4 July 2006
It’s hot, inside and out. Sitting at my desk the midday sun is filtered as it splays across our courtyard. In this light the external walls look buttercup yellow. Sometimes these walls are pale lemon, at other times the yellow of marigolds. I love to look up through the central cavity towards the sky. It’s a true picture of Mediterranean urban life, the yellow and blues contrasting and reflecting the colour of the people living within. The mess of antennas, open shutters, washing lines and amateur wiring on stand by, like actors waiting for their cue.
The whole city is a theatre, and inside No 28 Via Antonio Villari there is a playhouse receiving rave reviews. Many of the residents are like the back stage crew, you don’t see them much, rarely hear them, but nevertheless you know they are there.
And then there are those that take central stage.
Enzo, the neighbour to our left, is single, 22 years old, unemployed, and slightly incapacitated following a run in with a truck. Enzo’s family lives across the street. He’s a strange character, coming and going at odd times. He grew up rattling around this neighbourhood, and exudes the confidence that comes from being a born and bred local, which translates into thinking he has run of the place.
He is a sturdy fellow, with a flab of belly that hangs over the top of his pants. His hair, dark, slightly wavy and recently cut, is usually squashed down under a baseball cap. Long shorts, T-shirts and thongs are the only clothes I’ve ever seen him in, except for those unpleasant occasions when he’s hanging out his mother’s front window watching the street, or worse standing on the step in full view, dressed only in his boxer shorts.
Enzo has only recently finished renovating his urban cave, and since moving in he has certainly made himself at home. He has a bad habit of sweeping the shared courtyard after midnight. He then splashes around copious buckets of water, probably to keep the dust down. In fact it just helps mosquitoes breed and amplifies the humidity and dampness already trapped in the tufa stone.
He likes to watch. Sometimes he just stands there staring. He also likes to listen. In some places this would be considered eavesdropping. There is not much that we do that goes unobserved. He has an uncanny ability to mimic the language around him, acquiring smatterings of Polish and Ukrainian. I’m just waiting for some English to seep in, only to be regurgitated at the most unexpected moment. He has commented at how much time I spend at my computer writing. I also suspect he listens out at night trying to gage when we are in bed, sleeping or still awake.
There is rarely a greeting exchanged with Enzo that is not quickly followed by a question "Where are you going?" or "Where is Gigi?" or "What are you doing?’. Or he first makes his assumptions based on your appearance and then asks "Going to the beach?", "Off to work?" or "Aren’t you going to watch the soccer?" After perfunctory greetings we both tend to ignore such questions. His nosey parker tendencies need no encouragement from us.
A recent spate of Enzo’s ‘gardening’ brought out my territorial instincts. Enzo had a couple of pot plants sitting on his roof, the foliage spilling over the edge. Our landlady had left three pot plants on our courtyard dividing wall. Enzo took it upon himself to re-pot two of these, and relocate them to his liking. One of ‘our’ pots is now up on his roof. In a moment of frustration I took the largest, most established plant down from the wall and put it beside our front door. Then I used an empty pot to plant some aloe vera. This too sits by our door. Enzo made a comment to Gigi about the changes, claiming where he had them was ‘more beautiful’. I make a point of storing the laundry tub and bucket and mop on our dividing wall now!
In preparation for his birthday party Enzo cleared out his apartment and placed a trolley load of stuff in our courtyard while we were out. Ordinarily this would have been all right provided he’d had the courtesy to ask in advance. The problem with living in small apartments in high density zones is that space is a premium. It takes very little for neighbours to encroach on your space. Our courtyard is a prime example. It is the only external area inside the complex that is sectioned off and private. All other courtyards are shared spaces. It would take very little for Enzo to consider the section between our gate and our front door public domain. He has already encroached and we need to be vigilant about maintaining a certain detachment and challenge any intrusive behaviour.
Maintaining the appropriate type of relationship is an issue. It is important to be polite and mildly friendly with our neighbours but it is just as important to retain a certain distance and reserve. This prevents people (like Enzo) becoming overly familiar, walking into the house uninvited, and helping themselves to your belongings and space without asking. We already have him and his mother regularly asking to borrow things, for example, a vacuum cleaner, tools, scissors, light bulbs, and money. Gi and I were both flabbergasted when Enzo’s mother boldly asked to borrow €50 only a week after we’d moved in. There seemed to be no sense of shame or embarrassment. In fact, I suspect she was testing if we could say ‘no’ to determine how easily she could manipulate and dominate us. The answer is always ‘sorry, no’ (except for the scissors, which Enzo had seen us using).
