Neil Griffiths

Betrayal in Naples

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Viking 2004
Published in Penguin Books 2005

Copyright © Neil Griffiths, 2004
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-96538-2

Contents

sickness

1

2

3

4

5

crime

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

sex

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

death

1

2

3

4

5

Acknowledgements

PENGUIN BOOKS

BETRAYAL IN NAPLES

Neil Griffiths was born in 1965. He has lived for extended periods in New York and Paris. He has previously written for radio and film. He currently lives in London. Betrayal in Naples was shortlisted for the 2004 Pendleton May First Novel Award. The chair of judges, Amanda Craig, said, ‘Both thriller and love story, its feverish account of how an Englishman becomes embroiled with a former girlfriend, now married to a judge trying a Mafia case, contains a wonderful description of Naples as a corrupt yet dazzling city. Written with the energy and economy of the young Graham Greene, it is the perfect intelligent holiday read.’

For Michael Stewart & Lina Aspri

Terra di baci d’onore e non d’amore
Land of kisses of honour, not love

Gabriella De Fina

Fact: you cannot predict the outcome of acts of the heart. I learned that in Naples, when on Piazza Garibaldi, at 7 p.m., during the late Italian rush hour, I was shot in the stomach. All I felt was the snub barrel of a gun pressed into me, to the right of my belly button. Take two fingers and press there. That’s all I felt: a little give before meeting the resistance of muscle. Then I began to fall.

The pain was sharp, like a long silver sword run through me. A precise pain. I heard myself saying, ‘I’ve been shot.’ It was so clear to me, even the image of myself in that moment, dropping to my knees, listing over, clutching my belly. It was as if I could see myself in long shot, from way up high, a man stumbling, out of step with the crowd – shot, or perhaps knifed, but attacked from close range, singled out as the target and neatly killed. That’s how it happened …

I wasn’t dead, but I was dying. My breathing was quick and shallow; the screams around me muffled, compressed. With my face pressed into the mirror-grey paving all I could see was shadows, and blood in rivulets running between the stones.

I made out a single voice. Medico! Presto! Presto! It was a male voice – deep but melodious – a baritone: Italianate, passionate, commanding, without hysteria or panic. Bel canto in a crisis. He’d taken charge. I wanted to call out but all I could do was stare at the blood emptying out of me, pooling over the worn stone, making the street look like the surface of a strange planet – grey rock and red seas.

Then I was turned over; a body washed up on a beach. A woman was kneeling over me, issuing instructions, asking me questions in Italian. She ripped open my shirt, away from the wound; it was heavy, soaked, adhering to my skin. She then plugged the wound with her fingers. Take two fingers and press them into your belly – that’s how she did it. It felt just like the gun, but this time there was no resistance, no pain. I felt cold. It was a hot, humid evening and I was cold, shivering – just like the day I arrived in the city. But this time I was going to die.

You don’t expect it, do you? It’s not something you foresee as your lips touch another’s and briefly your world feels perfectible. You don’t think that within a few days you’ll be dying on a street, shot at close range, a contract fulfilled. But then you cannot predict the outcome of acts of the heart. Fact.

It was supposed to be a long weekend. A time to relax before I started a new job. I was going to be a senior counsellor at an addiction treatment centre specializing in the homeless. Don’t think well of me – it’s a job like any other. It’s not worthy work: that’s soup-kitchen stuff. Counselling addiction in the homeless requires emotional toughness. It is dangerous also. The embittered take offence easily: the street is violent, counselling intrusive; there is little trust. I’ve been ridiculed, insulted, threatened, attacked even.

Ten years in the same job, talking to the lonely, isolated, frightened, desperate, I had to quit. It’s thought of as a soft job. Rewarding. But you lose more than you gain. Striving for empathy takes it out of you. To connect with the dispossessed means a part of you has to connect with their fear, loneliness, pain. You can only do that for so long. It’s like being a city trader: burnout arrives quickly.

I needed time to work out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I quickly discovered it’s all I’m good for – thirty-five years old, years of experience, a reputation. After six weeks of indecision – courses paid for and not attended, applications made but the interviews ignored – I was offered this job. Three days’ actual counselling, the rest of the week liaising with the government’s policy unit for the homeless. I accepted reluctantly. My cowardice infuriated me. A friend suggested I get away, ‘Take yourself off for a few days.’ It was that simple – I was following advice. I should have known then it would all go wrong. Who, these days, follows advice?

