The Skin (29 page)

His mother was English; and to his English blood he owed the coldness of his expression and the sober and assured deliberation of his gestures. Having in his youth vied with Prince Jean Gerace not, to be sure, in bringing the modes of Paris and London to Naples, but in introducing the modes of Naples to London and Paris, he had long since renounced the pleasures of the world so as to avoid having dealings with that "nobility" of
nouveaux riches
which Mussolini had brought into the forefront of political and social life. For a long time he had shunned all publicity. His name had suddenly been heard once more on everybody's lips when, in 1938, on the occasion of Hitler's visit to Naples, he had refused to attend the official banquet given in honour of the Führer. After being arrested and imprisoned for some weeks in Poggioreale Gaol he had been banished by Mussolini to his estates in Calabria. This had earned for him the reputation of being a man of honour and a free Italian —titles which, though dangerous, were in those days not to be despised.

Prestige of a more popular kind had accrued to him during the days of the liberation by virtue of his refusal to be included in the group of Neapolitan noblemen chosen to offer General Clark the keys of the city. He had justified his refusal without arrogance, simply and politely, saying that it was not the custom of his family to offer the keys of the city to those who invaded Naples, and that he was merely following the example of his ancestor, Berardo of Candia, who had refused to pay homage to King Charles VIII of France, the conquerer of Naples, even though in his day Charles VIII also had the reputation of being a liberator. "But General Clark is our liberator!" His excellency the Prefect had exclaimed —he to whom the strange idea had first occurred of offering the keys of the city to General Clark. "I don't doubt it," the Prince of Candia had replied simply and courteously, "but I am a free man, and only slaves need to be liberated." Everyone expected that in order to humble the Prince of Candia's pride General Clark would have him arrested, as was the usual practice during the days of the liberation. But General Clark had invited him to dinner and had received him with perfect courtesy, saying that he was glad to make the acquaintance of an Italian who had a sense of dignity.

"The Russians too are extremely well-bred," said Princess Consuelo Caracciolo. "The other day, in Via Toledo, Vishinsky's car ran over the old Duchess of Amalfi’s pekinese and crushed it to death. Vishinsky got out of his car, picked up the poor pekinese himself and, after telling the Duchess how deeply distressed he was, asked her to let him take her in his car to the Palace of Amalfi. "Thank you, I prefer to walk home," replied the old Duchess haughtily, throwing a contemptuous glance at the little red flag, bearing the sign of the hammer and sickle, which flew from the bonnet. Vishinsky bowed silently, re-entered his car and drove swiftly away. Only then did the Duchess realize that her poor dead dog was still in Vishinsky's car. The following day Vishinsky sent her a present of a jar of marmalade. The Duchess tried it, and uttering a shriek of horror fell to the floor in a faint: the marmalade tasted like dead dog. I tried it too, and I assure you that it tasted exactly like dog-marmalade."

"Well-bred Russians are capable of anything," said Maria Teresa Orilia.

"Are you sure it was dog-marmalade?" asked Jack in great astonishment. "Perhaps it was caviare."

"Probably," said the Prince of Candia, "Vishinsky wanted to pay homage to the Neapolitan nobility, which is among the oldest of its kind in Europe. Don't we deserve to be given dog-marmalade?"

"You certainly deserve something better," said Jack naively.

"Anyhow," said Consuelo, "I would rather have dog-marmalade than your spam."

"Our spam," said Jack, "is only pig-marmalade."

"The other day," said Antonino Nunziante, "when I got back home, I found a negro sitting down to a meal with my caretaker's family. He was a handsome negro, and very polite. He told me that if the American soldiers didn't eat spam they would have conquered Berlin by now."

"I am very fond of negroes," said Consuelo. "They at least reflect the colour of their opinions."

"Leurs opinions sont tres blanches," said Jack. "Ce sont de veritables enfants."

"Are there many negroes in the American Army?" asked Maria Teresa.

Il y a des nègres partout," replied Jack, "même dans l'armée américaine."

"A British officer, Captain Harari," said Consuelo, "told me there are a lot of American negro soldiers in England. One evening, during a dinner at the United States Embassy in London, the Ambassador asked Lady Wintermere what she thought of the American soldiers. 'They are very likeable,' replied Lady Wintermere, 'but I don't see why they've brought all those poor white soldiers along with them.' "

"I don't see why, either," said Jack, laughing.

