Lost in the Spanish Quarter

by Heddi Goodrich

  Gabriele and I tagged along as the guide led us to an adjoining square cave. Almost the entire floor space was taken up by a pool of water, which straightened our group into a row of candles along the edge. A bare lightbulb hung over the pool, coloring it a chemical green that bloomed with circles every time a drop of water fell from the ceiling. They went plip plop like the pattering of keys on an untuned piano.

  “This is a cistern, an example of what the Greeks excavated first, around 470 BC,” said the guide. “The first cisterns collected rainwater, but the network of cisterns and tunnels was subsequently expanded by the Romans with the introduction of the aqueduct.” She went on to talk about the close connection between the water supply system belowground and the city aboveground. In the not-so-distant past, most buildings in Naples had a well in the courtyard, which the residents used to draw their household water directly from the ancient underground cisterns, like this one. “Hence the local superstition of the munaciello, who comes into one’s house up through the well system.”

  “Excuse me, what’s a munaciello?” asked the girl from before.

  “According to an ancient myth, it’s an ancient little spirit wearing a monk’s cape who sneaks into your house at night to wreak havoc: he breaks dishes, jumps on the bed, rings the doorbell, hides things, and so on. That’s why even today Neapolitans believe that when you move into a new house you must always leave some money out for the munaciello, so that he brings you good luck and not tragedy.”

  She pronounced this last word with foreboding measure, perhaps intentionally. She was standing on the edge of the cistern, the rippling water creating a play of light on her otherwise indiscernible face. “The well was also an access point to the tuff underground to be used as construction material,” she continued, “and indeed few buildings would have been built at all without a well, which allowed the locals to pull up the tuff block by block, with their bare hands.”

  “Just like you were saying,” I said excitedly to Gabriele, who showed no sign of remembering our distant conversation. He too seemed absorbed by the tour that only a short time ago I’d been reluctant to take part in.

  “Since ancient times Naples hasn’t felt the need to borrow from elsewhere—neither construction material nor fashion nor philosophy of life,” added our guide. “You could say that Naples was born of itself and therefore doesn’t owe anybody anything. This autonomy, this self-referentiality, is intrinsic to its origins and inevitably binds Neapolitans to the land under their feet.” I struggled to follow her line of reasoning, but it did seem to me that she was speaking off the cuff, something I became even more convinced of when she added, in a low voice as if speaking to herself, “It’s that intimate relationship between the sunshine outside and the darkness below, between what is out in the open and what is hidden beneath the surface . . . between what is spoken and what is left unsaid.”

  She left no room for questions as she ducked her head, exiting the cistern through the small opening. We followed her out, deferentially stepping through the slender passageway. Where it widened, the guide stopped to raise her candle above her, instructing us to follow suit, but the ceiling was lost to the darkness regardless. “This here is the first access point we had to this part of the underground city. But it was filled with debris and garbage. It took us months just to clear it all.”

  “You mean you did it?” someone asked.

  “With the Association, of course. Someone had to do it. If we just sit around waiting for the city politicians, we’ll be waiting till kingdom come,” she said impatiently half in dialect, proving she wasn’t one to be messed with.

  “So the steps went all the way down here?”

  “Steps? Not on your life. We lowered ourselves down here with ropes, harnesses, picks.”

  Judging from the ensuing silence that fell over the tunnel, this gave the guide more than just poetic authority. As we followed her through the buried Greek marketplace, we took delicate, padded steps over the rounded stone slabs. After a while she halted before a narrow shaft to conclude rather formulaically, “There is still a great deal of work to be done to reclaim the underground city and make it accessible to the public. This site is of incalculable value both for furthering our archaeological knowledge of Naples as well as for fostering a greater appreciation of the city among Neapolitans themselves. Thank you for your contribution. This is the way out. But I have to ask: Is anyone here claustrophobic?”

  “I’m a hypochondriac,” Gabriele whispered to me. “Close enough.”

  “Don’t lose sight of each other,” were the guide’s last words as she dipped back into the shadows from whence she’d come.

