Beautiful Antonio Read Online Free PDF Page B

tiles… Hell and dammit! Where women are concerned you have to ration it out, lead ’em up the gardenpath. It’s easy enough to take them in if you use a bit of gumption. I’m pretty sure you’re one of those fellows who’d give a fortune to make a good score every night, eh? Or am I wrong.”
    â€œWell, to tell the truth I…”
    â€œIn one way, mind you, you’re right. Women stroke you with one hand while they tot up the sums with the other. But what the deuce! it’s so easy to spin ’em a yarn. All it takes is a spot of technique. Not that there aren’t some pretty crafty ones who haggle over details, but that’s the cunning of a fool, because your clever woman knows she has to keep on her toes in other ways. Your job is to know when you’ve had enough. That’s all there is to it… It’s the clean contrary of what we’re told by the Pig who rules over us… Incidentally, is it true that he has a stomach ulcer?”
    â€œUncle, I have no idea!”
    â€œWord has it that he has a stomach ulcer… In fact yesterday, sitting in a café, I heard a naval officer at the next table whispering behind his hand to a colleague of his, ‘We’re home and dry: it’s not an ulcer, it’s cancer!’ I’m pretty sure they were talking about him. No? Do you say not?”
    â€œI didn’t say a word.”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake, you’ve no interest in politics at all! You don’t give a fig for it. I bet you’ve never read Karl Marx…”
    â€œNo, I haven’t.”
    â€œWell don’t. If you haven’t read him by the age of thirty, don’t start now. Just leave him be. In our day we used to read him. That is, we didn’t
read
him either, but we talked about him as if we had… Socialism! Abolishing private property! What’s your opinion, eh? Would it be possible to abolish private property? I don’t think so. But on the other hand we’ve become slaves to everything produced by the masses: electricity, wirelesses, telephones, railways, trams… As we are slaves to such things, it follows that we are slaves to the masses. And these same masses, hell and dammit, only become as good as gold and work with a song in their hearts under eitherFascism or Communism. As soon as you give them freedom they start to sulk, grow churlish and rowdy, and throw their weight about so rudely that they rip this famous freedom to bits and trample it under foot. You agree?”
    â€œOh yes, uncle.”
    â€œOn the other hand, if the majority of the human race wants Socialism, the world will inevitably become Socialist.”
    â€œYou may be right.”
    â€œMaybe yes, maybe no. It wouldn’t be the first time the majority of the human race wanted one thing and history took another turn.”
    â€œThat may also be the case.”
    â€œ
What
may be the case?”
    â€œThat history will take another turn.”
    â€œSo what’s this turn then?”
    â€œDon’t ask me.”
    â€œOn the other hand the rich, among whom I personally number myself, are disagreeable.”
    â€œBut uncle, you personally…”
    â€œBelieve me, we are disagreeable, we are block-headed, we are spoilt, we are bored stiff. Impossible to persist until the end of time with the rich on one side and the poor on the other! I am well aware, hell and dammit, that we can’t go on like this!”
    â€œWho am I to say…?”
    â€œOn the other hand, in whose hands do you wish to place Capital? In the hands of the State? The State, to put it mildly, is a bunch of civil servants and officials, from whom the good Lord deliver us! Apart from the fact that here in Italy all officials are bandits… No, it’s no good shaking your head like that, they’re bandits to a man!”
    â€œBut uncle, I didn’t move a muscle!”
    â€œâ€¦ Officials, the world