She said that we didn't know anything, either as children or now, that we were therefore not in a position to understand anything, that everything in the neighborhood, every stone or piece of wood, everything, anything you could name, was already there before us, but we had grown up without realizing it, without ever even thinking about it. Not just us. Her father pretended that there had been nothing before. Her mother did the same, my mother, my father, even RINO. And yet Stefano's grocery store before, had been the carpenter shop of Alfredo Plus, Pasquale's father. And yet Don Achilles's money had been made before. And the Solar as' money as well. She had tested this out on her father and mother. They didn't know anything, they wouldn't talk about anything. Not Fascism, not the king. No injustice, no oppression, no exploitation. They hated Don Achilles and were afraid of the Solar as. But they overlooked it and went to spend their money both at Don Achilles's son's and at the Solar as', and sent us, too. And they vote for the Fascists, for the monarchists, as the Solar as wanted them to. And they thought that what had happened before was past, and in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it, and so, without knowing it, they continued it, they were immersed in the things of before, and we kept them inside us, too.

The Story of a New Name