Lost in the Spanish Quarter

by Heddi Goodrich

Melancholy lived in every alleyway, locked between the arms of two best friends strolling in sexy miniskirts while sucking on lollipops: it was in their lost childhood. Melancholy was with the unemployed men outside a café discussing the latest soccer results, and with the coffee grinder grumbling about having to repeat the same old routine day in and day out without ever getting to the bottom of anything. It was in the middle-aged woman peddling children’s books on the filthy steps of a church, struggling to sound out the words to The Three Little Pigs in plain sight of everyone. There was sadness in her lack of privacy and in her lack of shame. It was in the midmorning drizzle, drops as light and disoriented as snowflakes, and in the way the cobblestones would then become coated in a slick layer of grease for the sea snail vendor to plow his cart through. The melancholy would ring out in his street cry (Maruzziell’! Maruzziell’! Come get them fresh maruzziell’!), a chant as mournful as a call to prayer from a minaret. It was in the way that, after he’d passed through, the street smelled like fish and candy, ignorance and good intentions, sewage and frankincense.

  But most of all, melancholy was in the volcano, slices of which from the city center could only be glimpsed at the end of certain streets: flat, meaningless pieces of a much larger puzzle. Vesuvius didn’t come to us. It sat there biding its time, and it could wait tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. Our ambitions, our fears, our tremendous love—all that meant nothing to it. Was this a kind of wisdom as deep as its magma chamber, or was it simply indifference? It was hard to tell. But now I wondered if what truly unsettled me was not that the volcano might be indifferent to all of us, but that it might be indifferent to me. Its silence was personal.

  Century after century nothing in Naples ever really changed. And I was beginning to sense that the strange sadness that was perhaps uniquely Neapolitan might just be the knowledge that, no matter what, life goes on.

  Life in fact went on without Luca. During the summer his absence wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but now with all the students back it was obvious he’d gone and taken his magic with him. It was in the Spanish Quarter that I missed him the most. Luca had been able to take the neighborhood in his stride, as though he could see its inner workings—just as he could see the inner workings of humankind itself. But without his higher perspective, the quarter was just all too real and its ugly side impossible to ignore. Rabbit skins hanging outside the butchers’. Rats in broad daylight surgically opening the garbage bags. The hopeless darkness of the side streets, the doors opening onto prostitution and drug deals. And in one of those streets, who knows where, was that enormous dog guarding his walls underneath the scaffolding, king of a small territory that interrupted the grid pattern of the neighborhood like a metal parenthesis. And everywhere motorbikes growling, people hollering, car alarms hooting, shoes clicking up and down the streets, hundreds of them all together as if in a collective tap dance. But this was no musical.

  More than ever I adhered to my memorized paths, but one time my feet betrayed me and took me in the direction of the old house. On the way I bumped into Tonino, who had popped in to check how the renovation was progressing. Abruptly I pulled him toward me and held him so tight I was scratched by his stubble and infused with his smell of too much coffee and too many cigarettes.

  Tonino admitted he’d been up all night cramming for an exam. “Sanskrit, finally. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Good luck.”

  “No, this time I don’t think luck is going to cut it.”

  “Then I’ll go to church,” I said in jest, “and say a prayer for you.”

  “Yeah, go on. Go straight to the top, to the patron saint of Naples, San Gennaro, and tell him I need a fucking miracle.”

  “All right, I’ll see what I can do . . .”

  “And while you’re at it, ask him if he’ll make my cock the size of the Incredible Hulk’s.”

  How good it was to be laughing stupidly as always.

  Then Tonino said, in a more sober tone, “And if I don’t pass, I might just leave this black hole of a university and get a job like Luca.”

  “What do you mean a job?”

  “What, didn’t you know, gorgeous? That bastard got himself a job in the army, as an officer,” Tonino explained. “In a way, Falcone is a genius. All the others just let themselves get fucked in the ass, a year in the military for a daily allowance that won’t buy you a pack of smokes. But our Luca, he knows how to work the system, getting them to pay him a shitload just to boss all those dickheads around.”