Why Naples? Why did I go to a place where I knew nobody, a place I had never thought of going? I have a good friend in Amsterdam – why didn’t I go and see him? If I needed to be on my own, why didn’t I choose Florence, Rome – any of the other cities within a few hours’ flight? There was this question, on a radio quiz show. From where does the phrase ‘See Naples and die’ originate? It’s something you hear, but I had no idea where it came from. If pushed, I would have said from a poem by Shelley – he had a terrible time during his stay there. One contestant said that it was the title of a film starring Humphrey Bogart; another that it was due to the city’s typhus and cholera epidemics; and the two other contestants passed. In the end we were all wrong. The phrase was a piece of nineteenth-century advertising copy from a Thomson Holidays campaign for the Grand Tour.

Naples? I lifted myself off the sofa, logged on to the web and looked for a cheap flight. There wasn’t a lot of choice. Only a few flights a day. A couple extra at the weekend. I entered my requirements, and after a frustrating few minutes’ wait a selection of airlines and departure times appeared. The only price available was the highest. I clicked. Please enter your payment details. I did so without really thinking; I could always just close the page if I wanted. Confirm your reservation? I was one click away from purchasing a four-day return flight. Thursday to Sunday – arriving home the evening before the start of my new job. I circled the cursor around the icon. I asked myself out loud, ‘Is this what I want to do?’

I leaned back in my chair and imagined what might happen. My hope was to meet a beautiful Italian girl, dark, voluptuous, full of Catholic abandon. I remember an ironic snort; my recent past promised three days of loneliness. It didn’t matter – I would be away from London and I could pretend my life was full of adventure and possibility.

I clicked. I clicked impulsively, decisively. I felt a rush of adrenalin, fluid, pulsing. Suddenly a place I’d never thought about was the only place I wanted to go. And I was going.

What I think made my reaction so intense was how different this decision was from my normal behaviour. I’m not intrepid, I’m not impulsive; I’m usually very responsible. Choosing to go to Naples only days before I started a new job contradicted something fundamental in me. It represented a point of change in me.

1

As I board the plane I realize I have a sore throat. By the time I arrive in Naples I am feverish. Stumbling from the plane to the airport building I know I should turn back, reboard and fly home, but I am delirious and all I can think of is hotel, bed, sleep.

At passport control the officer waves me through without caring that the man in the photograph in my passport looks like a terrorist and the man before him is sweating profusely and hardly able to stand. I stumble through the arrivals lounge, following the directions to the taxi rank as though they are hypnotic signs guiding me, tempting me somewhere mysterious, exotic. My guidebook, which I bought at the airport and have hardly looked at, warns about Neapolitan taxi-drivers in the introduction. Firstly, make sure they turn on the meter; secondly, make sure they don’t kidnap you. Right now I am too sick to care and head for the first cab I see. The driver, a man in his mid forties, unshaven, unsmiling, is standing by the open rear door like a chauffeur. I make some vague gesture asking him whether he is free. He nods and places a lighted cigarette in his mouth.

I collapse into the back seat. He walks around the front of the car. I need to lie down but remain upright by propping myself up on my bag. After inspecting me in his rear-view mirror, my driver wraps his arm around the back of the passenger seat and turns to look at me directly. Is he assessing what kind of kidnap victim I might be? I feel cold sweat on my forehead, on the back of my neck, running down my back. My shirt is drenched and clings to me. My jeans, damp like sodden cardboard, are heavy and resistant to movement. Even my hands are covered in a film of moisture. Is this all a symptom of fever or is some of it fear, I wonder. I take a deep breath and say in English, ‘Sorry, give me a moment …’

The driver doesn’t respond, just continues to stare at me. When he does eventually open his mouth it is to expel a thick cloud of smoke. This is followed by a deep glottal rasping. At first I think he is just clearing his throat but then realize words are embedded in the low growl. He is speaking to me. His accent sounds like a kind of a warrior Italian, an Arabic Italian, harsh, irritable, masculine, quite different from the gentle lilting cadences I have heard from all the young Italian tourists in London.