"If they weren't black," said Consuelo, "it would be very hard to tell them from the whites. American soldiers all wear the same uniform."

"Oui, naturellement," said Jack, "mais il faut quand même un oeil très exercé pour les distinguer des autres."

"The other day," said Baron Romano Avezzana, "I was standing in the Piazza San Ferdinando, close to a boy who was busily engaged in polishing the shoes of a negro soldier. At a certain point the negro asked the boy: 'Are you Italian?' The little Neapolitan replied, 'Me? No, I'm a negro.' "

"That boy," said Jack, "has a strong political sense."

"You mean he has a strong historical sense," said Baron Romano Avezzana.

"I wonder," said Jack, "why the people of Naples like negroes."

"The Neapolitans are nice people," replied the Prince of Candia, "and they like negroes because negroes are nice too."

"They are certainly nicer than white men—they are more generous, more human," said Maria Teresa. "Children are never wrong, and children prefer negroes to white men."

"I don't see," said Antonino Nunziante, "why negroes are ashamed of being black. Are
we
ashamed of being white?"

"Women are never wrong, either," said Baron Romano Avezzana, evoking cries of indignation from Consuelo and Maria Teresa.

"In order to persuade the Neapolitan girls to become engaged to them," said Consuelo, "the negro soldiers say that they are white like the others, but that in America, before sailing for Europe, they were dyed black so that they could fight at night-time without being seen by the enemy. When they go back to America after the war they will scrape the black dye from their skins and become white again."

"Ah, que c'est amusant!" exclaimed Jack, laughing so heartily that his eyes filled with tears.

"Sometimes," said the Prince of Candia, "I am ashamed of being a white man. Luckily I am not only a white man—I am a Christian too."

"What makes our behaviour unforgivable," said Baron Romano Avezzana, "is the very fact that we are Christians."

I was silent, and listened, my heart heavy with a dark foreboding. I was silent, and with an abstracted air contemplated the walls with their historical frescoes, superimposed on a surface of red Pompeian earth, the beautiful gilt furniture of the time of King Murat, the great Venetian mirrors, and the frescoed ceiling—the handiwork of some painter schooled to follow the Spanish style which prevailed at the Court of Charles III of Bourbon. The palace of the Princes of Candia is not among the oldest of its kind in Naples: it belongs to the splendid yet unhappy age when the Spanish domination was at its most austere—the age when the Neapolitan nobles, abandoning the old, gloomy palaces which surround the Porta Capuana and flank the Decumano, began to build their sumptuous dwelling on the Monte di Dio.

Architecturally the palace of the Princes of Candia conforms to that heavy imitation-Spanish baroque which enjoyed a great vogue in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies before Vanvitelli brought back into favour the classical simplicity of the Ancients. Yet its interiors reveal the influence of the grace and the pleasing innovations associated with that imaginative spirit which in the Naples of those days derived its artistic inspiration not so much from French refinements as from the stuccoes and encuastics of Herculaneum and Pompeii lately brought to light as a result of the learned researches of the Bourbons. The paintings and the decorative effects produced by the artists of the two ancient cities, which for so many centuries lay buried in their tomb of lava and ashes, were in fact the prototypes of those dancing Cupids portrayed on the walls, of those representations of the triumph of Venus, of Hercules leaning wearily against Corinthian columns, of Diana the huntress, and of those
vendeurs d'Amours
which later became a favourite subject of French decorative art. Let into the doors are great mirrors, which cast blue reflections and, by way of a contrast to the brilliant red of the Pompeian stuccoes, throw an aquamarine shadow upon the pink flesh and black tresses of the nymphs and the elusive whiteness of the classical robes.