  A Vespa swerved skillfully around us, leaving us in its nauseating wake. How could someone like Luca Falcone, surely a bona fide conscientious objector, voluntarily join the army? Luca with the wild hair, Luca the metalhead, the calligrapher, the tarot reader, the mind reader? And anyway, none of this was meant to begin until after graduation, right?

  “Did he tell you all this himself?”

  “I heard it straight from the falcon’s mouth.” At his pun on Luca’s last name, Tonino burst into hoarse laughter, but I must have looked humorless, if not distressed, because before leaving he pulled from his wallet a slip of paper with Luca’s phone number in Varese.

  Afterward I stood there steeping in that smog, still holding on to that pointless series of numbers. First his escape to Greece, and now this. How vain I was to have thought I reserved a special relationship with Luca, to think I could possibly interpret his hypnotic glances. In the end, I didn’t know who the real Luca Falcone really was. Maybe none of us did.

  The only certainty was that Luca was outrageously independent. He challenged people’s expectations of him by doing the exact opposite. After his parents had run for their lives up north, Luca returned south. While all of us were studying for exams, he was teaching himself to read the runic alphabet. After the ceiling had collapsed and we were all looking for a new home, he was ferrying off to Greece. And while Pietro and I were in Greece, as if merely chasing his shadow, Luca was already off getting a job. Now there was someone who knew how to break the mold and when to move on; he had the courage to make a clean break—with places, with people, with me.

  And there I was, still in the Spanish Quarter.

  19

  OUT OF SHEER PRACTICE we became masters of time. Time obeyed us, stretching out upon request and shortening when necessary. The trip Pietro had to make to Monte San Rocco flew by, whereas the afternoons spent studying broke themselves down into minutes packed with valuable facts. We were obsessively collecting signatures in our exam booklets like stamps in an album. Yet we still had time left over: for dinners with our friends, often mixed with Gabriele and Madeleine’s crowd; for film festivals with heavily discounted student tickets; for open-air concerts organized by the students’ association. We were especially masters of the night, at least in the city center. Piazza Bellini, with its mood lighting, exotic music, and risqué conversations, put the darkness in time-out like a child who has pushed their limits and hasn’t earned the right to stay up with the grown-ups. It was too snobby, though, for Pietro, who preferred Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, where a bar had recently opened with hours suited to those who could choose whether to get up early or not get up at all.

  I had so much time, in fact, that I willingly handed it out to the homeless man on Via Roma. A couple times a week I’d bring him breakfast, for which he always thanked me with great courtesy and humility. One day I found him in the usual spot not in the morning but in the afternoon. I crossed the boulevard on purpose to say hello, although out of pure habit I said buongiorno. A broad smile splintered his face, revealing teeth I no longer found upsetting. But still there was something different about him that day, at that late hour . . .

  “Would you like a coffee or something to eat?”

  “Already eat. Thank you, thank you.”

  My eyes darted to the blanket spread out beside him. His dog was digging into her belly with her teeth—fleas or maybe mange. A moth-eaten sweater had slunk off her back, for the cold weather was jus
t around the corner. Then it registered. “Where are her puppies?”

  “Away, away!” I could tell he wanted to say something else but the language was a barbed-wire fence he couldn’t cross. When I asked him if they’d found good homes, he didn’t answer but simply wiped his grubby forehead with a trembling hand.

  “Are you cold?” I asked, addressing him for the first time with the informal “you,” as I would a friend.

  “Fine, fine. At evening I go center. Give food. Sometimes shower.”

  There are times when the body acts and the mind just sits back and watches. Thus, as if suddenly overcome with exhaustion, I sat on the ground beside the man’s wheelchair, right on top of an offensive accumulation of urban grime. From that angle it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was half a man. His legs had been lopped off just above the knee as brutally as a sword cut. They scared me. And all the while, whooshing past us without a care in the world were pants, skirts, shoes.

  “Signore, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what happened to you?”

