Two experiences, sixty years apart

In the South of Italy the saints weep, as they say here. […] Seeing how hundreds of thousands live in this incomprehensible country below Rome, a mere mortal can hardly keep his eyes dry. No wonder, then, that the adored martyrs, the men and women without sin, weep with deep sorrow when they see how their children live. Yes, ‘their children’, because although according to the widely-sold guidebooks, Naples may be home only to thieves, they are closer to heaven than anyone else in the West. (Alings jr. 1958: 11)

This quote is from the book Napels, stad vol gevallen engelen (Naples, city of fallen angels) by Wim Alings jr., written in 1958. The book is a beautifully written impression of life in Naples at the end of the 1950s. Through encounters with friends, neighbours and strangers, Alings sketches a picture of a bustling city and its inhabitants. The book follows him during his stay in Naples by means of some twenty anecdotes, in which especially the poverty and hard life of the city are central, but also compassion plays an important role. 

Alings rents a room in the house of landlady Concettina and her daughter Rosaria. His anecdotes are situated both in and around Concettina’s household and on the street. Although Concettina was initially reluctant to take in a stranger, the author recounts that she changed her mind after all: ‘In the end, with a ‘va buo’, she gave in and was prepared to give up a bed, provided two weeks’ payment was made in advance. After that, she was all friendliness, because whoever is taken in in Naples is really a member of the family.’ (27) 

As readers, we are introduced to Gennarino, Rosaria’s fiancée, who later in the travelogue is arrested for cigarette smuggling. We meet Cumpá, the communist carpenter whose workshop the author overlooks from his room and whose hatred of the ruling Christian democrats is so great that – as Alings tells us – he ‘would not even furnish them a coffin because the wood is too good for them’. (31) We also get to know Don Mario and Father Francesco, two acquaintances of Alings, who each in their own way take care of the fate of the poorest people in the city.

I myself had the opportunity to live in Naples for six months in 2016, sixty years after Alings’ visit. What do our experiences have in common? When I left for Naples, I was just 18, I had a gap year after finishing secondary school and decided to fill that year with travel – to Italy, the country I had never been to before but about which I dreamed as if life there must be like in the classic Italian black-and-white films that made me melt away my whole childhood. I looked for a job where I could earn a living and ended up as an au pair in Naples, so that – in retrospect, extremely naïve – I could discover the Italy that, until then, had consisted of images from the films of my youth. 

My experience in Naples was one of love and hate, of admiration and disgust, and of contradictions. I discovered the best pizzas I have ever eaten, the most beautiful palazzos and the most receptive and passionate people I have met in my youth. I also discovered my first love – Camilla – and with it the abhorrence of homosexuality and the discrimination that goes with it, which is still very much present, especially in Southern Italy, and which I, as a Dutch person, had not been able to imagine until then. 

During my time in Naples, I wandered with admiration – as did Alings – through the narrow streets, where every day laundry hung out to dry, where the wooden shutters – peeling from the heat – were always open, and from where you often saw neighbours passionately sharing the latest gossip. Those streets were crowded, pleasant and lively every day, the typical Italy I knew from my beloved films. They were also dilapidated, dirty and hectic, an image I had not anticipated after watching the films. They were full of street vendors, beggars, tourists, loitering children and rubbish. I am not exaggerating when I say that on several occasions I saw residents throwing rubbish out of their windows onto the street as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Alings seems to share my experience in this, on a visit to the Forcella district he writes:

There is always an indefinable smell in the alleys, probably from the cheeses and fish that hang there to dry. There is the eternal coming and going of people. [...] Thick women and children sit behind wooden crates, on which American cigarettes are for sale, by the piece and by the packet. Almost on every corner there is a blind man or a man who is half paralysed, kneeling on a box full of caramels, which can be bought for five lire. […] One can sell anything in the Forcella: chickens, a batch of ballpoints, smuggled lighters or an expired passport. Police rarely or never come. When there would be a sudden raid, everyone is warned in advance. Because cars can’t drive into the crowded streets. (75-77)

‘La vita é trop’, Piazza del Gesù nuovo, 2016. Photo: Lonneke Luijendijk.

The feeling that stays with me the most about my stay in the city is the amazement at how so much beauty can be reduced to so much ugliness and filth. And how, in spite of that ugliness and filth, every Neapolitan can express so much pride in his or her city. As Wim Alings also states in his book: ‘Call that the miracle of Naples, the gold of Naples, the pride even in the most dilapidated squalor.’ (19) 

The writer finally ends the story with his decision to leave the city, he writes: 

For those who were not born here, who did not spend their first years of life in dusty slums and alleys, Naples, with its eternal shortage, can suddenly become a surplus that one fears will perish. […] The poverty of Naples seems to be eternal. The changing seasons will change little or nothing. He who departs on a day chosen by chance leaves friends behind, knows however very clearly that he will be forgotten in a very short time, because he has not been an actual part of this life, remained a stranger, as stated at the outset. (149-150)

Sixty years later – in 2016 – I came to the same conclusion when I decided to leave Naples. Although the city and its inhabitants – like Alings – welcomed me with open arms, I too never succeeded in feeling part of the city’s life. The things I saw were so strange to me, as a Dutchwoman, that I could never feel anything but a visitor – a stranger from the North, taking everything in, watching while life in the city raged on. ‘Life is like a carousel, so they say of Naples. People live there so intensely that no event can be ignored.’ (51)

Bibliography
Alings jr., Wim, Napels, stad vol gevallen engelen, Baarn 1958.