Then began the foul rectification of a foul situation. Everyone knew that you could buy in Naples any amount of American meat and medical supplies. If you had the price. Papa knew where these things were sold, for most of his friends had gone into the black market. The only catch was that the prices were ten to twenty times the normal level. Two weeks after its fall there was anything you wanted to buy in Naples. For two thousand lire a day a small family could live quite well. But Giulia knew no small Neapolitan families with an income of two thousand lire a day. She didn’t know any millionaires.
One evening after a supper of dark bread, beans, and a potato soup Papa announced that they might as well bid farewell to honesty. He said that only two classes were destined to survive in Naples — the very rich and the very poor. The rich could afford to live through the parenthesis by selling all they had, to buy on the black market. And the poor stole more than they ever had because with the Allies here there was more to steal. Papa’s mustaches were as stiff as iron. He described himself as a man tied to a plank and ordered to stand on his feet. Giulia listened. She wished she had more of the Italian woman’s gift of tears. In her throat she felt only a pain as though there were a hot cauter there. After a while she went into the gabinetto. Her stomach wouldn’t keep down what she’d just eaten for it was as delicious as grass and as palatable as cardboard. She stood over the bowl holding her hot dry forehead and feeling her stomach twitch oysterlike and deathly. Then she put on her coat and went out to find Elvira for a walk.
Elvira’s family had already entered the bracket of the war rich. Papa Brazzi had closed his barbershop and had taken a position as head waiter in an American officers’ mess. From the kitchen door of this installation there streamed a small but precious rivulet of American meats, coffee, sugar, and white bread. Enough of this contraband appeared on Papa Brazzi’s table to keep his family as well nourished as they’d always been. The rest he sold or bartered. Actually Elvira and her family were living on a slightly higher level than the prewar one for their class, but in comparison to most other Neapolitans in October, 1943, they were princes. Elvira’s posture was better, her eyes prouder, her complexion almost radiant. She was now in a position to make a brilliant marriage, if she chose.
Elvira greeted Giulia with condescension. She led her friend into the Brazzi kitchen, remarking happily that poor Giulia looked pale and faint. She set before Giulia a plate of American spiced meat out of a can, two slices of white bread, and a cup of chocolate which she bragged came from American powder. Giulia ate every morsel, trying to conceal how hungry she was.
— Ah, poveretta, Elvira squealed, watching Giulia as though she were a canary breakfasting in a cage.
And Giulia, dizzy and enervated from her vomiting, knew coolly that this was the moment Elvira’d been waiting for all her suppressed days — the chance to play the queen at her own expense. Giulia tried not to listen to Elvira’s itemized boasting over Papa Brazzi’s commerce in the borsa nera, of the goods that lay in the Brazzi cellar.
Arm in arm she and her new patroness walked in the Galleria Umberto. The arcade was moist and dark after the rains. On the pavement still lay the splinters of glass that had been bombed out of the skylight. A few bars were open. There was no electricity in Naples, but lighted candles stood in their own wax on the marble bar tops. By this wan light Allied soldiers drank vermouth. And Giulia noticed that they were being whistled at in a casual savagery that made a pain press on her eyeballs. It was the first time in her life she’d been treated so. She tightened her grasp on Elvira’s arm and forced her into a swifter pace toward the Via Verdi end of the Galleria.
Suddenly there came to her mind in the midst of the murk and the candlelight and the slippery pavement those walks she’d taken here as a little girl with her Mamma and Papa on Sunday afternoons. There was glass then in the dome of the Galleria Umberto; the sun dropped like a gay flag, the murmur of the Neapolitans talking was bright and sure. In those days Giulia wore small green coats and green ankle socks and a small straw hat fastened to her chin with a green ribbon. In those same bars where the Allied soldiers were now drinking, she used to reach up her little hand for the Sunday ice-cream cone. She was picked up and kissed by all, though Mamma didn’t like compliments paid in her presence. Fifteen years ago! Out of the haze and the feeling of sleepwalking in a dank cellar, Giulia heard those voices praising her baby beauty:
— Ah, la piccina! Eh, che piccola regina! Com’è carina, signora, e ben educata pure.
