But to come back to the elections: that was supposed to be the year of the Communists. The Communist Party was by far the leading party in Turin, Naples, Venice, in Emilia and in Tuscany. In certain cities, two thirds of the population voted Communist. The Communists even picked up votes in the ranks of the classes that communism had historically declared its determination to abolish, and perhaps those classes voted that way out of a subconscious desire to contribute to their own destruction and finally eliminate the mark of distinction that in other historic phases they had striven ruthlessly to attain. There was a bourgeoisie that defended tooth and nail the prerogatives acquired and a bourgeoisie that fought, at least to hear them tell it, against the regime that had hitherto always protected, coddled, spoiled, and cherished them. These two souls of the bourgeoisie, mirror images of each other, would soon come to a final reckoning. And that final reckoning was expected to come with these elections. When I talked, socialized, argued, made friends, made love, or went to the movies it was almost exclusively with Communists. Of various varieties and degrees, some of them authentic Communists, some less so, and a few who were unquestionable fakes, but all of them red, members of the PCI, the FGCI, Lotta Continua, Manifesto, PSIUP, Marxist-Leninists, anarcho-Communists (as we members of Collective M proclaimed ourselves), renegades of the extraparliamentary world, Trotskyites, adherents to the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth International, Socialists even farther to the left than the Communists themselves, and a vast number of so-called gruppettari, members of grouplets whose political militancy made explicit reference to movements that there is not enough space here to mention, so frequent were their schisms and reconciliations and breakaways and fragmentations, by the end of which there were increasingly extremist and sectarian formations. The only one that I’ll cite, if only for its exemplary name, and because the older sister of my first girlfriend was a militant in its ranks, was Serve the People. I, too, was a Communist to all intents and purposes, I was one even if maybe I wasn’t one, I hadn’t been before and I wouldn’t be afterward, I was one even though the ideas of communism failed to persuade me back then any more than they do now, that is to say, almost not at all, and their practical applications actually disgusted me, to the point that I could much more readily say that I’m an anti-Communist than a Communist. So how can an anti-Communist proclaim himself to be a Communist, and act and vote and even wade into brawls, feeling himself wholly to be one, and I mean sincerely, with full conviction—so I ask myself, how can that be? My sole anchor of salvation and my one way of scuttling out from the dilemma of that contradiction was, in any case, to proclaim that I was opposed to Stalin—whom I considered a criminal even then and have ever since, and one of the worst criminals ever to have existed on the face of the earth—and against the Stalinists, and in that way I managed to carve out a virtuous little niche for myself in that ocean of bloodthirsty events and behaviors. All the same, I already know that, no matter how hard I try, no matter how I explain it away, I’ll never be able to understand and justify the contradiction that deep down still drives me, even now that I’ve stopped rooting for one side, now that I’ve even given up voting, the contradiction that still sometimes drives me to take the positions of a free-market gentleman, and on other occasions unleashes within me the delight of being implacably, coldly Marxist. A disenchanted bard of the status quo ready to turn into an equally disenchanted analyst of man’s exploitation of his fellow man. How can that be? And yet it most assuredly is. For that matter, I exist, there’s no doubt about it. And I sway, back and forth. I hardly think I’m alone in this.

Perhaps the fact that I sway can be attributed to the profession of writing, which tends to make me adopt different positions from case to case, different ways of looking at things. It’s a collateral effect of this calling. Or else, perhaps, I chose this line of work precisely in order to afford myself the luxury of swaying, in order to encourage it, so that I could impersonate first this person, then that one, that idea …

Savor pineapple

And dine on pheasant

No future for you, bourgeois,

So hold on to the present! (The Catholic School)