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ready to make extremes meet, Amerigo would have liked to go on clashing with things, fighting, and yet achieve at the same time, within himself, a calm above it all.... He didn’t know what he would have liked: he understood only how far he was, he and everyone else, from living as it should be lived the life he was trying to live.
VIII
    THE ABUSES to which an opposition party’s watcher can usefully raise objections during the balloting at Cottolengo are limited. To become angry because they allow idiots to vote, for example, doesn’t achieve any great result: when the documents are in order and the voter is able to go into the booth by himself, what can be said? You can only let it go, perhaps hoping he hasn’t been taught well and will make a mistake (though this occurs rarely) and will increase the number of invalid ballots. (Now that the batch of nuns was finished with, it was the turn of a horde of young men, resembling one another like brothers, with their twisted faces, dressed in what must have been their best suits, as they are sometimes seen filing through the city on a Sunday when the weather is fine, and people point to them: “Look at the
cutu
.”) Even the woman in the orange sweater was almost solicitous with them.
    The cases where you have to be more alert are when a medical certificate authorizes a half-blind woman, or a paralytic, or someone without hands, to be accompanied into the booth by an authorized person (usually a nun or a priest) who can make the “x” for her or him. With this system, many poor wretches, incapable of discrimination, who would never be able to vote even if they had the use of their eyes or their hands, are promoted to the rank of bona fide voter.
    In such cases there is almost always a certain margin for doubt and protest—for example, with a certificate of very weak eyesight: the watcher can immediately raise a protest. “Mr. Chairman, this man can see! He can go and vote by himself!” the woman in orange would exclaim. “I held the pencil toward him and he reached out and took it!”
    This was a poor man with a deformed neck and a goiter. The priest accompanying him was large, heavy, blunt-faced, a beret pulled down to his ears; his manner was harsh and practical, not unlike a truck driver’s; he had been bringing voters in and out for some while. He held out the palm of his hand, vertically, with the document plastered over it, and he struck it with the other hand: “Medical certificate. It’s written here that he can’t see.”
    â€œHe can see better than I do! He took two ballots, and then he noticed there were two of them!”
    â€œYou think you know better than the oculist?”
    The chairman, to stall for time, pretended amazement. “What’s the trouble? What’s the trouble?” Everything had to be explained to him again from the beginning.
    â€œLet’s see if he can go into the booth by himself,” the woman said. The man was already on his way.
    â€œOh no!” the priest said. “What if he makes a mistake?”
    â€œHa! If he makes a mistake it’s because he isn’t capable of voting!” the woman in orange replied.
    â€œWhy are you taking it out on this poor unfortunate man? Shame on you!” the other woman official, the one in white, said to the first woman.
    At this point Amerigo intervened. “We could surely make a test, to see if his sight...”
    â€œIs this certificate valid, or isn’t it?” the priest said.
    The chairman examined the paper up and down and from side to side, as if it were a bank note. “Oh, yes, it’s valid....”
    â€œIt’s valid, if it tells the truth,” Amerigo protested.
    â€œIs it true that you can’t see?” the chairman asked the man with the goiter. The man with the deformed neck looked up. He didn’t speak; he began to cry.
    â€œI object! They’re intimidating