And Giulia, in the thousandth repetition of the warning that Naples would be dangerous for a ragazza after the Allies took it (as they eventually must) would study Gennaro’s nose in the moonlight and feel a compulsion to tweak it. She wondered if at Madam Sappho’s too the women loved and understood her brother.
Every afternoon at fifteen hours Papa banged up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. He came directly from his office in the Questura, where he spent the day playing poker and adding up columns of lire and centesimi. He was always furious and splenetic till he’d had three cups of scalding caffè espresso. Then his spirits would rise and he’d bawl and mime in dialect for the rest of the afternoon. His gray mustaches and gray hair and small paunch quivered with apprehension. This apprehension was founded on the insecurity of all employees of the Fascist state. Till now they were doing all right. They were the middle class with comfortable fixed stipends. But after the Allies came (as they surely would) the stipend would remain unchanged and the lira would go down down down. Papa could always awake Mamma from her doze by the radio by telling her that as soon as Naples fell, she’d lose all her avoirdupois because there wouldn’t be anything to eat in the house. He also described with gestures his daughter earning her living on the streets and his son withdrawing from the university to work as a truck driver for the Allies, and at a wage that wouldn’t keep him in shoelaces. At this point Mamma would awake with a jump, scream, say her rosary, caress her children, and say that Italia was rovinata and they would all be rovesciati. Giulia and Gennaro, hearing of these predicted horrors, would merely smile at each other. For they knew they’d get along somehow, even if the Russians took over Naples.
In his youth Papa had been more progressive and socially minded than most of the employees of the Fascist state, who simply pocketed their stipends and their bribes, did as they were told, and played mad politics with the questore at the questura. In 1919 Papa was returning from under arms, sad and confused for the future of Italy. Then he had met Benito Mussolini and had fallen under the spell. Until the Ethiopian War Papa had been a vigorous and intelligent Fascist. Papa knew so well the good and the evil of fascism. Why hadn’t the combines of Torino and Milano let well enough alone? Why hadn’t they built up Campania and Puglie instead of distracting the public’s attention with the Ethiopian War? Why a dream of empire when Italy had only begun to be unified? So from 1935 on Papa had been as tepid a Fascist as a ragioniere employed by the state dared to be.
— Ho smarrito la fede nel sognato destino, he said.
And with the outbreak of the Second World War Papa in despair ceased to go to Mass on Sundays. In his home he wept and railed against the farabutti who had brought this on Italy. He predicted a speedy end to Europe. He cursed the Italian middle class and the house of Savoy. His curses were in his throatiest Neapolitan. In their hearts his children agreed with him. Mamma wept continually. Her heart condition got worse.
On 3 October 1943, Naples fell to the Fifth Army. For a week Mamma kept her entire family about her in the house. She had a chain of cardiac attacks. The house was without light or gas. The sounds of the liberators in movement that came up from the streets were far more ominous than during the air raids or when the Tedeschi were in Naples. Mamma, with her feet in sheepskin slippers on the divan, was tended by all. She lamented that she’d ever lived to see this day. She said it was the end of the world for all of them. She lambasted Papa for not having consummated his plan of going to America twenty years ago. And every five minutes she made Giulia or Gennaro peer out of the apartment window into the swirling foggy streets to see if there were any New Zealanders coming. She remembered what Il Duce had said the Kiwis would do to all the women of Italy. She had Giulia fetch the carving knife from the cupboard. She promised that this knife would finish in Giulia’s heart if ever a New Zealand tread were heard on their stairs. Then Mamma would turn the knife, smoking from her daughter’s blood, on herself: for who knew that even a matron of her age would be safe from ravishing New Zealand soldiery? But peer and descry as they could, Giulia and Gennaro saw nothing but truck convoys tearing through the streets below. No New Zealanders came to their apartment to violate them. Over the nightly English lesson Giulia whispered to Gennaro that, while Mamma was keeping them all shut up like canaries, all the other Neapolitans were out hunting up choice jobs with the Allies.
