Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (3 page)

I
’m from Naples, I’ll shout it out, I’m not ashamed. But then why should I be? Wasn’t Totò born in Naples? He’s the greatest actor in the world, he won five Oscars. I’m a big fan of Totò, I haven’t missed a single one of his films and I remember them all. He can make me laugh even when I’m sad. I just can’t help laughing whenever I see the scene where he tries to sell the Trevi Fountain to that nitwit tourist. Remember that movie?

My name is Benedetta, but a lot of people like to call me la Napolitana. That nickname doesn’t bother me. I know that a lot of the tenants can’t stand me, hate me for no reason, even if I am good at my job. Ask around which is the cleanest building in Piazza Vittorio, they’ll tell you with no hesitation: “Benedetta Esposito’s building.” I don’t mean to say that I own this building, let’s get it straight: I don’t want any trouble with the real owner, Signor Carnevale. I’m just a simple concierge, that’s all. I’ve spent forty years in this building, I’m the oldest concierge in Rome. I really deserve a prize, and I ought to get it right from the mayor’s own hands. The problem is, this is Italy: we reward the incompetent and despise the good! Look what happened to poor Giulio Andreotti: after serving the state for decades, he was accused of being in the Mafia! Mary Mother of God, help us! In fact, they accused him of kissing that mafioso Riina on the mouth. What a disgrace! What an outrage! Who would believe such a lie? That poor man Andreotti is a true Catholic. He never misses Mass, he is a real gentleman, and as Totò says, “Gentlemen are born.” I am ready to testify at the trial in Palermo loud and clear: “There is only one hand that Andreotti has kissed, and it’s the hand of the Holy Father!” His back is hunched from fatigue. I have back problems, too, because of the heavy work, and the pain in my joints gives me no peace. I can’t really manage the cleaning anymore, but I have no alternative since my pension isn’t enough even to buy medicine. The trouble is they destroyed the Christian Democrats after Aldo Moro was killed. In the past I always voted for the Christian Democrats, but now it’s all so confusing! I don’t know who I should vote for. My son Gennaro told me to vote for Forza Italia, he says he heard Berlusconi on television swearing on the heads of his children he’ll make everybody rich like him.

What are you saying? Signor Amedeo is a foreigner? I can’t believe he’s not Italian! I haven’t lost my mind yet, I can certainly tell the difference between Italians and foreigners. Take that blond student, for example. There’s no doubt, he’s from Sweden. Just look at him and listen to him, and you know he’s a foreigner, with that way he talks. He makes so many ridiculous mistakes, like when he says, over and over, “I am not
gentile
!”—“I am not polite, not nice,” he says, the way someone might say, “I am
rude
.” He calls me Anna Magnani! I’ve told him so many times that Anna Magnani was born in Rome, she’s Roman, whereas I was born in Naples, I speak Neapolitan. He asked me to be in a movie. I said that I like movies a lot, especially the ones with Totò, but I don’t know how to act. I’m a concierge, not an actress! At that point he took me by the hand and got me dancing. I was nearly falling down, and he looked at me seriously: “You’re the new Anna Magnani!” That blond kid is a foreigner from head to toe—he’s an idiot and he’s crazy. A lot of times in winter I see these blond tourists, male and female, wearing short-sleeved T-shirts, and so I stop, bewildered, and in astonishment say to myself: “Aren’t these people afraid of catching cold?”

But what do you want, now that I’m getting old I don’t understand anything anymore. To hell with old age! And so what, if Signor Amedeo is a foreigner, as you say, then who’s a real Italian? I’m not even sure about myself. Maybe the day will come when someone will say that Benedetta Esposito is Albanian or Filipino or Pakistani. Time will tell. Amedeo speaks Italian better than my son Gennaro. In fact, better than the professor at the University of Rome, Antonio Marini, who lives on the fifth floor, No. 16. I know all the tenants in my building, so they accuse me of making trouble among them. Is this the reward I deserve? I have their interests at heart and I’m always available for them. Tell me: is that supposed to mean I get involved in their business? San Genna’, help me out here.

I remember very well, it was spring, five years ago. I saw him come in the street door and go toward the elevator, and I said to him:

“Hey buddy, where’re you going?”

“I’m going to the third floor.”

