A Year in the World (19 page)

Vocabulary:

decumano
: the Latin word for a major street. Spaccanapoli, an arrow-straight street piercing the heart of old Naples, was an important thoroughfare, the
decumano inferiore
, on the Roman town plan. Via Tribunali, parallel and close, was the
decumano maggiore
, and Via Anticaglia was the
decumano superiore
.

presepio
: crèche. The
presepio
tradition goes back centuries, and the antique clothed, terra-cotta figures, with expressive faces and the range of Neapolitan gestures, are searched for by aficionados of the tradition. Every citizen must have an ongoing collection. On the side street along the church, San Giorgio Armeno, I find a bevy of delicately painted pastel angels and buy a dozen for Christmas gifts.

scavo
: archaeological excavation.

Paleochristian
: earliest Christian remains.

corno
: horn-shaped object carried, displayed, and worn as protection against the
malocchio
, the evil eye.

Enter
Spaccanapoli, and you step onto the ancient Roman grid. The forum, the center of town, was uncovered in this area. Off Spaccanapoli are the narrowest streets on earth, lined with closet-sized artisan shops and little
bottege
whose entire stock you could fit inside two suitcases. The air above the street is alive with the flapping of laundry. I often stop at the top of a street because the dim light looks sinister. Via Tribunali and Via Anticaglia (which becomes Via S.S. Apostoli) are similar in feel to Spaccanapoli—scrunched and lined with palaces, dingy shops, and so many churches I can’t keep them separate. Our route goes from Piazza Bellini over to Via Anticaglia, back along to Via Tribunali to the duomo, then cuts over to Spaccanapoli, where we will walk the length to Piazza Gesù. With meandering in between. We’re focusing on these streets because along them, and jogging off here and there, are the
monumenti
, usually closed, now open on May mornings.

We get dropped off by the taxi at a piazza so Old World it makes you ache. Piazza Bellini seems to be dozing in another century. Decadent terra-cotta, ochre, mustard, and oxblood apartments and cafés circle an excavated Greek ruin, a man napping on a bench, a street lined with bookstores. We hear music here, there, everywhere—someone playing a time-warped violin in the morning, and from another window, a sad sax. We free-fall into a special ambiance we did not know existed but which seems so oddly familiar, so right. Old ladies stare from upper windows as though at something we can’t see. Men are raising the
saracinesche
(the folding gates that close Italian shops retain the Saracen name of those who brought them to Italy) and opening the doors to their musical instrument and sheet music shops.

Map in hand, we find courtyards with open staircases zigzagging up four floors, lone palms, old-fashioned nuns in heavy black with crosses, priests in long robes, buildings faded and peeling, abandoned palazzos, a derelict yellow baroque church overtaken by pigeons. An extravaganza of tile covers benches, fountains, paths at the sublime cloister of Santa Chiara. The streets gyrate with daily commerce. And we find open churches! All week we will wander this route among arcaded markets with vegetables spilling out of boxes, fish in blue plastic tubs, cheap shoes, and
presepio
shops. Many of these sell handmade crèche figures. Elaborate scenes involve not just the holy family, wise men, and angels—the whole context of a village is included. Small children are shopping with their parents. I see them buy miniature roof tiles, bread ovens, sections of buildings, artificial fires, tiny fruits in baskets. I collected for my dollhouse like that when I was a child. And everywhere the
corno
is for sale. Jewelry stores sell this protective symbol in coral, turquoise, and gold. The
presepio
shops sell them in terra-cotta and brass. “Do local people still believe that the
corno
keeps away the evil eye?” I ask in one shop.

The young man, who makes his own
presepio
figures, points to the tiny gold one on a chain around his neck. “We don’t believe—but we wear. If you get a new car, a new motorcycle, anything new, you hang a
corno
. You hang a
corno
especially if you don’t believe.”

Ah, split Naples: Spaccanapoli.

San Lorenzo Maggiore, right in the heart of Naples, must be one of those inexplicable places where magnetic forces beneath the earth converge and pull you toward an invisible crux. It pulled Petrarch, who ran into the church from the rain—such an odd little bit of memory to survive. It pulled Boccaccio inside where he met his Maria, who became Fiametta in his writing. It pulls us away from the fatally picturesque piazza, framed by an arch over the street where the skill of the ten-year-old soccer players enables them to avoid hitting the crowded stands of
corno
,
pulcinella
, and
presepio
wares.

