He conferred with Spada and went with him to the old church to see that everything was ready. What he saw pleased him, and Spada’s gentle face lit up with pathetic pride in his handiwork.
On the cold tiles of the ancient apse, there was a row of old sacks filled with sweet new straw. Each sack had a grey blanket, thin and threadbare. There was a rough table and one chair. There was a small pile of firewood. Best of all there was a gunnysack full of macaroni and a can of tomato paste. There were cook pots and a pile of rusty tin dishes and a few forks and spoons that had seen better days.
The two priests looked at one another and smiled wanly. It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. The stable was ready for the Christ-children of the bassi.
Borrelli’s shoulders shook. Spada put a gentle arm round his shoulders and led him across the apse to the altar, empty now and despoiled of its ancient glory. Together they knelt on the sanctuary steps and prayed, and the love that flowed out from them warmed the cold stones of the Church of the Mother of God.
* * *
It was late at night when Mario Borrelli went back to the scugnizzi. He had chosen this time because it was the worst time of all in the life of the urchin. The sun was gone. The commerce of the day with its thrills and triumphs and dangers was finished. The last guests were trickling out of the casinos, the theatre crowds were long since gone. The tourists were sleeping in their beds and the last jolly-boats had gone with the last load of drunken sailors. The boys would be alone again, huddling over the last pitiful coals, and when the fire died the cold and the darkness would eat into their bones and into their hearts. He knew how they felt, wretched, isolated, lost. He had felt so, himself.
He had stripped off his urchin’s rags and dressed himself in his priestly black. In his breast pocket was the small sheaf of photographs, the proof of his good faith. He walked slowly through the dark lanes of the bassi, praying a little, fearing much. A life’s work depended on the outcome of the next ten minutes.
He turned one corner, then another. He passed an ancient fountain carved with the arms of a forgotten prince. He skirted the blind wall of a church and passed a dark, evil-smelling archway. He turned into a narrow lane that opened off the alley. It was a cul-de-sac. At the end of it, just settling themselves for sleep, were the boys of his band.
They looked up when they heard his footfall, and when they saw that he was a priest, they cowered back, blank-faced and staring like small frightened animals. He took off his hat and stood looking down at them.
He grinned, cheerfully, and asked them in dialect:
“Don’t you remember me? Mario?”
They stared at him with dumb hostility. He took a torch out of his pocket and shone it on his stubbly face.
“Look! It’s really me. You know me, don’t you? You, Carlucciello? You, Tonino? You, Mozzo?”
At the sound of their names they started and stared at one another in disbelief. Carlucciello heaved himself to his feet, lounged over to him and stared insolently into his eyes. Nino, the sick one, coughed and spat and groaned unhappily. Then Carlucciello spoke:
“You look like Mario, sure. But you’re not. What do you want here? Why don’t you get back to your convent?”
The boys tittered uneasily. Carlucciello was a real guappo. He knew how to handle the priests. Borrelli grinned and fished in his pockets for the bunch of photographs. He fanned them out and handed them to Carlucciello.
“First I want to show you that I really am Mario. Go on! Take a look at those. Use the torch if you want to.”
Carlucciello took the torch and then, squatting, shone it on the photographs while the others crowded round, chattering uneasily and looking from the glossy prints to the white face of the priest standing above them. Borrelli talked, too.
“You remember now, don’t you? That’s the one that was taken the night after we met the sailors outside Filomena’s place. That’s the one where we were eating chocolate that Mozzo pinched from the American car. That’s the one where Nino was sick and he was sleeping in my arms all night. You know me, don’t you, Nino? I got the medicines for you, didn’t I, and the big pills that made you feel better?”
The small wasted child looked up at him.
“It’s Mario all right. How would he know all these things, if he was someone else?”
Carlucciello stood up again. His eyes were hostile. He handed back the prints and the torch without a word. Then, after a long minute, he spoke. His voice was quiet and angry and the little group shifted uneasily.
“All right, Mario, what’s the game? Yesterday you were one of us, today you’re a black crow. What’s the story?”
“The story comes later, Carlucciello. I’m a priest, sure. Why and how I’ll tell you later. Right now I’ve come to tell you that I found a place for us—it’s not much, but there are beds and blankets and a fire and food. It was the best I could do. Nino’s sick. If he stays on the streets, he’ll die. I’d like you to come and have a look. If it doesn’t please you, you can leave. It’s your place, not mine.”
Carlucciello’s dark face was twisted with anger and contempt. He had trusted this fellow like a brother and now he turned out to be a dirty priest. Carefully, he filled his mouth with spittle then voided it full in the face of Mario Borrelli. Then he threw back his head and laughed. The sound echoed horribly along the empty lane.
The other boys watched in tense amazement. These were the leaders. Of the two Mario was closer to them, but not this way, not in this hated garb of authority. They watched to see what he would do.
Carefully Borrelli wiped the spittle from his face. He shoved the torch into his pocket and, still holding the prints in his hand, squatted down against the wall, heedless of the mud and filth that soiled his black cassock.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled.
