Congo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not a catholic or a protestant; I haven’t any money and I haven’t any work. Look at that.” Congo pointed with a dirty finger to a long rip on his trouserknee. “That’s anarchist.... Hell I’m going out to Senegal and get to be a nigger.”
“You look like one already,” laughed Emile.
“That’s why they call me Congo.”
“But that’s all silly,” went on Emile. “People are all the same. It’s only that some people get ahead and others dont.... That’s why I came to New York.”
“Dio cane I think that too twentyfive years ago.... When you’re old like me you know better. Doesnt the shame of it get you sometimes? Here” ... he tapped with his knuckles on his stiff shirtfront.... “I feel it hot and
like choking me here.... Then I say to myself Courage our day is coming, our day of blood.”
“I say to myself,” said Emile “When you have some money old kid.”
“Listen, before I leave Torino when I go last time to see the mama I go to a meetin of comrades.... A fellow from Capua got up to speak ... a very handsome man, tall and very thin.... He said that there would be no more force when after the revolution nobody lived off another man’s work.... Police, governments, armies, presidents, kings ... all that is force. Force is not real; it is illusion. The working man makes all that himself because he believes it. The day that we stop believing in money and property it will be like a dream when we wake up. We will not need bombs or barricades.... Religion, politics, democracy all that is to keep us asleep.... Everybody must go round telling people: Wake up!”
“When you go down into the street I’ll be with you,” said Congo.
“You know that man I tell about?... That man Errico Malatesta, in Italy greatest man after Garibaldi.... He give his whole life in jail and exile, in Egypt, in England, in South America, everywhere.... If I could be a man like that, I dont care what they do; they can string me up, shoot me ... I dont care ... I am very happy.”