The Communist man then said the Banini could have his filthy fifty lire and grind the faces of the poor for all he cared, because soon justice would be done. And he laughed very loudly to show how he would not be sorry when the justice happened to the Banini and to show how he would laugh even if the Banini begged for mercy.

Then he threw a fifty-lire coin out into the water and took his children by the hand, and the mother and the grandmother all walked up to where their deck chairs were and they all sat down and if the children said anything, they got slapped and told to sit still because couldn’t they see Papa was upset enough?

The Banini got the net on the long pole he used to fish up things tourists dropped, like earrings or sunglasses, and he found the fifty-lire coin and put it in his leather boat money pouch.

When the next boat came back, he didn’t charge them any extra since the times were gone from the board. But they were an English family, and the father said he remembered when they had left and that he knew he owed the Banini an extra hundred lire, and he paid him and said they had had a “splendid time.”

Then the Banini walked over to the Communists, who were now having a glass of wine and some bread and grapes with amaretto cookies. And he showed the hundred lire to the PCI father and said how the English man had remembered he owed more and paid it without having been asked, even though he didn’t have to because the times were wiped off the blackboard.

The PCI man and the Banini both laughed at how the Inglese’were imbeciles because who would ever pay when he didn’t have to and how the Inglese had something missing upstairs. The Banini then sat down and accepted a glass of wine. He and the Communist told stories to each other about how crazy the English were in the war when they had both been captured by them in North Africa. And how they had even heard how the English would pay their taxes without lying and how that proved they were stupido even if they were polite.