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‌The Third Day

The third day of rain was 25 October, a day of pale and unhealthy spite, and consciousness accompanied the tremors. In the first hours of the day the streetlights flickered. Everything was extremely unstable and precarious then, in that moment, with that deep night now gone, of course, and the day that showed no sign of coming, no sign. In Piazza Sannazzaro five stray dogs wandered around, and the rain fell on to the water in the streets, and a faded hiss in the distance came from the occasional ship, and only the silence seemed comfortable. The silence that promised recovery, of course, and voices, people shouting, the rattling of trams, and cars, and policemen, and convulsive traffic. And yet nothing existed at that grey moment, and then the silence promised nothing, you have to go all the way in and plunge in if you really want to re-emerge, because it wasn’t a pale silence, no, a sad silence merely, because behind the windows various eyes were alertly keeping watch, of course, keeping watch, and opaque with sleep they followed the still-falling rain, and that grey, Christ!, that discouraging, inescapable grey, and their breathing was strained and feeble. Nothing reached the asphalt and the volcanic buildings of Posillipo but sad thoughts, disjointed consciousness. Would it end? Would it ever end?

In his porter’s lodge Salvatore Irace turns the newspaper around in his hands and images flee and news and thoughts go inevitably to the window and beyond, mingled with the streaks of that sweet, gentle insinuating rain, so stubbornly regular, regular, yes, and unremitting. Salvatore Irace reads attentively: a bridge has collapsed at Guardia Sanframondi. He remembered it, certainly, he remembered it well, along with all the houses and all the things and the people in his village. The harsh landscape, that wind that blew and blew remorselessly, so that on some days you couldn’t put your face out of the door. He remembered it. The wind sliced his cheeks, stung his pupils, sandpaper dust fell violently on his eyelids, those red-blotched bony hands with their creaking finger joints withered. And Salvatore Irace wondered if it had really been worth leaving Guardia for this cramped watchman’s hut. Of course his children were safe. Safe, of course, and thriving. Both at school studying, and studying reasonably well. Because he had told them, it’s not all fun, my dear boys, your studies have cost me the sweat of my brow, and if you don’t understand and if you don’t study as you should I will tie you both to your beds at night and belt your faces, you know very well that I will, I will do it seriously, and your mother would do well not to intervene. Because I’m willing to understand everything, to forgive everything, in life, and I don’t want to distress you, I don’t want to do that, but get it into your heads that you aren’t children of the rich, and that you have to study, and you have to improve yourself by your own efforts, you have to make your own way in life, and to build it you have to study, and study, and make sacrifices, and otherwise do as you like, but don’t forget those studies. His two sons have to go to university. And get a degree. Of course, one mighty great degree. And you have to be doctors, because when you’re a doctor everything is solved, absolutely everything. And maybe nothing is solved, nothing whatsoever, if you don’t know what you’re doing, but with a degree behind you, you have a lot of possibilities in life, yes, and bear in mind that your mother and I have another few years here and then we’re coming back to Guardia. To tell you the truth we’re a bit tired as well. Think about it, bustling about all day back and forth, ironing shirts all over the place. Do you think you can spend a whole life like that, do you?, what do you think?, does that seem fair? Salvatore Irace says to himself that perhaps that degree will solve nothing, nothing at all. He saw it very clearly every day, conversing with people who really knew what they were talking about. He shrugged. But what are you going to do?, tell my boys they’ve got to study?, tell them do what they feel because life’s one big mess anyway?, ah, no can’t do that. When you have children you have certain duties too. He remembered very clearly his father belting him in the face because he didn’t want to work the land, he didn’t want to, and instead every day he said one of these days I’m off, I’m leaving everything and going to the city, what do you expect me to do on this stupid land that gives nothing at all to anybody and you have to kill yourself with work? His father took him into the stable, tied him to the rusty iron ring and beat him with his belt for an interminable length of time. But there was nothing to be done about the belt-blows, they didn’t persuade him at all. Oh no, Salvatore Irace was even more bullheaded than Antonio Irace. It was because of that bull head of his that when day came he didn’t stop to think for as much as an instant and he said goodbye. And in truth he said not a word, because he left at night. Now with that rain coming down and coming down again Salvatore Irace turns the newspaper around in his hands and beyond the glass he sees his wife beckoning him because there’s coffee. He gets up for the sake of it, but also sees that water, coming down and coming down interminably, and that desolate grey of the sky, and the daylight that hasn’t come. He wonders at that point, he really wonders: how will it end? Because to tell the truth life has fled, now, and sometimes if he and his wife are left on their own there’s always that dark presence, that sad thought of the life that was once in their life and has now fled; and when this happens he gets up, always, and says I’m going to the garden because I’ve got things to do. And his wife gets up too, and all of a sudden there is the sound of the open tap and the water flowing. She has started washing something. There’s always something to wash, and dry, and tidy away. There’s one more question, with this rain, and a sense of irritation. Nothing serious, oh nothing, but if something ever were to change. Here, all of a sudden everything might melt into air, everything destroyed, everything, years of sacrifice, of effort. But these are strange thoughts. Thoughts that bode ill. Salvatore Irace with his firm stride leaves the lodge, reaches his wife and they drink coffee. There is that habitual silence, in the hallway.

And 25 October was in fact the third day of rain. With this rain coming down like rain coming down. And everything normal, everything normal, in the streets of this normal city. So dark and confused, at any rate, and so unstable, so hard to interpret and even to perceive. There: let’s say that not everyone perceives it, not everyone, and for some things will continue exactly as before. Except this little rain coming down. There has been the collapse, the chasm. But in essence nothing new, nothing extremely unusual, in essence. Because it is a well-known fact that when it rains there are collapses and there are chasms, and people call the fire brigade and the fire brigade comes running, and sometimes they fail to spot the corpse, and yes, all right, this time there are seven corpses, a mournful event, certainly, a tragic event, but also predictable, in some respects, from the ancient perspective of a city that lives its life in a continuous form of multiplication. If there is a multiplication in the numbers of children, and the unemployed, and women in the street, and people who need to be looked after, why not also the dead? Just this, nothing more. Of course, there are things that strike you, of course, they strike you. They leave a mark, they cause debates, and make people talk for several days. For a few months you remember everything, everything down to the smallest details. The fact is known even in the alleys of Montecalvario, even under the bridges of Sanità. Certainly from then on there will be someone who remembers of course, someone who remembers. One day it will be said: you remember the dead on Via Tasso and Via Aniello Falcone? Those poor innocent creatures? Yes, of course, they will say that, along with other things, and other facts. But let us also say one more thing, that life is in the end reabsorbed in tranquillity, collective facts are pondered long enough to be diluted a little and confused, and in the end, off you go!, in the end why do you want us to care about this whole mess and this rain falling as if it had never fallen before, my friends, let us regather, let us regather everything.

But this in fact would happen later, much later, for now there was a crowd of people on Via Aniello Falcone, precisely on the bend before the bend where the chasm had been identified, and there was another crowd on Via Tasso, just behind number 234 that had collapsed. These black clothes, and these umbrellas. With the water coming down and coming down. And rivulets coming down on the edges, and streaks of light grey, and the still silence and a murmur if you listened carefully. The story ran from mouth to mouth with a few distortions. And this event weighed down the men’s shoulders, and pressed down upon the women’s eyelids. The women wore wedding rings, that distinctive sign, that defence. Then everyone followed their own thoughts. If you leaned slightly against the low wall, and even if you didn’t, in front of you was the city’s expanse of stone leading towards the sea. The sea had fled in a grey streak into the distance, with faint lights, they too softened, level with Capri, Punta della Campanella, Sorrento. That thought collapsed slowly from below along with the filaments of the mourning garb it wore, and regathered, and blurred and that strange mixture was in the air, and in the drain covers, of death and of things to come, of painful consciousness and hope. How strong life is in the presence of death, like a conscious acquisition, and it rebels, and rises serenely to its feet to say no. And perhaps only with that black presence, which in any case drags itself inertly onwards, inertly or almost, and there might be much else to be said were it not right now for this dark and irritating presentiment of waiting. Because there is no point turning round and turning round again: but somewhere someone is certainly getting ready. And it is bound to happen. And perhaps it will be late, then, too late, but for the moment you were hoping for no one really knows where to turn. How do you say to your wife my dear wife everything is going to change now, everything, completely, so forget the new sofa cover, forget the phone bill, the hairdresser’s on Saturday afternoon? My dear wife, something’s about to happen, something that I don’t know and no one knows, something that will throw thoughts into confusion, that will relight the icy fires within the mind, and if that happens you won’t be able to pocket the shopping money, tell lies to your friends and your husband, and neither will there be any point rolling on to one side at night and waiting for a hard presence to grow and press against you, my dear wife. But how can such things be told now? They certainly can’t. Nothing can, for now. All that is left is that hateful embarrassment, and the thought of waiting. That presentiment digs and digs, it blows up the effluent from without. The effluent gurgles on the surface. Oh how it does. And that foul smell that it gives off. And everything was in it, yes, all pus within, and we didn’t realise, or perhaps no, perhaps we realised very well, and perhaps we knew very well, but you know how it is, you avoid looking as much as possible, or smelling either. Because in the end we are all the same, aren’t we?, all painfully the same. Then if there’s this sewage of mine, there is also everyone else’s sewage, right? One’s sewage and another’s are largely identical, there is absolutely no need to discriminate between the two. And it’s the same with self-pity. Probably the best thing is to do nothing at all, with the great mess unleashed hour after hour by this rain that is coming down like rain coming down interminably.

With half-open eye fleeing the greyish strip of the sea and the little low wall a conscious thought returns: there is nothing else to look at: nothing at all: life lies in these umbrellas and in the murmur, in the water coming down and stirring the water. The sewers have been crammed and full for a good long time, and these rivulets which descend from Via Aniello Falcone and from Via Tasso to Corso Vittorio Emanuele are swelling hour by hour, and more water, in huge quantities, is coming down from Via Salvator Rosa and rushing downhill, Piazza Mazzini, and down to the Museum, and to Via Roma, and the water from Via Roma meets the water coming down from the Quartieri and from Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and the circle closes, a heavy and ineluctable circle, and that water meets in a circle and surges towards the sea, which in turn surges towards the water of Mergellina, of Via Caracciolo, of Via Partenope, of Santa Lucia, of Via Marittima, of San Giovanni a Teduccio. It would start to feel like a siege, if we didn’t all know that in the end it isn’t the first time it has rained like this. No, Naples has endured other rains, rains that were still more violent, yes sir. Which lasted longer. It pays its kickback, the city does, and it survives. Now there is nothing more than a sad awareness: from Via Foria the slow procession begins to quiver, and then to move. There are black cars, vans, umbrellas and these black clothes.

