WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19
The woman who let us into the Airbnb said, “You will either love or hate Naples.” The man in the small store who overcharged us for our food, asked, “What do you think of Naples?” We were quiet when he asked. The answer began to form with Chloe’s first question, meant rhetorically, “Can you imagine how frightening it would be to visit here as a woman alone?”
The crush of people, lack of light in the long, narrow streets, garbage everywhere, stinky tap water, cars and motorcycles zooming down alleyways, mattresses and clothes belonging to the homeless strewn on stone streets were a dramatic change of scene. There is a sense of near desperation, or survivalism in this city. Few smiles or laughter. No sitting around in community like in Bari. Constant hustle.
We stayed in an apartment that had gates locking the windows and a triple lock on the door. We were barricaded for our safety. We weren’t used to this, having come from places where people leave their doors open and looked askance at us for using the locks. Several times we were overcharged when buying food, and quickly learned that we needed to shop only in places where the prices were marked on items. In some ways, it was understandable. We were tourists, easy to fool, and in no position to protest. And most people seemed poor, in need of extra money.
From the time we hit the ground at the train station, people were more anxious than in Matera or Bari or in Greece and the Balkans. The stylish people of Milan felt a million miles away. The streets themselves were grimy and I wondered if it was safe to wear sandals. The woman from our Airbnb carried hand wipes. There was human feces on the narrow stone street leading to our Airbnb. I saw a dead mouse. Several men touched and squeezed their dicks as we passed.
To get away from the streets, we decided to go to the MADRE, the contemporary art museum, near the Duomo. The temporary exhibition was a retrospective of Pier Paolo Calzolari’s work, and we loved it. It was intelligent, humorous at times, and elegant at others. He comes out of the Arte Povera movement but has lived through many movements – conceptualism, baroque-like paintings in the 1980s, and more. The exhibition covered nearly three floors.
The permanent exhibition also had some impressive pieces — our favorite was an Anish Kapoor installation, a black rectangle in the floor that seemed to reach underground through stone to infinity, and at the same time sit on the floor like a carpet. Perplexing and wonderful. We eventually were able to lean over the glass railing far enough (thanks to being nearly 6 feet tall) to see some light discs that looked almost like coins, confirming that there was a hole under the black. We returned to the piece many times, along with two young French men who were equally captivated.
We also loved the atrium by Francesco Clemente. It looks baroque and contemporary all at once, and totally overtakes the visitor as you walk over and through it.
From the first moment I saw the courtyard from the third floor window, I wanted to go there. (A castle D’Albertis moment.) A statue of a man with his arms spread like he is running toward you to offer a hug or is celebrating the sky sits at the back by two benches. After a quick visit to the roof, with a full panorama of Naples, and the most wonderful long-legged horse sculpture, we figured out how to get to the courtyard. A gathering/ and panel discussion of Naples art folk was taking place under a grapevine, canopy thatching in a large grotto in a courtyard.
After the museum visit we walked down via Duomo, sat in the Duomo for a few minutes then made our way to the water, which is inaccessible by foot because of a multi-lane freeway passing between the city and its docks.
A incident in Bari:
In Bari, the night before, we passed a man, sitting on the ground near a shuttered Donar restaurant just across the street from Central Station. He was propped, leaning on a cement step in the corner of the restaurant entrance. I honestly had never seen anyone so thin. His forearms were tiny, maybe two centimeters around. He was literally skin and bones. His cheekbones were sunken and his eyes deep set. When he opened his heavy lids, his stare was glazed, blank, black and his eyes protruded slightly. He was starving to death.
As we made our way to the bus stop in the morning, we saw him sitting just as he had been the night before. Same place, unmoved. A small plastic bottle with water sat beside him on the concrete. His eyes stayed closed most of the time, only occasionally would they flicker open but not completely because it took too much strength.
We bought some bread and I put it next to him. Silly, really, because he could hardly open his eyes let alone move. He didn’t have the strength to reach out for it, to put it in his mouth. His throat was probably parched, too.
People walked casually by. This was a busy corridor. People were picking up food, stopping coffees, rushing to buses and trains. And he was dying.
What do you do when you are in another country and you see this? Should you shut down your instincts out of respect for something you don’t seem to understand? How, we wondered, could people we had found so generous to us, leave someone to die like this?
Five or six police had gathered a few shops down the colonnade, attending to a small fire that had been put out. They were drinking coffees and hanging out. I typed into google translate – “There is man dying down the street. Can you help him?”
Chloe was already on our bus, which was leaving soon, and I could see her looking out the window at me. I showed the translation to a police officer. His immediate reaction was concern, but then he turned and saw the man sitting there. I ran to catch our bus. Once seated, I could see the police weren’t going to help him. They were still standing there talking. Chloe told me that once I left, they shrugged and carried on with their conversation.
The man in the seat across from us was speaking both English and Italian and we told him what we’d seen and asked if he’d call an ambulance. He was Australian. He talked to the man in front of us who lived in Naples but visited Bari often. The Italian man explained that the dying man was “a beggar” and he was there all the time. I think the dying man was Roma. There was nothing that could be done, said the Italian. The man had no documents so even if he went to the hospital they wouldn’t help him. People from the Red Cross could help but only with food from the soup kitchen, he explained.
The Australian and the Italian talked about how we “Americans” were just bleeding hearts and didn’t understand the situation. They didn’t know that we could understand a little Italian.
Later when they learned we were Canadian, they were kinder.
We knew we were doing the right thing, no matter what they said. Never should anyone anywhere be so callous that they will let a man die before their very eyes.
About thirty minutes into the ride, the Australian told us he sent a note to the Red Cross, and the Italian called an ambulance. Really, no matter the country or circumstances, we all know what is right.
