Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [72]
These minor misdemeanors were almost always a matter of common knowledge. Unlike outsiders who stole from Monticiani, the perpetrators were not considered any more immoral than the officials whose rapacityitself, some sagely averred, forced on them by their terrible salariesallegedly compelled them to resort to such practices in turn. On the contrary, failure to take advantage of the state's weakness would only earn a merchant a reputation for almost culpable innocence and an antisocial attitude.
Such openness does nevertheless entail a measure of risk; spies exist (local people betrayed at least one large Jewish family to the Gestapo), and people who feel slighted may take their revenge by bringing illegal actions to the attention of the authorities. The dominant ethos, however, strongly rejects betrayals of neighbors to the official state. Openly illegal transactions exemplify a fragile trust, performed in an atmosphere of partial fear that failing to read a customer's real intentions can result in serious trouble. The state is perceived as a watchful presence, made all the more damaging by the corrupt practices, especially extortion, of its officers; among one's neighbors, by contrast, constant testing can reduce the risk of betrayal to manageable proportions.
The sense of living under oppressive and unrelenting inquisition, perhaps a relic of papal rule, is still remarkably widespread: "You're forced to keep things under wraps and you can't get ahead [as a result]." The resulting intimidation takes the form of a constant fear of snooping informers who exploit the dialect and gestural style of friendly interaction while actually either doing the work of the state or, worse and perhaps more common), feathering their own nests. The miasma of potential extortion induces compliance without, usually, the necessity of resorting to actual physical violence or to the use of legal provisions. All become complicit, because there is no other way to operate in this society. But that does not mean that anyone can be prevented from com plaining about it. The point is precisely to keep options open by complaining that, in effect, local and national government give one no choice but to cheat and lie; politicians (and priests) are human too. People work best with the state when its representatives act in ways that ordinary citizens can understand, and indeed see as normal. As a local tag has it, "for citizens the laws are applied; for friends, they are interpreted." This attitude creates a high degree of ambiguity, especially as professions of friendship can actually be intimations of a coercive presence. Officials often do not trust each other either, which is why some categories of police, following a series of scandalous disclosures, were ordered to watch others for signs of bribery and extortion.
Cynics also point to widespread evidence of corruption in the highest echelons of civic administration; there is a paradoxical sense that "in Italy [only] the dishonest are politically credible!" The shopkeeper who offered this ironic observation had lived some years in the United States; he also said that in Italy everyone participated in the game. Thus, to use one of his examples, a butcher who gave his customers receipts for half the amount paid thereby made them tacitly complicit in his tax evasion; not for these Romans the stern Christian prohibition of involving others in one's own sinful failures to resist temptation.
The predictable sins of the powerful, moreover, furnish both a model and