ITALY: A Bell -for Don Cesare

Separated from the rest of Rome by a loop of the muddy Tiber River, the people of the tough, teeming, poverty-ridden district known as Trastevere (meaning: across the Tiber) have thought of themselves as a people apart ever since the time of the Roman Empire. In those days, the gladiators of Trastevere put on the best and bloodiest shows of all, just as today Trastevere's tough soccer players are the best in all Italy. Many another superlative can be applied to Trastevere; its poverty is the deepest, its streets and alleyways the most crowded, its feasting the lustiest in all of Rome. It was in Trastevere that Raphael himself found the baker's full-bosomed daughter whose sensuous charms he bequeathed to the world in the painting La Fornarina.

The Madonna. Once each year, to emphasize the differences between themselves and the'more effete Romans across the river, the proud Trasteverini pay homage to saints and sinners alike in a fortnight-long Festa de' Noantri—the Festival of Us Others. The celebration begins with a solemn procession in honor of the Madonna del Carmine, for as well as being the brawlingest quarter of Rome, Trastevere boasts the first church ever built in Rome to the glory of the Madonna. But with the procession over, the solemnity is at an end, and for two weeks the alleys of Trastevere echo to the bellowing of bawdy street songs as the Trasteverini give themselves over to abandoned enjoyment. All traffic stops as tray-bearing waiters hustle through streets jammed with the tables and chairs of the celebrators. And high above the confusion and gaiety ring out the bells of Trastevere's churches.

The most clangorous of all these bells once sounded from the white Church of the Patron Saints of Italy, where cheerful, cherubic, chain-smoking Don Cesare Polidori tends his flock in a section known for toughness even in tough Trastevere. Hard by the famous Thieves' Market is a district whose bitter poverty made it a hiving hotspot for trouble-brewing Communists, Don Cesare's bells had rung through every feast in the 14 years of his ministry. More important, perhaps, they rang when there was no feasting, for Don Cesare, troubled by the fact that more than half of his 15,000 parishioners voted Communist, conceived the idea of ringing the bells to break up party meetings of a Communist cell just down the street.

The Vendetta. Three months ago, during Italy's municipal elections, the Communists staged a big rally in the square. Don Cesare chose this moment to toll his bells in celebration of a three-day vigil for St. Catherine of Siena. The deafening tones of the tocsin scattered the Red audience like autumn leaves. Three days later, the biggest bell disappeared, skillfully and silently lowered by pulleys from its 75-ft. belfry. "It wasn't for the value of the bell that they stole it," said Don Cesare, eying the gaping space in his bell tower. "It was done as an outrage to my church. This is vendetta."