Mayor Gaetano’s Christmas carol

Tormented by those thoughts, Gaetano lay down heartbroken. He hadn’t yet closed his eyes when a kind of shadow appeared in front of his bed. The spidery figure of a splendid female covered in rags, her flesh encrusted with dried mud.

«Gaeta’!». The mayor, dismayed, covered his head with the pillow. «Cajetan! Why do you turn to that part? Am I talking to you about it?».

«Ma staje parlanne cu ‘mme?», the man found the courage to whisper.

“And with whom else? Stay me and you in this room».

“But I was alone until a moment ago, and you seem everything but reasonable.”

«Enough talk, Gaeta’. I am the spirit of past Naples and I have to show you what. After me you will be visited by two more of my sisters. Now get up and come with me».

Without even having time to reply, the mayor found himself hovering in his bedroom, then, as if sucked into a vortex, he was thrown out the window and an instant later he found himself flying over his city, held by the hand by the shadow. . However, it was not the Naples he knew, but that of several centuries earlier.

«Look closely, Gaeta’. This was Naples a long time ago. How much misery, how much poverty, yet those lazars sang, danced, wrote songs and poems. Even then people suffered the worst pains, but they kept faith and hope. He knew how to distinguish high things from low ones, he had an innate alchemical knowledge of the transformation of shit into gold. From every weeping tear sighs were born that put even God in awe”.

Having said those words, the shadow vanished and Gaetano, terrified, began to fall into the void. As he nearly crashed to the ground he felt himself lifted into the air again. He reopened his eyes and another shadow led him by the hand. N’ata female, but dressed in a very different way from the first. Modern, contemporary clothes. Nu jeans faded and torn according to fashion, ‘na camesella designer, ‘na cuppulella Americana. Tattooed all over her body, she was holding a cell phone and a beer with the other hand.

«Hold on tightly and see that I’m in a hurry. I am the spirit of contemporary Naples. Do you recognize her?”.

Gaetano made an effort to look downstairs, but too many lights dazzled his vision, too much noise deafened him. The streets, the alleys, the squares were a bloody gut of rage, clamors and hallucinations which degraded the soul and understanding.

Gaetano bowed his head, dejected by so much confusion, bewilderment. Then, as dawn came, he found himself in the center of Piazza del Plebiscito. Empty, without a living soul. He approached what appeared to be a mausoleum. The plaque placed on the top said so. «Here lies the Neapolitan people, who without realizing it perished under the blows of time. Forgetting himself, he bowed to pain losing his light.’

The mayor was trying to understand the meaning of that tomb, where and when it was, and the third sister joined him.

«Don’t be surprised dear Gaetano. Here is what will remain of your city and your people. Naples and the Neapolitans were destined for great things, but, subjugated by the dark ages, they no longer believed in themselves and in the gift that heaven had granted them. I am the spirit of future Naples».

“But you don’t even speak Neapolitan?”

«All of that dialect, of that millenary culture, has been lost. Others after you have tried to rule this city and all have made the same mistake. They wanted to make Naples what Naples was not. They have delivered it to senselessness and abandonment. No one has been able to understand and protect her. The people have become populace, the educated, vile. Crafty, beggars, villains, they have subjugated the good people, drained their veins, burned their belly. No Neapolitan was able to give birth to authentic Neapolitans anymore, and year after year, they all disappeared».

“No. No. Wait…» shouted Gaetano chasing that woman who was dissolving into the ether. When he thought he’d grabbed her he found himself standing empty handed in the center of her room. The sun had already risen… «A dream? Was it on a sound?” he wondered, but in his heart he knew it wasn’t like that. That day he seemed to understand how much and what there was to do to save himself and the city.