The Day Before the Revolution

Seventy-two years and she had never had time to learn what they were called.

she had been the lover, the swimmer in the midst of life, but Taviri, dying, had taken that woman away with him. There was nothing left, really, but the foundation.

She was herself. Indeed she had been the tireless worker and thinker, but a blood clot in a vein had taken that woman away from her.

Nobody looked at her. Odo, who was Odo? Famous revolutionary, author of Community, The Analogy, etc. etc. She, who was she? An old woman with grey hair and a red face sitting on a dirty doorstep in a slum, muttering to herself.

was their business. Just so long as it wasn’t the business of Business, the source of profit and the means of power for other people.

“What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.”

She learned from them, but they didn’t learn from her; they had learnt all she had to teach long ago, from her books, from the Movement.

Amai had grown up in Odonian Houses, born to the Revolution, a true daughter of anarchy.

Analogy which was certainly the solidest intellectual work she had ever done, all of that had been written in the Fort in Drio, in the cell, after Asieo’s death.

There were always more people wanting to live in an Odonian House than could be properly accommodated. She had this big room all to herself only because she was an old woman who had had a stroke. And maybe because she was Odo.