Lorenzo, patron saint of cooks, is one of my favorites. He is always shown holding a rack, on which he was roasted by his persecutors. He is said to have cried out, “Turn me over, I’m done on this side”; I don’t doubt it. His restrained Gothic and very masculine church interests me primarily because it’s the last layer of a series of previous embodiments. Excavations have shown that the Greek agora lies underneath, and the Roman forum was located nearby. The present church, a baby in historical terms, was built over the Paleochristian church on the same site. Some later baroque overlay has been removed, restoring the architecture to its unadorned simplicity. The Gothic is not common in Tuscany, so the architecture seems foreign, except for the marble columns and
pietra dura
inlay. Inside the door one of the memorialized dead carved in marble looks as if he’s taking a siesta after lunch; another props up on his side, as if reading a mystery in bed. In the adjacent cloister and underground lie the remains of the Roman market. Then down a long flight of stairs, and you’re suddenly walking along a whole section of Roman street. How spooky Neapolitans must have felt during the air raids of World War II, when they hid from bombs here. Cool, dank, dim—this is a cross-section of the past, with perfectly delineated shops. Like the ones still thriving above, they had one room for sales and a smaller one in back for storage, siesta, and eating. The paved street is about as wide as those that cut between the
decumani
. A section of arcades, too, mirrors the markets above ground. A bread oven, a cistern, a little pass-through window, a stone wash tub—these homey details recall daily life.

After all these marvels, my favorite part of San Lorenzo turns out to be in a wing of the convent, where I find two small rooms of medieval sarcophagi and marble tombstones carved with figures of the deceased. They are all men, probably much taller in death than in life. Each body rests his feet on two dogs like little cushions. The figures rest their heads on marble pillows, indented as though soft. Their hands are crossed in knightly poses, but one man’s hands are together in prayer. The beauty of the carved marble invites the hand. When I rub mine over one face, I get a chill, as though the marble man could feel my touch. Long gone to dust, the idealized form remains.

Santa Maria
del Purgatorio faces one of the arcaded markets. Grim bronze skulls and crossbones on stone pedestals mark the front entrance. You can see into a dim crypt below, decorated with olive oil cans full of plastic flowers. Standing across the street day after day, selling your produce and chatting with friends, you don’t, I suppose, notice the grinning skulls staring at your radicchio.

Santa Maria di Costantinopoli must be the liveliest church in Napoli this morning. As part of the May openings, we are greeted politely by a boy from the convent school, who offers to show us the church. His teacher says
buon giorno
, too, and stands a few feet away to listen to her student practice his English. Soon we’re joined by three girls. Is there anything lovelier than eleven- or twelve-year-old girls? Tossing cascades of black hair, flashing brilliant smiles, almost jumping with excitement, they all talk at once, telling us the church was built as a thank-you to Maria for stopping an attack of plague. But, one shouts, the church was supposed to have been built on promises given during an earlier plague, and the people forgot. That’s why the plague came back; Maria wanted the church she’d been promised. They propel us to the convent garden where their classmates perform traditional music and dances with great enthusiasm. They refuse to believe that we understand Italian. “Nonstop music. You will listen.” Songs involve cartwheels in the dirt, great work on the tambourines, and that quintessential local instrument, the
triccaballacca
, which rings bells and clacks at the same time. Pre-sexy girls go all out to interpret romantic songs. Hands on hips, eyes rolling, lots of swaying—little innocent Carmens. “Which girl do you like?” I ask the boy. He turns his serious, deep Byzantine eyes to me and smiles. “Not one of these, but there are too many beautiful girls in my school.”

The girls pull our sleeves, pointing out the sparse and dusty laurel, bitter orange, mimosa, and mandarin trees, the tiled cupola of the church, and their school, which they so clearly love, abutting a desolate courtyard with broken chairs and trash. “
Abbandonata
,” one shrugs.

They offer to show us the church again. When we thank them and say goodbye, each one politely shakes hands, then they’re off.

