Naples, eruptions, chittlins and the tears of Christ

Its not easy, prone in the dentist's chair, mouth agape and filled with fingers, to tell the nurse twice describing how her aunt prepares chittlins, to STFU, though I tried, believe me. Squeamish about food I may well be - at least according to the Celt - and surprising perhaps for one who, as a child, relished uncooked tripe laden with salt and malt vinegar, but couldn't remain in the same room as a bowl of tripe and onions cooked in milk, my grandfather's favorite dinner, which to me looked nothing more than a bowl of ... well, perhaps I'd better leave you without that image. Still shining bright in my mind's eye, though.

I hoped they were olives, not eyes, in the Polipo alla Luciana the Celt ordered and consumed with gusto, but olives or not, so repelled was I, despite sitting in the sun on a terrace overlooking the bay, I couldn't finish my pizza Margherita and drank my wine as if it were Pepto Bismol. Antacid it was not, and dyspeptic eruptions occurred along the sea-side of the Via Partenope towards our hotel opposite the Castel dell'Ovo.

On St. Stephen's day, despite horror story after horror story about crime and dirt in Naples, we took the train from Rome to Naples - a shortish, pleasantly sun-lit journey with plenty of time to take in all the beauty rushing past the windows. We talked with other tourists sitting near - an American couple and their daughter, the latter playing games on her phone, not once looking out at the views.

Across the bay, Vesuvius dominates more than the land it once destroyed, I think, for surely it must overshadow the minds of the people who live near it or on it - and people do live on it. Houses, farms and vineyards climb the slopes, unbelievably to me, given what there is to see at Herculaneum.

At Herculaneum, in the early morning light, it is possible when standing quietly in certain parts of the town, to imagine the life once lived there and that the people are not yet awake. To walk down a steeply-raked tunnel to the old shoreline and then to look back and see the cliff down and through which one has walked – and know that it is the layer after layer of volcanic mud and ash, nearly 60 feet in all, that buried not only Herculaneum but the memory of it too – is shocking.

 

Pompeii, much bigger, is a sadder place - not so much because of the ancient tragedy, inured as we are to that by television dramatizations, but more for the fact that so much appears to be falling down, that so many streets are barricaded off for restoration, and that one of the most egregious infestations afflicting Naples – graffiti – mars even the faded remnants of decoration in those Pompeian houses one can still enter. To know that in 1979, Alberto loved his Adriana, is not the edifying experience for which I crossed the Atlantic. Yet for all its sadness, and the nightmarish feeling of endlessly walking through low ruined walls beyond which are more of the same, I wish we'd had more time and I more energy.

I did not fall in love with Naples, despite its wonderful archaeological museum, its charming two-and-a-half-hour-long siesta, and staying at one of the best hotels in town - frankly, I found the town awash in graffiti and dog-dirt even in the more fashionable parts, with swarms of small cars and scooters clogging every street and alley, laundry hanging over every balcony in sight - not as romantic as one might think - and the food not nearly as interesting as one might wish. I stuck to pizza, fish and rough wine and was perfectly happy.

A wine still produced on the slopes of Vesuvius, Lacryma Christi, and recommended by a fellow blogger, I never knowingly drank in Naples - I had forgotten about it. We've bought it since and, in my opinion, it needs a good steak to to go with it - a steak which, by the way, in my own increasingly queer way, I prefer cremated rather than rare.

It also occurs to me, on a more cheerful note, that if that thing ever goes off again - Vesuvius, that is - there'll be more than one tear of Christ needed for the scale of that tragedy.

The name, Lacryma Christi, "Tear of Christ", comes from a old myth, or marketing ploy, that Christ, lamenting over Lucifer's fall, cried his tears onto the slopes of Vesuvius and gave divine impetus to the vines that grew there.