  The tour was over. I had learned some fascinating facts, yet I realized I was disappointed. I’d squeezed through one of the city’s ancient veins, which through an intricate circuit fed the very heart of Naples, but I was none the wiser. If anything, I was more of an outsider than ever. A tourist.

  Gabriele and I were the last to step into the shaft, which by its very nature thinned the group into a broken line. In front of me Gabriele’s form pulsated to the rhythm of the flame as the yellow tuff tightened harder and harder around us, scraping our clothes. The stone walls, chiseled but smooth to the touch, shot upward until they disappeared in a blackness so thick my eyes ached trying to penetrate it. I hoped Pietro was wrong about the crickets.

  At one point the walls narrowed to such a degree that we had to walk sideways. We inched along like that, with awkward little steps, the rock rubbing itself against us in a sort of opportunistic embrace that reminded me of the scirocco. Yet I found it fitting somehow that I was being forced to walk like a crab, to bend myself to the will of the rock.

  All of a sudden, like the tide abruptly pulling away, I felt my blood pressure plummet from head to toe, the way I imagined it might feel to be drunk and not realize it until you’ve stood up and it hits you like a sledgehammer. I was sure I was about to fall, or was already falling, and the walls seemed to have come to life; they were moving and between them I was nothing, just an empty shell.

  An earthquake?

  Gabriele had stopped too. “Damn, what an idiot!” he yelled, looking down at his hand.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Not badly,” he answered, but there was blood on his knuckles speckled with yellow stone. He’d scratched his hand, he explained, while trying to keep his candle from falling. “I’m all right. Let’s keep going. We shouldn’t fall behind the others.”

  “You’re bleeding, Gabriele. Let’s clean it up first.”

  He protested as a matter of politeness, for he was already reaching his hand toward me. The tightness of the tunnel made it impossible to move naturally, and I had to maneuver to pass my candle into Gabriele’s decent hand so that I could pull a paper tissue from my pocket. It was a good scrape and I tried to blot the wound without rubbing the sand in further. Then I took out a fresh tissue to wrap around his knuckles.

  “Give it here,” he said, pointing with noticeable shame to the used tissue soaked in blood.

  “It doesn’t gross me out, Gabriele. Your blood, Pietro’s blood, there’s not much difference really.”

  He turned to look at me, the rock a pillow against his cheek. He said, “I understand why my brother is so in love with you.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes. The unstable light from our candles accentuated Gabriele’s aquiline features that he shared with Pietro. We were shoulder to shoulder as though together we had to bear the weight of the rock, and my breathing and his seemed to synchronize as we inhaled the uncensured, unadorned smell of the earth. I thought I’d repressed the memory of him asking me for a kiss, a real kiss, but no, I remembered it perfectly and so did he. I was struck by an incredibly vivid thought, almost a premonition, that Gabriele was going to reach his bleeding hand behind my neck and press his mouth to mine. I was seized by an intoxicating fear.

  It was Gabriele who broke the tension by letting out a little sigh and lowe
ring his gaze. “My brother has always been lucky in life.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “I don’t know, Eddie. I have a lot of friends, a lot of books . . . all the wine I could possibly wish for. In Naples I’ve finally found a place where I can belong. I should be happy, but something important is missing from my life.”

  “What’s missing?”

  “Someone who loves me.”

  His confession pained me somehow, and all I managed to say, a bit inanely, was, “At least here you’re spoiled for choice. Naples is full of beautiful, intelligent girls.”

  “And boys . . .”

  I looked at him perplexed.

  “I’ve never said this to anyone, Eddie. The men I’ve loved, from a distance so far, partly I wanted to be with them and partly I wanted to be like them: handsome, sophisticated . . . I don’t even know if there’s a difference, I haven’t really gotten my head around it yet . . . I’ve also fallen in love with women, always hopelessly, always ending in utter solitude.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You see why a place like Monte San Rocco just isn’t for someone like me?” He laughed bitterly. “And I owe it all to Pietro that I was able to escape from that horrific place. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”

  “Grateful to Pietro?” Surely he meant the opposite: after all, Gabriele had been the one to coerce their parents into allowing his younger brother to study. The grateful one should have been Pietro.