“Pizza pause,” Ed says as we leave. We stop in at Campagnola, the plainest of plain places, jammed with locals. The sign proclaims:
Qui si mangia bene e si spende poco
, here one eats well and spends little. This is down home; no guidebooks will point you here. Mama is cooking, and there’s no pizza at all, but instead we are tempted by marinated sardines, grilled fish, marinated zucchini, and
peperoni ripieni
. Four tourists look in and recoil. But this many locals can’t be wrong. Soon more crowd inside. The husband keeps grabbing folding tables and finding space for them. No one minds because Napoli has the densest population in Italy; they’re used to close quarters. When Mama comes by our table, I ask how she made the delicious peppers, which are not really stuffed but rather layered. “Roast the peppers and cut them in strips. Put them in a baking pan and sprinkle them with breadcrumbs, parsley, pine nuts, raisins, and a few pieces of butter, then do that again.”

“No olive oil?”

“Of course olive oil. Swim in olive oil. Then you bake.”

“That’s all? Wasn’t there some meat?”

“Sí, come no? E forse un po’ di formaggio.”
Yes, why not? And maybe a little cheese.

We
start the long walk back to the hotel. We pass so many Santa Maria churches. Some are named for location: Maria of the arch, the portico, the column, the vista; some are named for memory: Monteoliveto, Jerusalem, a rare snow in summer. But by far most of Mary’s churches’ names reveal her deepest function to the faithful. She has her churches of miracles, pregnancy, help, concession, faith, patience, purity, health, victory, knowledge, hope, thanks, grace, every good, seven sorrows, and chains—dozens and dozens and dozens of places to appeal to Mary for what ordinary life requires. Her shrines in the street offer a spot to pin a note or a photo so that she will look down with mercy. We stop at all of them. She is outlined in three layers of neon. She is gazing all the way through you. She has a secret smile. One moving Jesus shrine has carved above its niche
ADOREMVS
in Roman letters. Jesus is crowned with thorns,
ecce homo
, behold the man. His pain is completely surrounded by flowers. “Napoli overwhelms me,” I say to Ed. “It’s the full-fledged, all-out, big-hearted Mediterranean city.”

“In fifteen years it will be the best city in the world to live in. It’s got everything. Clean it up, yes. But I hope they leave the ruins, let it continue to run wild, too.”

“As much as I love Rome, something about Napoli gets closer to me. I’d love to have been born here. More than anywhere else.”

In
the dim siesta light, with the shutters pulled almost closed, I read pages from
The Gallery
by John Horne Burns, a young American soldier stationed here during World War II. I pick up this book as I do Colette’s
Earthly Paradise
, because it deeply refreshes. Besides being a clear imagistic writer, who seemed to write with blood instead of ink, Burns understood Italy. Even during war and occupation, even though he was very young, he connected at a cellular level. Having just walked through the glass-vaulted Galleria Umberto I, where his novel is set, I go back to him because of the tremendous love he brought to his writing. He
recognized
Napoli, and the city gave him an opening into understanding how those in tragic circumstances live and even find joy. His method is portraiture. In his pages we meet many American soldiers and many Neapolitans, all caught in stupidity and madness, all given the opportunity to reveal their souls. The ugliness and grace of human character stains and lights every page. On page 347 this description:

Moe loved the city of Naples . . . Those corners that gave onto nowhere, the sunlight slanting on a pile of rubble, those faces looking out laughing or weeping at him—all reminded him that his heart was a hinge not a valve. And most of all he loved the titter or hum or roar of Naples, saying to him things older than 1944, things that reached back into a time when men were more united in their chaos, willing to be put against a wall for something they believed. It seemed to Moe that in Naples there had somehow survived the passion and coherence of an old faith. All this he only felt, but the city of Naples comforted him. There was a poultice in its dirt, a natural humanity in its screaming.

Sunday. The city closes. Traffic abates. Families flock to Villa Reale park, where they visit with friends and leisurely walk along the water. The children ride long-maned ponies that are saddled or attached to little carts. Older children rush toward the bumper cars. “They’re practicing for adulthood,” Ed says. And yes, the children drive with aggression and exuberance. A concert is in progress on the bandstand. We don’t go in the aquarium, stocked with fish from the bay, but I love the story of the feast prepared for American generals when the city was liberated during World War II. The larders were bare all over the city, so a seafood dinner was prepared—from the aquarium.