Fox

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  Marlene had asked nothing of me, I could so easily have said a few words about how marvelous it was that she was doing this, how she’d given it a shot when so many others were floundering, how resourceful she was in these times of hardship when many people were finding it so difficult to get a job, and how she’d chosen an admirable, old-time skill . . . I said none of these things; only somebody who is better, or at least feels themselves to be superior to the person they’re talking with, can say such generous things, and I was blindsided by the realization that I, myself, am a “stilt walker,” but less skilled and far older than Marlene, and hey, I, too, do what I know the best I can. Of course, under the cheap truth peeked an even cheaper one: Marlene had showed up at my door not because she was particularly keen to see me, but to check on whether I needed somebody to clean my apartment as she had done before so she could she pick up a little extra cash, just as my sudden outburst of anger at Marlene was provoked by the fact that I did, indeed, need somebody to clean my apartment, but I no longer had the wherewithal to pay for it.

  11.

  Piazza Bellini

  The next the morning I sat in a cab and had the driver take me to Santa Lucia. I thought I’d find The Widow at breakfast so I could apologize.

  “The lady left this morning,” said the man at the front desk.

  “When this morning? It’s only 8:30!”

  “She had a very early flight,” he said.

  “Did she leave any sort of message?”

  He handed me a hotel envelope. “Yes, this is for you,” he said.

  The whole secret is in good posture! This is the sum of what I’ve learned in life. So straighten up! And don’t forget—mind your step!

  I held The Widow’s note as if it were a lottery ticket. Like all great quotes, this was a clichéd fortune-cookie message. The Widow’s courteous gesture, which I had in no way deserved, touched me. I was most moved, in fact, by her shrewd insight (How had she known I’d come looking for her that morning at the hotel?!), and also by a certain childish tone to the note. And I, what about me? Did I not come running less to apologize than to hear yet another word or two about myself, and then about the secret of success of the magical package people call a “work of art”? Is there anything more childish than these expectations, which The Widow, to be fair, never betrayed? Could the whole trick really be in good posture?

  I went out into the street. I thrust my shoulders back, feeling a mild twinge at the stretching of my shoulder blades. The sea and Castel dell’Ovo were glistening there in front of me. I took a cab over to the other side, to the hilltop, to Castel Sant’Elmo, from where there swept a magnificent view of Naples. The city shimmered in a sunny haze in front of me like a big Neapolitan treat, a baba soaked in rum, a tasty symbol of the vitality of a human race that survives, and the beauty that reconciles it all: the poor and the rich, the handsome and the ugly, the old and the young, the new arrivals and the local denizens . . .

  Down the hill I went into the Centro Istorico and roamed its narrow streets. I bought a few portafortuna charms, key chains with a corno, a Toto, a Pulcinella . . . I let somebody talk me into purchasing a little pot with a robust local basil plant, which was silly since I was sure the customs officials wouldn’t allow me through with it, and I’d have a terrible time juggling the pot at the airport. I sat in a little café at Piazza Bellini, passing the time until I went to retrieve the suitcase I’d left at the B&B and wait out in front for the cab promised by the conference organizers. In front of me gaped a large archeological excavation, the main attraction of Piazza Bellini. The site had uncovered remains of Greek walls, the oldest of the many historical layers of Naples.

  If somebody were to compel me to send a message to the past ages and generations through this impressive pit yawning there before me, what would I say first? Hakuna matata? What can we do with the fact that right before our very noses—while we sip a cappuccino and wait for a cab—there yawns a pit and in the pit, as in a pot with hot water ready for pasta, simmers time? Around the pit is the peaceful present, sunlit, and overarched by the dome of blue sky. A few steps farther on, at Piazza del Gesù Nuovo, workers who’ve been laid off are protesting. A few miles farther on, the Lampedusa coastline is being overrun by hundreds of immigrants from Africa, many of whom are arriving as corpses, having suffocated below the decks of the ships transporting them to a better life . . .