The father of Rosaria De Filippis is there, the first one behind that coach and eight. He would have liked the others to see her too, that day, his little girl dressed in white and with flowers in her hand, between the fingers now clamped shut. He would have liked everyone to notice the black horses from a distance, and the black coachman, and the black gravediggers, and that black coach. And inside that black the white flower of his Rosaria laid to rest with her face calm and smiling, because her father was following her. Instead they had said no, that the coffin couldn’t stay open on the journey, even though he clearly remembered, he had spent the whole night in that room, and he had patiently waited for Rosaria’s mother and the other ladies to take off that pair of ripped jeans and the purple sweater, and dress her, too, in that beautiful, beautiful bright white figure-hugging evening dress. And she was very elegant, his little girl, the most elegant of all. He had also told his wife, after the girl had been dressed, please put a bit of make-up on her, just just just a little bit. A seventeen-year-old girl has the right to her tender femininity, to her pretty ways, to the admiration of those who gaze upon her. Now following that coach and eight, Luigi De Filippis from time to time brought his left hand to the outside pocket of his jacket and with his fingertips gently touched and touched again to be sure: in his pocket he had kept Rosaria’s glasses. Only the frame in fact which had been recovered, and through the fabric he could now discern the marks of the metal. And when they said no, that the coffin must not be open, a red violence had darted through his arms and his brain, he thought I’m going to punch them right in the face, and his muscles had tensed, his eyes narrowed with hatred, the fingers of his right hand clenched into a fist, and then, all of a sudden, the strength had gone, and the rebelliousness, and the violence, and what remained was that tender feeling, and the half-smile, and consciousness, and a relaxed expression that he couldn’t see, and Rosaria’s nose that shaped her delicate profile. All night he had stayed and watched: and how beautiful you are, how beautiful you are, he had gone on saying to her all that night, sitting calmly and peacefully in a chair beside the bed. Every now and again he adjusted the folds of her dress. He had never touched her face, not that, because you never touch a woman on the face, because of the make-up and the hair and the eyeliner. And all that night he had sat peacefully in the silence of his devastated house, and had said nothing but every now and then how beautiful you are, how beautiful you are, and he had really said it under his breath, in a frail hint of a voice, confiding a secret. Because he was jealous at that moment, yes, jealous, and those were facts that other people must not hear, no one must hear them, those were matters between him and his little girl, his Rosaria, and all night he had stayed on that white chair, and only at the first light of dawn – 25 October, the third day of rain – had he got up, and felt his weak knees, and his weak legs, and shaken his head for a moment, for just a moment, and then he had crossed the house, his poor devastated house, with people and flowers and some unrecognisable things, and he had gone out to stand on the balcony. He had looked up into the sky at the falling rain. He had also thought: when we leave the house the sun will be shining. Of course, the sun will be there for my Rosaria, and we will go with her with the sun and so much light around, and everyone will see her, and it will be clear that she is the most beautiful of all, my poor little girl. Now that he was following the coach in front of his nose sighed deeply with sadness, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, he said to himself, because he knew very well that his little girl was the most beautiful of all, and perhaps there was really no need for the others to see her. He had felt on his right arm his wife’s arm, and he had shaken off her weight, and clumsily, and he didn’t want anyone’s hands on him, and he didn’t want anyone in front of him or beside him at that moment, because in any case nothing else mattered, what mattered was the two of them, he and his little girl, and there was no need for anything, really anything, his little girl would have imagined him coming with her. Just as he had thought of adjusting her dress when the moment had come that morning, when they had said to him you need to close it, really, you need to close it up now, and he had asked what do you mean?, close it up?, how do you close up a seventeen-year-old girl? And who will tell her about this blossoming sky and that sun that might return?, who will woo her and who will send her flowers if you close her up now? And what will that girl’s life be like if now this hateful, heavy wood descends on the paleness of her face, on the tenderness of her features? After that clumsy gesture, Luigi De Filippis’s wife had understood, and had fallen back a little and off to the side, because the relationship between a father and a daughter is slightly different, and men can be so strange, because they might keep things inside for years and years, and don’t show anything, and then guess what. She had stepped to the left and fallen back a little and linked arms with their son, and had seen: between father and son not even a word, no, not even a word. And now the most total void had grown around Rosaria, and he alone had stayed calm, he alone, and he had wanted no one, and there had been that separation, yes, it had happened, there was no point in hiding it. He had stayed with Rosaria, and she with their son whose arm she had taken and gripped and in the course of the night she had often come to stroke without a word.

And there was that big crowd which when you were in it seemed like the whole city united all because of those seven deaths. But if you looked carefully you could see those divisions, of course, those divisions: in fact everyone had their own dead, and as regards the onlookers, well, they were broadly inclined towards the family of Aniello Savastano, not least, obviously enough, because of the three little children. Because there is always a big difference between the death of an adult and the death of a little child. The little children are redeemed, so to speak. So, near the hearses that accompanied Aniello Savastano, Aniello Savastano’s wife and their three children, there were more people than there were near the coach of Rosaria De Filippis, or the hearse of Wanda Zampino, who was the old lady who had also died in the chasm. And there was that swarm of people in Via Foria, and the rumour circulated that the Higher Urban Authorities were going to come, and a speech would be delivered, but in fact now no need was felt for such a thing, for such a speech, not least because a speech had already been delivered by His Eminence the Cardinal. When a cardinal has spoken of death, what remains to be said? Perhaps something remained, something about the living, or about responsibilities, or about yet other matters, but who feels like breaking the decorum of death? Grief needs silence and rationality, and respect for the feelings of others, and it can’t be done, so it can’t be done. Faced with the sorrowful event, there are no objections, not a single objection.

And precisely by virtue of that fact, Giovannella Speranza had told them at home. Look I’m going to be late today, because the whole school is going to Rosaria De Filippis’s funeral, and it won’t be that much fun but we have to go. Her mother had looked at her and seen that her daughter’s eyes were evasive, but what do you do in such difficult situations?, reply, and then Giovannella had run out in a blue skirt, her white blouse, a blue jumper and her coat on top, and soon she had reached the street, and she had turned the corner, and disappeared, she had disappeared irrevocably. On the corner behind her street she had found him closed up and closed away in the Fiat 500, and the Fiat 500, from Via Lepanto, had reached Piazzale Tecchio and then on to Via Domitiana all the way to Damiani and beyond and when there’s that sign that says Cuma to the left via that little-frequented road. At last they arrived: it was 10.15 on 25 October, the third day of rain. They got out of the Fiat 500 together with a tender kiss on the lips, and he walked ahead and showed the way, even though she knew it well, and in through the entrance immediately on the left, in that dark doorway, and then the key that is difficult to turn and then turns. They went inside, and he looked around, slightly worried, because he shared the place with someone else and wouldn’t have wanted to find inconsiderate traces or anything out of place. But in the end it all went well, all well. Then he smiled and pulled the door closed behind him, while she had taken a tour, as you might say, and poked her head into the bathroom and the kitchen, after all you know what women are like, and there was a strong smell of stuffiness and also of damp, beside the bed two empty bottles, cigarette butts, and Giovannella immediately went to check, were the cigarettes hers from last time, nothing to take exception to. He watched her movements and said are we carrying out an inspection, is that it? Of course, Giovannella replied, and he smiled with that tender face of his, so tender, and he threw his arms around her neck and a deep kiss he gave her, rubbing himself against her and going MMMMM and suddenly he switched position and his hands slipped along Giovannella’s hips. He felt her soft flesh under his hands, so soft, and immediately he felt a growing presence in his trousers. And also she was rubbing herself of course, and thrusting those hips forward and that tender outrageous belly, then let’s put on a bit of music she said pulling suddenly away, and he was left standing in the middle of the room watching her while those little hands of hers explored and explored the radio, and found music in the end, and languidly brighter turned towards him, fumbling with her bra as he sat on the edge of the bed and leaning slightly to the side slipped his hands down below. Down below she was hot tenderly hot. In the end there was a great fuss as they tried to liberate themselves from all those clothes, and he was responsible for most of the fuss, because women are much calmer and more practical. At any rate, in the end they were naked on the bed and in a close embrace, and he kissed her, and she opened that mouth of hers a little too wide as happens sometimes when you sigh slightly, but their breath rose panting in their chests and the muscles in their arms and in their legs were now inclined to draw together. He stroked her breasts and between her legs, and she didn’t stroke anything, apart from his hair, and she brought one hand down and that hand remained quite still because she had to play the part of the girl, the part of the woman. And even in fact when he climbed on top of her, Giovannella kept her legs tenderly closed tightly and they opened only when he opened them, and she went on lying underneath him. And in the end they met and, there, there, the strange sensation, strange sweetest thing in his possession coming inside and her face growing serious, and her lips parting and her eyes going blank, now, now, at that very moment that she is feeling, yes, and that movement of the loins, and the blood running now, and that strange force, and instinctively her hips move, slightly, with a brief and imperceptible movement, and he thinks for a moment and stops where he is and thinks and sees his face hidden in hers, and he is aware of their breathing and the force of those tensed muscles, and he clutches her, he clutches her so violently it hurts. And it’s over, now, it’s all over. Slowly, that cloudlet darkens in the distance. He stays on top of her, for a while, he kisses her tenderly on the lips. Giovannella feels from underneath that she would like to move and tremble slightly, but she can’t with that cumbersome weight on top of her, and lie there she does until he comes out and doesn’t turn over, and breathes deeply, of course, and smiles, and jumps up to look for a cigarette in his trousers. Giovannella says for me too. And those two cigarettes are lit. There is the sound of the rain falling, outside, methodical neurasthenic rain falling. She pulls the covers over herself and they lie there: he smoking, she thinking of her mother’s eyes. She has worked it out, of course, she has worked out very clearly that she wasn’t going to a funeral. Perhaps a woman who’s a daughter can’t lie to a woman who’s a mother. But in the end it’s better that she, her mother, realises, because in any case it was the same for her, and nothing to make a song and dance about, no. They all know very well that at a certain age girls open their legs and make love. She did the same, when the time came. So why does she go on at her like that, why? He lies there smoking with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Giovannella gives him a kick. He lifts himself up on his elbow towards her breasts and rests his lips tenderly on them and for a while they joke and talk about themselves and other people and there’s always lots to talk about. When he approaches again and rubs against her thigh, Giovannella becomes aware of that hard presence, and now it starts again, she says to herself, and indeed it does start again, and this time better, much better. When the movement comes Giovannella stretches into her loins and grips grips with her legs in an arc holding on, and that river that comes oh that river and the world opening up and the earth opening up, now, and she receives, yes, she receives it all, the furrow comes down, down into the depths, oh yes, and that river that is a whole sea now, a wide enormous boundless sea, and there is this open air, and this pace and her heart swells, and those arms leaving me, and those legs leaving me and those hands that have abandoned me oh yes abandoned oh yes abandoned. Then slowly conscious thought returns, she says, damn! She grips him, she plants a kiss on him, and then she looks at the clock. Of course, the clock: there’s not much to joke about, at home. Seven days before, then she was late, her father gave her two slaps that she can still feel on her face. Giovannella Speranza decides that it really isn’t a good idea to make the situation worse, and that there are ways and ways of doing things. A woman if she is a woman always finds the right way. And she doesn’t need to look her in the eyes, her mother doesn’t, with that falsely apprehensive expression as if she could understand who knows what. There, you see, mamma?, here I am completely naked in bed and nothing is happening, really nothing at all. If I think about the way you used to fuss in the old days, the way you want to fuss again, it just makes me laugh thinking about it. And the worries that I carried with me, and the gossip of my friends, and those dark questions, and that thing that weighed so heavily. And too bad that I’ve sorted it out, too bad, if it had been up to you I would have had to drag it around with me for another ten years, wouldn’t I?, just ten, and then maybe all those other things about marriage and life. My dears, the more time passes, the more I realise, with the best will in the world, that there’s very little in all the things you say, yes, very little, because when I move in my own way I see everything differently, and things are never the same as you told me they were, and as you would like to go on telling me they are, never the same, never, not even once. Then really you would wonder if you weren’t in another world. Maybe you haven’t noticed and in the meantime the world has shifted, it’s moved a little further on, and you haven’t noticed, you’re still twisting your things thingies thingummies around in your hands and in the meantime everything has changed, of course, everything, and what has not changed is about to change, without a doubt. If I think again of that thing that I carried around with me, if I think about it. But anyway, now, let’s see if we can start moving because it’s getting late. Outside in the street it was raining harder now. That strip of grey in the sky, everything seemed heavier. Giovannella Speranza, there, now, became aware of her separation from him: he was certainly steering off somewhere else. He had set off on a different route, somewhere far away.

