Naples '44

by Norman Lewis

  By the first week in January, a number of attractive young Neapolitan prostitutes had been rounded up, and of these twenty were selected, who, while showing no outward sign of infection, were believed by the medical men called in to co-operate with the A-Force scheme to be suffering from an exceptionally virulent and virtually ineradicable form of syphilis.

  They were removed to a guarded villa in the Vomero, pampered in every way, given all the army white bread and spaghetti they could eat, taken on a day-trip to Capri – although of necessity denied any form of medical attention, apart from regular inspections to see that no unsightly chancres had developed. The news was then broken to them what was expected of them, and the trouble began. However many inducements were offered, they were naturally terrified at the idea of crossing the lines in the care of A-Force agents. Payment was to be made in the form of gold coins to be carried in the rectum, as well as original lira notes; but handsome as it was, the girls knew only too well how harsh was the economic climate of the North by comparison with Naples, and how hard and how risky it would be to make a living once the original bonuses were spent. One girl recruited from a staff of twelve resident prostitutes employed by the Albergo Vittoria, Sorrento, taken over as a rest hotel for American personnel, was accustomed to receive 1000 lire a night. In Rome she knew she would be lucky to earn 100 lire, and could not be convinced that her condition would long escape discovery by the German doctors.

  But the main obstacle to the enterprise appears to have been an emotional one. All these girls had pimps from whom they could not bear to be parted. Some of the pimps were big enough in the scale of their professions, too, to be able to buy favours, and they were beginning to make trouble through AMGOT. Finally, like so many wild A-Force schemes, the thing was dropped, and the girls were then simply turned loose on the streets of Naples. The situation now is that as many hospital beds in the Naples area are occupied by sufferers from the pox as from wounds and all the other sicknesses put together.

  March 5

  Line-crossers become more and more active. Many of these people are driven by the determination – whatever the risk incurred – to be reunited with their families in German-occupied territory. No doubt just as many cross the lines coming in our direction. There is also an ever-increasing number of couriers, some working for the intelligence of either or both sides and others who simply carry letters backwards and forwards for financial reward. They work through agents who collect the letters from the ordinary Italian public. In the past all this was done with great secrecy, but now the line-crossers and their collectors are becoming careless. Only last week Signora Lola reported to me that if one wanted to send a letter to Rome a jeweller in the Via Roma would arrange for this to be done for a payment of 200 lire. From the security point of view this is a catastrophic situation, and one assumes that enemy agents in the liberated area have not the slightest difficulty in passing across the lines whatever information they may wish to send by using these people.

  Within twenty-four hours of receiving Lola’s information and before any action could be taken, both Lattarullo and Losurdo supplied the name of a letter-carrier – Giovanni Patierno – who was soon tracked down. As it turned out, Patierno was being used as a guide by A-Force agents, and had also been involved in the ill-conceived scheme to take the twenty prostitutes infected with syphilis across the line and deliver them to Rome. With A-Force’s unwonted collaboration Patierno was picked up this morning in the Café Savoia, Piazza Dante – a rendezvous, it appears, of such dubious characters. The occasion was a picturesque one. We borrowed a half-dozen Pubblica Sicurezza agents, all of them dressed like detectives in an old René Clair film, in boaters, bow-ties, and in two cases even spats. These surrounded the café, charged in with drawn pistols, and arrested everyone in sight. Besides Patierno, several other line-crossers were pulled in, but as they all worked for A-Force, they were let go. Patierno, charged with his misdeeds, instantly caved in, took us back to his flat and showed us a stove full of charred remnants of the letters he had been paid up to a thousand lire to deliver. He was a horrible, weasel-faced little man. It is remarkable how really despicable villainy like this shows so often in the face. A few letters collected that day hadn’t been destroyed. They were from the social, commercial and religious elite of Naples, and it has been decided that nothing will be done about them, although under the proclamation huge penalties are prescribed for illegalities of this kind.

  The collecting agents were in a different case, and we were flabbergasted to discover that one of these was the famous midget gynaecologist Professore Dottore Salerno – already known to Parkinson – who is said to employ a tiny stepladder to work at his gynaecologist couch. Salerno is supposed to come from one of the celebrated families of cabinet-makers of Sorrento, whose eldest sons traditionally became surgeons, having been encouraged by the traditions of the family trade to develop extreme manual dexterity at an early age. In his case this traditional skill has been fostered by Salerno’s ability to work with both hands where necessary in the female pelvic cavity. We called forthwith on the Professore, shook the tiny paw he extended, and I looked on and listened while he and Parkinson exchanged endless courtesies before the bad news was broken. The Professore was told that we should be obliged to search his elegant curio-packed house, and not a muscle moved in the wizened little monkey face. While the search went on the Professore skipped along at our side, entertaining us with a stream of urbane and witty conversation. Nothing was found. Salerno was far too wily a bird to be caught like this. Nor in the absence of concrete and damning evidence could a man of the Professore’s social status and power be successfully prosecuted. We apologised, shook hands once more, and said goodbye, and the Professore invited us to dinner. A bishop from Sicily would be there. One wondered why on earth a man of Salerno’s standing had ever got himself mixed up in a thing like this.

