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The Guardian of Mercy

How an Extraordinary Painting by Caravaggio Changed an Ordinary Life Today

Arcade Publishing

Into Mezzogiorno

Where am I? That is the first question. — Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable

Outside my window, the swollen Arno surges under Ponte alle Grazie, or Bridge of the Graces. A thick autumn mist slowly wraps its gray shroud over Brunelleschi's cupola. The orange jigsaw of terracotta roofs, domes, towers, spires, pigeon roosts, and satellite dishes soon vanishes from sight. Below, shrewd merchants bargain with foreign shoppers while the few surviving artisans scurry to appointed rounds, heels clicking crisply on stone-laid medieval alleys.

Each day, this once-refined Renaissance city buckles under the weight of mass tourism. Last traces of jewelers, sculptors, artists, and the dying silk trade of Florence lie submerged under a flood of Chinese plastic knockoffs, T-shirts, kebab takeouts, and postcards. Ambulant vendors splay out their wares for countless busloads of travelers. Troupes of Senegalese unfurl sheets laden with fake Prada and Gucci bags. Young Moroccans lay down posters of saccharine landscapes and iconic David with his anatomic wonder. Chinese hawkers dangle counterfeit scarves from their arms. Only in the evening, when the hordes of modern-day Visigoths march back to waiting buses with their cheap trinkets of plunder, only then does the city exhale in relief.

I find myself here, far from the concrete canyons of Manhattan, or the lofty Tehran where I grew up in the days of the Shah, or the anarchy of Athens where I was based as a cross-cultural consultant for a decade working across the Persian Gulf. All that changed when I met Idanna, whose magnetic voice seized me one evening in the East Village.

We had both been invited to a storytelling dinner at an Iranian friend's flat. Ironically, each of us had separately decided not to go to the gathering, but because of my friend's melodramatic insistence over the phone — he threatened to throw himself from his third-story window — he was able to lure us there.

So I arrived at the candlelit table, and when my turn came I offered the story of Nikos Kazantzakis — author of Zorba the Greek — who defied his excommunication by Orthodox priests by carving on his gravestone, perched in the hills above Heraklion, "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free." When we went around the table, Idanna spoke softly, poetically, and told us about a world where Asia spilled into the green Pacific waters. This island was her home. Struck by her words, I knew that I had to know more. Two years later, we were married on Madison Avenue and 25 th Street in Manhattan in the Italianate Appellate Courthouse during a blinding December blizzard that blanketed the city in a white cloak for days.

Here in Italy, I've seen that Idanna carries a wide, cosmopolitan vision that sets her leagues apart from the smug Florentine society that has been feeding off the city's legacy for centuries, instead of preserving the best of the past for the sake of the future. Idanna's style differs dramatically. She chooses to play it low-key, unpretentious and understated.

Peering through the Florentine fog from my desk, I gaze beyond the old cypress in a nearby garden. My gaze falls on two aged figures standing by the bridge staring down at the Arno's rising waters. They do not move and stand transfixed. Decades still have not washed away their memories of November 4, 1966. On that morning, the Great Flood breached the embankments, submerging the city in surging waves and an avalanche of mud.

A burst of rain lashes at the windowpanes. Suddenly I turn to find Idanna standing silently behind me. On winter days like these, a deep melancholy overwhelms her. Her mood changes when the humid chill seeps through our walls and settles in. And she is not alone. Most of her ever-feuding Guelphs and Ghibellines succumb too. Pushing back her chestnut-hued hair, she sighs.

"My Neapolitan grandmother rarely smiled, but when she was bedridden, I remember that all I had to do was to utter the word Napoli and a sudden spark would light up her dark blue eyes."

Though I never met Idanna's grandmother, I know she had two remarkably different sons. Each reflected life's great extremes. Her first, Emilio Pucci, shocked the dreary postwar fashion world and exploded into the sixties with succulent colors — hot pink, turquoise, and lime — in psychedelic prints drawn under a Tuscan sky. Her second son, Puccio, Idanna's father, chose the opposite trajectory. After separating from his young wife, who left for Africa, he closed his palace doors and chose to retreat in solitary seclusion.

So Idanna grew up in a shadowy world, with random bursts of sunlight when her uncle's models preened on the palazzo roof for photo shoots with the Duomo in the background. At eighteen, Uncle Emilio helped her escape to New York, where she worked at Saks for two seasons. But once she understood that fashion was not her path, she set out for Southeast Asia and settled on an Indonesian island. There, she studied Balinese mythology and then wrote a book, The Epic of Life, on the ceiling paintings of the ancient Royal Court of Justice of Bali, inspired by an episode from the Mahabarata that hauntingly reminded her of Dante's journey into the afterlife.