Just so, at that moment, did Rosaria De Filippis, Wanda Zampino and Aniello Savastano with his family turn into a different road, very far away, and the crowd dispersed into a hundred tiny trickles, and in the end only the groups of family and relatives had remained, in the cemetery of Poggioreale. Each group had seen the other making for a different destination, and the solidarity of death had shattered silently now because of those partings, and in the end each one of them was left with their own dead, and perhaps because of that dispersal they felt diminished, as if life had stolen something from them. Certainly, compared with two hours previously, the atmosphere was completely different, and that participation, and the multitude of voices, and the quiet murmur had made them forget even the falling rain, everything had been set aside, two hours before: the little torrents of water along the sides of the road, the overflowing sewers gurgling water, and those streams of water that were on the way, and the silence that had been there as a clue. While now that presence of rain drew on the alleyways of Poggioreale, and the water came down the hill, and everyone was sure that it had nothing to do with them, nothing at all. The water came down came down fled into the distance, and somewhere it would stop too, in all likelihood, but that didn’t concern any of them, no: it only concerned those who were in the place where the water stopped: but, in the end: would it ever really stop, that water that kept coming and coming? And even if it did, what would ever happen? There was only that grey presence to disrupt their thoughts, to confuse their eyes.

And it was the third day of rain, 25 October.

At about 7pm, in the courtyard of the Maschio Angioino, the cars began to arrive. They came with that faint sound of windscreen wipers, tic tac tic tac tic tac, and as they passed the police cordon the police brought their hands to their berets and saluted. Nothing survived in the courtyard but that arrangement of cars parked at an angle so that the exit could be reached. But: would there ever be an exit?, would this session ever end? Would the Baronial Hall not be turned, that evening, into an enormous trap?

Perhaps columns of peasants with scythes and pitchforks would come running from the countryside. They would invade the courtyard, disrupting the police cordon. Shouting they would climb the stone stairs and would burst into the reddish electric light of the hall, with big boots on their feet, kerchiefs around the necks, their arms brawny, and they would begin a cruel manhunt. The municipal councillors would attempt an impossible escape across the wooden benches, with those shouts and that heavy breathing behind them, and they would feel themselves being gripped by the legs and the arms, and they would open their mouths as they attempted to speak. Shut up!, the others would yell at them instead, traitor to the people! Two three four pitchforks would run through their chests, and they would feel the blades in their flesh and they would scream, scream, and streams of blood would gush from their flabby flesh and spill down they would in the end lie lifeless on the ground. The peasants would work doggedly with their scythes. Get the head, get the head!, they would hear them cry. Five six seven arms would get to work with the scythes to part their heads from their necks. It isn’t as easy as you think to detach a head from the neck, it doesn’t just come off like that, oh no. It remains attached with muscles and bones and there’s just that flowing blood on all sides. You have to strike resolutely and with full force. After twenty blows at last the head really comes off. The heads would be slipped on to long poles and, then, exposed on the crenellated bastions in that flaming night. Cries of jubilation would rise into the night, and everything would be destroyed, and the benches of the council building would go up in an enormous bonfire, and high the flames would rise to illuminate from a distance that tormented city. And gone in the end would be the crowds of peasants, swarming through the deserted rain-thrashed city. The fire would last until the first light of dawn with the acrid smell of smoke, and that silent crackle. And that rain falling, interminably.

When the hall was full enough, and quiet confabulations could be heard in the corridors, it was decided that it was time to begin the session. The Mayor said I declare the session of the municipal council open, first of all the agenda: extraordinary interventions for childcare facilities. And Mr Mayor, said a councillor, I think that the foremost task of the council is to deal with the tragic event of Aniello Falcone and the tragic event of Via Tasso, it is unimaginable on the part of anyone etcetera etcetera. And then it became immediately clear to the gentlemen of the majority party that they would not have an easy ride of it that evening, and that even the most probing eyes were watching with concern: the space reserved for the public was fast being filled, and other people were still bound to arrive, and there would be protests. The Mayor said certainly certainly, and called over Antonino Sale, not yet a councillor, he hadn’t quite made it that time, but he was still a capable pair of hands, and in short when it came to the crunch there was no one more suited than he. He said come and gauge the mood on that side. Because we are very much disposed to deal with the tragic event and we also realise: the opposition will inevitably cause trouble, if only to show all those people that the opposition’s hands are clean and that they are performing their acknowledged functions of criticism and crack-papering, and all of those fine things. We are very well aware. So let them cause as much trouble as they wish, but take care not to overstate their case. Because if they come down too hard, the agreement on the professional course to be taken is blown away, blown away once and for all. In short, my dear Antonino Sale, off you go on a reconnaissance mission and see how we’re going to get these issues across. Antonino Sale casually went to chat to this person and that. Meanwhile, the council member for the opposition said: it certainly isn’t the first time that our wretched city has had to record such tragic events, just as it isn’t the first time that adverse atmospheric conditions have determined situations of alarm or at least of alert, but we must obviously continue to ask ourselves, fellow councillors, what were, technically speaking, the causes of these upheavals, and whether those causes might be attributable to chance, to accident, to the whims of fate, or whether they should not rather be attributed to neglect, to slothfulness and incompetence, as well as to fact that works and repairs and the reconstruction of the sewerage system which everyone had identified for years as urgent and pressing had been put off indefinitely. We may obviously wonder, gentlemen, whether the tragic events with which the council at present has a civil and above all a moral obligation to address constitute the extreme conclusion of exceptional and therefore unpredictable events, or whether those events are not in fact that logical conclusion of a series of administrative shortcomings all of which may be traced back to the incompleteness and inadequacy of a governance of the public good whose role it is to address uniquely illuminating events, such as that of the gold incinerator, to take one example, and which instead disregards that possibly awkward and perhaps not well-remunerated administrative sector which holds responsibilities with regard to road conditions, the clearing of rain water, the channelling of the same, and to get to the nub, gentlemen, let it be pointed out straight away that the relevant councillor, or indeed the Mayor himself if he considers it appropriate, will be doing something most welcome if he explains to the council how it is possible that after an impressive amount of works, which amongst other things for a good two years have kept entirely closed and blocked that important urban artery which goes by the name of Via Tasso, three days of not particularly violent rain were enough to cause a sinkhole of the dimensions of the one that has just appeared. While this councillor was delivering his speech, a murmur rose up among the crowd. They were asking the name of the councillor in question, and which party he belonged to. Meanwhile, his leader had already gestured to him to come forward, to continue the speech, and in fact the councillor, who knew how to speak discreetly, came forward straight away, listing the faults and shortcomings of the civic administration, not only and not so much with regard to the tragic event of recent days, but not least and above all with regard to the general state of neglect and uncertainty which afflicts, and not only since today, all of the city’s structures and substructures. And in fact the councillor, for the sake of coming forward, came forward, except that a mounting sense of embarrassment took hold of him as he followed with his eyes the secret discussion that was at that very moment going on between the head of the Majority and the head of the Opposition. And bearing in mind that point of visible reference the councillor continued with his speech, stressing how the tragic event had once again provided dramatic evidence of the inadequacy and superficiality of the public intervention in the area, etcetera etcetera. And the head of the Opposition, having concluded his lengthy secret discussion with the head of the Majority, approached him discreetly and, still with extreme discretion, whispered: we are requesting a commission of inquiry. Then the councillor went on saying it is precisely with a view to overcoming such shortcomings, such confusions, such reprehensible defects, Mr Mayor, that we are putting forward an operational proposal: that is the formation and appointment of a commission of inquiry with the precise mandate to make every useful attempt to ascertain responsibility, should such responsibilities exist, and establish why and in what way Naples must pay such a high annual tribute in terms of human lives because of adverse atmospheric conditions which cannot be described as unpredictable or to be on the scale of an exceptional event or a cataclysm, because let it be quite clear to everyone that, if the dead cannot do it, the living demand justice, and we must not in any way excuse ourselves from that precise civil and above all moral obligation. When the councillor had concluded his speech, followed distractedly in the hall but carefully savoured by the public, the journalists exchanged meaningful glances from the press benches. In short, it was clear that the Opposition had made this speech solely and exclusively for reasons of honour, that in fact they had been careful not to cause too much trouble. And on the other hand that was largely predictable, if one were to bear in mind that there had been that morning a joint meeting concerning the use of the new funds made available by the Region for the maintenance of professional training courses, and if we bear in mind that those funds amounted to one billion eight hundred million lire. Now that the speech was completed, the Mayor said that the Majority adopted the proposal put forward by the Opposition and then decided to proceed to the constitution and to the appointment of a commission of inquiry in which all parties would be represented, with the purpose and the declared objective of casting a full light on the tragic events of Via Aniello Falcone and Via Tasso and to ascertain who might or might not bear responsibility, and if necessary the commission itself would be able to seek advice from a shortlist of officially appointed experts. The Municipality of Naples paid dutiful homage to the victims of the disaster. Everyone rose to their feet, and even among the public the murmurs stopped immediately, and everyone stood silently like that, and some people began to wonder how long a minute’s silence really was and in fact only fifteen seconds had passed when murmuring to himself the Mayor sat down again. Then everyone sat down again, and even the public resumed its conversation. In short, it was possible to trace everything back to an orderly pursuance of roadworks. The subsequent speeches had the same calm and reasonable tone as usual. A council meeting is not a rally, a street demonstration, and its purpose is certainly not to satisfy the base instincts of the so-called masses. The council is in fact the worthy seat, both worthy and opportune, for the peaceful debate of the problems of the city, for the solution of which, for the best possible solution of which, both sides must make their own effective contribution. And in short it was now more than clear to the public that there was nothing amusing going on here, far from it. Because there was no fascinating, riveting rhetorical duel in the offing, no argument about to set the session alight, and no one going to strike the bench with his fist and shout that’s enough now! The speeches had been so calm and reasonable that the sound in the hall was not only and not so much one of composed voices as it was the cold and in many respects cruel hiss of the rain outside, leaving greyish vertical stripes on the black of the night. In the courtyard, the waiting cars waited with waiting drivers waiting. And the police had taken shelter under the portico, because in the end a police cordon is a great bore, which you can man without getting soaked to the skin. In the darkness of that night, which was the third night of uninterrupted rain, the glow of cigarettes shone from time to time with puffs of smoke fringed by the rain. And it was as if during those hours an incomplete and distorted question had risen over the silent city, just a hypothesis, the idea of a question. A question that refused to emerge, that refused to emerge at all, which everyone sensed deep in the tissue between rib and rib. As they breathed, they became aware of its concrete presence in the diaphragm. Over the city that dark presence, and with it fear, and foreboding as well: now perhaps the perspective on life would change, oh, yes, be changed and disrupted for ever. There would be an adjustment, a strange conversion. Inside the chasm that had appeared on Via Aniello Falcone the rain was now coming down with an unusually determined violence. Just as it was thundering ruthlessly down on the overflowing sewers on Via Tasso. That water was fleeing quickly towards the sea along the other different ancient streets of the city, and alarms were going off increasingly, and those voices in the thick night were made of magma, harsh and concerned. During the night of that third day of rain, reliable witnesses state that they saw cars slipping silently on the grey of the tarmac with white lights, with red lights, with blue lights, and without sirens, without breaking the silence, and those cars slipped silently along the streets of the promenade. From the red brick pyramid where they climbed to dispute one another’s right of way, and sprays of spume, and that salty smell, that moving water, moving lightly in some ways, which was rising up against the black of night to meet the rain coming down, and that darkness around it. Black darkness, still and silent. One wondered if it would be wise to leave, oh yes, to leave. And why not?, for what specific reason? To gather things together in silence, to close everything up, close it up and lock it up and protect and gauge and assess with a swift glance, and climb inside one’s car, and set it in motion, turn on the lights, reach the motorway. From the motorway off you went forever, of course, as definitively as a full stop, a decision both irrevocable and unamenable to reassessment in the cold light of day. Away from the city in the depths of night, as far away as a separation, scorched earth, that’s it, a clean break. And it also needed to be borne in mind that the rising of the sea level at Montedidio had occurred that summer. Not without reason, certainly. In fact it was all clear. As a harbinger, a warning. And even though in that moment they might have thought and conjectured about who-knows-what unusual tidal phenomenon, now, in the light of that rain and that difficult question, everything was clear, yes. Everyone remembered the morning of Sunday 5 August, and as they remembered it was like touching revealed truth, and illumination dilated the pupil. Born of a flash of inspiration it now proceeded along the road to consciousness.

