Cossa was tired and he would have wanted to go home, but he had been the last to arrive and thus didn’t want to be the first to leave. Thoroughly rebellious, when it came to relationships with other people and with society at large, he was a conformist at heart. He pushed his conformism to the limits in order to please others, possibly even cater to their stupidity, and this in turn led the others to call him splendid. He admired the Major’s strength, which allowed him to throw himself into the thick of the action, and to dominate it: whereas he would just stand there, frozen, feeling that he could only ever be a spectator, as had been the case when the Major had kicked Pietro. In fact, instead of intervening, as his thought a moment earlier had led him to suppose that he would, he had ins