  From the Professore’s house we went straight to Rufo, the jeweller’s shop in the Via Roma, and here we were luckier, finding several letters awaiting collection by Patierno. As for the deplorable Patierno himself, there was nothing really we could do about him, as the fraud he’d practised on his fellow citizens was no business of ours. He was therefore released, and left to the fury of his victims, who would certainly not be long in finding out what had happened.

  March 13

  The war on the black market is being conducted with spurts of ferocity, but the victims who fall are always and only those who have no one to speak out for them, and cannot bribe their way out of their predicament. Whole shiploads of army stores are spirited away, and items from these can be bought by every Italian civilian who has the money to pay. I am convinced it would be impossible to stop and search a single Neapolitan in the street without finding that he was wearing an overcoat or jacket made from army blankets, or army underclothing, army socks, or at the least had American cigarettes in his pocket.

  Attended yesterday at the Castello Capuano for the trial of the Rufo brothers charged with acting as agents for the smuggling of letters into enemy-held territory. This proved to be a farce. The prosecutor had not familiarised himself with the case, did not know which of the persons had been brought to trial and had lost the translations of the letters. Result: the Rufos got off with two months apiece. Another Commendatore of the Crown of Italy got a year for possession of a large quantity of stolen Allied supplies, but was released on bail. At the appeal he will be defended by Lelio Porzio, who now charges 20,000 lire, and is certain to get the man off.

  The reverse of the coin is the case of the dock-workers rounded up by the MPs and found in possession of rations. They had broken open a case and helped themselves to about half a dozen tins apiece. One of them was put in the dock to be got rid of while legal arguments were going on over the Rufos. He was chained up in the usual way, weeping desperately, clearly knowing what was coming. It took the judge minutes to find him guilty and sentence him to ten years. ‘What’s going to happen to my poor family?’ he
shrieked. He was led away sobbing loudly. A sickening experience.

  March 14

  Today another horrible example of what can happen to the poor when the army decides on a counteroffensive on the black market. A boy of about ten was brought into the 92nd General Hospital by his distracted mother. He’d had three fingers chopped off. These she handed over, wrapped up in newspaper, with the request that they be sewn on again. Somebody had told her that only the British were capable of this kind of surgery. The story was that this little boy was one of a juvenile gang that specialised in jumping into the backs of army lorries when held up in traffic and snatching up anything pilferable. We heard that they had been dealt with by having a man with a bayonet hidden under a tarpaulin in the back of every supply-lorry. As soon as a boy grabbed the tailboard to haul himself in, the waiting soldier chopped down at his hands. God knows how many children have lost their fingers in this way.

  March 15

  A bad raid last night with heavy civilian casualties, as usual, in the densely populated port areas. I was sent this morning to investigate the reports of panic, and frantic crowds running through the streets crying, ‘Give us peace,’ and ‘Out with all the soldiers.’ In Santa Lucia, home territory of the Neapolitan ballad, I saw a heart-rending scene. A number of tiny children had been dug out of the ruins of a bombed building and lay side by side in the street. Where presentable, their faces were uncovered, and in some cases brand-new dolls had been thrust into their arms to accompany them to the other world. Professional mourners, hired by the locality to reinforce the grief of the stricken families, were running up and down the street, tearing at their clothing and screaming horribly. One man climbed into the rubble and was calling into a hole where he believed his little boy was trapped under hundreds of tons of masonry, begging him not to die before he could be dug out. ‘Hang on, son. Only a few minutes longer now. We’ll have you out of there in a minute. Please don’t die.’ The Germans murder only the poor in these indiscriminate raids, just as we did.

  There has been an issue to the troops of leaflets printed in Italian to be handed to any tout approaching a soldier to offer the services of a prostitute. It begins: ‘I am not interested in your syphilitic sister.’ Whoever dreamed this one up clearly had no idea of some of the implications or the possible consequences. Remarks about sisters are strictly taboo to Southern Italians, and the final insult tu sora (thy sister) is calculated instantly to produce a duel or vendetta. Many soldiers have already handed over these dangerous notices to people who accosted them for reasons other than prostitution, and there are bound to be casualties.

  March 19

  Today Vesuvius erupted. It was the most majestic and terrible sight I have ever seen, or ever expect to see. The smoke from the crater slowly built up into a great bulging shape having all the appearance of solidity. It swelled and expanded so slowly that there was no sign of movement in the cloud which, by evening, must have risen thirty or forty thousand feet into the sky, and measured many miles across.

  The shape of the eruption that obliterated Pompeii reminded Pliny of a pine tree, and he probably stood here at Posillipo across the bay, where I was standing now and where Nelson and Emma Hamilton stood to view the eruption of their day, and the shape was indeed like that of a many-branching tree. What took one by surprise about Pliny’s pine was that it was absolutely motionless, not quite painted – because it was three-dimensional – but moulded on the sky; an utterly still, and utterly menacing shape. This pine, too, trailed uncharacteristically a little tropical liana of heavy ash, which fell earthwards here and there from its branches in imperceptible motion.

