Books & Rough Business

VIII

35 Tullio Pironti VIII Piazza Dante in fact possessed a full array of comic-book vividness. Every day you saw a dozen or more shoestring ventures, many on the farther side of the law, as people who never had much to begin with scuffled to overcome the damages of war. Street vendors always made a place for themselves, and did whatever they could to keep the crowds buzzing around. The piazza borders Via Toledo, one of primary thoroughfares uphill from the docks, up to the Archeological Museum and the heights beyond, and it serves as a gateway to the ancient Greco-Roman downtown. Not long after the war the city got a new mayor, Achille Lauro, the sort of wheeler-dealer who might charitably be called “colorful,” and one of Lauro’s strangest moves was to order that the boulevard’s name be changed to Via Roma. But for those of us on the street, it always remained “Tuledu,” and Dante was its heart. It’s still a busy stop for the underground Metro. But when I was beginning to study the book trade, the piazza was one of the central tram turnarounds for anyone coming into the city. A boy kicking a ball, like myself, always had to keep an eye out for those trolleys—and for the penniless scugnizzi, many younger than myself, catching a free ride by clinging to the rear. Yet I could also see that the piazza was lovely. Even with all the activity, it’s one of the great open spaces of downtown. As I mentioned earlier, the Rococo master Luigi Vanvitelli designed the arrangement (or rather, re-designed it; in lower Naples every site has had several previous lives). As long as I’ve lived here, Vanvitelli’s building fronts have each been painted a different shade of pastel, and the central edifice is crowned by a row of statues, saints of course. The restaurants, while vying for the freshest mozzarella and the most genuine pizza, have chosen their awnings to match 36 Books and Rough Business the color of their palazzo. And at the square’s center there’s always stood Dante Alighieri himself, perched on a tower and frowning out towards Tuledu. Like most of the city’s better-behaved figures, he turned his back on the characters in the piazza. Perhaps the hardest to ignore was the baker Fortunato. If he called to mind someone from the comic books, it would’ve been Braccio di Ferro, the Grip of Steel—Popeye, that is. Fortunato too wore a little white cap, a beret in his case, slanted to one side; he too rolled his blue shirtsleeves up to mid-bicep. His work-habits drew notice as well. Long before it became a union demand, the short working week was Fortunato’s standard system. After the weekend you would always find his little cart covered by a tall cardboard sandwich sign: This Operation is Closed Mondays, to Allow Me Personal Time. His business didn’t suffer in the least, either. Come Tuesday, he still sold the best taralli in the city—a kind of spicy cookie you don’t find much any more, with both almonds and a touch of pepper. And when he needed customers, all he needed to do was raise a caterwaul, Popeye in dialect, with power enough to cut through the crowd: Fortunato’s got the good stuff! In another corner of the piazza, a bit less visible, you could find one of those Italian women with olive skin that verged on brown, the kind who remain eye-catching well into middle age. Working on her feet had kept her legs in good shape, and these were long and well-made to begin with. With just a flounce of her dress, a flash of leg above the knee, she would keep men stopping by to see if she’d do it again. And those same long legs gave her a name: Maria ‘a longa. But it was her bosom, a good grown woman’s top, that Maria knew how to use best. Her business was contraband cigarettes, nearly always in singles she drew nimbly from their packs and then offered by means of a highly specialized—to say the least—piece of marketing. Within her generous neckline she brought off a miracle of balance, so that fully ten cigarettes would poke up between her breasts. Any man with cash on hand, young or old, bello or brutto, was...