From the back came loud noises of pleasure and excitement and banging about. When the room door was opened I could see down the dark passage opposite another lighted door. Then the fat, fair Italian came in for more beer.
'What is all the noise?' I asked the landlady at last.
She jerked her head: 'In the room at the back.'
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:
They were still unwilling to see or to hear me.
'What do you say?' the small one asked in reply.
The others stood and watched, slightly at bay, like suspicious animals.
'If I might come and look,' I said in German; then, feeling very uncomfortable, in Italian: 'You are doing a drama, the landlady told me.'
The big empty room was behind me, dark, the little company of Italians stood above me in the light of the lamp which was on the table. They all watched with unseeing, unwilling looks: I was merely an intrusion.
'We are only learning it,' said the small youth.
They wanted me to go away. But I wanted to stay.
'May I listen?' I said. 'I don't want to stay in there.' And I indicated, with a movement of the head, the inn-room beyond.
'Yes,' said the young intelligent man. 'But we are only reading our parts.'
They had all become more friendly to me, they accepted me.
'English? But do you live in Switzerland?'
So I told them about my journey. They were puzzled. They did not quite understand why I wanted to walk. But they were delighted with the idea of going to Lugano and Como and then to Milan.
They were all from the villages between Verona and Venice. They had seen the Garda. I told them of my living there.