“I might just put forward the idea we stay here all night talking. What do you say, Eddie, would I have your support?”
“And miss the fireworks?” Somewhere in the Quartieri a cheap firecracker, one of the many being let off over the last few days, made a well-timed entrance, a sizzle followed by an undignified death. “C’mon, it’ll be fun to go out.”
“All right,” said Gabriele. “Whatever you wish, my dear sister-in-law.”
From anyone else it would have sounded like mockery. But Gabriele wasn’t just anyone, and that dear sister-in-law moved me. I felt certain in that instant that long, long after all the other noises had died out—the firecrackers popping, our friends laughing, their mother grumbling with discontent—there would still be the three of us. Him, Pietro, and me.
“Give me a kiss,” he said.
I obeyed, leaning over to press my lips against Gabriele’s cheek, sandpapery like Pietro’s especially against the tender spot my cold sore had left behind. It was a big kiss, with my eyes closed, as if to forever seal that bond.
“Not that kind of kiss.”
I pulled back as if burned by his words. For the very fragile instant that I was able to bear the weight of his gaze, in his eyes I saw the same rage I’d already seen aimed at Pietro, anger mixed with an almost unbearable love. But now that furious passion was directed at me, and god how it hurt, it burned much more than the steam rising off the pot of lentils that my eyes would very soon have to turn back to. Was I still trying to tell myself it was just the alcohol?
Alcohol or not, I was sure I was to blame. With that request for a kiss—a real kiss, there was no room for doubt—was he reproaching me for those intimate and fleeting instances of weakness where I’d nearly taken him for his brother? Was he trying to show me in my true light or question my decisions in love? I’d never wanted more than in that moment of accusation to finally tell Gabriele how much I cared about him. But there’s no point in saying certain things. We cared for each other not like two friends but like two individuals thrown haplessly into the same family; ours was the naked and urgent affection of two castaways washed up on the same beach. I had a vague sense that it wasn’t truly a kiss Gabriele wanted from me but an act that was just as real, just as risky. He wanted me to go deeper, perhaps to see something I wasn’t seeing or do something I wasn’t doing. Stop fooling yourself, I almost read in his eyes reddened with frustration and wine and sulfur that was coloring the night.
But before I could put my finger on what exactly it all may have meant, let alone reply, Silvia squeezed into the tiny kitchen to clean the fish and Gabriele stood up to go.
It was ten thirty by the time we finished dinner. The frequency of firecrackers was increasing, but to our ears it was just a lot of noise: popcorn, whistles, and occasionally thunder that made the glass jiggle in the window frames. The sky was a low ceiling as yellow as imitation sunlight in a zoo. Pietro lit a cigarette. He suggested we all stay put and watch the show from the safety of the terrace. Angelo and Silvia were fervently opposed, and Pietro was visibly irritated that it was Carlo who agreed with him the most.
“I’ve heard some stories, I tell you,” Carlo said. “Third-degree burns, lost limbs, you name it.”
The table went quiet.
But I must have won Gabriele over to my side, for he was the one who insisted, “Tall tales, no doubt, Carlo; the newspapers make a living off such stories. But in any case it would pay to make it to Piazza Plebiscito early so we get a decent view of the stage.”
When we finally pulled the door behind us, our coat pockets hard with liquor, I was afraid to look at my watch. The stairs were abnormally dark. Perhaps our neighbors had gone out earlier or turned out their lights to better view the show. But there was nothing to see. The sky above our courtyard was a rectangle of flickering light as smoky as a forest fire pressing its way down toward us from the gardens of the monastery. It was not a display of fireworks but rather a concert of fireworks, with melodramatic rumblings, panicky falsetto, suspenseful silences. No wonder in Naples fireworks were called botte, “bangs” or “blows”: they weren’t dazzling sunflowers but punches, deafening slaps that rocked your head like a soccer ball and stung your eyes; they made you eat gunpowder and burnt plastic and made you sorry you’d ever left the house.