But this memory broke off and mangled, for it was October, 1943, and Giulia and Elvira were walking through a changed Galleria. She observed — at first she thought it her imagination — that Elvira was gawking at the Allied soldiers, obviously turning her head as they passed concentrations of them chewing gum or passing around a cognac bottle. Giulia queried softly, Was it Elvira’s plan to marry an American? Elvira replied with a coy casting down of her eyes, Well, she’d considered the matter. Then Giulia said with the tinkle of an icicle that the Americans were different from us and might easily break the hearts of us Italian girls. And Elvira gave a too loud laugh and stated that sentimentality was out of date; it didn’t pay.
— Ah, ti prego, said Giulia, di non dirmi più simili sciocchezze.
To which Elvira replied with heavy scorn that it was all very well for Giulia to talk big ideals when she hadn’t enough to eat. For the first time in her tranquil life Giulia had the impulse to slap someone. But she merely tightened her hold on Elvira’s arm.
In the exact center of the Galleria Giulia saw a sight that was new. It scored her with the fascination of a pimple on the back of one’s neck. She saw many girls alone and in pairs, girls she’d never noticed on the streets of Naples before. Their attire, even in the dark, shone with a determined if shabby brilliance. They laughed constantly in a sound like crows jeering. They urged themselves boldly on the soldiers, who waited or pulled on their bottles. Through the night air tumbled estimates in lire such as one would hear on the stock exchange in Piazza della Borsa. Giulia’d never heard Italian women talking money so much before. The price of four thousand lire was much bandied between the soldiers and the girls. Then Elvira nudged her.
An American soldier was leaning against the slate-hued wall of the Galleria. He wore a fur-collared jacket and muddy leggins. In his hands were two tin cans which he pushed and retracted from the girl in front of him, who put out her tongue and wriggled the tip of her nose. Her dress was ragged. She was in a hysteria of several moods. She seemed hungry and frightened and lewd all at once. Finally she seized the soldier’s arm, pulled him along with a searing laugh, and they both ran out of the Galleria. Elvira tittered and revealed that in those tin cans was the food served to American troops at the front. Her Papa called it C-ration.
Giulia put two and two together. She began to quiver, standing still in the Galleria. Lightning raked across her eyes. There stormed up in her small breast a bitterness and a fury that frightened her and tore at her. She thought her heart was going to stop, that she was going blind with rage. And she heard her voice clang over her rigid lips like knives. She cried, not to Elvira or to anyone in particular, that a soldier who gave food to a hungry girl for love was outside the human race. Elvira tittered some more, said that this was war, and that Italian women could make riffraff of themselves if they chose. But then she stopped, for she saw that Giulia was crying.
Tears plopped down Giulia’s cheeks. Sobs came from her small body in a series of waves, dry waves like sheaves of paper ripped by a mad hand.
— Siamo vinti. . . . In questa guerra sono morti non soltanto i soldati . . . ma l’anima, le donne, e l’onore di tutti quanti. . . . Che Iddio ci aiuti. . . .
Still sobbing, she forced Elvira to quit the Galleria with her. She knew that if Elvira so much as giggled once more, she’d hurl her onto the wet sidewalk, though she was smaller than Elvira. Elvira suddenly took her leave and went into her own house. Giulia passed a church which the sacristan was jus
t locking for the night. She told the sacristan that it was a gracious idea to lock Christ in and the people out of the churches when the sun set. The sacristan shrugged and stepped aside to let her pass in. Giulia took water from the holy-water font and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. She was glad that Elvira had gone on home. She was still trembling, as a leaf remembers the wind.
After the black rainy air of Naples the church was glowing with vigil lights. These streaked out the offerings in the glass showcases, the cups of gold, the jewels, the token offerings for miraculous cures. Because of these treasures the church was locked at sundown. At a side altar a plump old priest was saying his rosary. Because she made some noise in entering, he looked at her testily and clucked.