Because in fact on the morning of Sunday 5 August not only had the police and their vehicles taken up strategic positions on the promenade, there had also been reinforcements and senior officers from the Carabinieri, as well as the regular police. The patrols had taken solid possession of the beach at Mergellina, the Diaz Memorial, the Broken Column on Piazza Vittoria, Molosiglio, Santa Lucia, and at each point a patrol had launched the operation which would go down in the annals of the city as Operation Sea Watch. In fact they had been talking about it for some time that summer, about the operation hastily drawn up by the forces of law and order. The episode had filled the pages of the newspapers and had passed from mouth to mouth and story to story until it had been completely distorted, but in any case on this occasion the news pages were still the most reliable sections of the daily newspapers. In short, on the morning of Sunday 5 August, it had been clear, extremely clear, to all the ragged boys on the promenade, and it had been equally clear to their big sisters and to their fat, shuffling mothers, that it would be impossible to reach the rocks that day, and it would therefore be impossible for them to throw themselves into the sea, and bask in the sun. And whatever ingenious schemes the ragged children came up with on the spot, really on the spot, the situation appeared tactically impossible. Because of the fact that the deployment of the forces of law and order was genuinely impressive: hundreds and hundreds of men all firmly guarding the key points and keeping the surviving points under surveillance with regular patrols. At the first signs, darting away in one direction and then switching back to another at great speed, the ragged boys of the promenade tried to penetrate the lines of the guards. But penetration was impossible. Two or three large hands would inevitably grab them by the hair, it was painful to be pulled by the hair like that, and there were these cries from the boys every now and again. But after a few minutes they were released into the most pointless freedom, after a few minutes, having learned that from that day forward in Naples they could not go swimming, and they could not go on the rocks, or take the sun, or dive into the water. So groups formed in the shadow of the Villa Comunale, and on the pavement in front of it. It was ten o’clock in the morning on the morning of Sunday 5 August. The boys thought it was just a matter of waiting, that sooner or later the guards would leave, the promenade would be clear again, if they waited briefly and patiently everything would be resolved. Then they began that slight invisible siege on the shadow of the Villa Comunale. And their eyes darted every now and again in the direction of the sea. The sea was under guard, truly under guard. Along the horizon, those dark uniforms, the jeeps, the blue cars of the police with the white letters Comune di Napoli. The minutes filtered through the leaves of the trees. That presence of the sun. Completely white, in the distance. The blue of the sea also blurred into white. And how hard and long was that slight and invisible siege. At about 1pm it was clear to everyone, even to those who had left temporarily to return to the battlefield: the blue uniforms would not be moving from there all day, no, they weren’t about to move for anything. And besides, never had the instructions of their superiors been more precise and categorical than they were on this occasion. Precise and categorical both as regards the places – the whole promenade of the city, from Mergellina to Molosiglio, was to be placed under guard – and the period during which it was to be effective – the guard was to last until half an hour after sunset, and while sunset might in itself be an arguable concept, the precise intention of the arrangements was clear to all those deployed to enforce it. At about 1pm the boys of Naples were obliged to accept, with some bitterness, that the blue uniforms were going to stay in place, and that they would not be moving for the rest of the day. Then that barrier became a barrier of hatred, and of mute rancour. Because the sea belongs to everyone without distinction. It is beyond imagining that one day the authorities will wake up and arrange themselves here and here, depriving the boys of the sea, and there was no point trying to explain to the shuffling and bundled mothers that the Municipality had permitted free bathing in some establishments in Posillipo, because in fact the boys of Montedidio really had no desire to go to Posillipo. For years and for generations the boys had bathed, always for the whole of those long, long Neapolitan summers, in those waters right in front of them, in that sea which was their sea, on those rocks which were their rocks, and why change all of a sudden the prospect of something rooted in the natural order of things?, for what unfamiliar reason?, for what capricious whim? It was at around one o’clock that a painful awareness made itself felt, and the ragged children climbed back up towards the city abandoning the Villa Comunale and abandoning the Gardens of Molosiglio. It would have to be said that there was a great deal of sadness, in that grim slog homewards, really a great deal of sadness. For a day the whole city had that veil over its eyes, the mild and melancholy air.

On receipt of the calm and peaceful news via radio, the authorities sighed deeply with relief and their faces settled into a half-smile: in fact, on the eve of Operation Sea Watch, there had been many doubts and intense discussions. It had even been feared that the operation might not go smoothly, indeed that there might be incidents and disorder. You know what schemers are like, always ready to take advantage of the slightest opportunity for attrition, and in short, on the eve, everyone had said let’s hope it goes well, and now that it was after one and the boys had sadly climbed back up to Montedidio, abandoning their outpost of the Villa Comunale and Molosiglio, it seemed that all had turned out for the best. Nothing could disturb that calm, serene air that breathed warmly now on the city’s promenade. And there was this air of resignation on the one hand, and of regained calm serenity on the other.

And it was precisely in consideration of the fact that the situation was firmly and definitively under control, that Ferdinando De Rosa, Marshal of the Carabinieri, said fine, rummaged in his pockets, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, drawing on it violently and with relief. Inhaling the smoke, he looked at the sea right in front of him, and there was this horizontal strip, the profile of Vesuvius, of Punta della Campanella, of the Isle of Capri. The sun bleached everything white. There were many boats on the water. He stood like that watching until he noticed that the sea seemed to be coming towards him. The first time he noticed he said to himself that’s impossible, that’s absolutely impossible. Or perhaps it is possible, what do I know about the sea? And in fact Ferdinando De Rosa reflected that he was profoundly ignorant about every aspect of the sea. Yes, there had been that thing about tides that come and go, which he had studied at school many years before, but apart from that he had never taken the slightest interest in the sea, not least and principally because of the fact that his wife’s illnesses, all nervous in origin, had repeatedly obliged them to take holidays, with the children the aunt and everybody, in the area around Lake Laceno, where they were all fine and entirely heedless of the disastrous effects of the sea on the nervous systems of people who suffered with their nerves. Because of that age-old habit he had gradually lost all contact with the sea. He had been left with a vague feeling of the time when he was a boy and sailing at school and he and his friends hired a rowing boat from the fishermen of Mergellina, and it was therefore a matter of rowing and rowing for hours under the sun. There were no bathing costumes in those days, there was nothing at all, those boys rowed cheerfully until they reached the open sea, and in the end with the heat and the sweat there was nothing for it but to strip off completely and throw themselves into the water. Every time he remembered that day, he inevitably also remembered a thin boy with glasses, no idea what his name was. He never wanted to get completely naked, so he swam in his very big white underpants which hung down because of the bony thinness of his legs and hips. He also remembered that if you lowered your head from the boat and stared at the sea it was as if you had gone to sleep. From below you couldn’t see anything but the slow movement of the water, the green and the azure blue, an unchanging stillness, an infinite variation of tones and colours. In the end the sunlight etched itself on his retinas. And in fact that was what he knew about the sun. Apart from jellyfish, which he had sometimes seen from the boat, and one of them had come very close to him, really close, while he was swimming in the water, but in the end nothing had happened that time, because calmly and keeping an eye on the jellyfish he had got back to the boat, he had hauled himself up on his arms and gone on staring at the water of the sea, strange, curious, transparent creature. Otherwise, he knew nothing about the sea. Ferdinando De Rosa had suddenly been very clear after getting married: Patrizia was sick with her nerves. The sea wasn’t really the reason, not at all, the fat doctor from the National Health had told him, but anyway she needed to holiday in a cool place in the countryside, in the hills if possible. In fact he was already aware by around the month of April, when it first turned warm, that Patrizia really couldn’t bear the heat, and at night she wandered the length the house and back again, and she couldn’t sleep, and in the morning she wore a face, hollow-eyed and shattered, as if she had done something in the course of the night, when in fact she hadn’t done anything at all. Sometimes he had surprised her in the early afternoon talking to herself on the terrace at home. At such moments he felt a pang in his heart, seeing her like that. Then he came slowly up behind her and gave her a kiss on the back of the neck, a kiss on the cheek, she smiled weakly as if to say thank you, yes exactly as if she was saying thank you, but in fact he was very clearly aware: Patrizia was far away, so far away. At that moment, and in the previous moments on that precise day, and on the previous days, she seemed sometimes to take refuge in that little corner that was all her own and withdraw from everything. It was because of Patrizia’s nervous frailty that in the end they had to call her aunt to ask if she couldn’t come and stay with them for a little while. Not so much to look after the house or the children, not that, so much as to keep Patrizia company for all the time that he was out on duty, and to check that her nervous fragility did not lead to anything serious, because who could guess the thoughts of a woman who was sick with nerves who was left at home alone with her children? Then the aunt had come to the house, and from the very first for Ferdinando De Rosa everything was immediately clear, oh yes: their life as a couple was shattered, shattered forever. But in any case there was nothing else to do, nothing else to do but keep a constant eye on Patrizia, and with those watches that they were doing at Gruppo Napoli II there wasn’t much to be cheerful about. He was particularly aware that with those watches he no longer had any time of his own. In fact some evenings he was tired, really tired and he came home and he saw his wife, and the children, and the aunt, and very often also Patrizia’s mother, a fat and unbearable woman who looked at him askance as if it was his fault that Patrizia had ended up in that state, as if it was because of the marriage, or perhaps the children he had given her, that her little Patrizia had ended up with that fragility of the nerves which meant that now she couldn’t even be left on her own, because her mother was afraid of something and everyone was really afraid of something, even if nothing ever happened, but how could you run the risk of something happening?, who would have assumed responsibility if something anomalous and terrible had happened all of a sudden? In short it had been for these remarkable reasons that he in one respect or another had never had anything to do with the sea, and every time he remembered the sea Ferdinando De Rosa remembered the boat trip with his friends, and the jellyfish, and not many other things.

