Knife Party at the Hotel Europa

by Mark Anthony Jarman

  Our furnace-hot trains forge past arid ruins, past prickly pear cactus by the track’s sandy ditches, as if we move through Mexico, and a uniformed man calling for tickets, tickets. Yet I ride the train for free most days, my pass expired, a Unico Campania Three-Day Travel Ticket. I am rarely asked, trusted — or I am invisible, of a certain age and appearance. The police do not check my ID in the piazza to see if I should be deported, I don’t have to burn the prints from my fingertips.

  The train circles the placid mountain that broke open and killed so many, the mountain filling the train window as our headphones fill our head with mumblecore and shoe-gazer. Millions live in the volcano’s zona rossa, the nervous red zone. The volcano blew during World War Two, March 1944, adding to the woes of starvation and typhus. If it blows again we are all dead, the peak held over us no matter where we go, until I feel Vesuvius has been looming over me all my life, leading me to this cratered place where fumaroles fume steam and ancient vineyards rise in long perfect lines to the volcano, a series of triangles and convergences and my eager eye follows, pleased by the sightline.

  The fields around the Bay of Naples are fertile, deep soil enriched by repeated eruptions of volcanic ash, crops leaping up in eternal sun. Old women draped in black work the fields, how do they do it, sweaters and long skirts, all in black in this heat! Arbours and grapes and orchards and orchids, beaches and marinas and all this beautiful coastline, this emerald sea stretching away in the sunshine, all these stunning islands, all this potential, the Bay of Naples could be a new California, an Eden. So I wonder, and my apologies to the locals: why do these sprawling suburbs under the volcano seem so fucked up?

  Trash piled in cul-de-sacs and vandals and thieves and graffiti, graffiti like ugly tattoos, and no work and larceny and kidnappings and extortion and payoffs and murders and sewing machines singing. In suburbs and exurbs men drink peach wine, sweet pellechiella, men cut packages into vials, kilos roll in and the kilos roll out. And all the euros, all the money being made? Where does it go? Like water, like affection, like affliction, it has to go somewhere.

  At the station in the centre of town I greet Ray-Ray and Tamika at the train. In Rome I was so weary of the art group at the hotel, happy to slip away to a pub on my own or travel down to Pompeii solo, but now it’s so good to see someone I know; let me hug them both. As we chat on an outdoor platform, a high-speed train pulls in to stop very briefly, a train so much more streamlined than the boxy Circumvesuviana carriages we sweat inside most days.

  A stray Jack Russell terrier dances around the train, full of pep, the stray dog checks us out but quickly loses interest and wants to move on. Jacks may seem the epitome of living in the moment, but really they live in the moment just ahead, the moment just one second from now. Now the dog wants to cross the tracks from our platform to see who is at the station door, but the streamlined train blocks the dog’s path.

  The train must be going all the way down to Sicily, where these cars will be uncoupled in a cumbersome dance and ferried across the strait.

  The little dog peers this way and that for a way to cross the track. The diesel will leave any second, we know; these high speed trains never linger. We all groan as the dog places his head under the iron wheels of the idling train, where he will be crushed or sliced in half in front of our eyes.

  “Don’t.”

  We see his quick terrier eyes and brain working in tandem: Might a dog sneak through here? The crowd tenses as if the curious dog awaits a guillotine, the lull between beheadings.

  “No,” I say out loud, “come back.” But the stray dog does not know English. Tamika turns away, she can’t watch the dog be killed.

  “Here!”

  The dog turns, runs back to our platform, the diesel train shrieks and train wheels scythe over the space where the dog’s nose was under the engine.

  “Come here. Good boy!” He has bright eyes and brown ears soft as gloves. I saved him, I am Pliny the Elder. Eve would like this dog. Do I have a treat in my backpack? It’s a Jack; it doesn’t want to be petted; it wants to run, it wants to run and work until it dies. I know this dog will die. It has no one.

  Tamika and Ray-Ray ask me to hike up the slopes of the volcano with them.

  Sure, why not? Any height here brings an amazing view.

  As we climb Ray-Ray tells us of suitcases full of gifts he brought back to Canada from China; odd to think of Ray-Ray hanging out in Hong Kong’s meatpacking district, it seems to him only minutes ago.

