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CdP
26 February 2014
One
great thing about Naples is that it’s all right, it seems, to be off
your head. At times, you begin to wonder whether it’s
not a performance of some kind that you’re
being treated
to.
In
one
metro
station
when
we
visited
last
weekend,
there
was
a man
who
could
have
been a Latin
American
native
but
probably wasn’t – the
variety
of
Neapolitan
face
types
is
remarkable,
and
so
much
greater
than
further
north – playing
his
guitar
and
singing.
He
had
one
of
the
worst
voices
I had
ever
heard:
raucous
and
slightly
out
of
tune.
And
he
only
knew
how
to
play
three
chords
on
his
very
scratchy
old
guitar.
He
had
been
practising,
probably,
but
he still wasn’t
all
that
adept
at
changing
chord,
so
his
song
got
a bit
disrupted
from
time
to
time
as
he
rearranged
his
fingers.
At
first
I couldn’t
work
out
where
the
racket
was
coming
from,
but
round
a corner,
there
he
was,
standing
on
one
leg,
the
other
knee
pressed
against
the
shiny
red
wall
panel
so
he
could
balance
the
guitar
on
it.
He
was
utterly
intent
on
his musical endeavours, with nothing at all in
the
way
of
money-collecting
equipment. So he wasn’t
busking
so
much
as
serenading
his
reflection.
No
one
seemed
to
notice
much.
On
suspended
screens
at
intervals
along
the
platform,
a lady
at
a kitchen
counter
was
showing
travellers
how to make a vegan
chocolate
cake (does the average Neapolitan know
what
a vegan
is?
and if so, would they bother
to
make
a chocolate
cake
for such a strange animal?) One dowdy-looking late-middle-aged
lady
came
rushing
up to
beneath
a screen
and
started
mouthing
the
ingredient
list to herself, then rushed off
again.
Does
she
make
a point of collecting and concocting each
day’s
recipe?
Another
journey,
another
platform:
there’s a group of three people, probably
in
their
30s,
quite
smartly
dressed,
talking
in
Neapolitan
accents.
One
is doing an exposition of the ad on
the
wall
behind my back, explaining that it’s for
a local
supermarket
and
that particular person
in
the
photo
is
there
because
he
wants
one thing and the others have gone along to
keep
him
company
and
their
surprised looks are due to the fact that
they’re amazed at
the
range
of
products.
The
disquisition
goes
on
for
several
minutes, with the others nodding sagely. When I look,
it’s an
advert
for
a bar
(or
at
least
I think
it
is
because
we walked past a rather seedy-looking bar of the same
name
later
that
morning) or
perhaps
a make of coffee sold in bars which
bear
its
name. You have to look quite hard even to
get
this far because the
goods
(bottles) on the shelf behind are all terribly
out
of
focus
and largely obscured by a large kentia palm. In front is
a row
of
people
looking like they’ve been photographed while on
a
ghost
train
or
a big
dipper,
screaming
and
with
their hair being blown about. Opaqe as
its
message
is,
it’s clearly not a supermarket.
Another
wonderful
thing
is
how
the
city
is almost a whole season
ahead.
Yes, we are having a remarkably – even
distressingly – mild
end-of-winter
our
way,
to
the
entent that my poor little apricot tree is covered in blossom
and
one brisk breath of
wind
or
frost
will
mean
that once
again
this year we won’t have
a
single
fruit.
But
in
Naples
any
tiny cliff-clinging plot is awash with lemons and oranges
and,
in glorious
profusion,
brilliantly
coloured camellias on
huge
branched
things
which
would
more
properly be described as trees, rather
than
bushes.
There’s money in Naples (the parts
we
were
carousing
in
were
elegantly
prosperous)
but
there’s
also
a
very
visible
mass
of
the
very
poor.
Yesterday
afternoon
we
strolled
through
the
Chiaia
district,
with
its
smart
boutiques
and
general
feeling
of
well
being.
And
yesterday
evening
we
went
aperitivo-ing in
Vomero,
among rowdy crowds of designer-labeled
youth
and rivers of well heeled shoppers
on
their Saturday parade up and down via Scarlatti.
This
morning we went down into
the
old
centre
to
check out the
Madre gallery. Just
one
stop
away from elegant piazza
Amadeo
the
clientele
changes.
The
average height dips and the jacket of
choice
is
shapeless puffa in nameless synthetic. It feels like walking
through the leftovers of some low-rent clothes market featuring
the worst of Made-in-China (though as the number of Chinese
sweatshops around Naples is immense, they probably don’t
have to bring these clothes from quite so far). You get the
feeling, too, that washing facilities aren’t always
that easy to come by.
Once
through
the
old
city walls, the scene changes again, to Medieval or maybe
something earlier. All the little hole-in-the-wall
fishmongers’ are open – this is Sunday morning,
after
all,
and
there’s Sunday lunch to make. But apart
from
that,
it’s rattling and empty and episodic: a
gaggle
of
unkempt
children outside a shop where there’s
a clown
who’s making animals out of thin sausage balloons;
an
odd
character
lounging by the very bar named in that inexplicable poster
in
the
metro; someone clanking a trolley of nothing down a narrow
alley;
an old old man wandering in slippers.
Inside
Madre,
the
collection
and exhibitions are take it or leave it – there
are
some
interesting site-specific things in the permanent collection
but
as for Vettor Pisani and his
friends – they’re another reminder that the
1970s
were
a decade
which we might do well to put away in the broom cupboard and
forget about. But from the gallery’s
windows,
on the
walls
just arm’s length away across
tiny
streets,
there’s a wealth of spontaneous vegetation
that
I find
mesmerising.
After a couple of spectacular days it’s raining again in CdP, battering against the south-facing window here in the living room and making me wonder what it’s doing to my delicate apricot blossom. (It’s night now, and I’m writing by the wood burning stove.) Apricots need a patch of serious cold to produce much fruit anyway, and we definitely haven’t had that this winter: so far, I’ve found iced-over car windows perhaps… twice?