  If I attune my ear more finely, I’ll hear the din of rage, of people scuttling, rodent-like, in search of food. And it’s merely a question of days before they start, rodent-like, gnawing at one another. Things are more fragile than they seem, the Neapolitans know this better than anybody, they have learned to live with it, with their “volcano neurosis,” their “chaos,” for it is true that at any moment somebody might stomp on Virgil’s Egg and there you have it, tragedy; angry Vesuvius spews lava tomorrow on the city and there you have it, tragedy; a capricious jettatore grazes us with the evil eye, and tragedy.

  If I slightly sharpen my focus, the Neapolitan images begin swarming around me like giant hornets: images of refugees from North Africa kicking around in front of their refugee camps with no idea of what to do or where they might go; images snapped through the bus window of dark figures looming by the roadside like phantoms; images of immigrants rising above the idyllic landscape like desert meerkats; images of immigrants sprouting from a trash heap, from dilapidated apartments, their balconies overflowing with flowers, images from all sorts of pits where the many centuries of layers verify the history of the town; images of people taking root like graveyard crosses, blocking the view of Vesuvius; an image of a girl, her elbows planted on the windowsill, gazing at the army of dusty miniature cacti set out on the sill; an image of a market stall with piles of fruit which, lit by the bright rays of the sun, glow like paper lanterns; an image of a little girl who with her delicate fingers adroitly unwraps a sfogliatella like a skein of wool . . . Naples flips about before me like the splashing fish held in the wide, flat, round, display dishes used by the street vendors on Via dei Tribunali. The orgy of images, fragrances (the smells of decay, street food, trees, melons, the sea, sweet, pungent, intoxicating scents) and sounds—steals my breath, dizzies me, and prevents me from anchoring in the safe harbor of my own perspective. It, my perspective, keeps shifting, crystal clear at one moment, blurred the next, double the next, flipping between comic relief and tragedy, and it’s as if nothing gets by without its double: there is no creature alive that’s not lugging its own dead body on its back; there’s no good luck without bad luck; there’s no love without hatred toted along in its backpack.

  The only thing unambiguous and constant is loss. Every person, one way or another, is always losing; we all slide downhill, what matters is only our skill at slowing things down, a skill demonstrated by the orange tree that grows out of the sidewalk on nearby Van San Sebastiano and pelts car roofs and noisy motorcyclists with its fruit.

  The movie Seven Beauties by Lina Wertmüller, a Chaplinesque story about a small-time Neapolitan hero, ends with Pasqualino’s return to Naples from a German concentration camp. Pasqua, you’re alive! says his mother in a tone suggesting the belief that survival is the only choice we have. Her tone is, at the same time, apologetic because she and her many daughters survived thanks to prostitution, despite Pasqualino spending half of his life defending the honor of his mother and his winsome sisters. Yes, I’m alive, answers Pasqualino darkly, having prostituted himself, as well, to survive. For Pasqualino—as he strips off his camp tatters, sings the Neapolitan canzone “Maria, Mari” and then stands on a round rug with a swastika design in the center in the office of the kapo. The kapo is a woman whom he struggles to please sexually while she brutally humiliates him, offering him, who is starving, food as if he were a dog (Mangia, Napoli)—so he, too, has used survival as an alibi and an apology.

  A city is a text. Every text survives by repeating stereotypes and undoing them, through trivialities and the dodging of trivialities. By
penning a brief footnote to this city, I am merely going down the well-trodden path of words that have been uttered so many times before. It is not me, of course, that matters, it’s the footnote. The footnote is a form of survival.

  I faded from Naples like color—blending through the airplane window with the blue of the Bay of Naples (Nel blu dipinto di blu . . .)—and with scent. The customs officials, wonder of wonders, did let me pass, after all, with my pot of basil that lay in my lap throughout the flight. At every jostle, even the slightest, the basil, berserk, exuded its heady scent.

  EPILOGUE

  First Epilogue

  The final frames of Pasolini’s film The Decameron—which takes place largely in Naples with non-professional actors speaking in the local dialect—show Giotto (or a pupil of Giotto’s) finishing a fresco in the Chiesa di Santa Chiara in Naples. The fresco depicts the Madonna holding Jesus in her arms. Everybody is pleased with it, the church bells are rung in celebration, the workers cheer the successful completion, but Giotto (or Giotto’s pupil), played by Pasolini himself, says: Perché realizzare un’opera quando è così bello sognarla soltanto? Why create art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter? Is dreaming about the artwork and the author’s (Giotto’s or his pupil’s?) lack of pretension regarding dreams closer to a woman’s feel for creativity or a man’s?