So when he had the impression, that morning, that the sea had grown, and that it had risen slightly, he was left with those doubts of his and the awareness of his own ignorance about the sea. He found himself thinking that perhaps he hadn’t seen properly, and that perhaps even if the sea had risen a little, it meant nothing but the recurrent play of the tides. He had studied at school but he didn’t really remember it now. Certainly there was a tide that rose and a tide that fell, and that was also bound up with the alternation of day and night, but in fact however many attempts he made he couldn’t really remember anything, he remembered only that vague thing and it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough at all. When he noticed for the first time, on that Sunday morning, 4 August, that the sea had grown, he stood in silence reflecting and waiting calmly and patiently. Besides, the sea was always the same placid sea, nothing to worry about in any respect, nothing that could cause anxious thoughts. The boats went as they always went, and on the parapet of Santa Lucia he had the good sense to make a mark so as to check the water level in future. So he made that visible mark and let a few minutes pass. As the time passed, letting the time pass, he felt something within him like a dark foreboding, a worry that was unjustified but vivid and real. Besides, his worry was broadly justified by what happened next, a few minutes later, when checking the mark he had made he noticed for the second time, this time without any doubt whatsoever: the sea had risen again. And in itself this would not have mattered in the slightest had it not been for the mounting sense of foreboding which seemed to provide an interpretation of everything which aroused remote and indistinguishable fears. Ferdinando De Rosa now reflected that he might have been mistaken, insofar as this rising of the sea constituted a ritually composed and regular event, but in any case henceforth it was his duty to be mistaken in company and not only on his own. It was in consideration of such reflections that he also showed the other carabinieri in what way and to what extent the sea had now been rising for some minutes at that spot. At first a deep sense of dismay took hold of the militiamen, not least because it is difficult for any carabiniere, however expert, to stop the sea, or proceed to its identification, and you can’t take the sea by the arm or if called upon to do so use handcuffs, so this state of dull embarrassment prevailed for some time. On the other hand everyone found themselves thinking, Ferdinando De Rosa and all the others; if it is true on the one hand that this strange, unusual and alarming phenomenon may occur, it is also true on the other hand that nothing, nothing at all, on that morning of Sunday 5 August, gave any clue to any inauspicious or tragic events, and in any case the situation seemed to be under control, yes, even with the sea rising like that. Of course the best resolution, subject to later checks, was to alert the superiors, inform those who, being of higher rank, also indubitably had the task of solving problems and assuming certain responsibilities, and obviously that decision was not to be taken on the spur of the moment, certainly not, because there was still a fear of making a poor impression on one’s superiors. But it would also have to be said that in the meantime on the round terrace of Mergellina there was a murmur of fishermen who had seen the sea rising and couldn’t figure it out, because in the course of their lives they had seen all manner of things but they had quite definitely never seen the sea rising with that Olympian calm, that joyful, almost laughing serenity of rising waves. Because in fact, even though the sea was clearly rising no one could really find it in themselves to worry about it. The sea wasn’t swelling and it wasn’t getting dark and it didn’t seem to be threatening anything, and in the end it was a sea that was still clearly a friend, a friend to fisherfolk and people on boating trips, the same calm, familiar sea as ever, nothing at all that might raise anxieties or dark forebodings. Aside from that extremely concrete awareness of the unignorable fact that the sea, beyond any doubt, had begun to rise. Yes, it had begun to rise and seemed to be continuing to do so. The same carabinieri, on the wall at Santa Lucia, at last agreed that there was nothing to be done but to alert the superiors, and radio contact was therefore established with the headquarters of Gruppo Napoli II. In the meantime, the water level had reached the parapet, and from one minute to the next the sea was going to overflow on to the pavement and into the road, yes, it was going to overflow. That fateful moment came at last and it came at the very moment when the police instruction came from Napoli II headquarters that they were not under any circumstances to abandon their position. Upon receipt of that instruction the officers immediately fell into line with a strong sense of discipline. Moreover, perhaps the wisest thing to do in these circumstances was to go on guarding that spot. And then, in any case, it became clear to everyone, even when the water overflowed from the parapet and on to the pavement, that for the time being at least there was no danger. No danger of any kind, apart from the irritation of water getting into your shoes, and sticking your trousers to your calves, and to your socks, but that was merely a matter of discomfort, of continuous embarrassment, certainly not a dangerous situation. Then the patrol went on patrolling regularly, even though the water had now filled the whole width of the pavement and spilled from the kerb on to the tarmac of the road. It was that brackish seawater that ran from one pavement to the other. It advanced in slow rivulets, and there was always that patch of water pushing forwards, pointing the way, just as seawater does when it reaches the shore, except that this time there was no backwash, the patch of seawater, that thin veil, continued on its way. From Via Partenope it climbed up Via Nazario Sauro and then to Piazza del Plebiscito, and in fact people stopped to look, and there really was something to look at, if we are to maintain a degree of objectivity. Because in reality no one had ever seen anything like it before, and neither would they in all likelihood see anything like it again in days to come, and in the end the rising sea is a very strange phenomenon. Then the people gazed down in puzzlement at the tarmac and that patch of seawater advancing, advancing, followed by all the rest of the water from the sea. And it was clear to everyone that this was not just something that was happening as the result of some dramatic or evil trick, oh no. It was clear straight away that, however unusual or supernatural the nature of this event, it too somehow fell within the natural order of things, and it had its own specific reasons, and what was being observed at that moment was therefore not a negative event, far from it. Except that obviously none of them could help thinking and reflecting on the joyful, almost laughing nature of this phenomenon, and in the end their sense of wonder was remarkable, and in many respects justified, but such considerations remained deeply alien to the strength and why not the biological determination of the seawater, which from Piazza del Plebiscito in the course of a few minutes – what time could it be?, half past one in the afternoon? – went on rising up along Via Gennaro Serra and reached Montedidio, the houses, the streets and alleyways of Montedidio, and seeped into the basements. In fact the seawater was doing nothing other than undermining the houses, one by one, patiently and meticulously, all the ragged boys who had not been able to get to the rocks on Via Partenope, on Via Caracciolo, in Mergellina that morning, and the sea saw this as a gesture of love, and in fact that is exactly what it was. Many considered with vivid alarm that a shapeless and sometimes tarry liquid mass could feed on such feelings with regard to the boys who had been unable to swim that day, but the evidence of the facts was truly blinding, it had never been more blinding. That brackish water insinuated itself everywhere, licking soft calves, touching toes. On that day, which was Sunday 5 August, it was truly clear to everyone that if the boys had not gone to the sea because they had been prevented from so doing by Operation Sea Watch, the sea, for once, had come to find the boys. It had done so with the boys’ own cheerful and punctilious determination. In fact, thinking again now about that unusual event already slightly spoiled by the passing of time, thinking again now about that event on the morning of Sunday 5 August, it dawned on the mind that this had in all likelihood been an alert, a warning significant in its way, and in short the question which concerned us now was perhaps substantially the question of 5 August, or at least not dissimilar, even though then in fact they could not help noticing the latent anxiety they were feeling right now had been entirely unknown on that August day. In fact they all remembered very clearly how that August day had been a joyful and a laughing day, a holiday, while now this rain that was coming down and coming down was something much harsher and more cruel, more than anything it bent your head forcing you downwards, and the feeling had shed any connotation of gaiety, beyond any doubt. There was nothing to smile about any more, with this rain now, nothing at all in the end, and in fact the cruel harshness of a vague and heavy question was concentrating in people’s fists. On the city, if you looked up, that veil of rain was coming down and coming down, and the rain marked a fine weft in the distance, and the same thoughts were damp and wrinkled thoughts, deeply marked by that fine vertical rain that was falling falling on threads of water that mingled with the fallen water and the water that was yet to fall, and because now there was a harsh and deep and cruel awareness: this rain would continue, yes, it would continue until the event became apparent, until the ultimate significance became clear and apparent even to the most defenceless and the weakest minds. In fact all that remained was to reconsider everything, really everything, from a perspective other than this one of waiting opened up by the rain. Waiting weighed on hearts like a gigantic press, fixed and inescapable, it fell with the harsh and heavy determination of continuous reproach. And that was the third day of rain. The city of Naples was so disheartened that it choked back its playful melancholic streak and folded away its florid thoughts in a dark corner of the house, along with the rubber mattress and battered fishing tackle.

And it was not until 7.30pm on that same day that Pasquale De Crescenzo became fully aware that no more people were going to come. Then he looked dolefully at the seats in their neat rows, the fertilised plants, the Press Club flowers, the waiters coming and going, and it was as if they always had very many things to do. But in fact he wondered what they really had to do, given that there were not more than twenty people in the room, most of them friends and family members. He wondered also, looking dolefully towards the window, if that gloomy, stubborn rain that had been steadily falling for three days and with those sad conscious thoughts would cease. And there was a strange silence in that room, because in fact everyone was very careful not to speak, and everyone was in a state of waiting, at least waiting to know how it would all end. And besides if you are talking in public, it is necessary for the public to be large, so it then covers the murmur with its own murmur, and in the end gentlemen everyone wants to have their back covered in life, it is by no means a matter of leaving yourself exposed and isolated. In general those who expose themselves always come to a bad end, and in life hardly anyone wishes to come to a bad end and even if there was someone who did wish such a thing, or did until a few days ago, now in fact with that rain that was coming down and coming down, and those distorted questions, and that unusual waiting, now no longer wished such a thing, and wished instead to participate, and to be involved in things, and therefore not to expose themselves, no, not in the slightest. In the end there was this silence, in the room, and what became apparent, along with the faint sound of the rain falling, the muted gurgle, in the little bar, of the espresso machine. Pasquale De Crescenzo said to himself that in such circumstances it would be appropriate to close the glass door dividing the hall from the bar. In fact, he believed that writing poetry was difficult enough, but that of course more difficult and tricky, in this strange city but also elsewhere in all the cities of the world, was making people listen to poetry. Because you needed an unexpected detail, that was it, the muted gurgle of the coffee machine, to distract the mind, distract it, and remove it from the verses. Because in fact Pasquale De Crescenzo had noticed on more than one occasion: life is hostile, deeply hostile to poetry. Life is something extremely concrete and tangible that does not want poetry, it can’t bear it. And even with all those jokes, and all that flattery, and girls applauding, and saying oh yes oh yes, in fact things are different, he knew very well how things were. Many many times he had resisted, in the homes of friends, and had looked sadly up at the windowpanes, and from outside he had seen the night sky with all its lights. Then he reflected sadly that in all likelihood there was no point continuing with the evening as planned, and in the end it struck him as entirely pointless for Maria De Giovanni to deliver her opening introductory presentation to the lyric poems of Pasquale De Crescenzo. Above all for the extremely valid reason that there had as yet been no sign of Maria De Giovanni that evening, and she never would appear, and secondly because the poems of Pasquale De Crescenzo spoke for themselves, and there was no need for any presentation or introduction, gentlemen, because poetry is what it is, it is pleasing, if it is not pleasing on its own it is the poetry that is wrong, or perhaps you are incapable of grasping it. Having mulled these thoughts, Pasquale De Crescenzo then got to his feet resting his hands on the green tabletop, for a long time studied the bottle of mineral water and the empty bottles, the two ashtrays strategically placed in anticipation of a huge influx of people to the table of honour, he carefully studied his fingernails, the ten nails of his ten fingers, and said at last: gentlemen. I am truly sorry that adverse atmospheric conditions have kept numbers smaller than they would doubtless have been under different circumstances, but on the other hand we must take account of reality and adapt to it, you all know that this evening’s programme included, before the poetry reading, an introductory presentation by Professor Maria De Giovanni, who has been prevented from taking part by difficulties with public transport, and therefore, with great regret, we will all have to do without the programmed talk and I will find myself all alone, and besides I don’t really have much to say, I will tell you one thing only and I hope that you will all share my enthusiasm: the language of Ferdinando Russo and Salvatore Di Giacomo is not dead, it is alive and vital today more than ever, today and in the years to come, because the so-called vernacular is not a literary invention, an artificial construction made by experts and linguistic experimenters, but the most authentic, the most genuine and the most felt expression of an entire people, that people which, in the reign of the Bourbons, enjoyed a superior position in civil and artistic life, and from the perspective of their history went on to maintain a true individuality and singularity, inexpressible except through the purest expressions of the purest Neapolitan dialect, so, gentlemen, in the hope that it may serve some useful purpose I should like this evening to strike a blow for the defence and protection of our language. Well, considering my brief introduction is at an end, let us move on to the poetry, which may not be great poetry, it may not pass into the literary history of this great city and this country, but it most certainly constitutes concrete testimony of a love of the city, a love of Naples, which is the truly unique characteristic of all the sons of Queen Partenope, and now we have come to the poems which as you know have been collected in a volume by the publisher Cosentino Fausto under the title Napule ca luce, and I should like to begin this short meeting with one of the poems closest to my heart, which seems to me to be particularly indicative of the possibility of making poetry today in the Partenopean vernacular, the poem in question is entitled ‘L’Ammore è ’na palomma’. Love is a Dove. So Pasquale De Crescenzo began in that faltering voice of his, and as always happened, down in the depths of his throat he became aware of a tremor in his vocal cords. But that only affected the first few lines, he knew very well, he realised that every time, that soon his voice would be coming out very smoothly, his voice would acquire pleasing and elastic inflections, and at last he began