Raising my hand, I say, ‘Wait … please,’ and drag my bag onto my lap. I open it fumblingly and pull out my guidebook. I haven’t booked into a hotel. My plan, based on my newly acquired boldness, had been to arrive early enough to head into the city and find one – a real Neapolitan place, small, family-run. But after three hours of flight delays it is now evening. And hot. Very hot. A digital display fixed over a large advertisement for Banco di Napoli is flashing the time and the temperature. It is 19.45/34°. For a moment I wonder whether I am ill at all. It hasn’t occurred to me that the heat is on the outside, that I am burning up because of the unexpected humidity closing in around me. I feel a wave of relief. It is simply the metabolic shock. The climatic change from cold, damp London to hot, humid Naples. I am wrong – again: my hands are barely able to hold the guidebook and my thumbs, thick and dull, refuse to divide the pages. Even when I manage to find the accommodation section my eyes are unable to focus on the tiny print. The words swim and stretch and slide down the page. I feel like crying. I throw the guidebook down and slump back in the seat.

Through all this my taxi-driver hasn’t taken his eyes off me, cigarette hanging from his lips, arm still slung over the back of the passenger seat. Then, for no apparent reason – and certainly not on any instruction from me – he swivels around in his seat, flicks his cigarette out of the window and starts the engine. I think, but only vaguely, why’s he doing this, he doesn’t know where I want to go. But it has ceased to matter. For some inexplicable reason, from the moment I tossed the guidebook aside, I have decided to trust him – to trust myself to him. I think, and this time not vaguely – the illness somehow providing me with a perverse clarity for a moment – what can happen, really? There are only four possible outcomes, surely. He can take me to a hotel – some place he might make a little extra if he brings in business; he can take me to his home – you hear these kinds of stories from people who have travelled, the generosity of strangers when things get tough; he can take me to a hospital – I obviously have nowhere to go and am too sick to look after myself; or he can drive around until I pass out, rob me and dump me somewhere to live or die according to my own instinct for self-preservation. That’s it. I don’t see kidnapping as a possibility – it is clear I am worth little.

As we leave the airport I stare out of the window and attempt, with my sweat-blurred vision, to read the road signs. If we follow the directions to Napoli, I can relax a little. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. Either way, we seem to be heading into the city. There is a large black mass on the horizon I take to be Vesuvius. I have never seen a volcano before. Sick as I am the sight gives me a real thrill. ‘Wow, Vesuvius,’ I say weakly, hoping to elicit a response from my driver, to make a connection with him. He is silent.

We come to an abrupt stop next to Naples’ central railway station. It has a long low grey roof, jutting out into a point, with only a McDonald’s to give it any colour. The external concourse is busy, Neapolitans hanging about talking and smoking. No one seems in a rush to catch a train. This is the first group of Neapolitans I’ve seen. Nearest to me is a group of young men. Men in their mid thirties – my age. They are all dressed in dark suits, white shirts, top buttons open, ties perfectly skewed. Their faces are dark, also. Some are handsome; most tough-looking. None is pretty or smooth. In my sick state I feel a little threatened.

I turn away and look out over the large piazza; buses and coaches nestled up to the grass verges which demarcate the car parks and the roads. There is little atmosphere in this area of Naples.

The car lurches into space and we filter into a slow-moving lane crossing the piazza. We stop again. This time I can’t see a way through, the roads are jammed. Cars, taxis, buses, trams and scooters all vying for two lanes. I imagine that from above, from the heavens, the traffic looks like an underwater mosaic, intricate, amorphous, shifting.

The image makes me dizzy. My driver is talking to himself, declaiming to other drivers, punctuating the low rasp of his voice with raps on the horn. Every so often he looks around at me. The expression on his face is unreadable. Concern, irritation, suspicion? All I manage is a feeble smile – a helpless baby to a parent, an encouragement to love, responsibility, security. He lights another cigarette, drops his arm out of the window and taps his finger on the door. As we move slowly forward a large hotel – the Cavour – comes into view, an eighteenth-century building, ornate and grand, its façade blackened by the exhaust emissions of perpetually grid-locked traffic.

The next hotel on has a large neon sign across its roof. Luxotica. That’s what I need, I think, some exotic luxury. I peer in as we pass, imagining the interior will display in some way what its name promises, but it’s like every other large European hotel: revolving doors, staff in ill-fitting uniforms, tall flowers in tall vases – everything in gold leaf. Corporate opulence. A level of comfort and service guaranteed. I say to myself, check in there, they’ll look after you, they’ll speak English, they’ll have access to a doctor – do it, do it. But I can’t. Or rather I don’t. Something stops me. However sick I am, however stifling the heat in this cab, I have decided to submit to the momentum that has got me this far, which means I am going to persevere with my cab-driver and his plans for me.