  Second Epilogue

  In his text “The Art of the Circus,” Viktor Shklovsky says:

  “Every art has its structure—that which transforms its material into something artistically experienced.

  “This structure finds its expression in various compositional devices: in rhythm, phonetics, syntax, and plot. A device is something that transforms non-aesthetic material, imbuing it with form, into a work of art.

  “As far as the circus is concerned, things are going rather strangely. [. . .]

  “Neither the snake man nor the strong man lifting heavy objects nor the bicyclist looping the loop, nor the animal trainer putting his well-pomaded head into the lion’s jaws, nor the trainer’s smile nor the lion’s physiognomy—none of this is art and yet we perceive the circus as art, as no different from heroic theater. [. . .]

  “Without difficulty there is no circus; therefore, in the circus the artistic work of the acrobats under a dome is more artistic than the work of those acrobats in the parterre, though their movements were both in the first and in the second instances absolutely identical [. . . .]

  “Making it difficult—that is the circus device. Therefore, if in the theater artificial things—cardboard chains and swords—were routine, the spectator at the circus would be justifiably indignant if it turned out that the weights being lifted by the strong man weighed less than what was written on the poster. Theater has other devices at its disposal than simple difficulty; therefore it can get along without it.

  “The circus is all about difficulty.

  “Circus difficulty is related to the general laws of breaking in composition.

  “Most of all, the circus device is about ‘difficulty’ and ‘strangeness.’ One of the types of difficulty connected in literature with plot-breaking occurs when the hero, for example, gets himself into difficult situations through the struggle between the feeling of love and duty. An acrobat overcomes space with a leap, the animal trainer overcomes a wild beast with a glance, the weightlifter overcomes weight with strength, just as Orestes overcomes love for his mother in the name of rage for his father. And in this lies the kinship between heroic theater and the circus.”

  Third Epilogue

  A year after our sojourn in Naples, I came across an article in the press reporting that The Widow had died, felled by a heart attack. Several black-and-white photographs from her younger years circulated on the internet, always by Levin’s side. Levin was phantom-like in the pictures, while The Widow, with her remarkable beauty, was the focus of all the attention. In one, The Widow was wearing a white sleeveless dress with a deep-cut neckline displaying to advantage her shapely collar bone and broad shoulders, a silken polka-dotted shawl draped around her head, and big dark glasses. In all the pictures it was The Widow’s arresting face, nuanced by intelligence, mystery, and a raw sensuality, that most stood out. I leafed through several newspapers, and, wouldn’t you know it, the place of her death given in each was different! The Paris papers wrote that she died in Paris, the New York Times claimed she died at the St. Regis Hotel during a brief stay in New York, while the Corriere della Sera reported that she passed away at Grand Hotel Vesuvio in Naples. Was this a simple error, too minor to merit a correction or even attention, or was this something else? I had no way of knowing, of course. The newspapers quoted several lines of an ambiguous verse by Levin, which could be interpreted as romantic and might possibly have referred to The Widow, though there was no explicit indication that it did. Her obituary was eclipsed by an interview with a major New York publisher announcing publication of Levin’s previously unpublished diary. The diary would carry the title The Other Shore, said the publisher, and he announced translations into several languages.

  What a fox, I thought, even in death she’s covered her tracks. I thought about how literary history can sometimes veer off in unexpected directions, and if that were to happen, The Widow—the beautiful, silent assistant who stands, reclining against the target at which the grand circus master takes aim with his unerring knives—might, in the future, be rewarded for her patient, quiet heroism. History, especially literary history, is engaged in the manufacture of illusions, as is literature, so there was, in this, a modicum of justice as well. The Widow had created Levin, not he her; he served, at first, as her modest start-up capital, which, through astute investment, she had aggrandized over the years. She was the broker for Levin’s literary legacy, a canny and savvy business woman, like all those who succeed in turning a small profit—real, or symbolic, or both—from art.