L’Ammore è ’na palomma
ca nun vo cchiù vulà

love is a dove that no longer wishes to fly, and he became aware that inadvertently his eyes had fallen upon the twenty people present, as if personally checking their approval of a poem that was very close to his heart, but by which he was in essence not particularly convinced, in the sense that apart from the musicality of the verse it was a conceptual proposition that on more than one occasion had prompted strong doubts concerning the final and recondite significance, but why for heaven’s sake recondite?, of this poetry of his. In that brief space, his eyes rose to check beyond his glasses, and he felt a sense of unease. Because those twenty people, rather than pressing together compactly in the centre in front of him were all scattered like dust around the hall, and every one of them had chosen to sit towards the back rows of chairs, and in the end the first rows, which were the ones directly in front of his eyes, were deserted, completely deserted, and each one of those present was there on his own, as if those were not chairs but so many tiny cells without the possibility of communication. So he continued

l’Ammore è ’na palomma
ca s’è fermata ccà

love is a dove that has settled here, and it was also clear enough that this rain was not about to stop, it was not about to stop at all. They knew it well, the Naples rain, which never falls or hardly ever, but when it falls it doesn’t stop. And in the end from the windows of the Press Club there came that sticky dampness, that mellifluous smell of damp which, passing through the wallpaper and the carpets, reached people’s shoes and feet, and there was no refuge, there was no refuge at all. The damp rose within until it reached your bones and slowly spread, and then those pains, like the pains of a creaking structure, and then you had to wonder: would it collapse from one moment to the next?

Because in fact from that third day of rain public transport had experienced very notable difficulties, and many lines had been closed, and many journeys cancelled on some of the routes that served the poorest districts, and maybe in terms of quantity that wasn’t a terrible blow, because in fact there were few people in the streets, there were few of them now, but at seven or eight in the morning and at five in the afternoon there was always that stream of unskilled workers from the provinces, their hair stiff with dust and their combs in their belts and their fake leather bags holding their belongings climbing aboard public transport and cheerfully heading home again. Using the excuse of the bus going over a bump, every now and again they bumped into the cleaning women, but the cleaning women were aware of their little game, and no longer left their backsides exposed or very much in evidence, and instead they stood with those same backsides pressed against the cold metal walls of the big vehicle, and they were even able to escape the odd pinched buttock, and not that much harm was done, the important thing was that it didn’t assume pathological intensity or manic fixation. Ultimately a hand on your backside, vulgar though it might be, is always an act of homage, a gesture of esteem. And after all there were as one might say notable difficulties with bus connections.

The buses passed in silence through big puddles, spraying muddy liquid up either side. This was particularly apparent on the Riviera di Chiaia, outside number 10, the location of the little Café Susan, run by Salvatore Picozzi, who had ten years before gone to live in London and returned two years later with the pure and melancholy Susan, she with the pale blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair and totally in love with him because the first few times they had been together in the cold boardinghouse room he had set to work with such enthusiasm that the poor English girl had had more fluid spurted between her legs during those nights than ever happened before save in her most unbridled nocturnal fantasies. Much time had passed since then, since those famous nights, a great deal of time to tell the truth, and you know what happens, a wife is always a wife, and you can’t spend the whole day fucking her this way and that. In fact love is a great thing in what we might call the initial phase, but otherwise you have to adapt, and after all by day there are lots of things to be done, you can’t just spend hour after hour every night pumping juice between your wife’s plump thighs. But one would also have to say: the sweet enchantment of the foreign wife of Salvatore Picozzi had carried on in the years to come, when he had returned to Naples, in his district of La Torretta, because in fact all his friends and all his relatives and all his acquaintances always put on a big homecoming party for him because of that foreign wife of his and effectively expressed a marvelling respect for this thing that had happened in smoggy London, finding a young woman with pale blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair. In reality, in his depths of his heart, Salvatore Picozzi had always felt a vague kind of self-important pride because of the marvelling respect that the others felt for his English wife, and he had convinced himself over time that his situation bestowed on him a certain pleasing prestige, and he had begun to look at his wife in a different way from other women. Because the other women were only and simply pretty Neapolitan girls and there were lots of those, really lots of them, with their tight jeans and the make-up on their eyes, but in fact there wasn’t a single English wife in the district apart from his. His was youthful and delicate from the tips of her hair to her thin waist, she had fine, sweet northern features and gentle eyes that were sometimes cold but certainly unusual in the city of Naples, and it was only from the waist down that his English wife changed personality, from the line of her waist in fact there swelled truly majestic hips and big full thighs and firm calves. And all that hair, all that hair between her legs. Every now and again he remembered those first nights with her in the boarding house and how delighted he was to look between her legs because of that full red hair, and it was almost a mystery, almost, a surprise, an unexpected discovery. When he was indoors, in the warmth of Pub 24, rinsing the cups in lukewarm water, he thought again of that curly red mass of hers, and with a tender smile he found himself hardening. Those nights had been unforgettable, yes, truly, unforgettable for him and for her. Pure, melancholy Susan had writhed between the sheets like a crazed cat, and her convulsive thrusts and thrashing had continued over time, and in that unknown tongue of hers which he struggled to understand, she had said certain words she had said certain mysterious things to him, and he had never summoned the courage to ask her what they were. Not least because, once he had asked, she had told him candidly and with a serious expression that he must be mistaken, perhaps he had mistaken her for somebody else. Watching her reply like that, Salvatore Picozzi had thought at first that all women are whores, and the second thing he had thought was that perhaps he really was mistaken, perhaps another woman had said those lustful things to him in the English language. But as far as he could remember, he had been with no other women, apart from a couple of prostitutes in Soho and a young waitress from the same part of the city, who certainly hadn’t said those things, and if they had they had done so in a profoundly different tone of voice. And in fact, that night, the general meaning of Susan’s words had become suddenly and immediately clear, there was no mistaking it, but the problem had remained, because in a general sense he didn’t want to understand, in fact he understood perfectly well, not the words in detail one by one, to understand precisely the terms used by that that woman who would subsequently become his wife and who subsequently knew other nights of unbridled lust with him, but because more than ever that night she came out with strange words said in that strange way. Sometimes, in fact, he had taken the greatest trouble in every conceivable way to wrest from her another night like that one, but he had never managed to do so, however hard he tried. That thought about her words had lingered in his mind, and in fact he too had tried to say a number of things, in the course of the unbridled embraces they had enjoyed subsequent to their time in London, but he had not been successful, no, he had not been successful. In fact, while speaking he had experienced a sensation of embarrassment, if not of actual unease, and indeed his wife had later delicately referred to his fragmentary outbursts. Also giving him to understand, quite clearly, because perhaps there was no need to insist, that perhaps his outbursts had the effect opposite to that intended. In short, Salvatore Picozzi wanted to say on that occasion but you – !, and he didn’t say it, he kept it to himself. And there was that thought which now divided him from Susan. Because otherwise they had always lived a life of loving companionship. And Café Susan had been a warm and tender edifice that they had built together. For some time their life had proceeded in that way, with Salvatore Picozzi behind the bar and strawberry-blonde Susan with the pale blue eyes behind another smaller counter on the right as you came in, by the till and the little packets of sweets and chewing gum. Now there was that complicit tenderness between them. Sometimes they smiled at one another from a distance. In short, there was a secret understanding between them. He had developed something of a belly, in fact a considerable belly, not least because she had really learned to cook, and pure and melancholy Susan had assumed the habit of drinking a good glass of whisky after dinner, and sometimes two, or three, and then they went to bed under the covers and with that whisky inside them they made love without great acrobatics, but they did it really well, with that thing that went on and on, and in short it only occurred to him much later that she had come and in fact she had come more than once and sometimes in short they repeated those crazy nights. Then by day they both stood inside Café Susan, she at the till and also answering the telephone, he at the espresso machine preparing the trays with the things for the little boys who were wandering about the place. Once when there had been a traffic jam that had lasted for hours and hours, he had had a brilliant idea and had started making coffee at very great speed, and immediately employed five of six of the little boys who had gone about among the cars selling coffee at twice the normal price. He had sold a truly indescribable quantity. Because in fact people would buy anything when they found themselves stuck in the car because of the traffic, and couldn’t go forwards or backwards. He had also thought about selling newspapers, the day after the day with the coffee, but then in the end he couldn’t reach an agreement with the newsagent. In fact the newsagent couldn’t begin to understand his brilliant idea, he even objected that the traffic wasn’t constantly stuck every day, which meant that this new initiative remained entirely hypothetical. You’re best off on your own in the end. So the days passed like that, and since it had started raining for Salvatore Picozzi and his English wife Susan this had not been a big problem, because they had gone on peacefully making coffee as always. It only remained to be said that the number of customers had diminished remarkably during those days, but otherwise it really seemed that life was passing in exactly the same way as ever. In short, everything would be fine for some time to come, everything was fine, everything was agreed, had it not been for the holes in the road which during those days of uninterrupted rain had spread considerably until they became veritable trenches. And that had been the beginning of the problem with the buses passing no more than four metres away, and when the buses passed and took the hole outside from a particular angle, well, there was nothing to be done: from beneath the vehicle’s enormous wheel, the rear wheel on the right, there came a spray of muddy liquid which reached the pavement and not only reached the pavement but also hit part of the tiny window and the front door of the bar which was tiny anyway and therefore vulnerable to the stench of that brown liquid which consisted of dust mixed with water. In fact Salvatore Picozzi took a great deal of trouble asking the people from the Municipality to intervene as soon as possible, because he certainly couldn’t go on like that, and Susan looked at him with that steady gaze of hers while he phoned furiously and between her teeth she muttered some English words of disdain for the Italians, and he wasn’t happy with that at all, but then again he wasn’t happy about anything at all, and he couldn’t help accepting that his wife really had every reason in the world to be disdainful towards the Italians, objectively speaking: towards the Neapolitans, because not all Italians are like that, some are even worse. And in short during those days the chance event of the puddles had become a resolutely endemic fact, a constitutional fact one might even have said. That had contributed considerably to the poisoning of his last three days, not so much on the grounds of economic disadvantage because of the constantly diminishing number of customers, not so much because of that as because of the fact that, fuck!, it’s impossible to get a minute’s peace around here! He had been given occasion to realise: in this city there was no chance of getting a minute’s peace at all. Just when it seemed that everything should be proceeding smoothly and peacefully, something unpleasant inevitably came along to disrupt the deep-rooted order of those days and the life that was dragging itself along without any particular animosity but pleasantly, certainly pleasantly. Because in life it is plain that you can’t have everything, and when you have a young English wife who’s good in bed and good in the bar, when you have a little bar that lets you live peacefully and lets you buy your wife a handbag from time to time, when you have the wondering admiration of your neighbours and your acquaintances, and in short, when you have all that what else do you want? Or don’t you want to spend your life breaking your back like the guy in Bar Renato, who thinks about nothing at all but the money that’s coming in and coming in, and if it doesn’t come in he really falls ill, physically, and his face turns pale. And in short what the fuck do you want out of life?, a sudden madness?, a split-second lack of reason?, a foul and hidden desire?, come on, tell me, what the fuck do you want? Had it not been for the puddles, these days right now would have passed calmly, but unfortunately those puddles were there, and then there were those bloody buses speeding up right outside the café and spraying a brown liquid at the doorway of the bar and spattering the whole floor and on a few occasions even hitting the calves of the customers, and this was a matter of the utmost gravity, certainly, he realised that. People would stop coming to Susan’s for coffee the day they realised that coffee at Susan’s risked ruining a pair of trousers with the muddy puddle-water. And in the end where did it say that he suddenly had to suffer because of this fucking Municipality that couldn’t be bothered to maintain the streets in a decent way? As soon as the workmen arrived he’d give them a piece of his mind. Of course, that’s what he would do. Even though he was perfectly aware, it was quite obvious, that the workmen did not bear any responsibility. They were just doing what they had been told to do. In short, do you know what the truth is?, the truth is that everything here is a mess, a complete mess, and when you want to pick a fight with an authority you can never find him, never really identify him, because it appears that everyone here is at ease with his conscience, everyone has done his own duty beyond a doubt, and in the end what is there left for you to do, beat your head against the wall?, come on, forget it, please, forget it.