Enzo likes to fill the air with his presence. He’s loud. If it’s not an old fashioned Neapolitan tune pumping out from his sound system, to which he enthusiastically sings along like it’s Karaoke night, it’s him calling out to someone. There is a toddler living on the level above, and Enzo is constantly calling his name, trying to get his attention, hoping the baby will mimic his thunderous ‘ooohhh’. If I was this child’s mother I’d tell Enzo to stop speaking to my son like he was a dog.
The toddler’s mother is another central character in our urban cave community production. Rita is a housewife, mother to two boys and wife to another Enzo. Her oldest son, Giovanni, nicknamed Gianni (like Johnny in English) is about twelve. With no room in the house, no back yard, no community centre and an apparent lack of kids his own age in this building he strikes me as a pretty lonely kid. He and Enzo No 1 spend a lot of time together, especially now that it is summer holidays. Most of the time he’s sitting on the front step at Enzo’s parent’s house, watching the street. The toddler is Gennaro, nicknamed Genni (like Jenny in English). He looks about 18 months, and like most toddlers is just trying to find his balance and his place in the world. Over the months I’ve heard him begin talking and now he often calls out something instead of just resorting to crying.
Now, why you would give your two sons names that become nicknames that sound like Johnny and Jenny is beyond me. It’s like calling your kids Anna and Hannah. For the first few weeks I always thought she was screaming out my name.
Oh yeah. Rita is a screamer. It seems to climax on a daily basis at lunch time, somewhere between 12 noon and 3pm. Sometimes they go to the shops in the late morning. The screaming begins as she tries to get all and sundry down the stairs, loaded into the pram and moving. The screaming continues, short ear piercing bursts, as she prepares lunch, trying to juggle the cooking with looking after the baby and working around her big surly husband.
Enzo No 2 usually looks like he’s just roused from a deep sleep. He is home most days, and seems to trundle off to work in the late afternoon, throwing a gruff ‘Buona Sera’ (good evening, the required greeting when you see a neighbour) my way if I’m outside. He doesn’t look like a happy man. Rita doesn’t look like a happy woman. Gi sometimes translates their arguments, ‘You don’t do anything for me anymore’ type ammunition. Enzo No 2 is, to my mortification, similar to Enzo No 1 in that he likes to wander around in his boxer shorts. There are just some bodies that shouldn’t be put on public display. His fat belly, hunched shoulders, thinning hair, and crumpled face are not a pretty picture.
The family lives on the floor above. As I hang the washing in our courtyard I look up into the small balcony near their front door. Rita seems to wash sheets almost every day. Their washing hangs from the balcony and provides me with a daily dose of colour, pinks, blues and yellows.
To the right is another apartment. I think the occupant, a portly signora with a bad heart and a strong, raspy voice, is Enzo No 2’s sister. She often accompanies Rita shopping and she has a motherly tone of authority that she uses on young Gianni. To my amusement and great pleasure she also uses this no-nonsense approach with Enzo No 1 when he steps out of line. As a middle aged woman, apparently unmarried, she has lived in that apartment for forty years and is a force to be reckoned with. Generally a quiet neighbour, we occasionally hear her television, turned up of an evening, the doors wide open in the summer heat. I always try to listen in whenever she’s out on her balcony sharing her opinion or assessment of a situation. It’s intriguing trying to understand her accent and the dialect. On every occasion that she’s had something to say in relation to the neighbourhood it exudes common sense, wisdom and a practicality that is sometimes absent in this city.
The other major player is Maria. She lives on the ground level, diagonal to us. Maria is Polish. There is a man living with her, I surmise it is her husband. Maria has an annoying voice, and too often she stands in the shared courtyard talking on the phone, her high pitched nasal tone echoing off the walls. We all get to listen in on her conversations, regardless of the time and content. On occasions I’ve heard her crying over the phone. Maria is one of a huge community of middle aged women who have immigrated to Italy from Eastern Europe in search of work. I can’t even imagine her life in Poland, but I can be quite certain that she hasn’t had the same opportunities as me. The immigrant communities in Naples seem to keep to themselves, and sometimes a handful invade Maria’s cave for an evening of conversation and alcohol.
The actors on this stage don’t change much. Most of them move in and stay. Gi and I are the newcomers, and I can only wonder what they see and think of us; the unusual washing, the smell of Thai food, the arguments in English, the flow of visitors.
