Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [93]
Under the sunny surface of Roman life, fear is a common and corrosive miasma. Outcomes are rarely as terminally violent as they are expected to be, but fear feeds on uncertainty, which the very failure of some criminals to inflict violent reprisals increases rather than reduces. Some forms of fear have become systemic and even institutional; one of my key non-Monti informants very recently wrote to me that the church created fear-both of material reprisals in this world and of eternal damnation in the next-as a way of protecting its financial interests; and that she, having initially been reluctant to share certain information about the ecclesiastical management of real estate in the historic center, had now liberated herself from the fear to the point where she was prepared to fax me the documentation overseas and to request that I publish all the names mentioned therein.' A bar manager who wanted to make some quite general comments about the circulation of dirty money and the use of real estate to launder it abandoned his habitual seat behind the cash register to mutter, "They have some big capital to recycle." Even in a self-avowedly gossipy society, in some domains discretion is wise.
Fear is often deliberately cultivated, and people who have lived or worked in Monti for a long time claim that its seeping presence is increasing insidiously but perceptibly. Partly this is a matter of intentional acts of intimidation. A former union organizer wanted to create a private coffee bar on his terrace, entirely within his own walls. This did not sit well with another resident, who used his connections to create interference. There was evidently nothing illegal about the proposed construction, because no legal measures were taken to make him desist. Instead, a vigile showed up and told the first man, "Leave my friend in peace!" Then the night-time telephone calls began, full of menace. Instead of yielding, however, the union man called on his own connections; having enjoyed the protection of a special security force in Sicily, where unionists often went in fear of their lives, he resorted to its local representatives in Rome. The threatening phone calls stopped immediately.
This incident demonstrates-twice-a common source of fear: those with enough arrogance ~prepotenza) are able to impose their will, at least temporarily, simply by demonstrating their own sense of immunity. With the rising tide of eviction has come an equally disturbing increase in the incidence of pressure tactics to speed up the old residents' departures-again sometimes with phone calls in the night, or offers to help with moving possessions out of the house accompanied by unmistakable if inexplicit threats of dire consequences if the tenant fails to cooperate. And even at the moment of eviction, timing often responds to the exigencies of a particular legal provision; speed often trumps decency. An elderly couple was hastily evicted before a new regulation protecting the old could take effect-the city policeman who told me about the case said it was carried out by a "company no one has succeeded in identifying"; the wife was allowed to organize a search for a lost ring before finally leaving their home of several decades, but only on condition that the husband remain waiting downstairs.
Sometimes, too, fraud is involved, and a crooked official in the family can be useful in these cases; on one occasion a proprietor persuaded