Only in Naples (14 page)

“
S
ai chi era esigente? Nonna Clara
.
”
The one who was really
esigente,
or hard to please, was Nonna Clara. To hear Raffaella talk of someone
else
being particular in her tastes was ironic. I had told her that I didn't envy her
salumiere,
the owner of the food shop where she buys her cold cuts, bread, and cheese, after she had spent fifteen minutes complaining about the thick and tough prosciutto ham he had sold her the day before. “Like this!” One eye became a slit as she held her thumb and forefinger to show just how thick he had cut it. “You think that's thin? You call that thin?”

A line of customers waited patiently as Raffaella and Signor Buono, the
salumiere,
hashed it out. It was a matter of trust. “To trust is good, not to trust is better,” is an oft-repeated Neapolitan expression. Remember, a mother tells her child, it is always better
not
to trust.

Neapolitan parents want to prepare their children for the real world, where cheating and lying are the norm. The worst thing is to raise a child who is
baccalà
(as dumb as a piece of cod), or
addurmùto
(like a zombie). There is no end to the pejorative terms for a person who is naïve and trusting. My favorite is probably
dorme cu 'a zizza mmocca
—he's still sleeping with his mommy's tit in his mouth. The opposite is the highest compliment that you can receive in Naples: to be considered
scetàto,
awake. It's better than being smart. It means that no one can cheat you, you know what's up.

In Mr. Buono's shop, it was fundamental for him to regain Raffaella's trust after the prosciutto episode. The other
signore
could wait.

“I'm easy,” she repeated later. Easy? But what about the prosciutto? I asked. “Well, the truth must be spoken. It's in the interest of the
salumiere.
It would be terrible for him if he continued to sell prosciutto like that and no one told him about it!” So she was actually helping him, while at the same time showing him and the other ladies in line that she is
scetàta,
she knows what's up. She's no baby sleeping with a tit in her mouth, or a German tourist who will eat whatever you sell her. “I'm not a difficult customer. Nonna Clara was a difficult customer. It was a nightmare to shop with her. Thank goodness the
ovaiolo
would come to the house.”

When Raffaella was growing up, the egg man would come to her home once a week with a basket of eggs and fresh cheeses from the countryside. Nonna Clara would not merely greet the
ovaiolo,
give him money, and take her eggs and cheeses. Oh no. She would invite him in, take his jacket, and they would
buongiorno, buongiorno
each other. She would offer him a glass of water, he would refuse. (Not coffee? Why not coffee? I asked Raffaella. Coffee is for people who are in
confidenza,
she explained. People with whom you share your shit.) They would then sit in two armchairs facing each other in the living room.

It was the moment of reckoning.

Nonna Clara would position herself next to a lamp and remove the lampshade. Then she would take each egg from the basket, one by one, and hold it up to the lightbulb. This way, she could see if the egg was fresh. If there was a shadow, it meant that the yolk had detached from the white and had formed a space next to the shell. That was a sign that the egg was at least three days old.

And so, with eight children, a tiny apartment, and three meals to cook (not to mention the cleaning and ironing), Nonna Clara inspected each egg. When an egg passed the test, she would put it in her basket with
“Chisto mm'o piglio io”
—I'm gonna get me this one. When she saw the suspect shadow, she looked the
ovaiolo
in the eye and told him,
“Chisto t'o magne tu
.
”
You eat this one yourself. Then she would hand it back to him, adding,
“È bbrutto comme 'a faccia toia.”
That one's ugly as your face.

When she finished, she would ask after his family and animals, and wish him a pleasant week.

When I heard these stories about Nonna Clara, or when Raffaella told me that she had just been to the De Cecco pasta plant to complain that one pack of
bucatini
was not up to snuff (What about the cost of gas? The two hours of her time?), I understood why I got so stressed when I went food shopping in Naples.

My mother did not have any sort of relationship with any human being at the suburban Safeway where we shopped when I was growing up. Her relationship was with the mammoth grocery cart that she plowed down the aisles of the supermarket. At the wheel of her cart, Bonnie Wilson transformed into a Formula One racing pilot. She would issue an angry “Dang!” at her vehicle when it veered in the wrong direction. She would pat the cold metal with appreciation and let out a satisfied breath as she positioned me, my sister, or her enormous black leather purse on the plastic seat.