They say her grandmother, nonna Augusta, was a religious woman, quietly severe, who carried the scars of polio from childhood. Yet, sometimes, nonna would amuse her granddaughter by recounting memories of a Pompeii-red villa, flooded with magical sunrises when eastern light poured across the great jade bay circling from Sorrento to Posillipo.

Staring out my window into the mist, Idanna's words about her nonna linger in the air. "You know, in my family," she says, "the word Napoli always conjures up light."

For myself, Naples holds another pocket of illumination, the Istituto Universitario Orientale, set in the historic center, which happens to be one of Europe's finest centers of Near Eastern studies. A leading expert on Persepolis, Adriano Rossi, teaches there. I have urgent need to speak with him about my book on Iran.

"Adriano just wrote," I reply; "he's back at the Orientale."

"Yes, andiamo, let's go!" she says without missing a beat.

Early the next morning, we drop by to bid our farewells to Idanna's father, seated behind his desk in the darkened office. A single desk lamp casts its rays downward on his documents. Hearing about our journey south, he raises his eyes and smiles. Puccio was born in Naples.

Speaking in his clipped British accent, he asks me, "You know what they say, old boy?"

"No, tell me, Puccio," I coax him.

"Below Rome, they say, Italy ends and Africa begins."

Then he pauses, negating the words he just uttered. "Terribly mean, all that. Well, don't you listen to them, old boy! I adore Naples. Haven't been back there since the war. It has been such a long time ..."

Drifting off in thought, he catches himself and waves his finger sternly: "Now, for heaven's sake, don't leave anything in your car!"

I nod respectfully and we turn to leave.

By the time we pass into Umbria, the rain slackens. The fog begins to lift. Rolling hills topped with fortress citadels float lightly above the highway. Soon, the green plains of Sabina surround us. We circle Rome's immense periphery with massive Autogrills offering inedible fast food and quick coffee injections, and enter into the land called il Mezzogiorno: "High Noon." I follow all arrows pointing south to Napoli.

Idanna sleeps as I pass the invisible line that splits one mentality from the other — the work ethic of Milano from the arrangiarsi of Naples, or "the art of making do." A look of contentment has settled over her face. Recounting her country's layered culture, she has guided me over the years through the labyrinth of Italian customs, where blunders can often end with final judgment.

By late afternoon, the sky dims with twilight streaks of violet and coral. Our long journey comes to an end on a corniche that hugs the sea-cliffs of Naples in a quarter called Posillipo, from Pausilypon in ancient Greek: "respite from worry."

We park in front of Grandmother Augusta's aging villa overlooking the magnificent bay. Scanning to the horizon from this promontory, the gulf spreads out before us. To the west drift the isles of Capri and Ischia. Across the bay, migrations of fishermen sail home like birds in flight with the day's catch. I watch Idanna sigh and fold her hands quietly. Her thick braid falls behind her soft shoulders. I sense that memories of nonna are flooding back.

Originally built by the Duke of Frisio in the eighteenth century, the villa was purchased by Idanna's great-grandfather, who gave it his family name: Villa Pavoncelli. Regrettably sold in the seventies by the last heir, it is now an exclusive apartment building. At the entrance stands a doorman in polished uniform. The gate is firmly closed. A sense of pride for its preserved beauty crosses Idanna's face. Giant pines and palms soar from the sloping garden like silent sentinels. She stares at the grand verandas that descend toward the private beach.

"There!" Her hand points down to a white sand cove. "That's where my father and my uncle played each summer as children." She holds the moment briefly. Then it all fades away with the last light.

Further up the cliffs, we arrive at Paola Carola's home. An old friend of Idanna, she welcomes us into her world filled with bohemian sensibility. Now in her seventh decade, she still exudes a magnetism that is the touchstone of all muses. Her admirers include a collection of writers and artists: Arthur Koestler, Gregor von Rezzori, Raffaele La Capria, and Alberto Giacometti. On her bureau stands her bust by Giacometti, along with an autographed portrait of beloved Neapolitan playwright Eduardo de Filippo, who stares out seductively with his smoky eyes.

Paola first discovered her bohemian side in Paris after she divorced her wealthy elderly Armenian husband, a great art collector. She had met Monsieur Giacometti and then enrolled at the Sorbonne to enter the field of the unconscious with the Freudian disciple, Philippe Lacan. Much later, she would return to her native city where she still practices as a psychoanalyst.

"Neapolitans are deeply superstitious," she confesses. "They don't greet psychology with the open mind of Parisians."

Bound by taboo, mental problems in her city often carry public stigma. Personal torments remain tightly bound in private inner family walls. Her patient visits must be shrouded in secrecy, unlike in Manhattan, where having an analyst is a badge of honor.