The traffic shunts forward and the hotel disappears behind me. We enter a long, wide street lined with small shops, windows brightly lit and crammed full of clothes, shoes, underwear, electronics. The shops are open yet there are few people about. If you look to the pavement, Naples seems empty, abandoned, as though Vesuvius is about to erupt and everyone has fled; yet, if you look to the road, it is a city full to overflowing, abundant with life. Vespas shoot past us in both directions, with two to a bike, shirts and blouses rustling rapidly in the breeze, not a helmet in sight. Before us, beside us, behind us, trams, buses, cars weave their way down the street as though it is illegal to stay in the same lane for longer than a minute. We seem to be parked at an angle across the traffic with no space to move in any direction. My driver turns on the radio. Italian pop. The song seems to consist of a single melody, high and sweet, endlessly repeated as if repetition is the only way it has any chance of being remembered. My head begins to throb. I grab the top of the passenger seat and heave myself forward. I want to protest, gesture to him to turn it off, or at least reduce the volume. But having leaned forward I immediately notice two things – one, my driver’s name is Massimo; two, the meter isn’t running. I slump back. If he isn’t charging me he can do what he likes; if he isn’t charging me he plans to do what he likes. My heart begins to beat rapidly – tight, hard punches in my chest. My body temperature plummets and I’m covered in a cold sweat, each droplet of perspiration freezing in my pores. I feel as if I am embedded with crystals. Each tiny movement crackles in my inner ear, each tiny movement cuts me. I shiver. This is followed by an instant rocketing in body temperature and the crystals drop out of my pores like hot wax dripping down my skin – I am burning up again, melting, liquefying …

Massimo swings the car sharply right and we are on a side street. The alley is so narrow he is forced, with cigarette nestled in his knuckles, to hold back his wing mirror so it doesn’t scrape along the wall. The people we encounter are forced to back up against the walls, thinning and elongating themselves to let us past. The buildings on both sides are tall and made of black stone. The only source of light is the shallow fluorescence of strip lighting coming from the windows high above us. Every now and then the street opens up into a small, dark piazza, and the Vespas gathering impatiently behind us stream past like water breaking around a rock. It is obvious to me I am in the back streets of Naples, precisely where I’ve been warned not to go by the guidebook, friends, the mythology. The darkness is deep, and the air pressed in through the taxi windows due to the proximity of the buildings is stale and meaty. This place feels forbidding and oppressive. It feels dangerous. I can tell that it will differ little during the day; the height of the buildings in relation to the width of the street means sunlight will not reach down here. I am being driven into permanent night. I don’t have the strength to panic so I pass out instead.

I am hardly aware that we have stopped. It is a dead end. Headlights spread over the wall. I am being pulled from the car. I try to grab my bag, but a hand is pressing down on my head the way the police always seem to guide people down into the back of a car. I am steered through a small door; I have to bend over, again there is a hand on my head.

I am in a courtyard. Small. Square. Tiled. Lemon-and-lime tiles. Washed clean. There are plants. Tall ferns in terracotta pots. Small palm trees. I could be in Morocco, Tunisia. I attempt to stand up straight, but I am too weak, shaky, cold. I hug myself, both for warmth and any sensation of security I might muster.

There is conversation around me, whispered, insistent. A man, a woman. I can’t see them. I look up at the building surrounding the courtyard. Five storeys; I count them carefully for some reason. Each floor has a hallway overlooking the courtyard. Plants cascade through the ornate railings. Directly above me, framed by the four sides of the building, is the night sky, a high, squared-off dome of blackness. Squinting, trying to focus, I can just make out the stars: tiny, irregular pinpricks of white light. Needle stabs in black card. I have a moment of recognition – these are the same stars, the same random pattern of lights I can see from the roof of my building in London, clearer perhaps, but the same, and for a moment I feel free from fear, sickness, helplessness – I feel safe. Then I begin to fall, like a man shot in his tracks. Spiralling down. A human twister unable to stay upright. I hit the floor hard and black out. When I come to, all I can see before me are the lemon-and-lime tiles, stretching for ever like citrus groves flattened by a god’s footsteps.

2

I awake in a small single bed, wrapped in soaked sheets, fixed in the scoop of a collapsed mattress. I awake with a start, as if shaken. My eyelids are heavy and resistant to opening. The room I am in is large, empty – almost. There is a chest of drawers in the corner with an enamel jug and bowl on top. Next to the bed is a chair on which my clothes are hung, my bag pushed neatly underneath. I don’t think it’s a hospital. Opposite, through a tall shuttered window, a little light comes in, shredded, slanting downwards, reaching halfway into the room.