A week later Mamma allowed Papa to return to his office in the Questura. She also allowed Giulia and Gennaro to go out and try to buy some food. In their week of immurement they’d eaten up everything in the house. So Giulia, Gennaro, and Elvira sallied out to buy food. Gennaro carried the carving knife under his armpit, also a little biretta that Papa kept in a secret place. Elvira had also been kept locked up by her family. Her mousy face was unwashed, her hair all mad and atwirl. Giulia in her neat frock and little cloth coat with the fur collar thought privately that her chum looked a fright. When a girl isn’t by nature attractive, she becomes a monster when she lets herself go.
In early October, 1943, Naples was a city of chaos, of movement with no purpose, of charnel smells, of rain, of army truck headlights coming out of the mist like eyes without lids. The shoe was on the other foot now: the Germans had taken over bombing the town as soon as they’d vacated the premises in favor of the Fifth Army. After the sun set through the fall rains, the few who dared go abroad stumbled their way over sidewalks in a close dreadful blackness. There wasn’t a light, except from the truck convoys. Corpses were let lie where they fell, creasing and bloating from the rain. Living Neapolitans stripped the clothing from them: the living needed the cloth. The city’s sewage had all backed up in a spasm of vomiting, like stomachs nauseated with war. What stench didn’t renege from the bay wafted through the ruptured mains in the streets. There were red whispers of typhus, and prayers that it was true that the Americans had a new disinfectant. And in the daytime the poor sun squeaking through the rains showed a spectacle more ghoulish than you imagined by darkness. Clots of returning Neapolitans trekked in from their hiding places outside the city. Household furniture was pushed through the streets. Wagons and carts swamped the roads through which the army trucks were trying to pass. Horses and van owners were clubbed and kicked and screamed at by American MP’s. They writhed and wrestled with the traffic like Laocoöns in a haze.
— La nostra città è morta, Gennaro said, his voice sickened and phlegmy.
— Non credo, Giulia said, but she too was ashgreen with terror as they felt their way through the vichi, where rubbish and foul moisture trembled on the walls like rotten emeralds.
Then she noticed that Elvira was chewing gum. Giulia whirled on her friend and demanded to know, her eyes narrowing into sparks, where that American gum came from. Elvira began to splutter and said that an American soldier had given it to her brother yesterday.
— Ebbene? Giulia said savagely, elbowing her bosom friend against an archway.
— No, no, no, no, Elvira said, bursting into tears. Non ci pensare. . . .
Giulia felt relieved, even though she despised herself for the thought that had popped into her head. . . . These were times. . . . She’d always sensed a weakness in Elvira, but not of that kind which would send her amica out onto the sidewalks to proposition the Allied soldiers.
By a series of leaps across streets, slinking along the narrowest and remotest alleys, they were approaching the Questura. They arrived at a church slit in two by bombs. There remained the blasted portico with its picture of the Madonna under shattered glass, its candelabra twisted like a frostbitten branch. Under the tempera of the walls lay a cadaver in overalls. Its dead eyes turned upward and outward like buttons fearful of a buttonhook. A little way off, on another pile of slag, was the hat that the head had worn when alive. Elvira let out one cluck and fainted. Gennaro laid his head against the shattered wall and vomited soundlessly. Giulia desired to hold his head, but instead she knelt down by Elvira and chafed her hands. After a time of murmuring incantations and encouragemen
ts, the way her mother had when they were babies, Giulia got her party restored and walking on again. She told Gennaro to use his silk handkerchief to wipe the corners of his mouth, from which dribbled a thread of slime.
— Vergogna, Giulia scolded.
She heard her small clear voice like a flute over the tympanum of sound that was Naples that morning. The pallor sank under Gennaro’s olive skin, he resumed his spry gentle gait. Elvira pulled her shapeless hat over her eyes and marched on in a blind stupor like a pig to the slaughter.
At the main entrance to the Questura, where her father worked, Giulia and her party came upon a long queue of screaming and buzzing Neapolitans, talking with hands and throats. At the side door cordons of MP’s were hustling others under arrest to cells. The American MP’s girdled the creamy stone walls of the entire Questura building. In the glassed vestibule hung the sign:
QUI GLI ALLEATI IMPIEGANO CIVILI COMPETENTI AL LAVORO
So Giulia told her brother and her friend to take heart; there were good jobs waiting for them inside with the Americans. She stood on Via Medina on the outskirts of the mob, trying to formulate some plan of action. But the yowling of the Neapolitans and the shouted orders of the MP’s drove everything out of her head. She felt again that long-ago sensation when, as a tiny girl with sparkling ringlets, she’d take refuge in her mother’s skirts if strangers spoke to her. But then she looked at her brother’s sad proud face, at Elvira, who was beginning to jitter again. So she pulled her furpiece about her, took both their arms, and prepared herself to rush the line in the best Neapolitan tradition on trolleys.