A transparent shaft of green light flooded down from the ceiling; and if the guests raised their heads they found themselves looking into the heart of a vast wood, through the intertwined leafy branches of which they glimpsed a brilliant blue sky, flecked with white clouds. On the banks of a river naked women, immersed in the water up to their knees, or lying on a dense carpet of vivid green (not the green beloved of Poussin, which merges into blue and yellow tints, nor the purplish green favoured by Claude Lorrain), unconscious of, or perhaps indifferent to, the Fauns and Satyrs who watched them through the leafy branches of the trees. In the distance, beyond the river, crenellated castles could be seen, rising from the summit of thickly-wooded hills. Plumed warriors with glittering cuirasses galloped through the valley; others with swords upraised fought among themselves; others yet, pinned to the ground beneath their fallen horses, pressed hard on the earth with their elbows in an effort to rise. And packs of hounds rushed in pursuit of white stags, followed from afar by knights clad in blue or scarlet jerkins.

The green radiance of grass and leaves which flooded down from the ceiling was softly reflected in the gilded furniture, in the yellow satin covers of the armchairs, in the pale pink and sky-blue tints of the vast Aubusson carpet, and in the white Sphinxes that adorned the Capodimonte chandeliers. These were suspended in a row above the centre of the table, which was splendidly draped in an ancient Sicilian lace cloth. There was nothing in that magnificent hall to remind one of the anguish, the destruction and the grief of Naples —nothing, save the pale, thin faces of the guests, and the modesty of the fare.

Throughout the war the Prince of Candia, like many other members of the Neapolitan aristocracy, had refused to leave the unhappy city, now reduced to a heap of rubbish and ruins. After the terrible American air-raids of the winter of 1942 no one had remained in Naples except the common people and a few of the oldest noble families. Of the aristocracy, some had sought refuge in Rome and Florence, others on their estates in Calabria, Apulia and the Abruzzi. The wealthy middle classes had fled to Sorrento and the sea-front of Amalfi, and the poorer middle classes had scattered to the outlying districts of Naples, in particular to the little villages on the slopes of Vesuvius, in accordance with the universal conviction— and heaven knows why or how it originated—that the Allied bombers would not dare to brave the wrath of the volcano.

Perhaps this conviction had its origin in the ancient popular belief that Vesuvius was the tutelary divinity of Naples, the city's totem—a cruel, vindictive God, who sometimes shook the earth terribly, brought down temples, palaces and hovels, and burned his own children in his rivers of fire, burying their homes beneath a pall of red-hot ashes. A cruel God, but a just one, who punished Naples for her sins and at the same time watched over her destinies, over her misery and her hunger—father and judge, executioner and Guardian Angel of his people.

The common people had been left masters of the city. Nothing in the world—no fire from heaven, no earthquake, no pestilence— will ever be able to drive the common people of Naples from their mean dwellings, from their sordid alleys. The common people of Naples do not run away from death. They do not abandon their homes, their churches, the relics of their Saints and the bones of their dead to seek safety far from their altars and their tombs. But when danger has been graver and more immediate, when cholera has filled their homes with sorrow, or the fire and ashes from the skies have threatened to bury their city, the common people of Naples have been wont for countless centuries to raise their eyes and scan the faces of the "gentry" in order to divine their sentiments, thoughts and intentions, and from their demeanour to measure the magnitude of the scourge, estimate their chance of salvation, and derive an example of courage, piety and confidence in God.

After each of those terrible raids, which had afflicted the unhappy city for three years, the common people of Pallonetto and La Torretta used to see the true "gentry" of Naples coming forth at the usual hour from the portals of the ancient palaces on the Monte di Dio and the Riviera di Chiaia, now wrecked by the bombs and blackened by the smoke from the fires. These were the men who had not deigned to flee, who out of pride, and perhaps also partly out of indolence, had not condescended to put themselves out for so little, but stuck to the habits which had been theirs in the era of gaiety and security, as if nothing had happened or was happening. Impeccably dressed, their gloves spotless and with fresh flowers in their button-holes, they met and exchanged affable greetings each morning in front of the ruins of the Albergo Excelsior, within the shattered walls of the Circolo dei Canottieri, on the mole of the little harbour of Santa Lucia with its surfeit of capsized vessels, or on the footpath outside the Caflish. The appalling stench of the dead bodies that were buried under the ruins polluted the air, but not the slightest flicker of emotion crossed the faces of those old gentlemen, who on hearing the hum of the American bombers would look fretfully up at the sky and, with ineffably scornful smiles on their faces, murmur: "There they go, the blighters."