So I told the landlady. She said I must be back by twelve o'clock.
The night was very dark. Below the road the stream was rushing; there was a great factory on the other side of the water, making faint quivering lights of reflection, and one could see the working of machinery shadowy through the lighted windows. Near by was the tall tenement where the Italians lived.
We went on through the straggling, raw village, deep beside the stream, then over the small bridge, and up the steep hill down which I had come earlier in the evening.
So we arrived at the café. It was so different inside from the German inn, yet it was not like an Italian café either. It was brilliantly lighted, clean, new, and there were red-and-white cloths on the tables. The host was in the room, and his daughter, a beautiful red-haired girl.
Greetings were exchanged with the quick, intimate directness of Italy. But there was another note also, a faint echo of reserve, as though they reserved themselves from the outer world, making a special inner community.
Alfredo was hot: he took off his coat. We all sat freely at a long table, whilst the red-haired girl brought a quart of red wine. At other tables men were playing cards, with the odd Neapolitan cards. They too were talking Italian. It was a warm, ruddy bit of Italy within the cold darkness of Switzerland.
'When you come to Italy,' they said to me, 'salute it from us, salute the sun, and the earth, l'Italia.'
So we drank in salute of Italy. They sent their greeting by me.
'You know in Italy there is the sun, the sun,' said Alfredo to me, profoundly moved, wet-mouthed, tipsy.
I was reminded of Enrico Persevalli and his terrifying cry at the end of Ghosts: