Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A Perfect Idiot

bratwurst, and so on and so forth. “I’d l ike to leave immediately,” I said. “Frankly, I don’t even have the money to pay for the hotel.” And it was true, if I hadn’t met Don Vito, I don’t know how things would have turned out. He took care of the hotel bi l l and offered me a room in his convent—yet another convent, I couldn’t bear it anymore! —right in the neighborhood of the church my friend Rosario Rossi had told me about. “I l ike you a lot,” he said, “I don’t care if you hate priests and the Cathol ic Church, it doesn’t matter, what matters is something else, I’ l l explain later, right now let ’s not waste time on such bul lshit and let ’s look at the photos.” Don Vito showed me pictures of Vi l laricca and the chi ldren for whom we would bui ld the l ibrary, they came from needy fami l ies, victims of a bl ight more powerful than the plague—ignorance. “Ignorance,” the priest said, “is the only thing you can’t defeat with intel l igence. And it ’s also the cause of the ethical decay that can only be overcome with reading; reading means knowledge, knowledge of the external world and the internal one. In short,” he concluded, “reading is the only way I know you can get your own idea of what ’s happening around you and not get screwed over by pol iticians or television, the way you folks in Campania do. . . People l ike you don’t even read one book in a year.”

137