  “What, he never told you this story?”

  “No,” I lied. “Tell me.”

  According to his account, Gabriele had come to the realization that the only way to rescue oneself from that small-town mentality was to earn a degree. Pietro, on the other hand, had no desire whatsoever to continue his studies after getting his diploma: he really dug his heels in. But Gabriele couldn’t tolerate the idea of letting him rot in Monte San Rocco, so he announced to their parents, who’d been more than happy for their middle son to be out of the picture, that he wasn’t going anywhere without his little brother. Knowing how much it meant to Gabriele, Pietro finally gave in and enrolled at the university too. “He sacrificed himself for me, for my dream,” Gabriele concluded.

  It was the same story I’d been told, but distorted like in one of those fun-house mirrors. Gabriele had made himself into the lead character, completely editing out Pietro’s passion for geology, not to mention his determination that had pushed him all the way to Rome. According to his story then, if it hadn’t been for his stubborn older brother, Pietro would have ended up like one of those card players in that smoky bar or, in the very best scenario, like his cousin Francesco.

  I refused to believe it. Maybe it was selective memory on Gabriele’s part, or perhaps an amalgamation of the two brothers, a narrative fusion of their dreams, desires, and destinies to the point where they couldn’t be told apart. I also considered the malicious possibility that his story was fueled by resentment toward Pietro as the favorite son (or at least he used to be) who was graduating before him even though they’d started at the same time. Yet in the candlelight as Gabriele recalled that shared past with his brother, he didn’t betray even a shadow of bitterness but only an immense and painful love.

  “I’m pleased I didn’t give up on him. Look how incredibly well he’s done.” Gabriele handed me back my candle, adding, “We should keep moving. Otherwise they’ll lock us in here.”

  “Good idea. Let’s go.”

  The truth was I couldn’t wait to walk away from all the stories whispered in the darkness of those caves—and to shake off the quiver of excitement I still felt from the kiss that never was and could never be. Because, yes, I had to admit to myself that I’d wanted my future brother-in-law to kiss me, but I didn’t know if that desire, wrong in every way and frightening in its clarity, was really due to Gabriele’s similarities with Pietro and not to all the qualities that made him different—his independence that bordered on marginalization, his pigheadedness in being true to himself at all costs, his fire burning inside that would sooner consume him than surrender to dying out.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the passageway released us from its grip and we climbed the stairs back up to the light.

  Later on I overheard on the evening news that our neighbor was watching (it was hard to miss it at that volume) that there had been a minor earthquake in the Campania region. When I mentioned this to Pietro, he downplayed it as a minor tremor: the epicenter was near Benevento and claimed only one victim. “Some old guy who dropped dead from a heart attack,” he said, blowing smoke out through our porthole window.

  “Can you maybe feel an earthquake more if you’re belowground?”

  He said it was the opposite, that the effect of an earthquake underground is one-half to one-third of the effect felt on the surface. Seismic waves, he explained, are like radio frequencies that become amplified as they travel their way up through the rock layers. Hence the sensation, and the damage, is always greater aboveground.

  Clearly what I’d experienced in Underground Naples wasn’t an earthquake. I was strangely disappointed. Disappointed that I didn’t know what an earthquake was like, and thus couldn’t even recognize one, just like I didn’t know and would never know bombings and other similar disasters except through other people’s stories. It wasn’t that I wanted to suffer, because I didn’t. I simply had the impression that happiness and true knowledge were mutually exclusive.

  Pietro must have interpreted my furrowed brow as worry because he hastened to say, “Relax, baby. The next time an earthquake hits Naples, we won’t be around. The news won’t even reach us where we are in the Outback counting kangaroos.” He drew in thirstily from his Marlboro Light. “But if there’s ever an earthquake, you know what to do, don’t you?” I shook my head. “Go stand under a doorway. If it’s built in a structural wall, the doorway is the strongest part of a building. You should have seen some of the houses destroyed in Monte San Rocco in 1980. Often all that was left was a doorframe.”