Salvatore Picozzi was now behind the bar by the espresso machine, looking out of the window, into the sky, and all he could see against the light were those thin threads of rain coming down and coming down, and sometimes in fact he wanted to shut up shop, oh yes, shut up the whole thing and go home, but he said to himself that you can’t do that, it’s not possible. People are used to finding Café Susan open all the time during its regular opening hours. What would people think if they turned up for a coffee and found nothing but a nice closed shutter? These are unproductive things from a commercial point of view. In short, he stood behind the bar now checking those threads of rain, following the pattern against the lights of the lamps on the other side of the street, on the lights of some of the windows on the opposite pavement. And yet it was clear that the traffic had now thinned out, and there were really very few cars around, and there were few people in the street, and yet they passed at a nimble pace, wrapped in hoods and various raincoats, with black umbrellas. The women often carried gaudy multicoloured umbrellas, a splash of colour in all that greyness. The girls walked with a light, skipping step, with little squeals, and pauses, and jumps. Older women proceeded with that slow, methodical tread they had, steady on their feet, they had lost the lightness of the girls, yes, they had lost it some time ago.

And that was the third day of rain, 25 October, and no one had yet understood the matter of the voices hurled at the city from the arrow-slits of the Maschio Angioino. Nor was anything known about the dolls. There was only, for the moment, that vague memory of the memory of Sunday 5 August, and a vague foreboding, the curious hypothesis that would probably, with this rain coming down and coming down, change the very prospect of life. Some extraordinary event was bound to occur, somewhere in the city of Naples.

Margherita Esposito sadly reflected that this evening her son Luigi would not be coming home. He wouldn’t be coming back, and this time wasn’t like the other times it had happened before, when maybe her son had been out all night for some encounter he had with a member of the opposite sex or perhaps he was out of Naples somewhere, no, this time it was all different, because an awareness had descended of the fact that he wouldn’t come home, he never would again. From that night onwards, and for all the nights to come, he would sleep with the girl he had married, and in short that piece of her heart had gone forever. The house was poorer and sadder now. Something was missing. Margherita Esposito wandered around the house, and checked, and checked, and without a doubt something was missing, she was aware of the absence, that was it, she was aware of it, and it was certainly the absence of that young son of hers who had gone. That night she didn’t feel sad, perhaps, but diminished, yes, diminished. Someone had taken away a part of her, and she found herself poorer, perhaps also more alone, thinking about it, but Margherita Esposito wanted to avoid thinking about it. So she went on wandering around the house with a duster in her hand. She ran it over the furniture, and over the mirrors, and over the windows, and to tell the truth there wasn’t much to dust, but what was left in that harsh moment but to wander and wander around the house?, what was left? The rain hit the windows of her house in Posillipo with a tender and sweetly melancholy sound. In some respects it was a caress, that rain that fell to obscure people’s feelings, that vague hubbub in the distance. Were the walls about to fall down?, would the house disappear?, what? The duster went around in a circle on the dining table, following the trace of a mark until deep into the night, a mark that won’t fade, a firm solid dry thought which this rain is dissolving and removing. Perhaps she might half-close her eyes, feel in her eyelids the start of tears that refuse to fall, were it not for that duster going round and round in a circle on the dinner table, and for the life that goes on. Because to tell the truth they can pull your arm off, they can mutilate your legs, and pull both your eyes from their bloody sockets, and they can burn the skin on your hands, and everything, but this life will go on as before. Your only option is to breathe hard, and stay calm, keep a strong grip on yourself and breathe right now in the silence of the night, and listen to your breath as it rises and falls, and the sound of the rain. Adding it up, it was the third day that this rain had been falling as it was falling, the third day in a row. If anyone wanted to believe in omens, let them. She could read her coffee grounds for portents, and find a meaning in the arrangement of a pack of cards. That ace of spades, why that ace of spades?

And beneath that rain that was coming down slowly, he quietly advanced, closed away inside his car. On the windscreen the wiper drew ellipses, greyish filaments and quivering lights. When he turned into Corso Vittorio Emanuele he knew that this time he would do it. He knew it in a flash of illumination, like a full headlight shone into the street. Then he changed gears and pulled over to the pavement on the right, so that anyone behind could easily overtake him. He felt in his chest that strange sensation like an unbidden emotion, and how would it end up he wondered, but there wasn’t much time now for those belated questions, because along the street in the headlights those unusual figures were emerging with their red-painted lips and their gaudy dresses. Their high heels, their densely drawn eyebrows, and their black and blonde and fire-red hair. It seemed to him that they had emerged as an interdiction, a prohibition. You can’t do this, you can’t do this, and yet it needed to be done, then, once and for all. Certainly with the requisite caution, but undoubtedly it needed to be done. In brief snatches Alfonso Amitrano ran through his own personal history, and this was the third day of rain in the city of Naples and through the windows he could make out the pattern, and it was possible to conjecture that from one moment to the next an unusual and in some respects a cruel event was bound inevitably to happen. Certainly an event out of the ordinary. And had the disaster on Via Tasso and Via Aniello Falcone had been an omen of what was to come?

That precise awareness had reached the devotees of the Holy Face. Now, inside the Sanctuary, everything was being put back into his hands, in such a way as to provide for what was just, for what was truth, and in fact truth is always very difficult to attain, and when you have attained it someone always appears to give another, different version, and this new version undoubtedly also contains an element of truth. Sometimes you find yourself thinking that the truth has a thousand faces and is in every place and in every person. Within the Sanctuary the image of the Holy Face descended to take fear from the palm of your hand. There was this trust, and the meditative silence, those prayers, those people murmuring on their knees. Outside the Sanctuary they were selling the image of the Face in the form of a car sticker, and everyone had his own. In fact, some people had more than one, on the four corners of the rear window of the car there were four stickers neatly arranged, and then there was the reassuring image of him with his blond beard and his blue eyes. Once outside of the Sanctuary, let us put it this way, one felt at ease, with one’s mind more agile. He had delegated; yes, he had delegated. Now there’s nothing more to think about, nothing more to worry about. The Face had been appropriately filled with hidden fears, hopes and thoughts. And even if that unusual rain continued outside, even the rain was more bearable now. The dark foreboding remained, certainly it remained, but with no reason now to worry. Or perhaps there was, but anyway.