  He turned to me with a paternal expression, or maybe it only seemed that way because I was looking up at him instead of the other way around. “I?”

  “Yes, you. Why are you here?”

  The man made a sweeping motion over his legs with both hands, like a magician about to make an object reappear. “Come Italy long, long time. From Germany. I priest. Understand?” He thrust a finger into his chest, like he was accusing himself of something.

  “You were a priest before?”

  He didn’t reply, burying his gaze once more in the pedestrian traffic. That seemed to be the extent of his story; it was up to me now to fill in the gaps. But I didn’t know how. What kind of priest leaves his vocation? One that, for some unknown reason, stops believing in that miracle he thought he could bask in, like a cat in the sun, until the day he died and even afterward?

  I was just about to get back up when the man directed his blue, blue eyes back to me, a purifying rather than an icy stare. “Then catastrof. Big catastrof!”

  “What happened, an accident?”

  “Catastrof!” he repeated, a frightening howl of desperation. But it wasn’t madness. The homeless man said nothing more and, having no coins left to give him, I stood up and headed home.

  There was not a single tree in the Spanish Quarter, nor much sunlight, with which to judge the change of seasons. To see the transformation taking place you had to look at the fruit stands: at the melons magically changing into pumpkins, the plums into persimmons. You could see it in the housewives inside their vasci: no longer wooden clogs and light, pastel dresses but lined slippers and formless cardigans in earth tones. You could see it in the resigned expression on people’s faces, ancient features built to grin and bear it. You could see it in the way that, no sooner had the siesta ended, the night sky was a lid closing you in a catacomb. A cold dampness would then seep into your bones. But at 33 Via De Deo, Pietro and I didn’t really feel the cold. Not only did we have a gas heater in the living room, but between the sheets we created more heat than a copper bed warmer. From there, the lights of the port looked like distant bonfires slowly burning away in the night.

  Nobody ended up moving back into the old house, forever fossilizing the sweet memories I had of the place. The repairs were taking too long and the owners had meanwhile upped the rent, for, never ones to miss a get-rich-quick opportunity, they reasoned that with those shiny new tiles the house was sure to make a fine impression now. So it was that the boys decided to find a new place with Davide in the Sanità district. And so it was that, just before Christmas, they invited me and Pietro over for a Sunday meal. I had no doubt, indeed I hoped, that they would serve nothing fancier than spaghetti with puttanesca sauce.

  It was a long way on foot and the weather was unseasonably warm. Via San Gregorio Armenio was packed with miniature nativity scenes for sale, and from the other narrow streets of the historic center came wafts of roasted chestnuts and blizzards of light from enormous snowflakes strung between balconies. There were even a few women in fur coats, probably rabbit fur dyed to look like mink, because if a lady couldn’t wear hers at Christmastime, then when would she ever be able to wear it? And in the midst of all that overheated humanity slipped a cool and silent car, a mobster’s no doubt. The masses split as they would for a coffin, and as the car drove through the only thing they were able to see in its darkened windows were their own expressions of awe and deference at that brush with death.

  “Now that’s a car,” said Pietro.

  “Paid for in blood, though.”

  “Look, baby, today I’d settle for one like Francesco’s. My legs are killing me walking around like a gypsy.”

  I didn’t say anything. It was hard to say what sickened me more: that black stallion pumped with steroids or Francesco’s blue station wagon, which on the outside looked like a practical family car but on the inside had that bitter smell of brand-new things that overpowers the sweet smell of dreams. That car was reparation for a life unlived, but I knew Pietro didn’t see it like that.

  Once inside the Sanità, we nearly got lost. Passersby eyed us suspiciously, even in the deli where we stopped to buy bread and wine moments before it closed. Pietro didn’t stoop to asking the way, instead muttering the boys’ directions under his breath. Finally we spotted the landmark we’d been told to look for, the skeleton of a burned-out Vespa. And there in fact beside it was the right building number, 17, unlucky since Greek times and slapped onto the stone in red paint as if to mark it with a cross.

