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often was sold on the black market by distributors. The "prominent" families which could buy it, bought it readily, those who could not, continued in their poor existence almost like before. During this period of transition and while the war was still going on in the north of Italy, some of the village activities were slowly resuming, but nothing was going to be the same again.
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CHAPTER EIGHTH

- The humiliation of rebirth -

As the war was still going on in the north but coming to a predictable end, Italy was slowly trying to emerge from the destruction of war. There were provisional governments with dubious functions and without any efficiency and certainly without any importance to most villagers or Italians for that matter. Some of the roads were being repaired even if with temporary
fillings to allow at least some transportation to go through. Traveling was still a difficult task. Means of transportation included horses, carts, a few cars or trucks some of which had also been converted to steam power and fueled by wood scraps often picked from the sides of the roads. Needless to say, interruptions and delays were the rule rather than the exception.

Allied troops were stationed or passed through large cities like Naples. Their presence and activities had brought a great economy, an abundance of goods, but a corruption at all levels, a flourishing black market, all sorts of hustlers, and a moral decay commonly ignored for pragmatic reasons or