  “Shoes incredibly cheap,” he says. “Brand new electronics, shuffles, hard drives, man, they cost nothing there! The customs people wouldn’t believe me when I declared the total value, it was so low they thought I was lying. Man, it was harsh, those dudes at customs held me for hours.”

  For hours we walk up toward the bulk of Vesuvius, sweating like mules in slanted streets, in dark rock and sun, the drugging sun. This is harder than we thought.

  “Isn’t there a bus that comes up this way?” asks Tamika. “Like, up to a parking lot?”

  “I don’t know,” says Ray-Ray, “It looked so close, I figured we could hike it. Man, I hear you can see right inside the volcano. I want to look inside.”

  I’m lost and wobbly and my scalp is toast. On her laptop back in Rome Eve showed me satellite photos from directly above the volcano’s cone, the strange opening, a black hole in the planet. We can see paths high up the slope above, but in a stretch of scrub brush and flowering broom we halt; we’re not going to make the peak, the Gran Cono.

  Pliny died doing this almost two thousand years ago, roof tiles breaking in the heat, in some corner of a foreign field Pliny fell and didn’t get up, covered in ash and molten lava. The poet Shelley burnt on the beach, I burn in Pompeii. Too long in the sun, my head hurting, and the scored mountain defeats us.

  Below the mountain such rich fields and bright sea and scattered islands running off to the glittering west. The volcano and bay sculpted by tectonic collisions, the African plate forced below the Eurasian plate, and below the mountain African men sell new sunglasses to an ancient nation. Tall men set up tiny tables on a street or a cloth spread on the sidewalk outside the glowing church and gather their goods and run when they see the handsome police uniforms moving toward them.

  Southern Italy so warm, a boot aimed at Africa, a long fashionable boot, so close to Tunisia, to Cleopatra’s Egypt, Cleopatra’s golden breast. North Africa is so close, part of Caesar’s empire and Mussolini’s empire, artifacts from Nubian locales scattered everywhere in Italy, yet Ray-Ray and Tamika seem like strangers in the living room.

  “Italians treat you like family,” Father Silas said at a restaurant in Rome. “Italians are wonderful, so warm.”

  This is not always so for African street vendors, and locals think Ray-Ray is a purse-seller, an illegal. My old Irish uncle used to say, We are made of the same dough, but we are baked in different ovens. And who among us in any country is consistent or perfect? Some nights we are the drunken bozos bellowing in the street and some nights we are the voice in the window telling the drunken bozos to shut the hell up.

  Ray-Ray and Tamika catch the milk-train down to Sorrento, but I travel alone to a smaller excavation I want to explore. A second-class train, baking inside, but a good price. Coming back toward Naples, I find a seat in a compartment with two men and an elderly woman. Two seats left. I sense each passenger’s unspoken hope that no one comes into their compartment. Then a young woman with a heavy case; I mean, it is large and in charge. She struggles awkwardly and I jump up and help tilt her giant suitcase to the high rack above our seats, where I hope it won’t fall and kill us.

  She sits beside me, her face flushed from exertion and heat, and we make our introductions. An American, Abby has been teaching art in Istanbul, but now her contract is over. She is travelling for a month and will meet her parents in Venice; next year she will teach in Asia.

  I’d like to see Istanbul, sail to Byzantium.

  “Any Italia
n links?” Abby asks me. “In your family?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I have an ancestor,” Abby says, “who was a sculptor in Italy.”

  “So art runs in the family?”

  “No, I’m the only one into art.”

  When she hears “Canada” she asks if I know Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. She says, “I went there as a child and still remember it. It’s so beautiful.”

  I agree, I love the Gaspé. It reminds me of the far west of Ireland, the Blasket Islands, but I can drive there: no Heathrow Airport!

  “I want to go back,” she says. She has lovely memories of diving whales and dazzling light and sea air. Wiping her perspiring face, she says she’d pay to have such fresh sea air supplied on this train.