“If you’d done that to me yesterday, Carlucciello, I’d have broken your nose and you know it. I could still do it. You know that, too. But I’ve let you have your fun. Now sit down here and listen. If you don’t like what I say, you can go away. It doesn’t matter. But you’ve got to listen. Is that fair or isn’t it?”
The boys nodded and whispered among themselves. This was Mario all right. That was the way he used to talk—quietly, easily; and what he said, he did. They hesitated a moment then squatted beside him. Borrelli took Nino in his arms and cradled him against his breast in the old way. After a moment Carlucciello squatted again, but a little apart. He would listen, sure. But he was too wise to be taken in by shabby tricks like this one.
Borrelli sat a moment in silence, considering his words. They had to be the right words, or the boys would race away from him and he would never come near them again. He said, simply:
“I know what you’re thinking: that I want to take you into an orphanage where they close the gates and send you to school and read lectures at you and let you out to walk in a crocodile on Sundays.” He grinned cheerfully. “I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. This place I’ve got isn’t much, but it keeps the rain out. There’s straw for you to sleep on and a blanket apiece. There’s wood for a fire and enough food to give you a good meal. You can stay there the night and leave in the morning. If you like it, you can come back again, any time, for a feed and a bed. It’s better than the street, isn’t it?”
The boys nodded, silently. They looked at Carlucciello, but he was staring at the ground drawing a dirty picture in the mud with his finger.
Borrelli went on:
“I’m going there now. I don’t want to force you to come. You can follow me or stay here, just as you want. The only thing is, I’m carrying Nino. It’s a long way and he’s sick. I’m going to try to get a doctor and medicine for him. That’s all. From here on, it’s up to you.”
Abruptly he stood up, hoisted Nino on to his shoulders and carried him pick-a-back down the dark alley. He heard the whispers and the scuffling but he did not look back. He plodded onwards, head down, arms behind his back supporting the puny c
hild who clung to his shoulders like a monkey.
It was not until he reached the Via San Gennaro that he dared to look behind.
The boys were a dozen yards away, padding along his tracks. A long, long way behind, but still following, was the skinny stooping figure of Carlucciello.
His heart leapt. His mouth split into a grin as wide as a water melon and he started to whistle the jaunty little tune of the ‘Duckling and the Poppy-flower’.
The Pied Piper of Naples was bringing his children home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FIRST thing that strikes the visitor to the House of the Urchins is its poverty. This poverty is a daily indictment of the selfishness and social indifference of wealthy Italians. Here are two young men keeping 110 homeless boys and ten paid helpers for less than a dollar a day each. Try it yourself and see if you like the taste of it—a dollar a day for food, clothing, housing, light, water, gas, electricity and medical services, to say nothing of education, textbooks and all the thousand contingencies of a charitable organisation.
The place looks poor. It is an old grey building in a back street and it looks out on rows of tenements with washing strung from the balconies and chickens pecking among the dust heaps. There are bedrooms with rows of chipped iron cots, each with two blankets and a pair of unbleached sheets and a tiny towel.
There is a small dispensary where the senior boys administer first aid. There are a couple of classrooms and a dining room and a small kitchen with a cooking range but no refrigerator. There is a bathroom with a cold shower and a row of hand-and-foot basins but no hot water. No gentleman of Naples has yet thought to donate a storage system.
There is a long narrow room with a television set where the youngsters sit entranced every evening at five-thirty. There is a pocket-handkerchief yard at the back of the Church, bought with a papal grant of 5,000,000 lire. It looks a lot when you say it in lire, but it’s less than 3000 English pounds.
The boys’ food is rough but plentiful—pasta with the inevitable tomato sauce, meat once a week, soup, bread and jam, occasional fruit. If you care to turn back to the cost of living figures in the second chapter of this book, you’ll see why there isn’t much variety. You’ll also wonder how they manage so well on a dollar a day per person. The boys’ clothes are poor and patched, but warm and serviceable. They don’t wear uniforms, they can’t afford them. But when the older ones go to work they buy themselves a suit, and when the young ones go to school each has a clean smock so that he is indistinguishable from all the others of his class.
When Padre Spada takes you round on a tour of inspection, you sense the diffidence and the pathetic pride as he tells you how much has been done and with how little. There is a small grant from the funds of a papal organisation. There is no help at all from the Government or the Comune. Most of it has been paid for by the sale of scrap iron and old clothes and by a trickle of private charity, sporadic and uncertain like all good works in Naples.
The place is clean and the boys are clean, in a rough and ready sort of way. The building is centuries old. The plaster cracks off and the tufa walls shed a fine grey dust that settles on everything. The boys play in an unpaved courtyard between the high walls of crumbling tenements.
Yet they are happy. They are free to walk out at any time. They stay because they want to stay, because they have found a warmth and a love stronger even than the call of the streets. They are proud of themselves and of their house, and this pride is the more striking for the poverty in which it flourishes.
It is little, you say, pitifully little after five years’ heartbreak and sacrifice. True. But when you think of the ruinous beginning and the rank indifference of the gentry of Naples, it is a very great thing indeed.
