THE GOLD OF FORCELLA

The bus that was supposed to take me to the intersection of Via Duomo and Via San Biagio dei Librai was so crowded that it was impossible for me to get off at the right stop. When I finally did set foot on the ground, I found myself staring at the dismal façade of the Central Station, along with the monument to Garibaldi, and a procession of faded green tramcars, rickety black taxis, and carriages drawn by small, sleepy horses. I turned and headed back the way I’d come until I reached Via Pietro Colletta, in the renowned Tribunali neighborhood. The sky was bright blue, as dazzling as a postcard, and beneath that luminosity people came and went in a great confusion amid buildings that rose like clouds here and there in no apparent order, and I stopped at the beginning of Via Forcella somewhat perplexed. Farther up the narrow street there was a terrific commotion, a buzz of mournful voices, and a wave of colors, red and black predominant. A market, I thought, or a street fight. An old woman was sitting near a stone at the corner and I stopped to ask her what all those people were doing. She raised her face, pitted by smallpox and framed by a large black kerchief, and took a look for herself at that distant strip of sunlight at the heart of Forcella and source of that intermittent mournful buzz, where the crowd was bulging like a snake. “Niente stanno facenno, signò—No one’s doing nothing, signora,” she said calmly, “you’re dreaming.”

It was years since I’d been down here, and I’d forgotten that Via Forcella, along with Via San Biagio dei Librai, is one of the most densely populated streets in Naples, where the hustle and bustle often gives one the sensation that something extraordinary must be happening. Through a veil of dust, the sun gave off a reddish glow that had lost all cheerfulness. From the thresholds of hundreds of small shops or from chairs set out along the sidewalks, women and children stared up at it with a strange, dazed air. Even the donkeys hitched to the vegetable carts seemed struck by the peculiar murkiness of the light, twitching their long ears to shoo the flies with a silent, apathetic patience. From within a small pushcart, like those used by the sanitation authority, which seemed to have been momentarily abandoned in the middle of the street, a head could be seen; beneath it was the trunk of a man of about fifty, carefully dressed in a jacket buttoned to the neck and sewn at the sides and lower hemline like a sack. A small gilt plate tied to his chest with twine invited passersby to give alms, but no one noticed him and, to be honest, he didn’t do much himself to attract the public’s pity. With his wine-reddened cheek resting against a sack, his ears also reddened by wine, even glowing, his white hair cascading over his eyebrows, and a delicate smile on his parted lips, the citizen slept. Meanwhile, all around him dwarves of both sexes passed by, respectably dressed in black, with pale, distorted faces, large sorrowful eyes, and twig-like fingers held at their chests, careful to avoid colliding with children and dogs. Other beggars, cripples or simply professionals, were sprawled on the ground wearing images of this or that patron saint around their necks or holding signs listing their misfortunes and their children—a sight that was replicated in the more fashionable streets of the city, in Chiaia or Piazza dei Martiri. They waited politely, or dreamed. Several church bells rang out loudly, calling these souls to Mass.

As I came out of Forcella onto Via Duomo, the traffic seemed more orderly and almost silent, but soon became even louder again in the San Biagio dei Librai district, which could be described as a continuation of Forcella.

Like other ancient, impoverished streets in Naples, Via San Biagio dei Librai was packed with shops selling gold. A lackluster glass display case, an excessively polished counter (so many ladies’ elbows and hands having leaned on it for probably more than a century), a bespectacled shadow of a man who cautiously balances a shiny object in his hand and silently observes it, while a woman, young or old, standing before him at the counter, eyes him anxiously. Another scene, even more intense: the trap now momentarily empty, the same maggot, coming out onto the shop’s threshold as if taking a break, looks vaguely around him, spying, in turn, in the crowd, the approach of a pale, hungry face, the eyes full of shame. That carpet of flesh which, even as I entered San Biagio dei Librai, had appeared extremely dense to me, seemed to disappear the deeper in I went, or at least it wasn’t as extraordinary, much like a fresco when you move up close to it. The fact remained that, as in Forcella, I had never before seen so many beings together, walking or hanging out, colliding and fleeing one another, greeting one another from their windows and calling out from the shops, bargaining over the price of goods, or yelling out a prayer, in the same sweet, aching singers’ voices that had more the tone of a lament than of the vaunted Neapolitan cheer. It was truly something that both shocked and eclipsed all one’s thoughts. Most alarming was the number of children, a force perhaps sprung from the unconscious, who were not remotely supervised or blessed, as could be determined by the black halo hanging over the head of each. Every so often, one of them would emerge from a hole in the pavement, move a few steps out onto the sidewalk, and then scurry back in like a rat. The alleys off this street, itself narrow and eroded, were even narrower and more eroded. I didn’t see the sheets for which Naples is well known, only the black hollows in which they were once hung: windows, doors, balconies where tin cans sprouted withered bits of lemon verbena. I felt compelled to search behind the miserable windowpanes for walls, and furnishings, and perhaps other little windows opening onto a flowering garden at the back of the house; but there was nothing to be seen except a confused jumble of various items such as blankets or the remains of baskets and vases, a chair on which a woman, like a sacred image blackened by time, sat with her yellow cheekbones jutting out, her eyes unmoving, thoughtful, black hair pinned on top of her head, sticklike arms folded in her lap. At the far end of the street, like a Persian rug worn down to clumps and threads, lay bits of the most varied kind of garbage, from amid which issued forth the pale, swollen, or bizarrely thin figures of more children, with large shaved heads and soft eyes. Few were clothed, and those who were wore shirts that exposed their bellies; almost all were barefoot or wore sandals from another era, held together with string. Some played with tin cans, others, lying on the ground, were intent on covering their faces with dust, still others seemed to be busy building a little altar with a stone and a saint, and there were those who, gracefully imitating a priest, turned to offer their blessing.