I insisted on further details, and I discovered that he was going to see Stefania Massaro. As he was about to open the elevator door I said:

“Please don’t bang the door. Make sure you’ve closed it properly, don’t press the button too hard.”

He smiled at me and said:

“I’ve changed my mind, I’ll walk.”

I thought he was making a fool of me, insulting me the way everybody else does, but he smiled even more sweetly and said, “Good day, Signora!” I couldn’t believe my ears! I asked myself: are there really still men who respect women in this country? That day I felt a strange sense of guilt. I swore, as sure as there’s a San Gennaro, that I would be nice to him if he came back again. You should know that Signor Amedeo is the only one in this building who out of respect for me doesn’t use the elevator, because he understood the problems it causes for me every time it breaks. The trials of this elevator never end. There’s even someone who secretly pees in it! So I’m in danger of losing my job. We have had so many meetings to try to resolve this problem, but unfortunately we’ve never managed to come up with a solution. I thought of calling the people from the TV show
Striscia la notizia
who look into people’s problems and solve them quickly, but then I reconsidered, I didn’t want to damage the reputation of my building. Finally, inspired by James Bond, I got the idea of installing a small hidden camera in the elevator to discover the guilty party. Only I had to forget about that, because of the expense, and then I was afraid I’d be accused of spying and not minding my own business.

I was talking about Signor Amedeo, right? After a while he came to live with Stefania. I was very pleased. But this life is not fair. Tell me: does Stefania Massaro deserve a fine man like Signor Amedeo? That fart can’t stand me, you’d think I’d killed her father and mother. And I can’t stand her, I do my best not to run into her. How can I forget her behaviour as a child? She’d ring doorbells and make a mess on the stairs just so the other residents would get mad at me. They were always accusing me of not doing my job properly! She did everything she could to get me thrown out, but she didn’t succeed. I’m not afraid of other people’s spite—San Gennaro protects me, if only because I named my only son after the patron saint of Naples!

No! Amedeo has nothing to do with that crime. I don’t know who killed Lorenzo Manfredini. I found him stone dead in the elevator, in a pool of blood. The people in Piazza Vittorio couldn’t stand the Gladiator. I’m sure that the cause of this whole mess is unemployment. A lot of young Italians can’t find a good job, so they’re forced to steal for a piece of bread. The immigrant workers should be thrown out and our sons should take their places. Find the real murderer. I’m suspicious of that Albanian friend of Amedeo’s. I never understood what sort of bond there was between him and Signor Amedeo. Elisabetta Fabiani informed me that she frequently saw the Albanian drunk and laughing till he cried, right in front of the tourists in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. I tried to warn Signor Amedeo to stay away from criminal types like that, but he wouldn’t listen to me. In fact, he welcomed him into his house. And there you have the result.

I say the Albanian is the real murderer. That good-for-nothing is rude when I call him
guaglio’
! I don’t know his name, and in Naples that’s what we say, but he answers with a nasty word in his language. I don’t remember exactly that word he always says, maybe
mersa
or
mersis
! Anyway the point is, this word means “shit” in Albanian and is used as an insult. What makes me even more suspicious is the fact that he doesn’t know his own country at all. He’s tried over and over again to convince me that he comes from a country that isn’t Albania. He’s not the only one who refuses to acknowledge his original country in order to avoid getting expelled, eh! That Filipino Maria Cristina always tells me she isn’t from the Philippines, she says she’s from some other country whose name I can’t remember. I don’t understand, why do the police tolerate these criminals? I know some of them very well, operating not far from Piazza Vittorio. You know Iqbal the Pakistani, who owns the grocery on Via La Marmora? Even he refuses to recognize his country, he always says, “I hate Pakistan.” How can a person feel disgusted by his own country like that? I remember Iqbal very well. Just a few years ago, he used to unload trucks at the market in Piazza Vittorio, now he’s turned into a big businessman! Tell me: how’d he find the money to start up a business? Where’d he get the money to buy the store and the van, and get the stuff that comes from outside? There’s no other explanation: that bum is a thief, or a drug dealer.