Gabriele was the first to step through the gate, with a sure and sober foot. I followed behind him, right away stepping on broken glass. A dinner plate. Covering our mouths with scarves or coat collars to keep from inhaling the malignant air, we began navigating toward Via Roma. It was an obstacle course of smoldering trash, gutted comforters, smashed furniture. Mysteries like green feathers or the jack of clubs stuck to our shoes. To move forward I looked for the black street slabs underneath it all.
It was the beginning of a fast, a detox. While we’d been eating dinner, the neighborhood was cleansing itself of all its broken and useless items with the fury that the undesirable deserved. Everything out over the balconies in an ecstatic collective regurgitation. Part of me wanted to stop and scavenge to uncover the slum’s dirty secrets, but then a sudden peal of thunder shook the street and all its debris and us, too, as we were now an inextricable part of it. We were inside a snow globe that was being shaken with malicious delight; who knew what else might come falling down now. A series of firecrackers let off in our direction, sparks and all, sounded like a warning.
We quickened our pace. I looked up to see that our group had split up. I could no longer see Gabriele—or maybe that was him a few steps ahead of me, but it was hard to tell through my watering eyes. And yet I felt it was important for us not to lose each other. Pietro grabbed my hand; there was no talking, or even thinking, with the air hissing and splitting all around us.
Something landed in my hair, dissolving like ash between my fingers. Pietro yanked me hard to the other side of the street just as we heard what sounded like a car crash behind us. We spun on our heels to see a washing machine lying twisted on the street, still trembling after its brutal fall from a balcony. I could feel my eardrums ringing with that metallic thunder and Pietro’s long, slender fingers seizing mine to the bone as we ran for cover under a first-floor balcony.
More items rained down, some in a great hurry, pieces of crockery perhaps, and others with an angelic serenity, like the pages of a notebook containing who knows what confessions. Pietro and I stood there in our shelter watching that perverse rain, erratic like all things Neapolitan. We were waiting it out, but it was a storm whose next move we couldn’t predict. Our backs pressed against the damp, crumbling tuff of the building, I tried to remove the washing powder from my hair. Pietro said in my ear, “I understand ‘out with the old, in with the new,’ but these people are out of their minds!”
We spotted the others. Madeleine, Davide, Silvia, and Angelo were huddled under a balcony across the way. A bit farther ahead of us, hugging our very same building, were Gabriele, Sonia, and Carlo. Pietro and I tacitly decided to join them. We advanced along the building flattened and unarmed like war correspondents, our jackets rubbing against peeling posters and the barricaded door of an evacuated vascio. One foot before the other, we managed to reach them in one piece. Under their balcony Sonia was somewhat hunched over as though her height might make her particularly vulnerable.
“Let’s turn back, guys!” Carlo’s voice joined the cacophony.
Now, I thought, after we’d come this far? I turned to look behind me. In reality we’d only progressed one block, and now the building protecting us came abruptly to an end in a cross street.
“At this point we should just keep going, don’t you think?” said Sonia.
Carlo was scanning our faces for consensus. “What, you guys want to cross this?” he yelled.
The alleyway was reverberating and trembling with explosions, with fiery droplets ricocheting between the buildings, a cross fire we’d have to get through if we ever wanted to get out of the Spanish Quarter and into the piazza. I wasn’t so sure I wanted
to anymore.
Pietro said, “We don’t have a choice. Let’s turn around.”
I looked over at Gabriele, his chest heaving and his back pressed hard against the plaster, and yet he had a smile on his face and a glint in his eyes. Was he excited by our foolhardiness or was he still feeling the wine? Then there was a moment of relative quiet and in that lull Gabriele barked, “Let’s go!,” a strict order that tolerated no dissension or hesitation or even contemplation, a call to an instinct that we’d assumed was long forgotten.
We ran for it. We ran under the open sky covering our heads with our bare hands, losing sight of one another. I ran and I couldn’t see anyone in front of me or behind me; I could only see my own feet pounding the devastated yet still traceable cobblestones. Pietro’s grip had come undone: I’d lost his hand, I’d lost him. But the blasts wiped away all emotion and I ran as if my life depended on it.