  As usual, his science managed to comfort me. “You know about so many things. You’re a natural-born scientist,” I said, not noticing immediately that in reality it wasn’t a compliment but a subtle prod. I wanted him to reconfirm his stubborn old propensity for geology; I wanted him to disprove Gabriele’s story.

  “I’m not what you think,” he said instead, putting out his cigarette to take me in his arms. “Without you, I’m a moon with no sun. I have no light of my own.”

  When Pietro kissed my neck, once and then again, I knew how the evening would turn out. As I kissed him back, through the window I caught a glimpse of the volcano encrusted in lights: the illegal houses tempting fate on a daily basis. Everyone knew that Vesuvius would sooner or later lose its patience and blow its lid. So then could those people on its flanks truly be said to be living in fear of a terrible disaster and not in anticipation of a spectacular show? Perhaps the events we fear the most, I mused, are paradoxically those that deep down we want to happen. It was as if the most primitive and unmentionable part of us—maybe the amygdala, that impulsive and preverbal almond nestled in our brain—was trying to preempt tragedy by saying, Just do it. Go ahead and get it over with.

  From: heddi@yahoo.com

  To: tectonic@tin.it

  Sent: August 27

  Dear Pietro,

  I’m back in New Zealand safe and sound. You see, there was no need to worry about the flight in the end? I just curled up with a novel, with my thoughts and fantasies . . .

  I realize now that I wasn’t psychologically prepared at all to see you again. My attempt to defend myself with Zen was an abysmal failure. But how could I be expected to remain indifferent to the sound of your voice calling up to me from the street? When I looked over the balcony, it was like falling not from the second floor but from a great, great height. And then when I saw that flash of silver, the ring on your finger, let’s just say that I was the one who felt like a traitor for having sent you back your
sun years ago, for having lost all trust in fate. But maybe there are some things I shouldn’t admit to you.

  The day we spent together wasn’t a day but a week, a month, a lifetime. So many unexpected confessions, so many old, and new, feelings . . . It’s not a day I can easily erase from my memory, and I don’t even know if I want to. I’m attaching the snapshot we took of ourselves down on the beach at Puolo. Sorry that the colors came out looking a bit unnatural, or maybe we actually did get a bit sunburned. I forgot to tell you that from there it’s only a short distance to la Regina Giovanna, at least by sea. Do you remember when we went there with Sonia and Carlo?

  As you know, the next day I met up with Gabriele in Naples. Now I wonder if you two arranged it like that on purpose so that your paths wouldn’t cross at all: you driving away in your flashy car (sorry to be so resentful) and him getting off the train all disheveled. I was already missing you and so straightaway I started talking your brother’s head off, about you. Gabriele must have thought I was crazy, though he didn’t say so. He seemed to understand my need to let it all out. I talked about you in the little streets around the city center, I talked about you at La Campagnola restaurant. The food was amazing, I even drank a bit, and finally I got to the end of all that latent energy that had me so fired up. Gabriele didn’t talk much about himself: Am I wrong or is he more disheartened than before? But even you may not know the answer to that . . .

  Naples hasn’t changed. Maybe it’s true that the city always stays the same and we’re the ones who change. But what’s wrong with not changing, with being consistent with one’s nature till the very end? (Even if, in the case of Naples, being consistent also means sometimes being inconsistent, unpredictable, and barking mad?) In order to be true to yourself, you first have to know who you really are, to be able to look in the mirror and recognize yourself . . .

  Anyway, our old place hasn’t changed, either, at least from the outside. Gabriele told me that he couldn’t handle seeing our building again and that he’d wait for me at the café at the bottom of the street. So I walked up Via De Deo by myself: funny, I hadn’t remembered it quite that steep. Did you know that the vegetable grocer who was always trying to rip us off is still there? And did you know that 33 is still my lucky number? Maybe it was a good thing that the gate was locked. I didn’t want to get emotional, I wanted to be strong for Gabriele.