Giulia knelt before the statue of the Madonna, which every year was borne through the streets on August 15 covered with flowers and smoked over with torches and incense. And Giulia prayed to Our Lady. She’d never really prayed before in her life.
She told Holy Mary Mother of God that she was a Neapolitan girl of nineteen. That she had her selfishnesses. That perhaps she was a little too proud for her station in life. . . . But (Giulia begged Mary) what are women put into this world for? Aren’t they to make good wives to men . . . at least in Italy. . . . Every good Italian girl wishes to be a wife and mother. . . . A woman doesn’t fear suffering as much as a man does. . . . Having children isn’t pleasant . . . but at least it’s natural. . . . Mother of God, a woman can’t cope with unnatural things like war, because a woman was put here to bring life into this world . . . women aren’t interested in killing. . . . Giulia asked the Madonna to help her. Her lips formed most passionately around that word, help.
Then she left the church. It was only two minutes now to the door of the apartment. She rounded an alley and came upon a tableau. An American soldier was lying unconscious on a doorstep. In her reflex of flinching back Giulia saw that this drunk was being relieved of his lire and his packs of cigarettes. At her step the thief jumped up from bending over the unconscious figure. It was Giulia’s brother Gennaro, all pale and with a murderous grief in his eyes. Her brother Gennaro.
Giulia discovered the consequences of sharing a secret which must never again be referred to, even with its imparter. This weight forced her deeper into herself and removed her completely from this life. Hitherto her adjustment to living had been a sweet moderation: neither mad for society nor shunning it. She’d lived well in herself, but not with that intensity or misanthropy which marks the queer or the gifted. Now all was changed. The sight of her brother bending over the drunken American soldier and rifling his pockets had burnt Giulia’s eyes, as though she’d looked straight at the sun. Often at night she saw this vision, asleep or awake, as a light remains on our retina after we turn away into the dark. With this there came to her moral and ethical nature a rift which refused to heal, which caused her night after night to cry into her pillow.
She knew that Gennaro had done what she saw him doing not through meanness or tendency to burglary in himself. He’d done what he’d done not for himself but because his family had to eat and because he could sell a pack of American cigarettes for three hundred lire. He had only to steal a few packs a week, and his family would revert to their former tranquil prosperity. All this Giulia knew, but the explanation didn’t help any. And she knew too that in these times Neapolitans of the middle class could starve slowly, as effectively as if they’d willfully gone on a hunger strike. No, it wasn’t that Gennaro had stolen that brought agony to Giulia’s soul; it was that he had had to steal, that there was no way out of doing what he’d done. Thus the worshiped figure of her brother became a symbol of that scabrous destiny which was debasing them all. He was no more her Gennaro, but a marionete whipped on by a fury and a fate beyond him. It wasn’t fair. It was filthy. He was now much more and much less her brother. He’d become the projection of all that was diseased in Naples of 1943. To her dying day Giulia could never forget that figure crouched in the murky vico, that look of horror and fascination outstarting from her brother’s eyes, that brown hand she’d so often spanked in their English lessons going like a shuttle through the pockets of the American soldier. Both their hearts broke at that instant — Gennaro’s and Giulia’s. They’d understood one another perfectly from the days when the little sister used to take the baby brother’s hand There could never again be between them that ripeness and gentleness, never, never. It was as though in a moment of madness they’d committed incest together, and had arisen defiled from the act, resolving never to see one another again. For their love had been close. They’d collided and passed through and beyond one another, like shadows embracing in hell.
Mamma, noting that the family’s diet had returned to its old level of abundance and variety, nodded sagely from her couch. She said, See, they’d done wrong to curse the Allies, for they’d kept their promises. Italians were overhasty in praise and in blame. She praised the American Spam and found that American coffee did her angina good. She hoped Gennaro’d make the acquaintance of an American and bring him home for dinner. In this way they might repay some of their debt to the Allies for liberating Naples and bringing fine American rations into the house. Giulia, when these things were said at table, would feel a knife go through her brain. She’d excuse herself from the meal and go to her room, for she knew that remaining at table would mean screaming. Her brother, the sad bent tool of injustice, simply sat in his place and stared at his plate. His dark hair seemed to have turned into sleek snakes hissing along his forehead.
