POSTCARD FROM NAPLES

Press, Volume C, Issue 29518, 20 May 1961, Page 8

POSTCARD FROM NAPLES

CARS squeak, bellow; yelp, gurgle, whine and hiccup. Bells ring. Incredible, but a cock crows also. The sound bounces from wall to wall between the narrow canyons of streets, gets stronger and stronger at every impact, rises in triumphant crescendo to the twenty-eighth floor of the Ambassador's, surges through a gap in the window, finds me, floods me, drowns me. We’re in Italy. This is Naples. (Italy ft may be. but few Italians would accept the Neapolitans as their compatriots. A different race. Pagan, And of course one mile south of Naples Africa begins.) Italy enjoys the highest level of noise in the world.

(I should know, I’ve just come from Greece.) In the past there were the bells. But now, the ultimate joy of self-expression; motor horns. There are no psychiatrists in Naples. Neapolitans are the most expensive people to draw. You get so few on a sheet of paper. They’re square. Except when you draw them in motor-cars. Welldressed women wear their hips under their armpits or just below their knees. Maybe they do so now everywhere, but I’ve been leading such a sheltered life. Everybody at some time has been to Naples and was the better for IL Lord Nelson met Lady Hamilton here. Boswell met no ladle* Montesquieu count-

ed 300,000 beggars and thieves (at that time the population was 320,000) and Goethe- lost his court painter to a red-haired English wench, with the result that the monumental picture depicting Goethe meditating among ruins remained unfinished. A good thing. Naples has a Bay. The Bay. But its greatest claim to fame is to have produced the first hit song in history about a mechanical device. “Funiculi, funicula.” After thus contributing its share to progress Naples settled down and rested rightly on its laurels in a cheerful and vigorous somnolence, until after the end of the last war, when, with American economic aid. it was suddenly washed, scrubbed, slum-cleared and rebuilt

with skyscrapers. It got so that while in the past I was offered by touts the usual beautiful sister, loving mother, or a very clean schoolteacher, the thing they try to inflict on me now is a phony golden wristwatch. This shows a high standard of living and morals perfected. (A horrible thought Maybe I'm just looking too old.) Explanatory note to drawing above: The figure on the left shows a Neapolitan taxi-driver, porter, waiter or guide in the traditional attitude after you’ve given him a fee, tip, fare twice the amount he is entitled to. I’ve left the picture. —GEORGE MOLNAR.