  At night the lava streams began to trickle down the mountain’s slopes. By day the spectacle was calm but now the eruption showed a terrible vivacity. Fiery symbols were scrawled across the water of the bay, and periodically the crater discharged mines of serpents into a sky which was the deepest of blood reds and pulsating everywhere with lightning reflections.

  March 20

  Today the sky was fogged over and ash was falling, and everything – the buildings, streets and fields – was covered to a depth of a half-inch in a smooth grey pall. At Sorrento, and on Capri and Ischia the ash lay already in places several inches deep. There was fear for the safety of military installations in areas such as Portici and Torre del Greco which always suffer the worst effects of an eruption of Vesuvius, and I was instructed to find out what the prospects were – if these could in any way be gauged – of a worsening in the situation.

  I drove out in a slow, grey, snowfall to visit Professor Saraceno, a leading seismologist who showed himself pleasantly excited at the prospect of the vindication of certain of his theories. He said that the destruction of Pompeii probably followed the undercutting by the eruption of those days of part of the crater wall. This eventually fell into the crater, sealing off for a time the eruptive forces until such time as pressure built up to produce an explosion which discharged millions of tons of pulverised rock into the air. From an inspection he had made of the crater some months previously, he believed a disaster of the same kind could be repeated, and I got the impression that he would not be wholly dismayed if it were. I thanked him sincerely, and repaid his advice with a tin of corned beef, which he accepted with gratitude.

  March 22

  An increase in the violence of the eruption, and also of the population’s fears. Following the news that San Sebastiano was about to be carried away by the lava stream, and Cercola was threatened, I was sent to get an on-the-spot report.

  Sticky going all the way through the ash, with several skids. At San Giorgio a roadblock had been put up and all vehicles not concerned with the emergency were being turned back. There were reports in this area of showers of the small volcanic stones technically known as lapilli, and here and there larger rocks had fallen, causing so far one death. At this point I was right under the great grey cloud, full of swellings and protuberances, like some colossal pulsating brain.

  Reaching San Sebastiano, it seemed incredible that all its people could have consented to go on living in such a position. The town was built at the very tip of a tongue of land until now spared by the volcano, but completely outflanked by the tremendous lava fields left by the eruption of 1872, and in effect lying in a valley between them. There were nine major eruptions in the last century alone, lava being on several occasions discharged in this direction, while lava streams have frequently burst forth from lateral openings at lower levels on the slopes. Here, stranded as it was in the no-man’s-land of the volcano, any outsider would have predicted the town’s eventual destruction as a matter of mathematical certainty, yet apparently no citizen of San Sebastiano would admit even to the possibility of this. Civic permanency is a matter of religious faith. Buildings are solidly constructed to withstand the centuries. Slow-growing trees are planted. Main-street businesses advertise with pride the age of their establishment. The population creeps up numerically and the young people stay on. All windows face westwards in hope across green valleys towards Naples, and the houses turn their backs on the grey eternal cone of the volcano. San Sebastiano fights back with colour against the ashen desert of old lava that almost encircles it. Even in wartime I found it a well-painted place, with geraniums in window-boxes everywhere, and an additional liveliness provided by the political parties with their posters and their flags.

  At the time of my arrival the lava was pushing its way very quietly down the main street, and about fifty yards from the edge of this great, slowly-shifting slagheap, a crowd of several hundred people, mostly in black, knelt in prayer. Holy banners and church images were held aloft, and acolytes swung censers and sprinkled holy water in the direction of the cinders. Occasionally a grief-crazed citizen would grab one of the banners and dash towards the wall of lava, shaking it angrily as if to warn off the malignant spirits of the eruption. The spectacle of the eruption was totally unexpected. I had been prepared for rivers of fire, but there was no fire and no burning anywhere – o
nly the slow, deliberate suffocation of the town under millions of tons of clinkers. The lava was moving at a rate of only a few yards an hour, and it had covered half the town to a depth of perhaps thirty feet. A complete, undamaged cupola of a church, severed from the submerged building, jogged slowly towards us on its bed of cinders. The whole process was strangely quiet. The black slagheap shook, trembled and jerked a little and cinders rattled down its slope. A house, cautiously encircled and then overwhelmed, disappeared from sight intact, and a faint, distant grinding sound followed as the lava began its digestion. As I watched, a tall building housing what was clearly the town’s smart café took the pressure of the lava’s movement. For perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes it resisted, then the juddering, trembling spasm of the lava seemed to pass into its fabric, and it, too, began to tremble, before its walls bulged and it went down.

  Dominant in every way, for sheer size, and the number of persons supporting the platform of the images confronting the eruption, was that of San Sebastiano himself, but wandering away into a side street, I noticed the presence of another image, also with numerous attendants, which was covered with a white sheet. One of the Carabinieri patrolling on the lookout for looters told me that this was an image of San Gennaro, smuggled in from Naples on an outside chance that it might be of some use if all else failed. It had been covered with a sheet to avoid offence to the confraternity of San Sebastiano and the Saint himself who might have been expected to resent this intrusion into his territory. As the last resort only, San Gennaro would be brought into the open and implored to perform a miracle. The Carabiniere did not think this would be necessary, because it was clear to him that the lava stream was slowing down.