Gennaro’s own sorrow forced him into a kind of flagrance of bitterness, as those with skin diseases appear brazenly in public. In his room he kept cartons of American cigarettes. These Giulia would find as she did her morning dusting while Mamma chattered from the couch in the parlor. Then Giulia, in an ecstasy of horrid fascination, would pick up the shining cellophane packages with the red target in the center. She’d count them with loathing, letting each fall back into the drawer through her fingers. Each morning she would play with these American cigarettes till she had to sit on Gennaro’s bed and weep. Mamma in the salottino would get peevish and restless and call out that Giulia was getting lazy in her housekeeping, and would make no man a good wife.
Giulia knew that Papa, anything but stupid, guessed what his son was up to after a few days’ lying. So, living off the American food and the American cigarettes which he so passionately loved, Papa’s mustache grew white. Giulia watched a metaphysical corset twine round Papa’s plump chest that was strangling off his breath.
One evening in November Papa walked with Giulia to the door of her bedroom. All evening long he’d been ostensibly in high spirits, jesting of his Fascist youth, of Mussolini’s violin playing, of Edda Ciano’s legs. He was as gay as one coming out of an anesthetic. But Giulia, inured to agony, saw his mirth for what it was, the abandon of a clown with a dying son. At her door Giulia’s father kissed her good night so hard that she tasted the small onions he’d eaten with such bravura, the tart red wine he’d drunk with dinner, the stinging afterbreath of American cigarettes. And Papa’s chest shook as he drew her head over his heart.
— Ah, cara mia, che bellezza! Abbiamo un figlio ed un fratello ladro. . . .
And as she lay in her bed she sounded the depths of her father’s bitterness.
Or sometimes Giulia tried to exchange a few words with Gennaro, those teasing sisterly sallies she’d always made. But their hollowness was obvious to her and, she knew, to him. Any conversation on their old level was as intolerable to both as a house hit by an incendiary bomb: only walls stood in the void where once were lovely rooms.
In December, 1943, Giulia sat under the stained-glass lamp over the dining room table. She was reading Risorgimento, which she hadn’t had time to glance over all day. It was full of news of the countless Neapolitan political parties and their diatribes against one another. Giulia thought of the line of steel and death to the north of her. The Germans were making Italy a shambles by retrea
ting slowly to the north, destroying as they went. She wondered what other girls of nineteen were thinking tonight in Rome, in Firenze, in Milano. Then her eye hit upon an ad. It said that shortly a club for American officers would open in the Bank of Naples. They were going to hire Neapolitan ladies and gentlemen as cashiers and waiters.
Giulia arose from her chair, smoothing her somber dress and her hair. She was wearing also her cloth coat with the fur collar because the house was damp and cold. Nowhere in Naples could you buy wood or coal, even on the mercato nero. Giulia considered again. Then she went to her brother’s room. She knew how she’d find him. And he was. Bent over their old English grammar. He lurched to his feet as she switched on the ceiling light. His passionate vitality at once wove an armor about him. She felt it opaque and dense as a wall, but she kept walking till she stood beside him and took his hand. She put her index finger on the advertisement and pushed it to him to read as though she were forcing an invalid to eat. For a minute they stood there looking at one another with a fierceness that gathered and stiffened them both. Because it was the first time she’d brought herself to look upon Gennaro in months, Giulia saw how beautiful was his face, like the face of one with a wasting disease, where all the life and reserve passion pounds into the cheeks and sits there in a wildness of decision and husbandry, saying, Kill me if you dare. For a second she thought she was going to die. But some cyclone blew them into one another’s arms, where they wept loudly for some while.
The Gallery Page 31