The Way of All Flesh

Giovanni Mannu, 37, a careworn Sardinian coal miner with a red mustache, went to bed one night as usual--a poor proletarian who had pledged his faith and taken out a card in Italy's Communist Party. Next day he was rich.

Mannu had won the Totocalcio (national soccer pool); the 8-c- he had ventured got him a glittering $123,000, great' est bonanza in Totocalcio history. Kinfolk and friends gathered round to celebrate. So did Mannu's comrades.

The party photographed him, sporting a borrowed tie, against a party poster of an old woman begging alms. A comrade pointed meaningly to the poster. "Do you know what that means?" he asked.

"And how!" answered Mannu. "It is the personification of poverty that asks for help."

"And you," pressed the comrade, "are you going to do something for the poor?"

"Certainly," said the lottery winner. "Above all, I'll help myself because I'm poor enough, then I'll think of my children and my wife, and then comes my brother Giuseppe."

"And then?"

"And then my brothers-and sisters-in-law who helped me when I was badly off."

The comrade insisted, testily: "And for the party . . . what are you going to do for the party?"

"Why certainly," said Mannu, his eyes lighting at last with comprehension. "I'll immediately pay the arrears for the membership card of last year."

Then, as the comrades glared, Mannu disappeared into a shop, bought some rubber-soled shoes, a green necktie, a scarf, and a hat like the one he had admired in an American movie. He tipped the shopgirl $3, promenaded off with 25 friends to a lunch of lobster & champagne. He said that henceforth he would drink beer with his meals, travel only by plane. Then he flew off for Rome.

At week's end, Mannu's wealth was still unshared with the party. Chuckled Rome's conservative Il Tempo: "One millionaire more, one Communist less."

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