So in the end what happens to the taxes we pay to the state? What’s the use if not to protect us from these criminals? Why don’t they arrest Iqbal and the Albanian and the rest of these criminal immigrants and throw them out? That Filipino woman, I really dislike her, she is so nasty, constantly aggravating me. My problem is I can’t stand people who don’t want to do anything. I still remember when she first came to take care of old Rosa, she was so thin, like a broomstick, from hunger. Oh well yes, there are still a lot of people in Africa and Brazil and other parts of the world who scrounge food out of the garbage. After a few months she got big and fat because of all the crap she eats, and she sleeps a lot, too, she only leaves the house for emergencies and pays no attention to problems like taxes, the rent, the electric bill, the phone bill, and all the other nuisances of daily life. She gets everything free and she acts like she owns the house. Is this right? Does this situation make any sense? Me, an old Italian woman, ill, I have to work hard, while she, that chubby young immigrant, is the picture of health. She eats what she wants and sleeps as much as she wants, just like a spoiled cat! I know she doesn’t have papers to be here, but I can’t report her because I don’t want to make trouble for Rosa’s relatives. They could get back at me without thinking twice.

I’m sure the murderer of Lorenzo Manfredini is one of the immigrants. The government should hurry up and do something. Soon they’ll be throwing us out of our own country. All you have to do is take a walk in the afternoon in the gardens in Piazza Vittorio to see that the overwhelming majority of the people are foreigners: some come from Morocco, some from Romania, China, India, Poland, Senegal, Albania. Living with them is impossible. They have religions, habits, and traditions different from ours. In their countries they live outside or in tents, they eat with their hands, they travel on donkeys and camels and treat women like slaves. I’m not a racist, but that’s the truth. Even Bruno Vespa, on TV, says so. Then why do they come to Italy? I don’t know, we’re full up with the unemployed. My son Gennaro doesn’t have a job—if it weren’t for his wife, Marina, who’s a seamstress, and help from me he would have ended up as a beggar outside the church of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples. If there’s no work for the people of this country, how is it that we welcome all these desperate types? Every week we see boats loaded with illegal immigrants on the TV news. They bring contagious diseases like plague and malaria! Emilio Fede always says so. But no one listens to him.

I say that crime has gone beyond all limits. Last month Elisabetta Fabiani, the widow on the second floor, lost her little dog Valentino. She had taken him out to the gardens in Piazza Vittorio to do his business, as she does every day, and she sat down to enjoy the sun, then she looked all over and there wasn’t even a trace. She asked me to help, and we searched inside and outside the gardens, but not a sign. Elisabetta wept so much over the loss of Valentino that everyone thought her son Alberto had died. I told her that Valentino’s disappearance raises a lot of suspicions. I don’t have clear proof available, but what I see all around me tells me it was kidnapping.

First. Recently a lot of Chinese restaurants have opened in and around Piazza Vittorio.

Second. The gardens of Piazza Vittorio are the favorite place for Chinese children to play.

Third. They say that the Chinese eat cats and dogs.

After all those things I’ve told you, there is no doubt that the Chinese stole poor little Valentino and ate him!

Signor Amedeo is innocent. Arrest his Albanian friend, question him carefully, you’ll see, he’ll break down and confess. I’ve caught him red-handed many times trying to break the elevator. I’ve seen him go up and down for no reason, he goes up to the top floor and down to the ground floor. I observed him very carefully until I became sure that he was guilty. Before calling the police I spoke to Signor Amedeo to avoid complications. The Albanian is the real murderer, I’m ready to swear to it. Is it right that Signor Amedeo should pay in the place of some immigrant? Is it right to accuse a good Italian citizen of a crime he didn’t commit? San Genna’, you see to it!

Why are you so insistent? I told you that Amedeo is a real Italian. I asked him personally over and over to tell me where he comes from, about his parents, his family, where he was born, and other things I can’t remember anymore. He always answered with a single word: south. I didn’t want to bother him with questions to find out more details, I said to myself: who knows, he might be Sicilian, Calabrian, or from Puglia. And then there’s no difference between Catania and Naples, between Bari and Potenza, we all come from the south. What’s the harm, in the end we’re all Italians! Rome is the city where people come from all over. Do me a favor, don’t accuse Amedeo of being an immigrant. We Italians are like that: in tough times we don’t trust each other, instead of helping we do all we can to hurt each other. Are we a people who have betrayal in our veins? During the Second World War we fought with the Germans, then we revolted against them and were allied with the Americans. I still remember the American soldiers on the streets of Naples. I was a pretty girl then, and all the boys liked me.