The only thing I can be sure of is that each daily act will be original and unrehearsed, except perhaps for Rita’s lunchtime screaming and Enzo’s midnight sweeping.
The whole city is a theatre, and inside No 28 Via Antonio Villari there is a playhouse receiving rave reviews. Many of the residents are like the back stage crew, you don’t see them much, rarely hear them, but nevertheless you know they are there.
And then there are those that take central stage.
Enzo, the neighbour to our left, is single, 22 years old, unemployed, and slightly incapacitated following a run in with a truck. Enzo’s family lives across the street. He’s a strange character, coming and going at odd times. He grew up rattling around this neighbourhood, and exudes the confidence that comes from being a born and bred local, which translates into thinking he has run of the place.
He is a sturdy fellow, with a flab of belly that hangs over the top of his pants. His hair, dark, slightly wavy and recently cut, is usually squashed down under a baseball cap. Long shorts, T-shirts and thongs are the only clothes I’ve ever seen him in, except for those unpleasant occasions when he’s hanging out his mother’s front window watching the street, or worse standing on the step in full view, dressed only in his boxer shorts.
Enzo has only recently finished renovating his urban cave, and since moving in he has certainly made himself at home. He has a bad habit of sweeping the shared courtyard after midnight. He then splashes around copious buckets of water, probably to keep the dust down. In fact it just helps mosquitoes breed and amplifies the humidity and dampness already trapped in the tufa stone.
He likes to watch. Sometimes he just stands there staring. He also likes to listen. In some places this would be considered eavesdropping. There is not much that we do that goes unobserved. He has an uncanny ability to mimic the language around him, acquiring smatterings of Polish and Ukrainian. I’m just waiting for some English to seep in, only to be regurgitated at the most unexpected moment. He has commented at how much time I spend at my computer writing. I also suspect he listens out at night trying to gage when we are in bed, sleeping or still awake.
There is rarely a greeting exchanged with Enzo that is not quickly followed by a question "Where are you going?" or "Where is Gigi?" or "What are you doing?’. Or he first makes his assumptions based on your appearance and then asks "Going to the beach?", "Off to work?" or "Aren’t you going to watch the soccer?" After perfunctory greetings we both tend to ignore such questions. His nosey parker tendencies need no encouragement from us.
A recent spate of Enzo’s ‘gardening’ brought out my territorial instincts. Enzo had a couple of pot plants sitting on his roof, the foliage spilling over the edge. Our landlady had left three pot plants on our courtyard dividing wall. Enzo took it upon himself to re-pot two of these, and relocate them to his liking. One of ‘our’ pots is now up on his roof. In a moment of frustration I took the largest, most established plant down from the wall and put it beside our front door. Then I used an empty pot to plant some aloe vera. This too sits by our door. Enzo made a comment to Gigi about the changes, claiming where he had them was ‘more beautiful’. I make a point of storing the laundry tub and bucket and mop on our dividing wall now!
In preparation for his birthday party Enzo cleared out his apartment and placed a trolley load of stuff in our courtyard while we were out. Ordinarily this would have been all right provided he’d had the courtesy to ask in advance. The problem with living in small apartments in high density zones is that space is a premium. It takes very little for neighbours to encroach on your space. Our courtyard is a prime example. It is the only external area inside the complex that is sectioned off and private. All other courtyards are shared spaces. It would take very little for Enzo to consider the section between our gate and our front door public domain. He has already encroached and we need to be vigilant about maintaining a certain detachment and challenge any intrusive behaviour.
Maintaining the appropriate type of relationship is an issue. It is important to be polite and mildly friendly with our neighbours but it is just as important to retain a certain distance and reserve. This prevents people (like Enzo) becoming overly familiar, walking into the house uninvited, and helping themselves to your belongings and space without asking. We already have him and his mother regularly asking to borrow things, for example, a vacuum cleaner, tools, scissors, light bulbs, and money. Gi and I were both flabbergasted when Enzo’s mother boldly asked to borrow €50 only a week after we’d moved in. There seemed to be no sense of shame or embarrassment. In fact, I suspect she was testing if we could say ‘no’ to determine how easily she could manipulate and dominate us. The answer is always ‘sorry, no’ (except for the scissors, which Enzo had seen us using).
