by Norman Lewis
‘Can you do anything for me?’ the girl usually wants to know. ‘I didn’t ask to live like this. Give me the chance to get away from it and I’ll be as good a wife as anybody else.’
The Bureau of Psychological Warfare has just stated in its bulletin that there are forty two thousand women in Naples engaged either on a regular or occasional basis in prostitution. This out of a nubile female population of perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand. It seems incredible. Three out of four of these girls I have interviewed will probably cease to be prostitutes as soon as they can hope to keep alive by any other means. One would like to be able to do something for these applicants to marry our soldiers. Of the twenty-two failed candidates most seemed kindly, cheerful, and hard-working at their household tasks, and their standard of good looks was very high. Nine out of ten Italian girls have lost their menfolk, who have either disappeared in battles, into prisoner-of-war camps, or been cut off in the North. The whole population is out of work. Nobody produces anything. How are they to live? Some Neapolitans have not tasted meat for two years. The marvel is that these girls can actually find a male once in a way – apart from soldiers – able to pay the very small sums they are ready to accept for their services.
April 7
To Nola to interview five British privates waiting to be re-posted to their units at the GRTD there, who escaped from a German prison camp near Terni and came in safely a few days ago.
All these had picked up enough basic Italian to be able to persuade the Italians working in the camp to bring in odds and ends of civilian clothing, which they stashed away until each man could dress himself up as an Italian civilian. The Italians did this out of the goodness of their hearts. Not only did they give away garments which they would probably have been glad to keep for themselves, but they exposed themselves to a terrific risk in doing what they did. Workers were put through some sort of perfunctory search both when arriving at the camp and leaving, and parcels were opened, so the spare items of clothing had to be worn. A man would come in wearing two pairs of trousers or two shirts, or he would stick a pair of canvas-soled shoes into his jacket pocket, leave his boots behind with the British prisoner, and wear these to go out. When all was ready the escapees quietly mixed in with the Italian workers and walked out through the gates. One of them described a tense moment when a guard didn’t seem to recognise his face, and stopped him, but was quite happy to let him go on being assured in broken Italian, ‘Noi lavorare per voi.’
Thereafter the five calmly set out on their one-hundred-and-fifty-mile walk back to our lines. The journey was undertaken in the most leisurely and relaxed fashion and there was nothing furtive about it. When they saw Germans ahead they kept up their stolid march, ready to wave, smile and shout encouragements in their broken Italian. Before their capture they’d listened to a standard S-Force lecture on how to handle a situation like this, and had noted the recommendation never to go to the big house in any village for help or food, but to rely on the poor, ‘because they have nothing to lose’. In fact they had their lives to lose – because the Germans gave short shrift to shelterers of escaped prisoners – but none of the Italians who helped our five friends to get back gave any thought to that. Progress was much slowed down because one of the party had a poisoned foot, and could only make a small number of miles a day, so the journey took over two weeks. When the men were hungry they would decide on a small house they liked the look of in a village street, knock on the door, explain who they were, and ask for food. In no case was this ever denied them. After they had eaten they were often offered beds for the night, and for this purpose were shared out among the neighbours. Sometimes they were urged to stay as long as they liked – in one case to settle down and become members of the local community. Money was pressed on them. The old people in Italian villages treated them as sons, and the young ones as brothers.
It turned out that there were several more soldiers in the depot at Nola who had had experiences of this kind, and I spent some hours talking to them. To date I have not heard of a single instance of escaping British soldiers being betrayed to the Germans. This adds to the general impression of the civilisation and impressive humanity of our Italian exenemies. For this reason, since humanity is above partisanship, the Italians are no doubt equally kind to Germans who come to them for help in similar circumstances, and I find it deplorable that we should show anger and vindictiveness when cases of Italians showing even ordinary compassion to their one-time allies come to our notice.
Recently a case was reported in the bulletin of the Psychological Warfare Bureau of Italian women near Avezzano who came out of their houses to offer wine to German prisoners under escort, resting while on the march. The writer took this as evidence of the existence in those parts of dangerous pro-German sentiments and was properly wrathful over the incident.
April 14
Five more marriage vettings this week, one of them extraordinary.
To Santa Maria della Colombina to investigate a Contessa della Peruta who wished to marry a British officer. Both Pubblica Sicurezza and Carabinieri agreed (for once) on favourable reports. There were no gross scandals whispered by the neighbours, so I went to see the Contessa who lived in a huge house – practically a castle – dominating the village. I was shown by a smart little maid into a room furnished with tapestry and antiques, which came as a pleasant change after the majority of Italian country houses, which – even in the case of the upper classes – are usually bare and austere.
After rather a long wait the Contessa appeared, with apologies and smiles. Even by Italian standards she was beautiful, with fine features and regal manners, and dressed with quiet elegance. We had a short talk in which she showed liveliness and charm. For the first time I found myself envying the man involved, and I went back to HQ to turn in an almost lyrical report.