  I, of course, immediately bought in to the Neapolitan version (See Naples and Die). I was sure she’d died at Hotel Vesuvio, a haunt for famous celebrities with a view of the sea and Castelo dell’Ovo. She had a knack for the management of symbols. Furthermore, it was easier, as in tarot, to divine the reasons behind choice. She had assigned herself the role of the siren, Parthenope, a bird with a woman’s head, a woman with a bird’s body, a second-tier mythical celebrity who killed herself, plunging into the sea, when her divine song failed to entice Odysseus. The waves cast her body ashore where Naples stands today. Naples rose up on Parthenope’s bones. Parthenope is the patron saint of Naples; the Neapolitans sometimes refer to themselves as Parthenopeans. Oh, and, by the way, according to one version, Parthenope’s mother was Melpomene, the muse of tragedy.

  There is another legend, the poor man’s version, more accessible to the tourist’s imagination, about a centaur named Vesuvius who fell in love with Parthenope. This so enraged Zeus that he turned Vesuvius the centaur into a volcano and condemned him to yearn, eternally, for Parthenope. And Zeus turned Parthenope, meanwhile, into a city, a gem, Naples.

  There is a third legend, this one Christian. During the age of witch hunts when women were put to death on a grand scale in Europe, Christian propaganda produced (for the sake of balance!) a corresponding popular genre through which certain women of myth underwent Christian beatification or “madonnization,” in other words they were given a Christian makeover. This Christian standardization for female heroines was abetted by the strategy of introducing a double, used to expunge the power of the original. Historical appropriation began in the age of the Renaissance, and then women celebrities suitable to the church were produced massively during the baroque. So there was talk in the fourteenth century that Parthenope was the daughter of a Sicilian king who had sworn an oath to God. But it would seem that after centuries of vying for the role of Madonna—at least as far as the city of Naples was concerned—it was St. Patricia who won. Having resolved never to marry and to devote her life to God, she fled her native Constantinople, received the veil from the then Pope, and lived u
nder the aegis of Catholic Rome. After her father’s death she donated her worldly possessions to the poor and set out by ship for Jerusalem. The ship was wrecked mid-journey and the waves bore her body to the shores of the Bay of Naples, to the little island of Megarides, today’s Castel dell’Ovo. In the seventeenth century, at a time when Naples was going through a massive Catholic and baroque transformation, St. Patricia became Naples’s protectress, and, to make matters even more brutal, her relics were reinterred on the spot where Parthenope is thought to have been buried, at a monastery on Caponapoli hill. And so, as an interloper in Parthenope’s temple, Patricia was declared the saint of Naples. The two women—both virgins, both foreigners, both migrants from the “East,” both cast up on the shores of the Bay of Naples—were left to compete for prestige.

  Yet the rivalry between Parthenope and Patricia (and who, according to some researchers, is also St. Lucia) is not symmetrical. St. Patricia is the product of the powerful Catholic industry, a modern figure, a figure of our times, a typical female Catholic shyster, an “entertainer.” She’s linked to legends about her healing powers; a legend about how, for instance, a pilgrim broke a tooth off her skull to add to his reliquarium, and the tooth suddenly bled. The blood, collected in two glass vials, dried over time, but it reverts to liquid every August 25th. The miracle of the liquifying of St. Patricia’s blood every year bolsters her status as a saint, as demure Parthenope slips into oblivion. And while Patricia is a symbol of (cheap) artistic success, behind which stands the powerful, far-reaching industry of Catholicism, Parthenope is victim of a historical deception, a loser-woman. Parthenope did not succeed in enticing Odysseus with her divine song simply because Odysseus had his ears stopped with wax. Naive Parthenope, who knew nothing of Odysseus’s ploy with the wax, experienced his stoic indifference as a devastating blow to her artistic self-confidence and preferred a plunge into the sea to continuing a song that no longer enchanted anyone. Parthenope is a symbol of the struggle for artistic excellence, for high artistic standards, a battle before the fact against the horrors of modern artistic cacophony, but also a symbol of stunning naiveté: most people are born, apparently, with wax in their ears!