Friday 5 August 2016

...of tacit consent

Dritto’s men are now chattering with cold behind the boulders; their heads and shoulders are wrapped in blankets, like Arab burnouses. The detachment has had one casualty - the commissar, Giacinto the tinker. He had been hit by a burst of German fire and his body lay in a meadow below, rid now of his colourful dreams of vagabondage and of all his lice too, which no insect powder had ever done. There was also one man slightly wounded in a hand, Count, one of the Calabrian brothers-in-law.
They have now been joined by Dritto, whose yellow face and blanket round his shoulders make him look really ill. Silent, his nostrils quivering, he watches the men one by one. Every now and again he seems on the point of giving some order, then says nothing. The men have said nothing to him yet. If he gave an order, or any of them talked to him, the rest would certainly turn on him, and violent words would fly. But this not the moment for a show-down; both he and the men realise that by tacit consent, so he avoids giving orders or reprimands and the men avoid any occasion for them. The detachment has been marching with discipline, and there has been no dispersion or quarrel about shifts; one could never have told it was leaderless. But Dritto is still in fact their leader, he only has to glance at a man to make him straighten up; yes, he is a great leader, he has a magnificent leader’s temperament, Dritto.

[The Path to the Spider’s Nests, Calvino, I.]

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