Four days later – by the greatest of chances – I found myself in Santa Maria again, engaged in some routine enquiry, and it occurred to me that having a contact there, who might be able to help, I should call on the Contessa again. After hammering on the door for some minutes I was admitted by a half-starved-looking crone into the vast room, now hardly recognisable as it was completely empty. A long wait while the Contessa was found. She was still as beautiful as ever but dressed in a coarse jumper and skirt. She burst into tears and the truth came out. One neighbour had lent the empty house. Three more had provided the furniture for the single room. Others had chipped in with articles of clothing. Although a member of an ancient aristocratic family, she possessed no more than any other impoverished village girl in her own right.
I consoled her with assurances that the report had already been completed, and the marriage would almost certainly go through. One of the good neighbours rushed in with the inevitable marsala. Toasts were drunk to the bride and lucky bridegroom-to-be, and I went on my way.
April 15
Today for the first time a marriage candidate gave me an absolutely straight answer to the question, ‘Where does the money come from?’
She was a neat, pleasant, smiling girl, and what instantly gave her away was the bar of soap in the kitchen of her tiny flat off the Via Chiaia. This was worth a small fortune at present black-market prices, and most girls still clean themselves by rubbing their skins with pumice and ashes. A bottle on the shelf contained about a half-pint of olive oil, the presence of this almost priceless commodity strengthening my suspicions to the point of certainty.
Calmly and smilingly she announced that an Italian major and an American corporal contributed to her support. She added that the corporal’s army pay was ten times that of the major, who seemed to be tolerated in a good-natured way as an old client she was not prepared to dismiss because he’d fallen on hard times, rather than as a source of income.
I took the trouble to verify her facts and found that an Italian major is currently paid 3063 lire a month. This with the lira fixed at 400 to the pound comes to £7 10s. While I was about it I looked into some other
wages. The Questore of Naples, holding a rank equal to that of major-general, is at the top of the list of civil servants and is paid 5496 lire. At the bottom, a postman gets 450 lire. Thus a man with a wife and an average five children to provide for, as well as the two or three old folk included in the normal Italian family, has to perform the miracle of keeping them all alive on just over one pound a month.
The Italians of the South live, just as Africans do, on bread dipped in olive oil. These days bread bought on the black market, and made with bad-quality dirty flour, fetches 160 lire a kilogram. Four shillings in London buys as many loaves as 600 lire on the black market in Naples. Olive oil costs 450 lire a litre, eggs 30 lire each, and salt cannot be bought at any price.
Considering these figures, it seems extraordinary that the Neapolitans have the strength to walk, let alone work, and that one does not actually see them dying of starvation in the street.
April 18
The black market flourishes as never before. According to the Psychological Warfare Bureau’s bulletin sixty-five per cent of the per capita income of Neapolitans derives from transactions in stolen Allied supplies, and one-third of all supplies and equipment imported continued to disappear into the black market. Every single item of Allied equipment, short of guns and munitions – which are said to be sold under the counter – is openly displayed for sale in the Forcella market. It was noted that at the opening of the San Carlo opera every middle-and upper-class woman arrived dressed in a coat made from a stolen army blanket. How easy it would be to trace all these articles back to the original thieves. When I suggested ways and means in which this could be done I was told by the FSO that the black market is none of our business.
Indeed, it is becoming generally known that it operates under the protection of high-placed Allied Military Government officials. One soon finds that however many underlings are arrested – and sent away these days for long terms of imprisonment – those who employ them are beyond the reach of the law. At the head of AMG is Colonel Charles Poletti, and working with him is Vito Genovese, once head of the American Mafia, now become his adviser. Genovese was born in a village near Naples, and has remained in close contact with its underworld, and it is clear that many of the Mafia-Camorra sindacos who have been appointed in the surrounding towns are his nominees. These facts, once State secrets, are now known to the Neapolitan man in the street. Yet nothing is done. However many damaging reports are put in about the activities of high-ranking AMG officials, they stay where they are.
The latest story going the rounds about ‘a certain high-ranking AMG official’ describes the trick played on him by the wife of a well-known industrialist. It appeared that this man had been sentenced to a year for dealing in stolen Allied goods. His wife went to the ‘Beacon’, the best of the Neapolitan brothels, and asked for the loan of their most intelligent girl. She dressed her in her smartest clothing, lent her her jewels, and paid 4000 lire for the girl to impersonate her, the wife, and to visit the said official to plead for the husband’s freedom. The visit was a success and two days later the gates of Poggio Reale prison swung open for the industrialist.
The average Neapolitan’s comment when hearing this typically Neapolitan story is, ‘What a pity she didn’t send a girl with the syphilis.’
