Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [167]
Some residents actively connived in the scams that further breached the walls of civic solidarity. We once went with friends to look at an apartment that was for sale. The edgy young real estate agents' representative who received us, dressed in a formal suit and a loose necktie too broad for his thin frame, assured us that the present occupant would be happy to negotiate with my friends. It was here that I encountered the young woman who adopted the Madonna-like pose; she was clearly part of the action.' Her posture contrived to convey both the wide-eyed innocence of the victim who was begging not to be evicted as a result of the sale and the knowing connivance of someone participating in an obvious scam. Had she been alone, she might have made an entirely convincing play for our sympathy, but the young real estate agent's evident anxiety to make a quick killing introduced the poison of incongruity into the scene, throwing the harsh light of suspicion on the tableau. As the real estate agent eagerly suggested a possible exit sweetener for the waiflike young mother, my friends looked at each other with growing disgust, wondering what her percentage of the overall profit would be; whether victim or, more probably, conniving participant in the deal, she had allowed herself to be co-opted by the neoliberal invasion of old Rome that they, very progressive and decent folks who were simply seeking to live once again in their old neighborhood, profoundly detested.
Honest real estate agents have a hard time finding work; one novice moved from office to office for a whole year, utterly disgusted by prospective colleagues' glee at the scams they had successfully perpetrated against poor, bereaved, and ill-informed clients. Such honest agents can only work at the economic margins of their profession; but they do exist. Charges of mafia or camorra involvement may be little more than an attempt to explain the high incidence of fraud in a profession already locally perceived as responsible for traumatic change. On the other hand, the very frequency of these charges paradoxically disguises them by reducing them to a routine sensation. No one really knows how to identify real crimes amid the tabloid discourse of everyday conspiracy theories.
Uncertainty is a potent weapon. When we look at the ways in which proprietors and their legal counsel manipulate the formal apparatus of the bureaucracy to put pressure on tenants to move out of their apartments, we shall see that timing is often calculatedly unpredictable. Such cat-andmouse tactics are all the more effective against a backdrop of uncertainty about the real identity of the new speculators. Fear feeds on an absence of clear and uncontested information.
Behind the fear of earthly pain lies a far greater fear, that of eternal damnation-or, perhaps more effectively, that of a protracted stay in Purgatory. The church has not always been above threatening the intestate elderly with precisely such eschatological consequences of failing to leave their real estate to the church. When this happens, the earthly consequences for the tenants can be correspondingly dire. A dilapidated property in another section of the historic center apparently passed into the hands of a local church in this way. The residents did not immediately see the danger they faced; to the contrary, a high-ranking prelate came in person to assure them that they should go ahead with whatever improvements they were able to make to the property in order to make their lives pleasanter. On the face of it, this seemed at least a politer approach than the usual tactic of proprietors who try