The room feels like a cell, as if it has been designed this way by someone who has made the decision to live minimally, untroubled that a little plaster has fallen from the walls, that the paint is peeling and discoloured, or that the floorboards, unvarnished and dusty, look like the carpet has just been removed. I don’t think I’m in a hotel. Behind the shutters, a window is open. I can hear Italian being spoken. A family arguing. Around a table. Setting a table. The clinking of cutlery and crockery is clear, close. Is it breakfast, lunch, supper? Breakfast. From the small amount of light, I judge it to be morning. There is a radio on somewhere. Music. More Italian pop. It is almost as close as the family.

I heave onto my side and look over the edge of the bed. A small, brightly glazed terracotta jug of water and a small glass. I carefully pour myself a drink. The cool water is a shock to my dry mouth and throat. After a few sips, I try to stand, but the manoeuvre proves too much, my joints are stiff, my muscles ache – I am instantly tired. I lie back down with a low groan. I hear a sound outside the room, the swish of a brush, a scratching at my door. I call out, ‘Hello …’ My voice echoes feebly in the bare room. I draw in a deep breath to shout more loudly. But then just as I am about to form the first syllable of ‘buon giorno’ the door opens and an old woman walks in. She is wearing a light-blue housecoat over a black dress, her hair is thick and grey and amassed into a small wiry bouffant that has collapsed slightly to one side. Her face is small, dark, lined. She has small, dark eyes underscored with lapping wrinkles.

She addresses me in a quick burst of Italian. The only word I recognize is ‘mal’. She is either telling me how sick I was or asking me how sick I am.

I shrug and look at her gravely.

She studies me – her small eyes hard, direct – before speaking again. This time I don’t understand a single word. I stare back at her, shrug. She tries another tack.

Pressing the fingers of one hand together and bringing them up to her mouth, she says, ‘Affamato? Mangiare?’ and points to me.

Hungry? Eat? Am I hungry? I don’t know. Am I?

I nod. ‘Yes … sì … grazie.’ I notice my breathing is shallow.

‘Prego,’ she says lightly, and nimbly slips out through the door.

Wherever I may be at this moment I know this: there is a bed, water, a woman who as far as I can tell doesn’t mind me being here and is going to feed me. So I should relax. I close my eyes and try to attune my ears to what is going on outside. The family across the street are now talking more amiably, laughing. It’s a mother, father, young daughter. Below the window I hear cars and Vespas passing, the constant squeal of their horns. I try to lift myself out of bed for a second time. I place my feet on the floor and haul myself into a sitting position. Easy stages. Like a weightlifter, readying himself for the thrust upwards. It’s no good. As soon as I am fully upright, the dizziness returns. In addition, I am naked. Someone has undressed me. I lower myself back down on the bed just as the door opens and the old woman walks back in. In one hand she is carrying a bowl, in the other a stiff, clean sheet, neatly folded. I grab a pillow and cover myself. The old woman approaches, places the bowl on the chair and holds the new sheet out to me. ‘Grazie,’ I say and take it. She then turns to allow me to lie back down and arrange myself. I only have the energy to pull the old top sheet off and replace it loosely with the new one. When I am settled she turns around. Her eyes flash to the bowl she has placed beside me. I lean over and pick it up. A small spoon sits in the soup, the handle resting on the side of the bowl.

‘Zuppa,’ she says encouragingly. ‘Fagioli. Bene.’

‘Thank you. Grazie, signora,’ I say, trying to express extra gratitude with a thankful expression.

‘Prego,’ she says once again, but this time remains where she is, her hands in the front pockets of her housecoat.

The soup is a white-bean broth, thick, heavy, alive with ground black pepper. My palate is so rough and dry from dehydration I am forced to wash each mouthful down with sips of water. I manage about half of the soup before I lose my appetite. Eating has exhausted me. I push the bowl back onto the chair and repeat, ‘Grazie, grazie,’ over and over to make sure my appreciation is clear. The old woman gathers the old sheet up from the floor. As she is about to leave I call out, ‘Scusi, signora?’

She stops and turns. ‘Sì, signor?’

‘Hotel. Is this a hotel?’ I ask and point to the floor.