  I usually hate about 98 per cent of the world and then once in a while I see someone I really like. She has lovely eyes. That way of talking or looking at me. On a train, here let me help with your luggage, a woman walking into a room, or you walk in and she is there and looks up, or passing in a street, every once in a while it happens — a glance, a hope, a chance, all moments of a possible life described and unfolding and held in that quicksilver second in the eyes.

  Abby asks if I can translate a sign she sees. She knows Latin, but not Italian. When did they switch? We speak English in the compartment and an older man stares at us. I practise Italian phrases daily, but when I try to speak to native Italians my tongue is struck dumb. No wonder Italians think we are all morons.

  The older man says, “You come to Italy and can’t speak Italian?” The man has a dark upswept pompadour and leans forward, head deep between his shoulders, like Elvis with osteoporosis.

  So wanderers and travellers must speak every language? Then I could never see Russia or China, Croatia or Greece.

  “Be very careful in Napoli,” the man says to Abby.

  He points to his eyes. At first I thought he meant they’ll go for your eyes, but then I realize he is showing her that he has seen it all with his own eyes. The old man is a retired detective, jaded by all that he has seen over years of police work.

  Abby does not understand what he says and I try to decipher. Another man joins in, a well-dressed young Italian filmmaker who has more English than the detective.

  I ask if they are sad about Italy’s loss in football.

  No, the filmmaker does not care.

  The detective says football is a very bad influence, all business and piles of money. The matches are fixed, it is contaminated.

  They surprise me, so far I have met only devoted fans. I talk with the filmmaker about Wim Wenders, Bertolucci, Besieged, The Passenger. He made a documentary about a Victorian writer, English, in Calabria. I will try to track it down. He says it is hard to sell films, he has to take other jobs in media.

  Abby asks me, “Is there some kind of trash problem in Naples?”

  “A little bit,” I say to her quietly, not wanting to offend our hosts.

  “A little bit!” Both Italian men laugh ferociously at my reply. “A little bit!”

  It’s as if I’ve fired a starter’s pistol for a race, the two men leap into a wild discussion of Italian governments and elections and communists and mobs and trash collection, both men waving hands and yelling. I can only make out snippets of the speedy animated Italian.

  “This is not a normal country. Here up is down, down is up. Here matters move like molasses and everyone wants a share off the top and a share off the bottom and a share off the sides and then what is left? Since the war? A new government every nine months, as if having a baby. But what is the result? The new baby never arrives. Nothing changes.”

  “No, nothing changes ever.”

  “When the americani voted for that fool Bush I laughed. But now we have elected a buffone, a clown. Now I can no longer laugh.”

  “A clown, yes,” says the young filmmaker, “but a very rich clown who owns all the television stations and newspapers. A clown who does what he wishes.”

  “Still a clown. This is a country run by old men, you have to know someone, what matters is who you know, not your talents, and thus the talented leave us. My nephew writes me, he has a job in New York, he had to leave, la fuga dei cervelli. How did we get like this? In a normal country the government governs. In a normal country criminals are arrested. Here the police do not police and villains roam free in gangs, here trash is not collected and taxes are not collected. Mister So-and-So drives a Ferrari and has a swimming pool, but he pays no taxes, the priest arrives at mass in a Lamborghini, but he pays no taxes. It’s no secret. Everyone wants to take and no one wants to pay.”

  The detective argues that Mussolini and the old ways had benefits, that at least the Fascists kept order.

  The filmmaker politely disagrees. No, he cannot favour fascism or Mussolini.

  “Believe me,” says the detective, “in the old days they knew what to do. Mussolini would take care of these banditi. If you stepped out of line back then, this is what happened to you.” The detective makes a motion of slitting his own throat.

  Again the young filmmaker tactfully disagrees with the older detective. “There were more banditi then than now.”

  The filmmaker turns to Abby and me. “The centre of Napoli is free of trash, but…” He struggles for words in English. “The outside districts, there it can be worse. But you are fairly safe here. The violence is exaggerated. They’ll happily lift your wallet on a crowded bus, but no one mugs you. They want crimes of opportunity, something sitting there, something easy.”

  The detective scoffs. “Are you insane? You haven’t seen what I have seen with my own eyes!” And they are off again, arguing about shootings and car bombs and the Camorra.