  There were no names, no intercom. Our doubts as to whether we’d found the right place disappeared only on the fifth floor, where a semiopen door released the feral odor of marijuana and the feedback from an amplifier. “Hey, boys,” said Pietro, walking in, “did someone mistake your intercom for a laptop and run off with it?”

  Davide turned off the amplifier and Angelo put down the electric guitar to greet us. Tonino came out from behind the stove, his glasses fogged up from cooking. “It’s better to be anonymous around these parts.”

  “Alcoholics Anonymous,” said Davide, and we all laughed.

  “But the intercom’s not the biggest pain in the butt,” said Angelo, serious now as he tweaked his nose ring. “The real problem is the phone. Telecom won’t connect it.”

  “Why not?” I said. “You’re model citizens.”

  “Because you know what our delightful neighbors do? They get on the phone and call their uncle, their cousin, their grandfather, their mother-in-law’s sister in Argentina; they talk for four hours and then conveniently forget to pay the bill. And in these dark and winding streets, who’s going to ever track them down?”

  “Leeches,” muttered Tonino. “We were better off in the Quartieri.”

  After a quick tour of the house, it was lunchtime. Much of my relationship with the boys played itself out around the table. Davide fit easily into that scene, so this meal too felt just like old times: Angelo stealing olives off my plate; Tonino cursing about politics; the conversation turning, in accordance with male tradition, to digestion and then inevitably to sex; the wine spilling on the tablecloth and the bread mopping it up. I didn’t ask them about their classes or even Tonino’s Sanskrit exam. It was obvious that in that household studying was a low priority, and I didn’t feel like spurring them on, not even for fun.

  After a coffee we all sank into a comfortable, well-worn silence. Davide got up somewhat lethargically to tune the electric guitar. Tonino lit a cigarette, as did Pietro as he pulled my feet up onto his lap and undid my shoelaces. Angelo started rolling a joint, but with that blond mop of hair and that face it all looked very innocent. Outside the open balcony it was a beautiful sunny day. But the city showed few vital signs, and even that apartment was at risk of falling into the Sunday coma. It was like a second hand that’s stuck and goes tick tock but without moving forward, an immobility that made me itchy. I could hardly remember: Had it been like this in the old house too? All th
at wasted sunshine. Now I craved only to be outside, to shake off that contagious drowsiness and go for a walk.

  “Where are you guys spending Christmas?” Angelo asked, lighting up.

  It was a topic the two of us had been able to avoid so far, but Pietro answered, “Well, Monte San Rocco, of course. You pretty much have to spend it with the old folks, don’t you?”

  “Fuck me,” said Tonino, “the most traditional event of the year with your future in-laws. Maybe they’ll take you to midnight mass too. What a bowl of cherries that’ll be.”

  I heard Davide from the other side of the room say, “It’ll make you want to slit your wrists.”

  “Heddi’s tough, though,” Pietro hastened to say. “She’ll get through it.”

  It was at once an invitation and a compliment, but it gave me a start. I said under my breath, “No, not Christmas, Pietro. I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Pietro looked hurt. “Where were you thinking of spending it then?”

  “It’s just a couple of days. I’ll stay in Naples and study or something. Or I’ll go to Castellammare. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “C’mon, baby, it’s Christmas. We have to be together. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”

  When I looked up, I could see the boys had discreetly removed themselves, Angelo to the couch to nurse his joint and Tonino to the kitchen to noisily pile up plates as if to test their resistance. I stood up to give him a hand.

  “Sit down, gorgeous. You’re a guest,” said Tonino, heading back my way. He too hurled his weight onto the couch, deflating the cushions and sullying them further with his shoes. “Besides, Angelo does the chores around here.”

  Angelo groaned with annoyance. A curl of smoke uncoiled toward the ceiling before spreading into a mushroom cloud that remained trapped in the room. I stared at the joint he held so delicately between his fingers like a fountain pen.

  “Can I try?”

  Everyone, even Davide, turned to look at me, dumfounded. Tonino sat up straight on the couch.