If the people argued longer than normal, other vacationers would come over and start to gather in a little circle to see how it would all come out. If the people who didn’t want to pay the extra money were Italian, they never pretended the Banini had got the time wrong but just started to argue about how the rent for the boat was too high anyway and how the Banini was a Fascista Capitalista and how when the PCI (the Italian Communist party) won the next election, all the boats would be free for everyone, and the Banini and the people whom he worked for, who thought they owned the beaches, would be put in jail. Then the Banini would say that, if everything was going to be for free, maybe it would be a good idea for them to lend him their new Fiat parked up by the pizza and espresso bar so he could go visit his mama that afternoon. The other man would shout that the Banini was a porco-cane(a pig-dog) and then other Italians nearby on the beach would all come over, and the Christian Democrats would take the side of the Capitalista Banini, while the PCI families, who had little pictures of Communist partisans shot by the fascists in the war in their cars instead of saints’ medallions, would take the side against the Banini and all the Capitalistas who were ruining Italy. The Socialistas would try to be reasonable and take the middle ground, but because you can’t argue very effectively in Italian without taking a strong position, the Socialistas would have to join in with the “people”—PCI rowboat-renters—against the “lickspit-tlers of the Vatican oppressors and the Capitalist Swine who served neo-colonial American interests.”

The Banini would finish what he had to say and turn his back and walk away but only for a couple of paces; then he’d turn around and say a lot more about how subversive the boat-renter was and also maybe something about his war record and how he knew who the real collaborators had been.

Then the boat-renter’s family would all scream things and hold back their PCI papa who was being so insulted that soon he would have to fight the Banini. They all screamed at the Banini asking if he was trying to get someone killed with his inflammatory loose talk about people’s war records.

Other men would step forward to get between the two men who were soon going to kill each other, but then they’d start arguing among themselves about who had really started this, so you couldn’t tell who was who anymore or which ones were Capitalist Running Dogs and which were Stalinist Butchers.