Theirs was a relationship built on trust. At the Safeway, not to trust was okay, to trust was better.

Into her much-loved cart, my mother would hurl cereal boxes with cartoon characters (which had been tempting American kids like us since the early 1960s), plastic bags of frozen strawberries, easy-to-open bottles of Heinz ketchup. We bought food with preservatives. We bought food that came in shiny packages. My mother, efficient and American, had us in and out of that joint in time for swim practice or dress rehearsal with food that would last us for weeks.

And so, on the rare occasions when I would go food shopping alone in Naples (I almost never ate at my apartment, but every once in a while bought ham or cheese to have in stock), I didn't know how to contend with the
salumiere
behind the counter. The man would ask me how much prosciutto I wanted and what kind. I was not allowed to see or touch, and I had to look the man in the eye and answer.

“San Daniele or Rovagnati?” At least there was a multiple choice option, so I could simply repeat the last word that he had said. As for the quantity, I would say, “One hundred grams,” which would certainly be too much or too little. It should have mattered to me—it seemed to matter even to the man who was selling me the ham.

“Stop should-ing on yourself!” my sister often reminds me. That first winter in Naples, I stopped should-ing and started schlepping once a month to the big American-style Italian supermarket, Conad. There I could throw prepackaged things in my grocery cart like Frisbees, things that were well marketed and had those easy-tear corners. At Conad I was a confident consumer. There, thank the Lord, I didn't have to listen to my weak voice making it painfully clear that I wasn't quite sure how I liked my food.

W
inter in Naples is short and wet. By April, it seemed that summer had arrived. Air-conditioning and roll-on antiperspirant became inextricably linked to my nostalgia for and love of my homeland.

I arrived at the hospital of Fatebenefratelli, or the Hospital of the Do-Good Brothers, on a stiflingly hot morning in early spring. I had come to assist Raffaella, currently a patient in the women's ward on the fourth floor. Dressed in a Duke T-shirt and running shorts, sweating as I pressed the call button for the elevator, I noticed a statue of San Giovanni di Dio, arms outstretched, greeting patients and visitors and welcoming them to Fatebenefratelli. San Giovanni's expression was serene, and the statue was exquisite. But why wasn't the elevator coming?

When I was informed that the elevator was out of service, I tried not to think about the what-ifs, about stretchers or emergencies and the inherent logistical problems of a hospital with six floors and no elevator. I told myself to let go of those images of sterile, high-tech institutions where a Visa gold card can get you places. Here at Fatebenefratelli nobody is interested in your credit cards or whether you have insurance or what kind. Your health is in the hands of fate. And San Giovanni. And of the modern-day do-good brothers and their do-good sisters.

Raffaella and Nino had both contracted salmonella at an elegant wedding several days earlier. When many of the guests started getting sick the day after the wedding, everyone thought of the mussels and clams and other seafood that had been served. In Naples, pasta with shellfish is a staple: there would be no Christmas Eve without
spaghetti a vongole.
Children of four are served
impepata di cozze,
or sautéed mussels, parents disappointed only that they can't give their poor little Ciro a glass of white Vesuviano wine to help wash it down. Because shellfish is eaten so often and because hygiene is not always optimal, hepatitis happens.

A Neapolitan friend of ours was violently ill and hospitalized after eating
spaghetti a vongole.
When he recovered, I asked him if he would give up shellfish for the rest of his life. He looked at me as if I had lost my marbles. “The rest of my life?” he asked, incredulous. “My doctor told me I should avoid mussels and clams for a week or so, but I don't know if I can hold out! My mother has found a new
pescivendolo
[fishmonger] who swears by his mussels.”

Surprisingly, the results of the investigation about who ate what at the wedding reception (which wasn't easy, given that the dinner lasted four hours and included about forty dishes) indicated that the culprit was a mayonnaise that was served with shrimp. On a hot day, the caterer had left the mayonnaise (made with raw eggs) outside for too long, and many of the wedding guests contracted salmonella.