At the other side we all gathered under another balcony, thrilled and breathless. If we could make it across that side street, then we could make it the three or four remaining blocks to the relative safety of Via Roma. Across from us Angelo, Madeleine, Davide, and his sister had made it, too: in fact they were already running up ahead. So again we darted, running individually, blindly, euphorically, street after street until the broken dishes and charred garbage gave way to dead firecrackers and bottles of Heineken, signs of a younger, tamer party.
“I told you we should have left earlier,” said Carlo, putting Sonia into an affectionate headlock. “Those barbarians nearly got us killed.”
“It was actually kind of cool,” she said.
“Cool? It was awesome!” shouted Angelo, and Davide howled.
Silvia was laughing, everyone was laughing, even Carlo. Our cheeks were rosy from the adrenaline: the only one who’d lost his color was Pietro. He lifted up the collar of his jacket and shoved his hands into its pockets. He called the whole expedition “training for the Secret Service” and pulled out a Marlboro Light before turning his back to us and heading in the direction of the piazza.
His seriousness struck me. Pietro suddenly seemed like the only responsible adult among us, the only one aware of danger and loss. He had real obligations—he was a landowner, for goodness’ sake—and to him this was no game. I quit laughing. Thunderstorms and vipers had already well earned my respect. Funny then how I’d never really considered the possibility that Naples, too, by just trying to scare the pants off us, might end up harming us. I may have been naïve.
The concert in Piazza Plebiscito was in full swing, but no one appeared to be listening to the pop music blasting them from the stage: the audience was buzzing with laughter, cell phones, beer, joints, and plenty of dialect. It was as packed as a wardrobe, and as we squeezed through the wool coats and sheepskin jackets we inadvertently brushed against gelled hair and costume jewelry. If this too was part of the urban renewal, well then maybe it was having a bit too much success. We found a spot under one of the equestrian statues.
“King Charles III of Spain,” Gabriele illuminated us.
Pietro asked, “Is he the guy you’re named after?” but Carlo didn’t hear him.
Angelo and Silvia were deep in conversation. Madeleine smoked solemnly as she looked off into the crowd: perhaps she and Saverio had fought again. She didn’t notice Davide staring at her as if dumbstruck by her beauty, or maybe she did notice but she’d become numb to those looks. Pietro took a bottle of whiskey from his pocket and passed it around. Carlo had Sonia locked in his arms as though he was afraid to lose her in the crowd, but she didn’t seem to mind: she smiled her moon smile, her night-black hair parted down the middle.
The lead singer announced it was nearly midnight.
“About time,” Carlo said, his breath hanging in the air. “Who brought the Moët et Chandon?”
“Yeah, right!” said Angelo, pulling out a cheap bottle of bubbly. “Let’s toast to our survival!”
Gabriele, on the other hand, was uncorking a bottle of the family’s wine, muttering something about old habits. The band members had quit playing, and behind them you could once more hear the Spanish Quarter in its mad rush to self-destruct. The crowd in the square began counting down, lighting sparklers and firecrackers, opening bottles. Eight, seven, six . . . Angelo was grappling with the “fucking wire cage” around the cork and in the meantime the crowd had made it to one, at which a triumphant roar muffled a string of Sicilian curses and the already blazing sky swelled with color.
New Year’s usually put me in low spirits. I couldn’t understand why everyone was so eager to celebrate the death of an entire year of life: Didn’t it deserve to be remembered, to be mourned? But I didn’t feel that way now. The piazza was being showered with sparks and best wishes and disposable champagne, and I had the sense I was at the epicenter of it all, surrounded by some of the people I loved most on the planet.
Pietro came close, pressing his stubble against my forehead and warming my face with his distilled breath. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and together we created a hot and humid space all our own, a tropical island far from the popping and the whooping.
“This is the happiest New Year of my life, Pietro.”
“This is going to be our year, my love. We’ll finish our studies and then we’ll leave. We’ll hop from one country to the next until we find a place we want to put down roots.”
“Yes, roots. I want to do it with you.”