To look for their mothers would be insanity. Every so often one would dash out from behind the wheel of a carriage and, screaming at the top of her lungs, grab a child by the wrist and drag him into a lair from which emanated shouts and cries. There you might see a comb brandished, or an iron washbasin on a chair into which the unfortunate lad was forced to plunge his pitiful face.

In contrast to the savage cruelty of the alleys was the sweetness on the faces of the Madonnas with their infant Christs, of the Virgins and Martyrs, who appeared in almost every shop in San Biagio dei Librai, bent over a gilded cradle decorated with flowers and veiled with lace, not a hint of which existed in reality. It didn’t take much to understand that passions here were cultish in nature and precisely for this reason had deteriorated into vice and folly; in the end, a race devoid of all logic and reason had latched on to this shapeless tumult of feelings, and humankind was now a shadow of itself, weak, neurotic, resigned to fear and impudent joy. Amorphous poverty, silent as a spider, unraveling and then reweaving in its fashion those wretched fabrics, entangling the lowest levels of the populace, which here reigned supreme. It was extraordinary to think how, instead of declining or stagnating, the population grew and, increasing, became ever more lifeless, causing drastic confusion for the local government’s convictions, while the hearts of the clergy were swollen with a strange pride and even stranger hope. Here Naples was not bathed by the sea. I was sure that no one had ever seen this place or remembered it. In this dark pit only the fire of sexuality burned bright under an eerie black sky.

It was noon, and on each of the past few days it had rained precisely at that hour; accordingly, I watched the sky cover over with a layer of gauze that immediately caused the shadows of the buildings to fade, along with the already tenuous shadows of the people. Some women were walking ahead of me, preceded by a pair of very tall priests, their waxen hands grasping red leather books, who soon disappeared down an arcade with a rustle of cassocks. The women held in their hands small white packages, and every so often glanced inside them, sighing and chatting. When they arrived in front of the Church of Sant’Angelo a Nilo, they crossed themselves, then entered a courtyard opposite.

O Magnum Pietatis Opus was written across the pediment of the building at the far end of the courtyard. The lifeless gray façade resembled those of the hospitals and nursing homes in the neighborhoods of Naples. But behind this one, instead of hospital beds, there was the long line of windows of the Monte dei Pegni pawnshop, a “great charity operation” run by the Bank of Naples.

When I arrived on the third floor of the building, before one of the most majestic doors I have ever seen, groups of poor people were already there, sitting on the stairs or on their packages: pregnant women, old women, sick women, those who could no longer stand and who had begged a relative or a friend to hold their place in line. Making my way cautiously amid those bodies, I pushed open the door and found myself in an immense room with a very high ceiling, lit by two large sets of windows, like wings, on either side, and above each of those windows was another large, square, hermetically sealed window. Long spider-webs, like thin rags, were suspended in midair.

It was the room designated for dealing in precious objects.

A vast crowd, only nominally in a line, was clamoring in front of the windows for “New Pledges.” The commotion was due to the fact that on that very morning an order had come down to give as little as possible as a loan against each pawn. Some people, their faces pale as lemons and framed by frightful permanents, turned the gray pawn tickets over and over in their hands with an air of disappointment. A very large old woman, all stomach, with bloodshot eyes, wept ostentatiously as she kissed and rekissed a chain before parting with it. Other women, and a few thin-faced men, waited calmly on a black bench set against the wall. Children wearing only shirts sat on the floor and played.