Enzo likes to fill the air with his presence. He’s loud. If it’s not an old fashioned Neapolitan tune pumping out from his sound system, to which he enthusiastically sings along like it’s Karaoke night, it’s him calling out to someone. There is a toddler living on the level above, and Enzo is constantly calling his name, trying to get his attention, hoping the baby will mimic his thunderous ‘ooohhh’. If I was this child’s mother I’d tell Enzo to stop speaking to my son like he was a dog.
The toddler’s mother is another central character in our urban cave community production. Rita is a housewife, mother to two boys and wife to another Enzo. Her oldest son, Giovanni, nicknamed Gianni (like Johnny in English) is about twelve. With no room in the house, no back yard, no community centre and an apparent lack of kids his own age in this building he strikes me as a pretty lonely kid. He and Enzo No 1 spend a lot of time together, especially now that it is summer holidays. Most of the time he’s sitting on the front step at Enzo’s parent’s house, watching the street. The toddler is Gennaro, nicknamed Genni (like Jenny in English). He looks about 18 months, and like most toddlers is just trying to find his balance and his place in the world. Over the months I’ve heard him begin talking and now he often calls out something instead of just resorting to crying.
Now, why you would give your two sons names that become nicknames that sound like Johnny and Jenny is beyond me. It’s like calling your kids Anna and Hannah. For the first few weeks I always thought she was screaming out my name.
Oh yeah. Rita is a screamer. It seems to climax on a daily basis at lunch time, somewhere between 12 noon and 3pm. Sometimes they go to the shops in the late morning. The screaming begins as she tries to get all and sundry down the stairs, loaded into the pram and moving. The screaming continues, short ear piercing bursts, as she prepares lunch, trying to juggle the cooking with looking after the baby and working around her big surly husband.
Enzo No 2 usually looks like he’s just roused from a deep sleep. He is home most days, and seems to trundle off to work in the late afternoon, throwing a gruff ‘Buona Sera’ (good evening, the required greeting when you see a neighbour) my way if I’m outside. He doesn’t look like a happy man. Rita doesn’t look like a happy woman. Gi sometimes translates their arguments, ‘You don’t do anything for me anymore’ type ammunition. Enzo No 2 is, to my mortification, similar to Enzo No 1 in that he likes to wander around in his boxer shorts. There are just some bodies that shouldn’t be put on public display. His fat belly, hunched shoulders, thinning hair, and crumpled face are not a pretty picture.
The family lives on the floor above. As I hang the washing in our courtyard I look up into the small balcony near their front door. Rita seems to wash sheets almost every day. Their washing hangs from the balcony and provides me with a daily dose of colour, pinks, blues and yellows.
To the right is another apartment. I think the occupant, a portly signora with a bad heart and a strong, raspy voice, is Enzo No 2’s sister. She often accompanies Rita shopping and she has a motherly tone of authority that she uses on young Gianni. To my amusement and great pleasure she also uses this no-nonsense approach with Enzo No 1 when he steps out of line. As a middle aged woman, apparently unmarried, she has lived in that apartment for forty years and is a force to be reckoned with. Generally a quiet neighbour, we occasionally hear her television, turned up of an evening, the doors wide open in the summer heat. I always try to listen in whenever she’s out on her balcony sharing her opinion or assessment of a situation. It’s intriguing trying to understand her accent and the dialect. On every occasion that she’s had something to say in relation to the neighbourhood it exudes common sense, wisdom and a practicality that is sometimes absent in this city.
The other major player is Maria. She lives on the ground level, diagonal to us. Maria is Polish. There is a man living with her, I surmise it is her husband. Maria has an annoying voice, and too often she stands in the shared courtyard talking on the phone, her high pitched nasal tone echoing off the walls. We all get to listen in on her conversations, regardless of the time and content. On occasions I’ve heard her crying over the phone. Maria is one of a huge community of middle aged women who have immigrated to Italy from Eastern Europe in search of work. I can’t even imagine her life in Poland, but I can be quite certain that she hasn’t had the same opportunities as me. The immigrant communities in Naples seem to keep to themselves, and sometimes a handful invade Maria’s cave for an evening of conversation and alcohol.
The actors on this stage don’t change much. Most of them move in and stay. Gi and I are the newcomers, and I can only wonder what they see and think of us; the unusual washing, the smell of Thai food, the arguments in English, the flow of visitors.
The only thing I can be sure of is that each daily act will be original and unrehearsed, except perhaps for Rita’s lunchtime screaming and Enzo’s midnight sweeping.
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