NUN SAJE CHE T'AJE ASPETTA
Naples is a city of sounds and, while sitting on the balcony of my new acquaintance’s flat as he was inside making our fourth espresso of the afternoon, I listened to the street below. I am no musician, but I knew that the orchestra of the city was providing an auditory experience I would never have elsewhere. The tumult was so constant – with all the loud gesticulations and divinely-crafted blasphemies – that the odd moment of silence felt dramatic. But, after each short pause, the unordered polyphony always started again, louder than before. And, although the lack of a conductor was apparent, everybody performed enthusiastically whilst they could, subtly aware that, at any given moment, Vesuvius could join the chorus and steal the show.
My new acquaintance returned with our coffees to continue our chat about Diego Maradona, who seemed as important to him as the Madonna.
‘We say Maradona gave life to our dying city,’ my new acquaintance told me, as he plonked the coffee cups down, causing half of their contents to splash over my linen trousers. ‘But I think we also gave life to him, you know?’
‘Sure,’ I said, whilst hopelessly trying to wipe away the blackened stain. I didn’t know much about football, so I thought it best to just nod along and agree with everything he said, if I had nothing obvious to add.
‘Yes, yes.’ He looked up to the sky as he contemplated his next words. His English was far better than my non-existent Italian, but it certainly didn’t come naturally to him. ‘Yes, we make him immortal.’ And it was true. You couldn’t turn a corner in Naples without seeing some sort of a shrine for the player.
‘In my country, some people aren’t necessarily his biggest fan. They say he robbed us of the World Cup by cheating.’ I didn’t have much of an opinion on the matter, but I thought I’d throw it out there to at least show my new acquaintance that I was interested in engaging with his conversation. I needed a friend in this new and foreign city. After all, the few Italians I knew from London had warned me before I left that even Italians feel foreign in Naples.
‘Cheating? No, no. My friend, that was la Mano di Dio,’ he said, clenching his own hand into a fist and standing up excitedly to punch the lightbulb that dangled from the balcony above us. Thankfully it didn’t break, and he sat down again. ‘Anyway, my friend, we in this city, we see worse than that.’ He was right, there were worse things in the world than a handball. And I had seen some fairly sorry sights in the backstreets of my new acquaintance’s city. I suppose I’d seen some sorry sights in most cities.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course, my friend,’ he said.
‘Do you ever fear it’s going to erupt? Vesuvius, that is. Does it not scare you?’
‘Nun saje che t’aje aspetta,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘He will erupt one day. Why fear the inevitable?’
How is that your answer, I thought to myself. I had been in Naples a few days by this stage and, the whole time, the prospect of my untimely demise hadn’t left my mind.
‘When I was a boy, I think I maybe feared him,’ he wasn’t looking at me as he said this, but instead at his legs. ‘Always I would wake up with a lot of sweat running down me and Mamma would ask if it was Vesuvius again. I would say yes, of course. But, my friend, I don’t know if I feared Vesuvius or if I loved him. Maybe those nights were filled with dreams, not nightmares. He is the heart to this city, and he... I don’t know the word,’ and he started pounding his palm to his heart.
‘Pump?’
‘Yes, my friend! He pumps us with our energy for life. When he explodes, we die. But as long as he does not, we are more than alive. And if we do die, perhaps we will live forever like those poor bodies in Pompeii.’
In that moment, I imagined the tourists of the future flocking around my petrified, curled-up body, taking selfies with it as if it belonged to their Instagram feed more than it ever belonged to me. My dignity all but gone. This new acquaintance of mine was right; Vesuvius had the power to repeat history. If it killed me, I would become a mere extension of Pompeii. If it killed me, life would still go on for everyone else. If it killed me, would it really matter?
‘I had a nightmare about Vesuvius last night,’ I said after a few moments of utter silence, during which I fiddled with my ring – I always do this when I feel nervous. ‘I was walking by the castle when I saw the eruption. I was terrified and wanted to run for my life. But everybody around me just carried on with what they were doing. The old men were playing that card game – Briscola, right?’
‘Yes, that’s the one, my friend. That, or Scopa.’
‘Right. They carried on playing. The kids carried on splashing in the waves. The old ladies were still asleep on their plastic chairs, with their feet in the water. Nobody was bothered, except for me. And when I ran, it felt like I was doing the wrong thing. How does that make sense?’
‘My friend, it makes sense. Of course, we do not want him to erupt. But we accept he might in our own lifetime! And maybe it will be not so bad when it happens. What was it Pasolini said? Ho visto il Vesuvio... ormai rosso, avvampante, come nascondesse dietro un paradiso incendiato. Something like that, I think.’
‘And what does it mean?’
‘It is like, ehm, let me think. Yes, Pasolini saw Vesuvius and he thought to himself that perhaps Paradise was hiding behind the red blaze of his fire.’
Thomas Godfrey, 23, Torino (currently) & Yorkshire (usually) ✯ IG: @robins_reverie ✯ BACK TO FICTION: OUROBOROS
“I am an aspiring scholar and, having recently graduated from the University of Oxford, I am living in Torino for a year. During this year in Italy, I hope to finish the first draft of my novel, which deals primarily with the dangers of toxic masculinity in a university setting. After this year out, I intend to pursue a PhD, with the hope of eventually balancing a life in academia with my passion for writing/ painting/ doing anything that stimulates my creativity.”