“Nunzia Apicella!” a clerk shouted from a distance, toward the small crowd redeeming their pledges. “Aspasia De Fonzo!”

Names were called by the minute but were drowned out by the fervent chatter of people commenting on the new proviso, unable to resign themselves to it. A guard with a black mustache and big, languid eyes, who wore his uniform as if it were a bathrobe, paced up and down, indifferent and bored, every so often making a show of pushing people back into orderly lines. He was speaking to someone or other when the grand door to the hall opened abruptly, and in walked a red-haired woman of around forty, dressed in black, dragging two extraordinarily pale children behind her. That unhappy woman, who was later revealed to be one Antonietta De Liguoro, zagrellara, or haberdasher, had learned on the street that the bank where she was heading to pawn a chain was closing early that day and wouldn’t let her in. With her flushed red face and her blue eyes nearly out of their sockets, she begged everyone to do her a favor since she needed to pawn her chain before closing so that her husband could depart for Turin where their oldest son was gravely ill. Nothing could calm her. Even when she had been assured that she could certainly get in line, she continued to sob and cry:

“Mamma del Carmine, Mother of God, help me.”

Many of the women, forgetting their own great sorrow of moments earlier, took up her cause. Those farther away called out heartfelt messages of encouragement and blessings. Those nearer touched her shoulders and hands, used their own hairpins to fix her hair, not to mention the attention showered on the two children, the prolonged and theatrical cries of “Mamma’s darlings.” The two creatures, who were perhaps three and four, skinny and pale as worms, wore on their waxen faces little smiles so wizened and cynical that it was a marvel to see, and every once in a while they gave their frenzied mother the once-over with a mischievous and questioning air. A kind of uprising immediately transported the woman, whose trials and tribulations everyone now knew, up to the window, leapfrogging the ferocious bureaucracy of waiting one’s turn. And here is the mesmerizing conversation I overheard:

Clerk (after having examined the chain, dryly): Three thousand eight hundred lire.

Zagrellara: Facìte quattromila, sì—Come on, make it four thousand, won’t you?

Clerk: Take it or leave it, my dear.

Zagrellara: But my husband’s got to take the train, I swear it, we have a sick son as well as these two little rascals ... do it for love of the Madonna!

Clerk (very calmly): Three thousand eight hundred ... up to you ... (and turning to another clerk): Amedeo, ask Salvatore, purtasse n’atu cafè—bring me another cup of coffee, will you? ... No sugar.

Her eyes still bloodshot, but now perfectly dry, Antonietta De Liguoro retraced her steps of moments earlier, proudly ignoring, or perhaps truly not seeing because of her grief, those who had earlier rallied around her with their Christian pity. She seemed not even to notice the two children following behind her, their little hands gripping her dress.

“That one there,” the guard said to a young man who looked like a student, a red briefcase under his arm with the edge of a towel sticking out, “has been talking about her husband taking a train to Turin for a year. Nun tene nisciuno—there’s no one in Turin, no husband, either. Nun vo’ ’a fila ... e i’ nun ’a dico niente—she don’t want to wait in line, and I won’t say anything.” His gaze followed the cunning zagrellara, who, after pausing briefly at the cashier’s desk, was now hurrying toward the door with the money and a gray pawn ticket pressed tightly to her chest. Miserable and compassionate, the crowd forgot itself in order to attend to the presumed victim with words of comfort and indignation in the face of an age-old injustice that had by now seeped into everyone. “Jesus Christ will console her ... Mamma del Carmine will help her ... God rubs salt in the wound,” and stares of deep hatred were aimed at the bank windows and at the ceiling, where all could see the local authorities and the government promenading among the spiderwebs.

Meanwhile, a clerk’s indifferent voice had resumed calling out: “Di Vincenzo, Maria; Fusco, Addolorata ... ; Della Morte, Carmela ...”

All of a sudden, there was a great silence, then a murmur of astonishment, of childish surprise, ran through the three lines waiting in front of the New Pledges windows.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the clerk, peering out his window, but no one paid any attention. Somehow or other, a brown butterfly with a profusion of tiny gold stripes on its wings and back had entered through the door leading to the stairs and was flying over that melee of heads, hunched shoulders, and anxious stares; now it fluttered ... rose up ... dove down ... happy ... careless, never making up its mind to land in one place.

“Oh! ... Oh! ... Oh! ...” murmured the crowd.

“O’ bbi lloco ’o ciardino!—There, look at the garden!” a woman said to her newborn, who was crying softly, his head on her shoulder. Near the door an old crippled woman, her mouth full of bread, was singing.