— Where’s this pretty baby goin so fast, huh?
An American MP blocked her path. His sudden appearance, almost out of the ground, stopped them dead in their tracks. It was the first American soldier the three had seen at close range. Elvira burst into silly sobbing. Gennaro came to attention and gave the Fascist salute. Giulia stood her ground and simply looked at the MP. She was as tall as to his chest. Under his helmet she saw his yellowish face, pitted with the craters of his adolescence. His eyes were like oranges in blood. His mouth was a line of purple. He was in a tight olive-drab uniform and leggins. Over one shoulder and by his waist hung a burnished leather holster and a pistol. The blue and white MP brassard on his arm was pinned below the single chevron. He looked at her and she returned his glare until his eyes softened and netted into wrinkles. All her English flew out of her brain, then seeped back in. And Giulia spoke with her Oxford accent:
— Please, sir, please . . .
— Ah, molto buono, said the MP, tu parlare americano?
— I know English discreetly well, Giulia said. And sir, we three desire a post with the liberating army. . . . We are good decent Italians. . . . My father is not an active Fascist. . . . We will do anything that good people ought to do to live . . .
— A sharp mouse, a sharp mouse, the MP said, clapping his holster in a dour delight.
He put out his gauntleted hand and with a finger lighter than she’d have imagined stroked the soft line below her ear to her chin. Giulia’s impulse was to step smartly back out of his reach, but she stayed herself. Back of her she heard Gennaro’s breath go into a snort. She hoped her brother would control himself.
— Please sir, Giulia said, I am an honest young Italian girl. This is my husband behind me. . . . We are recently married . . .
— O scusate, the American MP said, himself stepping back. I didn’t know ya was married. . . . Well, baby, come around in a few more days and ask for Gibson. I might be able to help ya. But don’t walk in that door now unless ya fixin to take a blood test an maybe end up in Poggioreale jail. . . . But if ya wanta come back in a day or so, there might be somethin cookin. . . . Frankly, I like ya, baby. . . . Ya the first Ginso girl I could imagine myself goin for. . . . Why don’t ya come to America? Ya smart enough to do all right for yaself.
— Thank you, sir, Giulia said.
She gathered her brood and hustled them around the corner of the Questura to Via Diaz. Yet once again she looked back at the MP. He was still standing with his hands on his Sam Browne belt and gazing after her.
— An stay off these streets, baby, he yelled at her.
Giulia didn’t tell her brother or her friend, but she liked the American MP for all his seamy looks. He had a brusqueness and a crudity that wouldn’t be acceptable in an Italian man. But Giulia also knew from some core of insight that he would be incapable of doing her any treachery.
They walked up Via Diaz. Gennaro was lost within himself, murmuring something about the soldiering in the Italian Army and the fine manners of their ex-carabinieri. Elvira was sunk in a stupid terror; she’d retracted her head like a tortoise into her coat and was trusting only to Giulia’s arm to guide her. From the rear of the Questura, where the cells were under the ground floor, they heard the screaming of incarcerated ladies calling out Neapolitan obscenities and protesting that they’d never heard of syphilis.
On the façade of the neo-something Provincia Building Giulia saw another advertisement for Italian help. At this portal were gathered petitioners of a different feather. She asked one of the hangers-on whose offices were here and was told that Allied Military Government was setting up its control of Naples. In the tense postulant faces Giulia saw most of the South Italian nobility. Contesse had risen early from their beds to get themselves a job as social secretary to a colonel; marchesi were ready to put their Ischia or Capri villas at the disposal of the Americans and the British. All the elite of Campania were waiting here to prove that they’d never been Fascist, but had been just biding their time till they could give cocktail parties for the Allies.
— Razza di cani, Gennaro said and spat on the ground.