When I heard this, my heart immediately went out to the bride's parents. In Naples, where a wedding is what you eat and the good impression (or
bella figura
) that you make with your friends is directly related to the quality of the pasta and the succulence of the mozzarella, this was social annihilation. That family has always liked to skimp on what they serve, people started to whisper. The caterer must have been cheap.

Thank sweet Jesus that the newlyweds were vomiting on the other side of the world, at some resort in Thailand.

So this is how we ended up at the hospital of the do-gooders. I climbed the steps to the
reparto femminile
on the fourth floor with trepidation. When I entered the women's ward, however, I was struck by its unexpected beauty. Because the hospital is located on the promontory of Posillipo, there are breathtaking views of the sea out the huge open windows. It is stunning, particularly at dusk, when the fuchsias and violets of the sunset over Vesuvius are as intense as a screensaver. Fatebenefratelli hospital has nothing of the whites and greens of rational science and sterile medicine. It's all fluorescent pinks and blues and bright red blood on white scrubs.

The sounds that you hear are not the beep-beep-beeps of monitors but the constant howl of wind and the screams of patients. Here, you can feel the wind on your face inside, and smell the evidence of doctors and nurses smoking under the
RESPECT YOUR PATIENTS, DON'T SMOKE
sign. Here you are in close contact with human frailty, with human suffering, right in the midst of nature's beauty and terror. Smells, sounds, and colors are all larger than life.

At Fatebenefratelli, you can see in every direction how Mother Nature really pulled out all the stops in this city. The drama of a volcano would have been enough. But Madre Natura added the sea, the cliffs, the islands of Capri and Ischia. The little island of Nisida, which houses an Alcatraz-like prison. I could only imagine the intensity of watching a loved one perish in such a setting.

Fortunately, Raffaella's condition was not so critical. Nonetheless, I was in no way relaxed. As the saying goes in Naples, when you're sick, one of the most dangerous places you can be is at a hospital. And here we come to one of the biggest contradictions in Neapolitan culture. If you ask an Italian about the United States, he or she will often point to health care as the greatest contradiction in our democracy. All are equal in America, right? But a hospital will treat you only if you have insurance, or a credit card, or both. This is a hugely simplified way of seeing things, and only partly true, but that's the perception. If you are hurt, or sick, and poor, you are alone.

Here in Naples, there is another kind of contradiction when it comes to health. It is a city where if you fall, or faint, or feel sick as you're walking down the street, you will not have merely one Good Samaritan to help you out. You will have a crowd vying over who has the honor of taking care of you, even of taking you to their home if need be. They will argue over who is most qualified, who lives the closest, who best understands your predicament. I once fainted on a bus in Naples, and apparently after some heated discussion among the other passengers, it was decided that the bus would abandon its normal route and take me and a kind middle-aged lady who had been elected my protector directly to the hospital of the Incurabili, which was the closest. (Yes, there is a hospital of the Incurables.)

The contradiction is this: After such a touching show of love and generosity toward a fellow human in need, you arrive at a hospital where the doctors are smoking in the halls. Where the generator has been broken for a year and nobody has bothered to fix it (so, if there's a power outage, none of the machines will work). If you have had a heart attack, you risk dying in the waiting room because the diagnosis was performed so perfunctorily. Or maybe a nurse got a call on her cellphone and forgot about you.
Insomma,
a hospital where unless you have some loving, smart, pushy relatives to take up your cause, you might be better off never setting foot.

Raffaella shared a room with three other women, all of whom had pretty stable conditions. As I entered, I was surprised to see that she had managed to brush her hair and put on makeup. Another surprise was the unmistakable aroma of Neapolitan coffee. I knew that Raffaella hadn't eaten for three days, and coffee was off-limits. “Who had coffee?” I asked, and the four women's eyes darted guiltily to one another. I felt like a kindergarten teacher. One of the patients had pulled her IV drip with her down four flights of stairs to the hospital bar to sneak a little glass juice bottle full of sweet black
caffè
back up to her roommates while the nurses were chatting and smoking cigarettes. I didn't know who the guilty party was, but I saw that the mood of these ladies was sky-high. They were giggling. “Who had coffee?” I repeated.

