing things, came to possess an almost poetic and sentimental character. Lasala, the carpenter, an alert "American," who had been mayor of Grassano many years before and who kept in the depths of the enormous radio-gramophone he had brought back with him from New York along with recordings of Caruso and of the arrival of the transatlantic flier, De Pinedo, in America, some speeches commemorating the murdered Matteotti, told me this story. A group of immigrants from Grassano used to meet every Sunday for an outing to the country after their hard week's work in New York . . .

"There were eight or ten of us: a doctor, a druggist, some tradesmen, a hotel waiter, and a few workers, all of us from the same town and acquainted with each other since we were children. Life is depressing there among the skyscrapers, where there's every possible convenience, elevators, revolving doors, subways, endless streets and buildings, but never a bit of green earth. Homesickness used to get the better of us. On Sundays we took a train for miles and miles in search of some open country. When finally we reached a deserted spot, we were all as happy as if a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders. And beneath a tree, all of us together would let down our trousers . . . What joy! We could feel the fresh air and all of nature around us. It wasn't like those American toilets, shiny and all alike. We felt like boys again, as if we were back in Grassano; we were happy, we laughed and we breathed for a moment the air of home. And when we had finished we shouted together: 'Viva l'Italia!' The words came straight from our hearts."

Labels: noctes scatologicae