THERE’S AN ARCADE IN NAPLES THAT THEY CALL THE GALLERIA Umberto Primo. It’s a cross between a railroad station and a church. You think you’re in a museum till you see the bars and the shops. Once this Galleria had a dome of glass, but the bombings of Naples shattered this skylight, and tinkling glass fell like cruel snow to the pavement. But life went on in the Galleria. In August, 1944, it was the unofficial heart of Naples. It was a living and subdividing cell of vermouth, Allied soldiery, and the Italian people.
Everybody in Naples came to the Galleria Umberto. At night the flags, the columns, the archangels blowing their trumpets on the cornices, the metal grids that held the glass before the bombs broke it heard more than they saw in the daytime. There was the pad of American combat boots on the prowl, the slide of Neapolitan sandals, the click of British hobnails out of rhythm from vermouth. There were screams and coos and slaps and stumbles. There were the hasty press of kisses and sibilance of urine on the pavement. By moonlight, shadows singly and in pairs chased from corner to corner.
In the Galleria Umberto you could walk from portrait to portrait, thinking to yourself during your promenade. . . .