Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Naples
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della Duchessa. The room, the cave is the better
word, was almost dark, only lit up by the little
oil-lamp before the Madonna. The father had
been dead for two days but the body was still
lying there under a heap of rags, the family having
succeeded in hiding him from the police in search
of the dead to be taken to the cemetery, a
common practice in the slums. I was sitting on the
floor by the side of the daughter, beating off the
rats with my stick. She was already quite cold,
she was still conscious. I could hear the whole
time the rats crunching at the body of the father.
At last it made me so nervous that I had to put
him upright in the corner like a grandfather
clock. Soon the rats began again eating
ravenously his feet and legs. I could not stand it any
longer. Faint with fear I rushed away.
The Farmacia di San Gennaro was also a
favourite haunt of mine when I was afraid to be
alone. It was open night and day. Don Bartolo
was always on his legs concocting his various
mixtures and miraculous remedies from his row
of seventeenth-century Faenza jars with Latin
inscriptions of drugs, mostly unknown to me. A
couple of large glass bottles with snakes and a
foetus in alcohol adorned the side-board. By the
shrine of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples,
burned the sacred lamp and among the cobwebs in
the ceiling hung an embalmed cat with two heads.
The speciality of the Farmacia was Don Bartolo’s
famous anti-cholerical mixture, labelled with a
picture of San Gennaro on one side and a skull
on the other with the words “Morte alla coléra”
underneath. Its composition was a family secret
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