DON LIBORIO is scared of good-luck wishes, too. For the mid-August holidays he closes his print shop and goes up to the Matese mountains to breathe the air. While loading his suitcase into the taxi on his way to the bus, he runs into Don Ferdinando, the undertaker, who sends him customers for death notices and is also a good friend. He sees the suitcase and says, “Don Libò, have a good trip,” and Don Liborio answers, “Thanks, but I’m not leaving, I just arrived,” and takes his suitcase out of the taxi and goes back home. He left the next day instead. He told the story to Master Errico, who noticed that the print shop was open that evening and wondered why he was still in the city. “What else could I do? How was I supposed to leave with the greetings of the gravedigger?” Then Master Errico put aside the newspaper and ended the talk with a carpenter’s spell. “Saint Joseph, passace ‘a chianozza”—pass over this talk with a planer.
I TOLD Rafaniello about Maria and the landlord. He stayed quiet for a while, then closed his eyes tight and said, “May you share the fate of the dog who licks the rasp.” His voice was as cold as the north wind. I felt a shiver in my kidneys. What are you saying Don Rafaniè? “A curse,” he answered, but with his own voice again. “I’m saying it, but it’s not mine. It comes through me, into the open. Your story has been heard. That man has been struck by a pellet of hail.” There are many things I don’t understand, including the part about the dog. Don Rafaniè, is it bad that curse about the dog? “It’s bad. The dog licking the rasp is licking his own blood, but his liking for blood is greater than the pain, so he keeps licking till he bleeds to death.” Night has fallen. It’s time to close up. I’ve finished my cleaning so I give Rafaniello a hand straightening out his bench. The sound of bones comes from his hump. He looks up, pushing back the bag with the wings. His round green eyes search the sky for a spot to climb. The city rises upward in walls and balconies. There is no sky overhead. But he finds a way to get his bearings even in this canyon. His head has the same compass as a stork. I roll the gates down and we say good night. He says it’s nice to have wings, but it’s nicer to have good hands for work.
MASTER ERRICO sets the alley spinning with his voice. He’s furious. He’s showing his ugly side. A workman was fixing a cornice on a top-floor balcony. All at once there was a crash in the alley. Master Errico ran out and saw the rubble. He started screaming at the workman that downstairs there were children, people. The guy answered that he had work to do, so Master Errico let his animal out and shouted, “Scinne!” Get down here! Get down here and go home while you’ve still got legs to walk on. Otherwise I’ll come up and break them. He said it in Neapolitan so loud that the whole alley quieted down. The workman saw that the day was taking a turn for the worse and came down. Everyone was looking out the windows and doors and Master Errico stood in the middle of the alley. I came out to sweep up the rubble. “Stand back,” he said. “That guy’s got to do it.” Things were getting serious. “Don’t pay attention to him, Mast’Errì, don’t get all worked up, let the boy do it.” The voice of Don Liborio the typographer calmed Master Errico down. “Come on, let’s have a coffee.” He took his arm and led him up the street. I swept up the rubble and the workman was able to leave.
THE WOMEN were talking, saying that he had done the right thing. The women in Naples are always egging on the men. The oldest one said that Master Errico was a real kingpin, and during the September uprising against the Germans he got the whole block together to drive them out of Naples. Another woman said that when there’s someone like Master Errico on the block the criminals are nowhere to be found. The women talked, so I learned about past events. Back in those days my father was at the port defending his job. The people of Naples went wild. They took to the streets yelling, “ Iatevenne!”—get out of here! and they used guns to show the Germans to the door. Some even lost their lives. So this afternoon I asked Master Errico about it. He answered that everyone had come out that day — Don Liborio, Don Ciccio the doorman, the women, the street urchins, the city’s whole motley crew. “The Germans were tearing everything apart, dropping bombs on houses. In the end they wanted to take all of the young men to Germany to work for them. Anyone who didn’t report was shot. The only ones on the streets were old people and women. We wanted to drive them out. We didn’t want to hide anymore. The Americans showed no signs of entering Naples. They were waiting. So we got sick of waiting.”
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I WANTED to hear more. After I pestered him for a while with questions, he continued. Master Errico was in the right mood. “Even Father Petrella the priest got involved. During the bombardments he had learned to say mass quickly, fifteen minutes at most. The practice has stayed with him, which is why they call him Father Fast. Once an air-raid siren went off after Communion, just as he was finishing the service. Rather than say the usual, ‘Ite, missa est,’ he said, ‘Fùìte!’—make a run for it—‘missa est!’ He was the first to run like a hare, blessing the shelter while he was running and holding up his cassock, the landlord close on his heels, followed by retired General De’Frunillis. During the September uprising even Don Petrella came into the line of fire, not to hurt the Germans but to bring us comfort. He gave absolution to those who were dying from gunshot wounds, including a German soldier. The whole neighborhood came out. When it was over, I said, ‘Now this city is mine.’ ” Rafaniello listened with tears in his eyes.
PAPA SPOKE with me. They’ve got some hope for Mama. Sitting down to coffee at six in the morning while the block is silent and dark, he lays it out for me. This year there will be no Christmas. “The only thing I care about is her, and she is leaning on me with all the strength she has left. She’s weak, but not her hands. She squeezes tight. She even broke a glass and cut herself. We’re fighting this one together. We don’t want to put you in the middle. It’s between us, going back to when we went to the air-raid shelters during the bombings and swore that we would never be apart, bombs or no bombs. No one could separate us. When a bomb exploded nearby, the blast made her throw up. I held her head and she vomited between my feet. I was happy that our love could do even this. We were engaged back then and even closer than newlyweds. The war allowed us to be the way we are. If she leaves, I’ll be like a doorknob without a door.” He forced himself to use Italian. He wanted to speak with me. He made me feel important. I didn’t say anything. I looked him right in the face. It was a small thing, to stay right in front of him and listen as well as I could, keeping my eyes on him and not moving. Then he let out what he was thinking. “All three of us will get back together, as if nothing happened, we’ll go back to having our Sundays. Do you remember the Solfatara Volcano?” It was time to go. That’s where he stopped. He got up and rinsed his cup out in the sink. It was the first time he’d done it. He splashed some water on himself, dried off, and smiled at me.
HE WAS really confiding in me. He explained carefully, mustering the patience he needed to speak Italian. In his mouth it becomes a Sunday language. When he can’t find a word he turns red from the effort and I find it for him. Right away he says, “Bravo,” and repeats what I said, even if it isn’t the word he was looking for. Yes, I’m thinking of the Sunday we saw the Solfatara Volcano. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? ‘A tieni mente?” Yes, it’s fresh in my mind. He wants to climb Vesuvius, too, on a winter Sunday when there’s snow on top. “Do you remember the snow?” he asks me sometimes, and I nod yes, and stare out into the darkness. I can see the 1956 snowstorm, the soft rain of the north, white and silent. We tell each other about it again and every winter he tells me, “This year it’s going to snow by the sea, too,” out of his desire to see it again. The port becomes clean. You can’t see the dirt, the oil, the rust. Silence grips the city. Even the streetcar forgets that it’s made of steel and passes by as quietly as a trolley bus. “Even the garbage piles, ‘e muntune ‘e munnezza, seem beautiful.” The oak trees at the Villa Comunale wear white skullcaps and I wonder: How do the blind get by without white?