A Matter of Blood

Any normal week brings into focus a number of incidents--always violent, usually passionate, and rarely predictable--in that most cinematic of existences, Life--Italian Style. A few recent examples:

> Tooling toward Rome, a truck driver from the town of Poggibonsi suddenly realizes he has forgotten his driver's license. Che male fortuna, it's in his pants pocket at home. So he whirls the truck around and heads back. When he rings the doorbell, his wife leans out the window. "What's wrong, mio caro?" she asks sweetly. "I forgot my license." "Wait, I'll throw it down to you," she chirps. Back on the road to Rome, the truck driver is stopped by the police for a routine check. The driver's license he produces isn't his. Double take, then slow burn. With carabinieri in tow, he roars back home, bursts into the bedroom to find his wife in intimo colloquio with her lover. While the cops collar the accidentally unlicensed Lothario, the husband picks up his naked wife, plunks her seat-first on the red-hot kitchen stove. Pffft!

> In Sambiase, a town of 12,000 at the tip of the Italian boot, a chilly wind whispers under the doors. The townspeople stare at each other meaningfully as a lonely dog howls in the hills. Then, with a roar of auto engines and a clatter of hoofbeats, Sambiase blows wide open. Bullets spray in all directions; a hand grenade booms against the wall of the police station. For 40 minutes the town rocks to gunfire and explosions before the attack recedes. At last police arrive from a nearby town. Is anything wrong? No, say the townspeople, nothing. Can anyone identify any of the raiders? No. Any reason why they should have shot up Sambiase this way? No. The police write in their report: "Looks like a vendetta of some sort," and, shrugging, return to their headquarters.

> In a courtroom in San Remo, the slim, stiff-spined figure of Brigadier General Alberto Concaro, 74, stands at attention before the bar. It is a simple parking problem. But as the judge announces that General Concaro must park his car in his garage and stop using it as a storeroom, Concaro cries: "I protest!" The argument grows in volume; the general draws an automatic pistol. One court official drops, shot twice in the stomach and once in the leg. The court usher charges boldly, then sprawls dead with three methodically aimed bullets in him. The judge intervenes, only to slump in his robes, critically wounded by four slugs. Finally a policeman slips behind the general, cuts him down with a burst from his submachine gun. Dying on the courtroom floor, General Concaro gasps: "I shot as a protest against bureaucracy. I am only sorry I fell in such a dishonorable way--shot in the back."

It may be that Somebody Up There felt it was high time to cool off that hot Italian blood, for last week most of Italy was blanketed by its heaviest snowfall since 1796. But in Rome, which caught nine inches, passions only heightened when the army was called in to clear the drifts. Rome's unemployed demanded that the city hire them to do the job. Absolutely not, declared city officials, recalling the nightmare some years ago when gangs of unemployed cleared streets by day, then shoveled snow back onto them at night to keep their jobs alive.

As Romans pelted one another with snowballs, umbrella pines toppled like tenpins under the heavy, wet load. The citizens' reaction showed how long they have been conditioned to the sound of gunfire: with the crackling snap of tree branches echoing through Roman streets, police phones were besieged with hysterical calls of "Assassino!" and "Banditi!"

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