There was an eighty-year-old patient called Nonna, or Grandma, by her roommates. Her dry, brittle lips were rimmed with black, the black of the syrupy nectar that is Neapolitan coffee. Her lack of teeth and her heavy dialect made it hard for me to understand what she was saying, but whatever it was ended with the gesture of lifting the handle of a little cup of espresso, and with the words
tazzulella 'e caffè
(l'il ol' cuppa coffee). It was so tender the way she said it, and the coffee had obviously done such wonders in improving the ladies' mood, that I decided not to tell the nurses.

It was rare to find a chair to sit in in Raffaella's room. During visiting hours, Neapolitan hospitals are swamped by relatives. It's a lovely thing to see. If you arrive ten minutes before visiting time begins, you find the reception area crowded with families, elbowing each other so that they can be the first out of the gate when the receptionist comes to announce that visiting hours have begun. They are chomping at the bit. It seems that they are not here because they are prey to guilt, or because some sibling forced them to do their “duty.” They are here because it is clearly the only place for them to be now, a few days after Aunt Patrizia has broken her hip. They are here to hold her hand, to massage her back, and, most important, to make damn sure that the doctors and nurses don't fuck up.

In the States, if you have a relative in the hospital, you might stop by to see how they are doing, perhaps bring a book or flowers. Here, you come with your job cut out for you. You are responsible for the complicated, time-consuming, and ultimately exhausting job of checking on the doctors and nurses. This means making sure they know that your mother is taking blood pressure medicine. That she is allergic to certain antibiotics. Has this information been communicated, often and to the right people? If you're not sure, you must follow the relevant doctor around (you certainly can't worry if you're bothering him, this is your mother's health we're talking about) and remind the nurses, emphatically and at regular intervals.

I was sitting by Raffaella's bed when a nurse dropped a little white pill on her tray. “Take this,” she commanded. If I had been Raffaella, I probably would've taken it. The nurse was very firm, after all. But fortunately, Raffaella grew up in this city and learned early on not to blindly follow orders issued by someone in a position of authority.

“This isn't mine. I think it's Flora's heart medication. She usually takes it at around this time. Hey”—she motioned to Flora's niece, who was reading a magazine next to her aunt's bed—“can you go and find out who this is really for?” The girl set out to find the nurse. This sixteen-year-old surely knew the results of her aunt's last blood tests, which medicines she was to take and when, and which doctor to get furious at when her
zia
was not being tended to correctly. If she was here at visiting hours, it meant that her family had prepped her well.

When it was time for lunch, four completely different menus were prepared and brought in for the four patients. A soft potato dish for Nonna, who didn't have many teeth, a simple pasta for Raffaella, with her stomach problems. Relatives closely examined what had been prepared, and of course complained. They were angry. The food was not fresh enough, the pasta overcooked. To me, it looked and smelled divine. There were cloth napkins and real silverware, a little glass dish of freshly grated Parmesan cheese to put on the steaming pasta. Nothing was prepackaged. It did not even vaguely resemble hospital fare from my homeland. But complaining was the thing to do, and if I said it actually looked good, I would have been laughed at. People would pity Raffaella, who had that clueless American girl to look after her: she might as well not be in the hospital, she'd be better off at home.

I had to show my stuff. I had to be forceful. I had to reassure Raffaella that I was doing my job of
stare dietro,
checking up on the hospital staff
.

I put on my best angry face and took the plate of pasta into the hall, searching for the least-scary-looking nurse. When I found her, I tried my hand at the role of protective Neapolitan relative. “This pasta is overcooked! And reheated! It's inedible!” (Meanwhile, I hadn't eaten in hours and was seriously considering taking it into a private corner and scarfing it down.) The nurse issued a rebuttal, which I paid no attention to, so proud was I of my irate outburst. I took the pasta back to Raffaella, who was in turn reading the riot act to another nurse because Nonna's potato dish was also inedible—“
non sanno di niente
”—they taste like nothing. “My fish tastes like a bedroom slipper!” a middle-aged roommate added to the discussion. Oh, man, what energy it all took. I was exhausted just watching them. This team of women, patients and relatives together, could have taken over a small country.