Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [116]
Threats may sometimes be pure bluff. A newly established greengrocer got a number of mysterious phone calls offering both protection against theft and help with ensuring that he could illegally park boxes of produce outside the shop without incurring fines. He told the callers that he needed nothing; after a while the calls ceased and apparently nothing else happened. The subsequent collapse of his business was a result of his failure to anticipate the switch from the lira to the euro rather than because of any hostile activity. Out in the suburbs, by contrast, the extortionists make their presence clear; they are prepared to slash tires or set shops on fire. Perhaps the knowledge that such things do happen is sufficient intimidation even in relatively tranquil Monti.
Discommoding Complicities
It is not even clear that submission, when it happens, is quite what it appears to be. Submission is usually expressed through the common avoidance of conflict: numerous phrases-lascia perde' orlassa perde' (let it go lost), lassa sta (let it be), lascia correre filet it run)-are all iterations of the complaisance that lets dangerous currents run past, as when rotating credit managers skim off personal profits with impunity.
Many Romans attribute this attitude to the years of papal rule. It is often described in terms of resignation or accommodation. Importantly, however, it is also an attitude that can imply a threat no less than expressing the acceptance of one. As an astute student pointed out, it can serve as a warning "not to compete with me" (non entrare in concorrenza con me). Indeed, the passivity suggested by these phrases is perhaps deceptive; intimates understand them as socially proactive. An outwardly religious attitude to the workings of providence can thus disguise a cynical willingness to avoid responsibility for failure: "Let it go; dear Saint, what are you doing [for me]?" (Lascia perdere, Santo, the fai?) An expression of insouciant indifference may thus conceal both the speaker's own unease and the cultivation of fear in others.
This ambiguous stance pervades the smallest gesture; it is the verbal equivalent of the expressive hunching of the shoulders and spreading of the upwardly outspread hands whereby Romans refuse to engage in compromising conversations or indicate the ineluctable authority of bureaucrats and clerics. It is, above all, an assertion of personal dignity in the face of overbearing power; its implicit egalitarianism, a fellowship of shared impotence and frustration, leaves scant room for tolerating any kind of impatience or authoritarianism among one's interlocutors.
One elderly lady used the phrase lascia perde' to slow me down when I became impatient to pay off a waiter at a bar; she also used it to express the uselessness of getting into an argument-using it, for example (Dottore, lasciamo perde'), to indicate her disgust with the modern attitude to marriage: "What is fidelity? Stupidity!" Disgusted she may have been; but she knew better than to tangle with young people convinced of their greater worldly wisdom.
The stance is clear: one cannot seize on every potential offense, topic of interest, or passing whim; life is quite sufficiently complex as it is. That is why the butcher preferred to assume an air of intellectual inadequacy when faced with thinking about the existence of God. Equally, however, one tries to avoid becoming entangled over the trivialities of everyday life. It may be best to compromise in