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the voter!” the thin watcher said.
    â€œPoor creature,” the older woman in white said. “Not a spark of compassion!”
    â€œSince the majority of the watchers agree...” the chairman said.
    â€œI object!” the orange woman said.
    â€œSo do I,” Amerigo said.
    â€œWhat’s all this fuss?” the priest said to the chairman, curtly, as if angry with him. “Are you preventing a voter from casting his vote? Mr. Chairman, have you nothing to say?”
    The chairman decided the moment had come for him to lose his temper, to fly into a rage, the most violent rage that could be mustered by the mild, whining man he was. “Why, why, why,” he said, “why, what is this? What’s come over you all? Why do you want to stop this man? They all live here, poor things, at the Little Home of Divine Providence, which took them in when they were mere babies! And now, when they want to show their gratitude, you want to prevent them! Gratitude to those who have given them nothing but kindness! Have you no feelings?”
    â€œNobody wants to prevent an expression of gratitude, Mr. Chairman,” Amerigo said. “But we’re here to administer a political election. We have to make sure that each voter is free to cast his ballot according to his own ideas. What does this have to do with gratitude?”
    â€œWhat ideas do you expect them to have, except gratitude? Poor outcast creatures! Here they have people who are fond of them, who take care of them, and teach them! They want to vote. More than all those others outside! Because they know what charity really means!”
    Mentally Amerigo reconstructed their idea, noted the implicit calumny (“They’re trying to say that Cottolengo is possible only thanks to religion and the Church, and that the Communists would simply destroy it, and therefore the vote of these poor unfortunates is a defense of Christian charity...”), he was offended by it, and at the same time, confuting it, with a certain sense of superiority (“they don’t know that ours is the only total humanism...”), he erased the insult as if it had never existed, all in the space of a second (“...and that we and only we can organize institutions a hundred times more efficient than this one!”), but what he really said was: “I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, but this is a political election, they must choose among candidates of various parties...” (“Don’t start making political speeches at the polls!” the thin man interrupted him), “...they’re not voting for or against the Cottolengo Institute.... And so, what you’ve been saying, the expression of gratitude... gratitude to whom?”
    Until then, the priest had stood there listening, his chin on his chest, his heavy hands pressed to the table, looking up from beneath his beret; now he raised his voice:
    â€œGratitude to the Lord our God, that’s what!”
    Nobody said another word. They all moved in silence: the man with the goiter made the sign of the cross, the older woman in white nodded her head in assent, the orange one raised her eyes as if prepared to put up even with this, the clerk started writing again, and the chairman went back to checking the list, and so each of the officials returned to his task. Agreeing with the majority, the chairman allowed the priest to accompany the afflicted man into the booth; Amerigo and the Socialist comrade had their protest put on record. Then Amerigo went outside for a smoke.
IX
    THE RAIN had stopped. Even from those desolate courtyards a smell of earth rose, of spring. A few climbing plants were in flower against a wall. Under one of the arcades a group of schoolchildren was playing, a nun in their midst. A long sound was heard, perhaps a cry, beyond the walls, beyond the roofs: were these the cries, the groans, that people said rose day and night from the wards of the hidden creatures in