  I whisper to Abby that the Camorra is a very powerful mob; I think the word camorra means quarrel. I am glad that I didn’t travel first-class on a sleeker, air-conditioned train, I would not have met any of these people. The elderly woman in the compartment glares disapprovingly at all of us, foreigners or italiani. Her stern, lined face asks, Why did we have to sit with her on her peaceful journey?

  A wandering woman comes to our compartment, buongiorno, asks for money. I say no, but to my surprise the detective and the older woman wearily acquiesce and give her coins, the older two more charitable than the younger passengers.

  I like them all, like the detective; he speaks his mind. I like the filmmaker; he is closer to my age and political leanings. And I like Abby from Texas who sits close to me all the way to Naples, named by the Greeks Neapolis, their New City. Both of us unsure what is next as the train slows to penetrate the perplexing fulcrum of Naples, the huge harbour and wharf rats, the crowded troubled buildings by a beautiful bay.

  Naples was an independent kingdom for centuries. Naples was never as rich, never ruled the world, but also was never flattened the way Rome was. Rome such a centre of riches and sin that it attracted armies bent on setting Rome straight, on breaking its bones: aqueducts cut and lovely fountains dry, monuments and pillars toppled like tenpins, and the vandals took the handles, Rome left a ghost town, sheep grazing the empty tumbling temples and Rome’s lovely marble fascias burnt in rude kilns by scavengers.

  The kingdom of Naples was taken over by every touring barbarian — Viking, Goth, Frank, Norman, Hun, Slav, Saracen, Arab, Byzantine, Magyar, Nazi, and recent Eurotrash— but the city spires were not brought flat, Naples made arrangements with its strange bedfellows. Which approach do you lean to in your private kingdom? Cut a deal or be sacked?

  In the railroad switchyard we move under blue sky and a ceiling of wires and Abby points at big block letters spray- painted on a yellow shed, WELCOME TO AN ANTI-FASCIST CITY, accompanied by a hammer and sickle.

  “Why is it written in English? So the tourists can read it?”

  I wonder if the Soviet hammer and sickle looks odd to her American eyes.

  Abby and I walk the crowded Naples station, peering inside and outside the glass walls at the piazza and taxis; there for moment
s and we see police chase a man through the glass doors, where others wait for him outside; cat and mouse, they are familiar with each other.

  Attenzione Ai Borseggiatori — Beware of Pickpockets!

  Cat and mouse, boy meets girl, the train comes in the station with a blue light on behind and we sit for a cold drink near the station, an eye on our bags in the noise of a shambolic urban mob. Vorrei una birra, per favore. Vorrei many beer, per favore. Look at those faces; that family of four walked and bickered in Pompeii and were smothered by the volcano. The same handsome faces walking past Abby’s face.

  In Dublin I met a couple from northern Italy, near Pisa. I mentioned Naples and their faces altered, they rushed to look up the English words for theft, danger, worry. Do not go to Napoli, they begged. Yet the owner of a bar in Rome and his best friend show me where I must go in Napoli, the best friend circles spots on my map, writes down names; he lives in Rome now, but says Napoli is his favourite city, says Napoli is the true capital of Italy.

  Napoli is volcanic, scary and strangely endearing, flea markets with no tables or booths, hawkers and hustlers holding up smokes or soccer balls or simply laying shirts on the dirt of a vacant lot. The street people are not upwardly mobile, not on their way to better things. They say Christ didn’t make it this far and neither did a middle class, the place looks harsh, Napoli has endured plagues and quakes, cholera and cruel overlords, but Napoli also shows off wonderful antiquities and art, sleepy catacombs and blunt campaniles, with gourmand treats around every corner, clams, mussels, swordfish, eel, tripe, hunks of buffalo mozzarella, and hefty pizza. Abby lifts a big wobbly crust, trying to hold the fluid crater in the centre. I think of Rome’s pizza as thin and simple, almost dry, Napoli’s pizza liquid and, like the city, more complicated.

  Another bottle of beer and the usual questions of the past, but Abby surprises me when says she has just ended a long-term lesbian relationship and ended an affair with an older man where she worked. She worries this man has a pattern of staying with a younger woman until the woman is past child-bearing age and then he moves on to someone else.