Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [186]
Paolo, too, recognized the element of prevarication, although he obviously hoped that this would work in the tenants' favor as matters had once again not escalated out of control. An uncle of his had become deeply impassioned in the confrontation, at one point threatening the bank's lawyer and yelling about the bank's evil responsibility for the expulsion of the last true Romans; Paolo had intervened to stave off a fistfight. His uncle, he said, was "a torrent of words" and talked "according to the Roman character." The lawyer protested that he was simply doing his job and was in fact not part of the bank staff. Had he been one of the bank directors, Paolo claims that he would have grabbed him by the neck himself; but the lawyer was "a good person" (una brava persona), and antagonizing him would in any case have been counterproductive in that he might have become far more rigid in his demands. As for the authorities, the prefect had found it necessary to send an official police representative because otherwise the bank would have found grounds for legal action against the authorities themselves. His goal, Paolo thought, had been to give both sides some basis for temporary satisfaction and thereby to defuse the immediate tension.
While Paolo evidently hoped that the new deferral would also give the tenants a better chance to build their case collectively-once a single family had been evicted, the others' individual cases would collapse on the basis of precedent-he was also realistic enough to understand that the bank, too, would be able to marshal new forces for the next round. But time gained by the bank was also time gained for the tenants. When the bailiff asked the bank's lawyer to suggest a date for the next deadline-"How much should we make it, counsel-five months?"-the lawyer, while demurring at so unusually lengthy an extension, nevertheless "was quite indulgent with regard to the deadlines" and replied, "You do it"-in part because, as Paolo explained, in this respect the lawyer was partly obliged to yield to the bailiff's authority. The lawyer respectfully addressed the bailiff with the polite form of address, which recognized his situational authority while denying him collegial equality; the bailiff's power to extend the reprieve was pragmatically limited in that too generous a stay of eviction might well have provoked legal objections from the bank.
The bailiff's role followed certain identifiable social procedures. He could not act with complete freedom; the law had to be respected, as the tenants explicitly recognized. But when Loredana, under extreme tension, suddenly began to cry, he jocosely demanded of her husband, "So what's she doing all this crying for, then?"-indicating, in that moment, that he had actually managed to improve their chances. In fact he had good reason to be encouraging at that point; it was evident that the bank's lawyer had tacitly recognized that the bailiff's choice of date ~ i i April) would almost automatically mean a further extension until June because local elections were already scheduled for i6 April, but chose not to fight the suggestion. A prominent politician, a Monti resident and junior government minister who had taken an active interest in the case, commented, "Well, of course.... In Italy everything is amortized!" Hence, presumably, Paolo's visible anxiety not to let his uncle antagonize the lawyer, who showed himself to be quite sympathetic to the tenants' situation