I felt Pietro’s fingers under my coat, creeping up my back and clinging to my ribs. “I let you down at Christmas,” he said. “I didn’t stand up for you, I betrayed your trust. I was such an idiot. I even asked you to save me. Can you ever forgive me?”
“I was weak, too, Pietro. Never again. From now on we’re going to face every obstacle together.”
“It’s an understatement to say that I love you. You’re pure oxygen to me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I was miserable when we were apart over Christmas. And the whole time I had the strangest feeling, like I was under water just holding my breath and looking up toward the light. But I was comforted by the fact that soon I would be able to see you again, to come up for air. Do you know what I mean?” He looked me square in the eyes. “Heddi, I promise that from now on I won’t let other people walk all over me. I’m going to stand up for our love, whatever the cost.”
What do you need stars for when the sky is twinkling with emeralds and rubies? Pietro and I kissed like only lovers do on New Year’s. His whiskey warmed my mouth with its candid, full-bodied heat, a liquid sunrise that spread out through my chest and between my legs, on its way down loosening the bolts of my knees and thawing my feet. So much love. Did we really have to walk all the way back along that ravaged road to be finally wrapped around each other in bed?
A cold bottle pressed against my arm. “Stop snogging, you two,” said Angelo, passing me the champagne with a smile. “It’s New Year’s. You have to kiss everyone, remember?”
I took a swig and wished everyone a happy new year. I purposely left Gabriele last: I just didn’t feel ready, with Pietro’s kiss a candy still melting in my mouth. Gabriele, however, grabbed me the way he usually did, like an uncle I hadn’t seen in years, an embrace without undertones or ambiguity of any kind. He seemed to have sobered up and forgotten all about what had happened in the kitchen, if anything had actually happened at all.
We broke apart. Gabriele began telling Madeleine about the church before us that was reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome. I felt like having a chat with Sonia: we’d had so little time together that evening. And there she was, freed from Carlo’s hold and standing more elongated now, proud as a ballerina. Pietro was at her side, laughing in that soundless way of his, a silence I recognized even amid the commotion in the square. He looked so relaxed, so lighthearted, no longer a grown-up landowner but a carefree boy. I wished I’d been the one to make him laugh like that, with such spontaneity and transparency. That I’d been the one to have come out with a pun, a witty saying, or an astute ob
servation about the humanity around us. The one to have lifted a weight off him and made his face light up.
I was on the verge of formulating some sort of New Year’s resolution, but then I thought the better of it. We already had several new promises to keep and those alone, without counting our exams and theses, would sap most of our energy.
The bubbly was all gone, the whiskey too. As we headed back toward the Quartieri, Angelo’s eyelids were heavy and Madeleine was singing to herself in French, teetering like a drunken sailor. Only Pietro looked as sober as morning.
The last few firecrackers were like the sputtering of an old car taking its final breaths, and this time when we turned up Via De Deo there was no need to take shelter. Our neighborhood looked like it had been through a war, and it wasn’t clear yet if it had come out the victor or the loser. We might as well have been the sole survivors as we stepped through the rubble in a ghostly calm. A dog scuttled past us, limping.
“Poor thing,” I said. “He looks injured.”
“A stray, I bet.”
I noticed Pietro’s Marlboro quiver between his fingers, the streetlights of the Spanish Quarter lending him an unusual pallor. As soon as we walked back into our apartment, he flew up the stairs two at a time. I heard him cough and raced after him. I found him in the bathroom in the exact same position I’d been not long ago, kneeling on the tiles, hands clutching the toilet seat and dark curls falling over his face. He hadn’t betrayed even an instant of drunkenness all night. But still, how could I not have noticed how much alcohol he’d been putting back?
He retched again and then let out a little moan, his forearms shaking from the effort of grasping the rim. It shook me to see him so vulnerable. Kneeling beside him, I placed my hand under his forehead. I wasn’t sure why I did this except that it might somehow keep his head up, and through his heavy breathing I did feel that he rested some of the weight of his forehead into my palm. Again he vomited.
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