Giulia led him and Elvira away. She saw that there was no hope from AMGOT. She couldn’t compete with really big operators — yet.
In a market of Naples where she’d always traded Giulia found reality of a closer sort. There was almost no food on the shelves and no meat in the windows except a few chines of red runny flesh looking like no beef or pork she’d ever seen before. And what little there was of anything was selling for from four to ten times its price of two weeks ago. Giulia felt herself going sick and frightened under her gay dress and trim coat. She heard her voice shake on the brink of a sob as she asked Mr. Gargiulo if this weren’t just a temporary shortage, if the Allies wouldn’t soon be rushing food into Naples.
Thereupon Mr. Gargiulo, who’d always been so kind to her, seemed to blow up under his bloody apron. He delivered himself of five minutes’ blistering Neapolitan rhetoric, of pleading and sobbing and suicide threats. He told Giulia that she was a cretin, then apologized to her; he called Elvira a ninny from Calabria, and he asked Gennaro in a burst of irony what good all that fine Latin and Greek were going to do him now. Then before Giulia’s eyes, which were beginning to seep the tears she’d been suppressing all morning, Mr. Gargiulo waved a freshly printed one-lira note. He told them that this was the new currency of the Allies, and that it wasn’t worth enough to buy a chicken with, no, not a whole bale of it. He told them that from now on Napoli was liberated — liberated from life itself, because henceforth money would mean nothing in the markets, nothing. He told them that the Allies had also liberated the lira of any value.
So all four of them cried there in the butcher shop with the rainy October air looking in on them. Then Mr. Gargiulo threw into Giulia’s shopping basket some suspicious pasta, a few old greens, and a chunk of wormy meat. He said that he didn’t want her money because it was the last time they’d see one another alive. They wept some more and cursed. Only Giulia stood a little apart from her own anguish and thought and puzzled inside her small studious head. When they got home and told Mamma what Naples was like, she had a really good heart attack. For a week it was thought that Mamma wouldn’t live.
From that time on Giulia and her family entered a desert of hopelessness. Since they’d kept alive all during the German occupation of Naples and the bo
mbings, they looked back on those days as a rather gay paradise compared to their existence now after the city’s fall. Then they hadn’t minded living from day to day. But now it was a minute to minute struggle, in which any problem five minutes hence seemed a lifetime removed. Every evening they had bleak sessions under the stained-glass lamp on the dining room table. They admitted that they hadn’t been liberated from anything at all, that the war was just beginning for them. Giulia felt like the man who survives pneumonia only to discover that his heart has been weakened forever.
Worst of all she found that misery doesn’t necessarily make strange bedfellows — or any bedfellows at all. Those other ladies in the apartment to whom Mamma, when they were ill, lent coffee and fruit and fresh meat now withdrew into chilly hostility when they discovered that the bounty was ended. Hence Giulia began to doubt whether privation and suffering unite people so much as they divide them. Each family went into a sniping war against all others. Everyone in Naples agreed only in saying that the Allies were worse liars than the Fascists. Everyone was divided from everyone else. Whereas the Neapolitans had known a certain dreary camaraderie when they all faced the war together in the bomb shelters, they now became one another’s enemies, since each must go out and forage for food. And Giulia watched the comedy of her father’s weekly stipend. Each week he collected the same sum of lire that he’d been receiving for ten years. But with it he could buy a day’s ration of bread. It was like a child putting up his hands to stop a tidal wave.
The first weeks they managed only with the thought that this state of affairs couldn’t last. For Papa was known and loved in Naples. He worked every angle and every connection, pulled every wire so that his family could buy in secret shops. His only luxury was that he smoked much. For a while his cherished cigarettes continued to dribble in: three from the Vomero, two from Torregaveta, four from Caserta.
In the third week typhus burst out all over Naples the way a rash seeps through after presages of itching. Mamma said sta bene, it would carry her off quickly, then she wouldn’t have to bother about her heart any longer, and there’d be one less mouth to feed. She rose from her sofa more than she should and spent time in the kitchen beside Giulia, trying to cook something into or out of the gray heavy pasta and the vegetables that seemed to have lain in the Sahara. She howled for the white bread the Allies had promised in their propaganda leaflets.
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