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By Root 699 0

that the jeweler, duly abashed, would now be conciliatory. The bar proprietor could not afford to stand on dignity for too long, for "business is business." He added, "You can't brood over every little thing.... You have to let things go by.... I can rise above it. For me nothing's happened; he's the one with the regrets." And he explained that his mother had taught him that "if you let it go, the other side becomes your inferior." Of another petty cheat who failed to pay his bar tab, he said that the money was so trivial that "you [the cheat] are of no value" and that he would not dignify such antics by bothering to recover the money. What might pass for resignation to the whims of fate becomes, in this man's demeanor, quite the opposite: a proactive seizure of the moral high ground.

His tactics are thus a subtle reworking of the stereotype of the southern male. Rome represents an unusual variant on the pattern of gender relations in the wider Mediterranean region. Historically, for example, the women of Rome have certainly not conformed to the image of southern European female demureness. Displays of male aggression, conversely, are usually tempered with self-restraint; those who fail to control their tempers are often roundly criticized even by their most traditionalist neighbors.

The bar proprietor astutely stage-managed these partly conflicting stereotypes of masculinity and the south, tailoring an aggressive style associated with his home region to fit the very different self-stereotype of the easygoing Roman. A politician he apparently admired, the same councilor we have already encountered holding a street meeting on traffic control, complacently contrasted the Romans' attitude to problem-solving with the stereotypes of both north and south: "We're not neurotic, and that seems right to me!" The attitude of "letting things go" defuses some surprisingly tense situations, and the barman had to live among Romans; indeed, his wife grew up in Monti. His skill lay in managing to recast the avoidance of conflict as manly strength.

His forbearance served his business well. When two junior goldsmiths ran up a tab at his bar and kept evading payment, he showed the tab to another goldsmith who had asked why these two did not come to the bar any more-this category of artisans does communicate internally and a few routinely exchange useful information, despite the jealousies that inevitably subsist-and suddenly the two young men began appearing again, not entering the bar but greeting the proprietor with a cautious "Ciao!" and being greeted cordially enough in return. Had he confronted the defaulters directly, he would have lost their custom, failed to collect the debt, and been humiliated into the bargain.

Even deep anger-the overtly racist outcry against the immigrants who flooded into the Piazzetta every Thursday and Sunday is an examplegenerally does not lead to concerted action, and individuals similarly tend to hold back from any drastic actions of their own. Thoughtful locals expected this complaisant resignation, or at least a habit of compromise, to overwhelm the calls for hostile action against the immigrants in the long run; that is in fact what happened, after some mediation between local residents and the Ukrainian church authorities. Once a significant proportion of the population acquiesces in any kind of understanding, it is only the foolhardy who continue to stand against it, because civility demands a degree of conformity, or at least complaisance.

Uncivil Pleasantries, Unpleasant Civilities

A decidedly left-wing bar proprietor loved to bait police officers who, he thought, were harassing Ukrainians and other immigrants. His establishment thus became a gathering place for some of these victims of police intolerance-a source of profit that did not go unnoticed by detractors wishing to impugn the purity of his motives. He and his wife did also recognize some individual Albanians as known troublemakers, and would preemptively put "reserved" signs on all the tables-which at least discriminated against them