Word: arsoli
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With liberation, Arsolians trustfully hoped for better times. Local Communist Boss Fabio Alimonti went to Rome. Dressed in his best shiny black suit, he faced Rome's prefect. Said he: "You take our water for your benefit and spill what you don't need. The people of Arsoli cannot be left to die. Find a pump to bring life back to our hills...
...clever son. I wish I were like other Arsolians who are ready to go down before your force. I cannot. I see things as they are. My fire won't let me sleep nor eat nor laugh till I see justice done." When Alimonti returned to Arsoli he believed that he had won his point. To the peasants crowding round him in the shadow of the castle, which overhangs the whole of Arsoli, he quietly announced that he thought something would be done...
...angry Alimonti sat down at his rough desk. In fine handwriting for which, too, he curses his mother, he wrote a letter to the highest authority, the republic's then President Enrico de Nicola: "Now that we have a republic and that the people reign . . .", and he explained Arsoli's case: "Please see that something is done for this starving population." Punctilious, prompt and useless was De Nicola's reply. It ran: "Your request has been passed on to competent Roman municipal authorities." That was the end of that...
...such occasional idiocies do not prevent the Communist message from reaching the minds of thousands like a messianic revelation. In the village of Arsoli, a white-haired, sturdy old peasant woman described how the message came to her: "I think perhaps one is born with a Communist spirit, just like some people are born poets. I remember the first Abyssinian war with our terrible defeat, and watching the first swallows come from Africa that year. I remember, too, worrying when I was young about people like the carpenters, who built fine furniture but slept on trestles. Communism will...