Then the PCI man who would not pay the extra fifty lire on principle, because you had to take a stand against the CIA and America somewhere and this was it, picked up the boat washrag and with a sweeping motion wiped all the boat times off the Banini’s blackboard so as to bring true equality to Italy and to show he wouldn’t sit still while the partisans were called collaborators and Wall Street brokers bought and sold the world.

The Banini turned to the crowd and asked them if they had seen what the PCI man had done. He shook his fist at the sky and asked the saints and Mary the Mother of God if she had seen what the PCI man had done.

Then he took a step over to where the man’s wife had put down their beach ball, towels, and picnic basket and he picked up the PCI man’s towel and threw it into the water to show the PCI that if they called in the Soviet tanks, like in Hungary to crush freedom, and wiped off blackboards with the time people had left in their row-boats, then, then, Then (!) saints above (!) they would have a fight on their hands, and he could count on that!

The PCI’s friends and his wife had to beg him not to fight the Banini and the Capitalists and the Papal Stooges, and the PCI wife had to show the PCI baby to her husband and beg him in the name of the PCI’s saints and the Communist Mother of God not to fight for the baby’s sake because did he want his children to be fatherless in this Capitalist wilderness?

Then the PCI father picked up his baby, who had started to cry because of all the shouting, and he held his baby up to heaven to show God, who, if not actually a member of the PCI, was nevertheless his witness, that the Banini had made his baby cry and to show that if he had done this to a sweet innocent bambino, he would stop at nothing!

The PCI grandmother who was on vacation with the PCI family ran up the beach, screaming that the PCI father was going to kill the baby in his rage. The pensione manager, hearing somebody screaming about murdering an innocente, came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on his apron, which was all bloody from the chickens he was gutting for our supper. He came down to the beach to ask what was going on, and then the Banini told him what the Communists were trying to do, and the Communists said their towel was ruined, and the manager said it was only wet and would dry.