It was on that third day of rain, 25 October, that the five-lira coins began to play music, and one might have thought at first that it was the result of a collective hallucination, of autosuggestion. But that would have been an impression that did not correspond to the truth, because in fact all possible and imaginable acoustic measurements had been made, and we know very well that if it is true that a brain can be rendered suggestible, the same does not hold for a recording device, and in fact every time a recording device was called upon to confirm the song that had just been heard, the reproduction corresponded to the reality in every single particular, and if the verification of such an unusual phenomenon was initially entrusted to devices which were not especially sophisticated, we must also say that highly sophisticated equipment was used to address the problem, and each time a check was made the result was the same as the one before. Because in the end it was clear even to the most recalcitrant that this was not a matter of suggestion, nor of collective hallucination, but of actual, genuine music. Well, it would also be appropriate to point out that Sara Cipriani was nothing more than a ten-year-old child with long blonde hair whose mother washed it constantly because she wanted to make a good impression on her friends, and on her fellow tenants in the building at 324 Via Posillipo. Sara Cipriani was four foot seven inches tall and without overwhelmingly brilliant results attended the fifth-year class of the Alessandro Manzoni primary school. In short, she was a likeable little girl, sad by temperament but still always cheerful, already with a melancholy hint of adolescence in her eyes. She spent her days going to school in the morning, from half past eight until one o’clock, and then she came home for lunch, and before eating she brought down her cocker spaniel puppy and then she sat down at the table with her parents and her brother. Her mother was always saying to her don’t do this, don’t do this, and in fact she paid attention except that sometimes she was distracted by a fleeting thought, and then maybe she made a mistake, and if she made a mistake her mother was immediately ready with that shrill voice and no gentleness at all. Then she bit her lip in silence, and accepted those reproaches, and lowered her head, and her father didn’t say anything to her, but then her father never said anything to anybody in that house, he just gave you those long looks sometimes that burrowed inside you, more than once she had thought that her father’s eyes were beautiful and gentle and deep and they reached you like a caress, like a tender smile. In short every day they came together around the table at about two in the afternoon, and her mother always had lots of things to say, especially to her husband, but her husband said not a word in reply, he listened, certainly, he listened carefully to every word and every syllable, but then in the end he said nothing at all, if there was a problem in the end he gave a nod of agreement to the solution already put forward by his wife and in short those family meetings at two in the afternoon passed wearily and were always the same and several times Sara Cipriani had reflected that perhaps everyone in that house lived for themselves, yes, for themselves, and there was no cheerful confusion or lively conversations, but the silence that fell was disheartening. Immediately after lunch her father left, he got up from the table and said well see you later and put on his raincoat in the hallway and at the very last moment just as he was about to leave she arrived in silence, she got up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, he stroked her long hair with his big hand and then opened the door and closed it behind him, and then he was gone, he was gone for another day, and she was about to stop for a moment and think about it, when her mother’s voice came from the kitchen saying that she had to give her a hand, didn’t she?, but she was always pretending to forget, she had no desire to help her mother, in the kitchen after lunch, even though she understood very well, of course, she understood: it was something that had to be done, and in the end she cleared up carefully slowly bringing the dishes to the kitchen and putting everything else in the drawers and took the bundled tablecloth and shook it in the air from the open window. When it was all over, she said do you still need me?, no I don’t need you, her mother replied, and then on tiptoe Sara Cipriani crossed the corridor of the flat and went and threw herself on the bed in her room, with her arms crossed behind her head and her feet crossed and her eyes wide open staring at the ceiling and after a while she heard vaguely through the corridor and the half-open door that her mother was on the phone to her friends. Then, so as not to hear the women’s chatter which was always the same and the same again, turned on her portable radio in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle and lay there listening to music, and with music the afternoon certainly became more bearable, dream images crowded into her eye, from the window overlooking Via Posillipo came voices and the sounds of cars and buses stopping right under the building, and generally speaking that’s how things were. Until one day her mother said wailing and red-eyed you’ve got to stop being annoying!, and let me show you what’s going to happen to that radio!, and she picked up the radio in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, went to the window, looked out and hurled it into the street. She heard that faint sound of a frail thing being smashed. Sara Cipriani wanted to say, and wanted to do, but instead she stayed on the bed with that lump somewhere in her throat taking her breath away and after a while she felt two big tears running down her cheeks, silent and unseemly, and from the open door to the corridor came the words of her mother saying over and over how tired she was of having a daughter like that?, and what did she think?, with that other one who is never at home and never says a word even if you pay him!, can you believe the two of them?, was she their servant? Sara Cipriani got out of bed and tiptoed to the window, and down in the street she saw her radio in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle and there was nothing to be done now and silently she went back to bed and crossed her arms behind her head to take a deep breath and crossed her feet and lay still crying inside and showing nothing. She wouldn’t say a word, no. She wouldn’t say a single word. Her mother could break all her things if she liked, she would never say a single word. What did she expect?, that she would cry?, that she would go and ask for forgiveness?, that she would sweet-talk her into letting her have the things that were actually hers? Oh no. She could take everything away every single thing and throw everything down into the street and do whatever she wanted and she could even hit her in the end, but she wouldn’t say anything, not a word, her strong, hard silence would become an impregnable raised barrier. And she lay still reflecting that now the afternoon was really longer and more interminable, without music, without the songs of her radio in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle. She put her hands in her pockets and tightened her shoulders, and then she got up on one elbow and threw all her coins on to the bed. 225 lire: one hundred-lira coin, two fifties, two tens, one five. The five-lire coin was absolutely tiny and teeny and light in the palm of her hand and for some reason she brought it to her ear, perhaps coins were like shells, and you could hear the sea if you listened very carefully in silence. It wasn’t the sea that came, not the faraway swish of an echo of the sea but music, music that she could clearly make out, yes, she could make it out, and she immediately recognised the song, which was the song about Lily, the girl who takes drugs and dies and they should have stopped her in time and treated her and instead none of that had happened and Lily was gone, gone forever, and a playful smile appeared on her lips, and her eyes opened wide at the discovery. The five-lire coin repeated in her ear the song about Lily and all the other songs she liked, and in the end she had only to think about a song and immediately the coin repeated it to her and now she had all her personal music, her truly personal music, and no one could take it away from her no, really no one. To check she took the coin away from her ear and as she had predicted the coin stopped playing, and then she brought it back and again she was listening to a few songs and then she gripped it in her fist and put it back in her pocket being careful to put the other coins in her pocket on the other side. Because the other coins didn’t do a thing, they were just ordinary normal coins, one hundred, two fifties, two tens. And in short she put that five-lire coin in her right pocket and touched the velvet of her trousers, and that same day, at that same moment, in all of the houses in all of the city ten-year-old girls found that their coins were playing music and there was an incredible crowd of parents who wanted to know and wanted to hear, but in fact when they picked up the coins and brought them to their ears they couldn’t hear anything at all, only little girls heard the music. In fact, as we have said, at first this phenomenon was considered rather suspicious, and people thought it was something to do with auto-suggestion, with a collective auditory hallucination, and then proofs and counter-proofs were necessary, but in the end when all the tape recorders supplied the same identical response it was clear even to the most sceptical and recalcitrant that it had nothing to do with suggestion and everything to do with music, which the tapes faithfully reproduced, and which no one could then deny with a shrug or by saying but anyway you know what little girls are like, always daydreaming, because in fact all the little girls all over the city weren’t actually dreaming at all, and nor would they dream in the future. They just brought the five-lire coins to their ears and out came music and songs. Every afternoon throughout that whole period all the little girls all over the city were rich in that music that came out ceaselessly, and at school from desk to desk they started exchanging coins and one girl already had the idea of buying them up, of collecting as many coins as possible, but after a while it was clear that buying up coins was completely pointless, you could have ten or a hundred but the one that played music was the one and one only, and in short even the most recalcitrant saw very clearly that there was nothing to be done but give them to girls who didn’t have any. Violent disputes broke out among the mothers about the quality of the music, because some of them were convinced that their daughters’ coins played much better music than the coins of the other little girls, so those stories circulated around the city about the previous evening with every detail about the music that had been played and the songs, and everyone emphasised the beauty of a tune, the cadence of a phrase, and furious debates raged among the mothers about the superiority of this or that kind of music and in some cases these arguments actually became physical, women were seen scratching each other’s faces, pulling each other’s hair out and even rolling around in their sagging nylon stockings and fake eyelashes and girdles and bras and big black lace knickers and in short it was quite a confused time altogether. In the streets of La Torretta and Ferrovia street vendors appeared, dealing in counterfeit five-lire coins because they had immediately come up with the idea of exploiting the situation, but however hard the operators of these makeshift clandestine mints might have tried, it was clear to even the most spendthrift buyers that there was really nothing to buy, because without exception those coins did not play music and they never would. In the meantime the local academic authority of the City of Naples along with the Office of Public Education decided to launch a series of promotional demonstrations encouraging the dissemination of musical culture among the school population, and at the Polytechnic Artistic Circle a series of highly learned meetings was held in the course of which long discourses were delivered concerning the advisability of stepping up and defining pedagogical musical interventions in schools, and this seemed to be a necessity that could be put off no longer even for those people who were least responsive to music, so much so that the school year was interrupted from one day to the next and in effect resumed from the beginning only seven days later, when the programmes concerning what would in future constitute the musical education of the population were prepared in detail. We should add that alongside public education during those days a series of private institutions of musical instruction were also set up at very short notice, and unfortunately after a certain amount of time had passed it had to be admitted that the music teaching at private institutions was both more profound and more practical than the teaching carried out in the state schools, and on the other hand you know how it is, certain tasks cannot be accomplished from one day to the next, but in short a great step forward had been taken, and some private institutions were already planning to restore the Scholae Cantorum of the seventeenth century, along with the inevitable castration of boys and young men interested in following the courses, when fortunately a memo was circulated by the Ministry of Public Musical Education in which the practice of castration was condemned once and for all as a barbaric, medieval practice, most severely prohibited save in exceptional instances which had to be authorised on a case-by-case basis by the relevant authorities, but on the civic level it would have to be added straightaway that the harmful phenomenon of castration remained limited to a very few regrettable episodes, and in short the bulk of the population, in spite of the obvious advantages that could derive from such a practice, remained calm and peaceful, without giving rise to a resurgence of seventeenth-century practice. More than anything they were in fact impassioned about the great variety of singerly events which from that point onwards were authorised and put into effect at increasingly frequent intervals, and of course you will all remember the famous Day of Song, at least in its first, monumental version, when the stadium of San Paolo di Fuorigrotta was filled by a hundred thousand children truly belonging to every social class, all dressed in white, delivering a huge and admirable interpretation of ‘Funiculì, Funiculà’ in the presence of the Head of State himself, who attended with all the members of the Council of Ministers in the central circle of the pitch, at the precise spot where every game kicks off, and on that occasion Naples was literally invaded by the special envoys of the national and international press, and a British broadcasting channel somehow managed to acquire exclusive rights to the show, which it then sold at an increased cost to other broadcasting channels within the western bloc. In short, that Day of Song, in its first and monumental version at least, was a truly unforgettable day. Key rings and banners had been manufactured in the shape of treble clefs and the City Council had authorised the installation of two thousand kiosks for the impromptu sale of souvenirs, and there was a packed press conference by the Mayor, a poor, flabby, perennially sweaty man who stressed in a suspicious voice that, through this tangible trial of strength, Naples had regained its pre-eminence in the field of the world’s music, a pre-eminence that had for too long been the prerogative of barbarian populations worthy of branding with the mark of the most reprehensible musical superficiality, and in short this was truly a great day for the city which lingered indelibly in everyone’s memories, and at the end of the performance of ‘Funiculì, Funiculà’ the same Head of State, assisted by the Ministry of Musical Heritage, pinned to Sara Cipriani’s white pinafore a gold medal with a treble clef on one side and on the other the words Naples – First Day of Song. Had it not been for the rain that was still coming down, it would have been a perfect day, and instead because of the rain an awkward question remained and something like a sense of unease that even music could not totally erase. In short, everyone understood that beyond the essential fact of these musical coins there was still something that was inexpressible yet concrete, extremely concrete, and it was precisely in that clash of lucky presentiments and embarrassed uncertainty that the third day of rain, 25 October, came to an end at last, and when people later recalled it what remained was mostly confusion, something like an accentuated disarticulation of the city, which felt it had lost its peaceful tranquillity and which still did not feel it inhabited this tremendous event that was yet to come, oh quite certainly, it was yet to come, everyone was willing to swear, and it would alter all perspectives on everything. Along these damp hidden streets of the city nothing survived but waiting, and a treacherous disconcerting provisionality descended to weigh heavily upon everyone’s thoughts and nothing survived, nothing apart from that sad and desperate thought that probably everything was about to change. Ships might drift and women in love would bleed from their nails and the geraniums on our grey balconies and terraces would shed leaves of their own accord. How, in the end, do we tell the story of that distorted anxiety that climbs, and pants, and groans, and that voice that sails and flies across the asphalt: on his hands now it descended to press on the provisionality of an inconclusive gloomy and unbreakable presentiment which still drags glowing decorations down into the mud of anxiety. It goes on now, it goes on drawing assents to shame, to uncertain fear.

And when, at the end of the third day of rain, it was 25 October, Carlo Andreoli found himself clutching that inert mass, night had fallen many hours ago to enclose him in the circle of waiting, his eyes were red and swollen now, they pressed against his eyelids. He was clad in fear, he felt cold and hard beneath the fabric of his shirt, and many hours had passed now, many hours, and the whole day had passed now, and he was left with the fatigue that had assailed his knees, that had forced its way into his nerves and tendons. Sadly now he went back into his house and stayed there listening to the sound of the door closing behind his quivering back, and stood smelling the silence of the dark house, and from outside the rain drew questions on the troubled breathing of the city, and the flat was sweet and empty and silent. Carlo Andreoli felt as lonely as a limping dog. He felt his feet in the corridor and he felt his heavy swathed clumsy body falling on the bedcover, and in the fear of night he lay there with his eyes open reflecting and nothing appeared before his eyes, nothing apart from little black dots, and however much he traced things back and forced his breathing and set his gaze alight, he could grasp nothing, nothing at all, and the anxiety and the fear and everything, but he was weary now, let Naples crumble, oh yes, crumble. And he closed his eyes.