The first bunch of uneasy urchins who came to the Materdei for food and straw beds, left the following morning. Mario Borrelli made no move to stop them. He gave them breakfast on the night’s leftovers, stuffed a few cigarettes in their tattered pockets and told them the place would be open all night and all day for any who cared to come. He told them something else, too. If any of them were picked up by the police, the others were to bring him a message and he would bail out the offender. The boys grinned uneasily. The thought was new to them but it might turn out useful. They bade him an off hand farewell and trotted off to the day’s trading in the bassi.
The next night they were back again, with a few more tattered recruits. The cook pot was bubbling and the warm blankets were inviting. The new arrivals had to double up on the straw mattresses. While they ate, Borrelli leaned against the wall and played them music on his battered accordion. There were no prayers, no lectures, only a warm diffusion of love and companionship. Borrelli is an impatient man, but the urchin life had taught him that the leaven of goodness works very, very slowly.
So they came and went and when they learnt that there was no compulsion, no hidden trickery, they stayed a little longer. Borrelli and Spada profited by the respite to add a few more comforts—a chair or two, a bed for the sick ones, an old stove, cast-off jackets and battered shoes begged from the poor. They had discreet talks with the questura to whom the boys were as troublesome as March flies. Instead of hustling them off to a house of correction, why not bring them to the Materdei and give Borrelli a chance to straighten them out?
The police were sceptical. The boys were tough little criminals. A priest was hardly equipped to handle them. Borrelli fished out his photographs and talked with passion and conviction. He, too, could be tough when he wanted to and he was not above using his knowledge of certain police peccadilloes to win his point. The questura began to see some reason in his views.
Then, one night, after the food and the music, Borrelli squatted on the floor in the centre of the circle of mattresses and laid down his proposition. His speech was couched in the vivid argot of the streets.
He had done what he promised to do. Right? He had given them food and shelter without questions and without price tickets. Right?
Right! The boys nodded agreement.
They trusted him?
Sicuro!
They knew that he didn’t play tricks or talk with two tongues?
Sicuro, again.
Now, they agreed that he knew a thing or two about earning a crust?
The boys grinned and giggled. They knew all right. He was a guappo, this one. They had seen him work.
Fine! Now this was his idea. Instead of working the streets the way they did now, instead of having to run from the police and the carabinieri, instead of having to scavenge in the filth of the lanes and be pushed about by shopkeepers and hotel porters, why not work together? Why not make a home here and organise their own trade? They could do it in the daytime and have their nights free.
“What sort of trade?” Carlucciello asked the question, but Borrelli knew it was in the minds of the others as well.
He explained, simply:
“What do you do now, you, Carlucciello, or you, Peppi? You steal stracci (old clothes) or car batteries or spare parts or carpenters’ tools. Then you sell them in the flea market up in Pugliano or in Porticino. Check?”
“Check.”
“Good. You do the same thing now. Only you make it legal. You earn the same money as you do now, probably better, because you won’t be in trouble with the police and the fences won’t be able to beat you down because you won’t be scared. You see?”
Carlucciello nodded. He saw everything, except where his stock was coming from.
Borrelli explained that, too. He would beg some of it, buy the rest. He knew how to bargain. He would get it at a good price. Then, they would clean it up and sell it at a profit. How did that sound?
The boys nodded eagerly. Even Carlucciello was impressed.
Borrelli was a wise man, and his wisdom was tempered with Southern shrewdness. He knew that he was appealing to one of the deepest desires of the scugnizzo, indeed of every Neapolitan male—the desire for respectability and a secure place in society. This thwart
ed desire produces the vanity, the cocky self-assertion which are the most irritating traits of the Southerner.
He was also appealing to their furberia, the instinct for trade and a sharp bargain. He waited; the boys waited too, watching for a lead from Carlucciello. The dark fellow was framing another question.
“It sounds fine so far. But if it doesn’t work out, we call it off, eh? We can quit whenever we like?”
“Whenever you like.”
“D’accordo!” said Carlucciello, briskly. “It’s a deal. When do we start?”
“Tomorrow,” grinned Mario Borrelli. He picked up his accordion, slung the strap over his shoulder and broke into a familiar Neapolitan song, ‘Scaptriciatiello’. The boys joined in with high raucous voices and the sound echoed round and round the cracked plaster of the dome.
* * *
That night was the real beginning of the House of the Urchins as it exists today. At one stroke, Borrelli had brought off a number of critical operations.
He had turned the Materdei from a soup kitchen into a home. He had turned the first scugnizzi from rogues and vagabonds into independent traders. He had established a small source of income for their upkeep. He had enabled the older ones like Carlucciello to qualify for work cards as street vendors or as collaborators of a charitable institution. He had something to show to Cardinal Ascalesi and the civil authorities when he asked for assistance to consolidate and develop the work. Now, when he went round the streets picking up the strays from under the barrows or over the bakers’ gratings, he could promise them companionship and understanding as well as a bed and a meal. With Spada as administrator and father of the household, he could begin the slow and devious process of re-education.
This, it seemed to me, was the most critical point of my investigation. By this the work of Borrelli and Spada must stand or fall. For all the drama of its beginning, for all the warm charity that pervades it, the only measure of its value is its success or failure in the re-education of the scugnizzi and their integration into normal life.
Children of The Sun Page 10