* * *

Next morning, Assunta in her sky-blue apron brings a pitcher of warm milk to the breakfast table to add to our brewed espresso, steaming in porcelain cups. Light illuminates the dining room that faces the rippling great bay, where a shrill sun reflects its silver sheen on the jade-blue expanse. Vesuvius's twin craters lift high above delicate nesting clouds. The grand marine arc stretches from our host's terraces to the far cliffs of Sorrento. Marmalade from Ravello lemons covers our toasted bread. Idanna leafs through the heavy volume La Cucina Napoletana.

"It's by Jeanne Caròla, Paola's mother. Listen to her words," she says. "'This book is dedicated to the grandchildren of all the Neapolitans scattered around the world. How can I, neither a scholar nor a writer of literature, express my love for this most unfortunate city, so rich in its past and poor in its present?'"

Standing at the door in her burgundy silk dressing gown, Paola savors every word. Then she takes her place at table and recalls how the Caròla family meals often ended with her father's biting remark that his own mother's cooking was the best in the world.

"Hearing those unpleasant words, my mother always fell silent. But slowly, with persistence, she managed to surpass her mother-in-law's reputation. She abandoned the typical Neapolitan recipes and ventured into a level beyond her rival's reach — the territory of the legendary monsù."

These alchemist-chefs exist now only in legend, but once they reigned in the aristocratic kitchens of Naples. After the French Revolution, they fled Paris and came south to offer their services to the nobility. Over time monsieur morphed into monsù.

Paola describes with great relish the world of her mother's kitchen, where preparations took entire days. Pastafrolla filled with fresh shrimp and mussels; miniature boats of buttered pain carré with parsley; fried sliced zucchini a' scapece dressed with fresh mint; chestnut and cacao balls coated with caramel, candied orange peels, chocolate truffles ... Each meal became a cornucopia of delicacies, breaking new ground. "And, finally, in triumph, my mother published her book," she says. "Now it's known as the 'Bible of Neapolitan cooking.'"

As Paola pulls away from the table, she announces that it is her wish to escort us into the quarter of ancient Neapolis.

"To ... day, I will show you una mer-a-viglia, " she purrs, tasting each syllable. "A true wonder. There is the Cara-vag-gio, you must see ..."

"How lovely," Idanna says.

"But remember," Paola says sternly, "leave your valuables behind. Carry nothing." She echoes Puccio's warning.

We dutifully prepare. I assist Paola in the ritual of closing up the house. I bolt each shutter while she carefully shuts every window. Darkness slowly swallows room after room. When the last window is closed, the illuminated outside world retreats completely. Then she sets the alarm.

We follow her through the shaded garden of palms, cactus, pomegranate bushes, and then climb the stairs that lead to the gate and the road of Posillipo. Harsh sunlight blinds us with its white uniform haze. We leave behind one face of Naples and descend into another.

A half hour later, our taxi driver pulls up in front of the imposing Duomo of San Gennaro and we step out. Idanna whispers in my ear, "Inside there, the relics of the city's patron saint are stored. When his blood miraculously becomes liquid twice a year, Naples goes into a complete frenzy."

Over two millennia ago, Greek colonizers laid down the grid pattern of the city's "historic center." Spaccanapoli, spacca meaning "cut." And slicing through the heart of ancient Napoli is Via dei Tribunali — the Street of the Tribunals. First laid down by Hellenic founders, this ancient artery cleaves the old city in two. It still follows its original trajectory, in spite of layers of urban chaos where buildings have risen and crumbled and risen again for centuries. Here dwells a sea of humanity pressed together like sardines. Underground extends a vast network of caves and tunnels carved out since the Roman epoch from the soft volcanic tufo that was quarried to build the city's structures above. Beneath the old city rests a negative space mirroring what stands above.

The writer Curzio Malaparte describes this living archeological site in his book The Skin:

Naples is the most mysterious city in the world. It is the only city of the ancient world that has not perished like Ilium, Nineveh, and Babylon. Naples is a Pompeii that was never buried. It is not a city: it is a world — the ancient pre-Christian world — that has survived intact on the surface of the modern world.

Navigating through the dense crowd, we enter a jumbled forest of once-proud palaces and timeworn tenements. I marvel at the anarchy. Along a stretch of broken pavement and down a side street, we step into a tiny piazza and pull up before a forlorn church façade. At the entrance, a gap-toothed woman sits quite comfortably behind her makeshift table, hawking cigarettes. A speeding Vespa with a sixth sense maneuvers in around me in a split second, scraping at my ankles. I hurriedly follow the ladies inside. As the wooden door closes behind us, the bedlam subsides. A quiet hush.

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Excerpted from The Guardian of Mercy by Terence Ward. Copyright © 2016 Terence Ward. Excerpted by permission of Arcade Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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