Trastevere is a boisterous, reeking, junglelike quarter that lies across a turbulent stretch of the Tiber river quite apart from most of Rome. The Trasteverini think the separation is fine. They like their dizzy labyrinth of alleyways, the Queen of Heaven jail and the little shop where the baker's daughter and the artist Raphael lived and lusted 400 years ago. They also delight in the dark, heavy-bosomed beauty of their women, the deftly handled stiletto and heroic quantities of dry, amber Frascati.
Trastevere has been the tenderloin of Rome ever since the Romans first settled across the Tiber. It achieved its earliest fame by supplying Rome's toughest gladiators and most durable prostitutes. Since then it has energetically produced a steady stream of hoodlums, revolutionaries, first-class soccer teams and the most colorful nicknames on the Italian peninsula (Trasteverini know each other by such names as the Mosquito, the Tub and the Big Balloon). "We don't quite know how we got to be different from everyone else," said the Mosquito last week as he polished up the wine glasses at his bar in the Via della Lungaretta. "I guess it's just a tradition sent down from our ancestors."
Enter the Communists. Once a year, Trasteverini hold a Procession of the Madonna del Carmine; they have added to it an additional celebration called the Festa de Nojantri (The Feast of Us Others). Together the two occasions are good for at least two weeks of sports, drinking, feasting, beauty and wine-tippling contests, and a lively spate of knife fights.
The Feast of Us Others had been managed by the Trasteverini themselves until 1917, when the Fascist Dopolavoro (workers' recreation society) tried to turn it into an organized political celebration. "One year," recalls Housewife Felicetta Gaudenzi, "they brought a Negro all the way from Abyssinia to stand at the entrance to the bridge. You paid so much, and you punched him. Then, unless you paid extra, he punched you back."
Last fortnight, as Trastevere prepared for the first Feast of Us Others in a decade, the district's alert Communists saw a chance to step in & take over where the Fascists had left off. But the Communists underestimated the alertness of the opposition. While they were debating ways & means to raise money for the affair, the right wing E.N.A.L. (National Organization for Workers' Welfare) blandly announced that it would sponsor the show this year, promptly received a generous donation from the anti-Communist Il Giornale d'ltalia.