April 24
Ran into Frazer again yesterday and found him handsome and haggard as ever, and in the same bemused condition over his continuing romance with the Signora Lola – who has long ceased to consult me in matters arising out of her emotional life. She had by now taught him to speak a little Italian of the kind lisped enchantingly by Neapolitan children just out of babyhood, in which all verbs are used in the infinitive and everybody, regardless of age and status, is addressed as tu. He had made a great business of breaking off the affair after our visit to Capri, and the discovery of the existence of another lover. Now after terrible scenes, recriminations, everlasting farewells, and a pretence of suicide on Lola’s part, they were together again, but in conditions which sounded for Frazer more arduous than before. Lola had agreed to cut the Neapolitan banker out of her life for ever, and to give up the iniezioni ricostituenti, and Frazer had dictated the letter by which his rival was dismissed. In return Frazer had agreed to placing the relationship on a formal basis. She had become officially his fidanzata, and he had been compelled to buy her a ring that had cost him more than he could afford, and was set with a lacklustre diamond he was sure was false. It was evident that he was deep in the Neapolitan quicksands, for she had next insisted that he should quite illegally requisition an empty flat in the fashionable Rione Amedeo, and he had weakly agreed. Operations of this kind have to be carried off with a certain show of high-handedness if they are to be successful, but Frazer had set about the unlawful requisitioning in a nervous and diffident fashion, having even gone so far as to track the flat’s owner down, and persuade him to accept a small rent. He was afraid that in doing so he had aroused the man’s suspicion. The happy couple were now comfortably installed, but Frazer admitted that every time there was a knock on the door his heart missed a beat, and he fully expected to find someone from the Provost Marshal’s department waiting there when he went to open it.
Now they were engaged, Lola insisted on public recognition of her status. He had to give a party for Italians – most of them, he learned, big names on the black market, or minor Fascist officials she had known through her ex-lover. Worse, there had to be a party, too, for his brother officers. Frazer got out of inviting his CO, but the Adjutant had to be there, an officer who detested all foreigners – Italians in particular – and had himself disinfected before and after the occasion. The pièce de résistance of this celebration, which had been only sporadically gay, was a monster cake in the form of a heart, inscribed in icing sugar with their names, and more icing sugar, vermilion this time, to represent blood, cascading from it. She had also compelled him to show himself with her in the Struscio, the famous Easter-day parade in the Via Roma in which by a tradition, the origins of which are forgotten, all the participants drag their feet as they walk. To be seen in the company of a woman on this occasion is a statement of serious commitment. Once again he complained of aspects of their intimate relationship, mentioning that certain things were expected of him that he was unable to enthuse about. ‘I seem to suffer from heartburn,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure it’s only psychological.’ I was able to help his morale by assuring him that even if Lola drove him to apply for permission to marry her, I had reason to know that there was very little chance that this would be granted.
April 25
After making mention of his new flat Frazer must have felt obliged to invite me round, because Lola appeared today with an invitation to dine with them tonight. The other guest proved to be the irrepressible Signorina Susanna, and she and Lola, glittering in party dresses and laden with ornaments, filled the bare environment of the flat with their chatter and laughter. The appointments of the flat were largely makeshift. It had been looted of all the furniture that could easily be carried away, and we sat on stools provided by the RASC at a very large and ornate table, which had been too cumbersome to steal. All the windows had been cracked in the bad raid of March 14, and brown paper stuck over the cracks with dismal effect.
Frazer gave an account of the engagement party, which sounded disastrous. Thinking it unwise to serve food that had obviously been stolen from army rations, Lola had done what she could on the basis of the black market. Thus, in addition to the famous cake, the guests had been served a spiced-up mess of eggplant and tripe, which, delicious as it undoubtedly was, had not found favour with Frazer’s brother officers. One, a lieutenant, had made a polite effort with a mouthful or two, but the Adjutant had simply let out a howl of dismay and pushed his plate away. From that moment the party seemed to have fallen apart. The officers had brought their whisky along, and soon the Adjutant was aggressively tight, to the point of blaming the girls for Mussolini’s Abyssinian adventure, and putting on a little pant
omime in description of Italian troops running away in battle. For this Susanna had called him a cornuto and a stronzo, neither of which expression he understood, although he must have guessed from the accompanying gestures that they were intended to be insulting. She then left the table followed by the lieutenant, inflamed by lust, who tried to corner her in the kitchen, and had his nose scratched for his pains.
For the present occasion Frazer had been able to steal a magnificent joint of beef – spoiled for him by the fact that Lola had punctured it in numerous places and thrust pieces of garlic into the holes. From the girls’ point of view this was a banquet: army bacon eaten raw as an hors d’oeuvre, beef bloodily succulent and fiery with garlic, and sweets from American K ration packs – so despised by the Americans, and so adored by everyone else. We were in the kitchen washing up after this feast when I smelt the smoke from the mobile smoke-screen units, and my heart sank, knowing that we were in for another raid. In a moment the others, too, realised what was happening, as the room filled with smoke, and we began to cough.
A shelter was provided for the use of tenants of the flats, which Frazer and I were reluctant to use for reasons of face. However, the girls refused to go unless we went with them, but before we could make up our minds the bombs started to come down. This raid was for me the worst of the war up till now. We grabbed the girls, pulled them away from the window, then stood in a row with our backs pressed to the wall. The windows blew in, the blackout screens flapping like enormous bats across the room, the ceiling in the dining-room came down in a gush of powder and slabs of plaster across the grand table, and the whole building began to heave and sway as if in the tremors of a moderate earthquake. Through the windows we saw the tracer-fire smudgily through pink smoke. By this time our hair, skins and clothing were coated with lime-dust. No one spoke, and neither girl showed any sign of fear.