She pauses, thinking about it, then says unsurely, ‘Sì, signor …’

Is it a hotel? I wonder. The answer is far from certain.

‘Pensione?’ I ask.

All she does is repeat the word back to me, neither affirming nor denying. I am beginning to suspect the Neapolitans are an opaque people. This woman is as inscrutable as my cab-driver.

‘Massimo?’ I ask, having reminded myself of his name, and mime holding a steering wheel. Maybe I can at least make a connection between the man who brought me here and this woman – is she his mother, his wife? Is this their home?

She shrugs, her expression blank.

‘Grazie,’ I say and leave it at that.

She then says something ending in riposo, which I take to mean ‘rest’, and leaves.

After she has closed the door behind her I notice a newspaper at the end of the bed. Flat and unread. I am sure it wasn’t there when I changed the sheets. I don’t remember the old woman bringing it in either; her hands were empty the first time, the second time she was carrying the soup and sheet. I lean forward with an outstretched arm and pull it over the bed. It is a tabloid. Ultimissime. The headline is large: Il Pentito. Directly below there is a picture of a young man: handsome, elegant, dapper even. He was obviously posing for the photo. The caption underneath reads: Giacomo Sonino. Pentito di Camorra. Camorra? I vaguely remember it’s the name of the Mafia in Naples. Or something like that. Who is he? I wonder. What has he done? Surely ‘penitence’ is not front-page news. Not even in Italy. I turn to the text to try to discover what the story is about. I give up after the first short line. My mind is heavy, lumbering, and I cannot concentrate. I go back to the photo and study it. Certainly not penitent when this was taken. Leaning against a lamp post he looks as if he is pointing to the photographer, jokily warning him not to take his picture. But then on closer inspection I realize he isn’t pointing at all. As well as his outstretched forefinger, his thumb is raised. Now, not so jokily, he is warning the photographer: take my picture and I’ll shoot you. On first glance the picture seemed posed, but now it is clear it was taken on the spur of the moment: Giacomo on a street corner, too cool to walk away, to hide, cover his face, yet quick enough to raise his hand and issue his warning. With a smile. I smile. This man is a gangster.

I drop the paper to the floor and close my eyes. I am just about to doze off when I realize I have no idea how long I have been here, wherever that is. I am taking it for granted that I arrived in Naples last night, passed out and it’s now the following morning – yet I have a strong sense more time has elapsed. I grab the paper from the floor: sabato 24 maggio. Sabato? Is that Saturday or Sunday? Sabato – Sabbath – Saturday. I arrived Thursday. One whole day missing. I have been unconscious for a whole day and night. I try to think back. The last thing I remember is standing in a small courtyard staring up at the night sky. Maybe some sense of time passing, of sleeping, but this room, the old woman – nothing. A blank.

Panicked by this, I try to stand. I need some control. To be able to walk, to get out of here if that’s what I decide. I push myself to my feet, ignoring the dizziness, the weakness in my legs, and take a few faltering steps. A single hot bead of sweat runs down my back, snaking over my backbone. I head for the window and open the shutters. There is a rush of hot air. There is a small, shallow balcony, two feet deep at most. I step out tentatively and grip the railing; flaky white paint crumbles in my hand. I look up. The heat of the sun cracks me on the skull and I reel back. I look down, over the railing to the street. I’m high up – the top of the building. Vertigo mixes with the heat and this time I all but faint. I grip the railing tightly to stop myself collapsing; more paint crumbles away. Across the street, only ten feet away, sitting around their kitchen table, is the family I heard earlier – they are all staring at me. When I’ve fully recovered, I force a smile. There is no response – three more expressionless Neapolitans. Expressionless, staring at … my genitals. I quickly cover myself, back unsteadily into the room and close the shutters. I rest against the chest of drawers until another bout of dizziness passes.

I pour some water into the bowl and immerse my face. The water is cold. I blink rapidly, and with two fingers of each hand clean away two days of sleep embedded in my eyes. When I emerge I feel better. Clear eyes, clearer mind. I squat down by the door and peer through the keyhole. A long hallway, dark and empty. No sign of the old woman. I contemplate dressing and trying to leave, but dismiss it as impractical. Where would I go? What if I collapse out in the street? I doubt I could lift my bag, never mind carry it. I climb back into bed. I will finish the zuppa and then sleep for a while after which hopefully I’ll feel strong enough to go out. A day in Naples. That will be my holiday!