Ah, what a city, said Aunt Lina to my daughter, what a splendid and important city: here all languages are spoken, Imma, here everything was built and everything was torn down, here the people don’t trust talk and are very talkative, here is Vesuvius which reminds you every day that the greatest undertaking of powerful men, the most splendid work, can be reduced to nothing in a few seconds by the fire, and the earthquake, and the ash, and the sea.
I listened, but at times I was baffled. Yes, Imma was consoled but only because Lila was introducing her to a permanent stream of splendors and miseries, a cyclical Naples where everything was marvelous and everything became gray and irrational and everything sparkled again, as when a cloud passes over the sun and the sun appears to flee, a timid, pale disk, near extinction, but now look, once the cloud dissolves it’s suddenly dazzling again, so bright you have to shield your eyes with your hand. In Lila’s stories the palaces with paradisiacal gardens fell into ruin, grew wild, and sometimes nymphs, dryads, satyrs, and fauns inhabited them, sometimes the souls of the dead, sometimes demons whom God sent to the castles and also the houses of common people to make them atone for their sins or to put to the test good-hearted inhabitants, to reward them after death. What was beautiful and solid and radiant was populated with nighttime imaginings, and they both liked stories of shades. Imma informed me that at the cape of Posillipo, a few steps from the sea, opposite Gajóla, just above the Grotta delle Fate, there was a famous building inhabited by spirits. The spirits, she told me, were also in the buildings of Vico San Mandato and Vico Mondragone. Lila had promised her that they would go together to look in the streets of Santa Lucia for a spirit called Faccione, called that because of his broad face, who was dangerous and threw big stones at anyone who disturbed him. Also—she had told her—many spirits of dead children lived in Pizzofalcone and other places. A child could often be seen at night in the neighborhood of Porta Nolana. Did they really exist, or did they not exist? Aunt Lina said that the spirits existed, but not in the palaces, or in the alleys, or near the ancient gates of the Vasto. They existed in people’s ears, in the eyes when the eyes looked inside and not out, in the voice as soon as it begins to speak, in the head when it thinks, because words are full of ghosts but so are images. Is it true, Mamma?
Yes, I answered, maybe yes: if Aunt Lina says so, it could be. This city is full of events, both large and small—Lila had told her—you can even see spirits if you go to the museum, the painting gallery, and, especially, the Biblioteca Nazionale, there are a lot of them in the books. You open one and, for example, Masaniello jumps out. Masaniello is a funny and terrible spirit, he makes the poor laugh and the rich tremble. Imma liked it in particular when, with his sword, he killed not the duke of Maddaloni, not the father of the duke of Maddaloni, but their portraits, zac, zac, zac. In fact, in her opinion, the most entertaining moment was when Masaniello cut off the heads of the duke and his father in the portraits, or hanged the portraits of other ferocious noblemen. He cut off the heads in the portraits, Imma laughed, in disbelief, he hanged the portraits. And after those decapitations and hangings Masaniello put on an outfit of blue silk embroidered with silver, placed a gold chain around his neck, stuck a diamond pin in his hat, and went to the market. He went like that, Mamma, all decked out like a marquis, a duke, a prince, he who was a workingman, a fisherman, and didn’t know how to read or write. Aunt Lina had said that in Naples that could happen and other things, openly, without the pretense of making laws and decrees and entire conditions better than the previous ones. In Naples one could get carried away without subterfuges, with clarity and complete satisfaction.
The story of a minister had made a great impression on her. It involved the museum of our city, and Pompeii. Imma told me in a serious tone: You know, Mamma, that a Minister of Education, Nasi, a representative of the people almost a hundred years ago, accepted as a gift from workers at the excavations of Pompeii a small, valuable statue they had just dug up? You know that he had models made of the best artworks found at Pompeii to adorn his villa in Trapani? This Nasi, Mamma, even though he was a Minister of the Kingdom of Italy, acted instinctively: the workers brought him a beautiful little statue as a gift and he took it, he thought it would make a very fine impression at his house. Sometimes you make a mistake, but when as a child you haven’t been taught what the public good is, you don’t understand what a crime is.
I don’t know if she said the last part because she was reporting the words of Aunt Lina, or because she had made her own arguments. Anyway I didn’t like those words and I decided to intervene. I made a cautious speech, but explicit: Aunt Lina tells you so many wonderful things, I’m pleased, when she gets excited no one can stop her. But you mustn’t think that people carry out terrible acts lightly. You mustn’t believe it, Imma, especially if it concerns members of parliament and ministers and senators and bankers and Camorrists. You mustn’t believe that the world is chasing its tail—now it’s going well, now badly, now it’s going well again. We have to work with consistency, with discipline, step by step, no matter how things are going around us, and be careful not to make a mistake, because we pay for our mistakes.
Imma’s lower lip trembled, she asked me:
“Papa won’t go to parliament anymore?”
I didn’t know what to say and she realized it. As if to encourage me to give a positive response, she said:
“Aunt Lina thinks so, that he’ll return.”
I hesitated, then made up my mind.
“No, Imma, I don’t think so. But there’s no need for Papa to be an important person for you to love him.”
43.
It was the completely wrong answer. Nino, with his usual ability, slipped out of the trap he had ended up in. Imma found out and was very pleased. She asked to see him, but he disappeared for a while, it was difficult to track him down. When we made a date he took us to a pizzeria in Mergellina, but he didn’t display his usual liveliness. He was nervous, distracted, to Imma he said one should never rely on political alignments, he described himself as the victim of a left that wasn’t a left, in fact it was worse than the fascists. You’ll see—he reassured her—Papa will fix everything up.
Later I read some very aggressive articles of his in which he returned to a thesis that he had espoused long ago: legal power had to be subject to executive power. He wrote indignantly: How can the judges one day be fighting against those who want to strike at the heart of the state and the next make the citizens believe that very same heart is sick and should be thrown out. He fought not to be thrown out. He passed through the old parties now out of commission, shifting further to the right, and in 1994, radiant, he regained a seat in parliament.
Imma was joyful when she learned that her father was again the Honorable Sarratore and that Naples had given him a very high number of preferences. As soon as she heard the news she came to tell me: You write books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does.
44.
I didn’t get angry with her, in essence my daughter wanted only to point out to me that I had been spiteful about her father, that I hadn’t understood how great he was. But those words (You write books but you can’t see the future the way Aunt Lina does) had an unexpected function: they pushed me to pay attention to the fact that Lila, the woman who in Imma’s opinion could see the future, at fifty had returned officially to books, to studying, and was even writing. Pietro had imagined that with that decision she had self-prescribed a kind of therapy to fight the anguishing absence of Tina. But in my last year in the neighborhood I wasn’t satisfied with Pietro’s sensitivity or Imma’s mediation: as soon as I could, I broached the subject, I asked questions.