Naples '44 Read Online Free PDF

common at this time of the year, attracted by the fruit in the orchards. They told me they had to face the hostility of the local people, on whose lands they were trespassing, and who accused them of raids on their vineyards and vegetable patches.

October 9
    This afternoon, another trip along the seafront at Santa Lucia provided a similar spectacle of the desperate hunt for food. Rocks were piled up here against the sea wall and innumerable children were at work among them. I learned that they were prising limpets off the rocks, all the winkles and sea-snails having been long since exhausted. A pint of limpets sold at the roadside fetched about two lire, and if boiled long enough could be expected to add some faint, fishy flavour to a broth produced from any edible odds and ends. Inexplicably, no boats were allowed out yet to fish. Nothing, absolutely nothing that can be tackled by the human digestive system is wasted in Naples. The butchers’ shops that have opened here and there sell nothing we would consider acceptable as meat, but their displays of scraps of offal are set out with art, and handled with reverence: chickens’ heads – from which the beak has been neatly trimmed – cost five lire; a little grey pile of chickens’ intestines in a brightly polished saucer, five lire; a gizzard, three lire; calves’ trotters two lire apiece; a large piece of windpipe, seven lire. Little queues wait to be served with these delicacies. There is a persistent rumour of a decline in the cat population of the city.
October 10
    How lucky for all concerned that the liberation of Naples happened when it did – when the fruit harvests were still to be gathered in – and the perfect weather of early autumn helped hardships of all kinds to be more endurable. Day followed day of unbroken sunshine, although the heat of summer had gone. From where I sat sifting wearily through the mountains of vilification and calumny, I could refresh myself by looking down into the narrow street running along one side of the palazzo. This is inhabited to bursting-point with working-class families, whose custom it is to live as much as they can of their lives out of doors, for which reason this street is as noisy as a tropical aviary.
    Quite early in the morning, a family living in the house opposite carried out a table and stood it in the street close to their doorway. This was briskly covered with a green cloth with tassels. Chairs were placedround it at an exact distance apart and on it were stood several framed photographs, a vase of artificial flowers, a small cage containing a goldfinch, and several ornate little glasses, which were polished from time to time as the day passed by to remove the dust. Round this table the family lived in what was in fact a room without walls; a mother, grandfather and grandmother, a girl in her late teens, and two dynamic boys, who constantly came and went. Here the mother attended to the girl’s hair, washed the boys’ faces, served something from a steaming pot at midday, sewed and did the family washing in the afternoon. There were a number of other such tables along the street, and constant social migrations took place as neighbours paid each other visits. The scene was a placid one. The green persianas hanging over all the upper windows and balconies breathed in and out gently in the mild breeze from the sea. People called musically to each other over great distances. A beggar with tiny, twisted legs was carried out by his friends and propped up in a comfortable position against the wall, where he started to strum a mandolin. Two lean, hip-swinging American soldiers, sharing a bottle of wine, passed down the street, and the girl at the table looked up and followed them with her eyes until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
    There is no notice in the palazzo to say who we are and what we are doing here so it is hard to understand why people assume this to be the