Twilight in Italy

by D. H. Lawrence

'What is all the noise?' I asked the landlady at last.

'It is the Italians,' she said.

'What are they doing?'

'They are doing a play.'

'Where?'

She jerked her head: 'In the room at the back.'

'Can I go and look at them?'

'I should think so.'

The landlord glaringly watched me go out. I went down the stone passage and found a great, half-lighted room that might be used to hold meetings, with forms piled at the side. At one end was raised platform or stage. And on this stage was a table and a lamp, and the Italians grouped round the light, gesticulating and laughing. Their beer mugs were on the table and on the floor of the stage; the little sharp youth was intently looking over some papers, the others were bending over the table with him.

They looked up as I entered from the distance, looked at me in the distant twilight of the dusky room, as if I were an intruder, as if I should go away when I had seen them. But I said in German: