Page 28 of Marcello

In the Inferno, Dante is approached by the Roman poet Virgil, who guides him through Hell and shows him all the horrors therein.

I suggest you find your own Virgil in Naples, someone who can guide you.

I realized I had found my Virgil in Federica.

And just like Virgil, she guided me exactly where I needed to go in Hell… even though she didn’t mean to.

It all started with a Banksy painting.

10

We had a Wednesday afternoon off from work when Federica took me to a square bordered by a bunch of crumbling buildings.

Nothing about the place was particularly interesting –

Except for a beautiful black-and-white spray painting of the Virgin Mary.

She looked more like an ancient Roman statue than a person. Above her head was a starburst of light –

And in the center of the light was a gun.

Hence the title of the painting:

“Madonna con la Pistola,” Federica said.

Madonna with the Pistol.

A thick layer of hard plastic protected the painting. Inside the frame was a brass plaque in Italian:

Work by Banksy, kept by the pizzeria Dal Presidente and by Agostino ’o Pazz to make Naples unique.

“Wait – what?” I said. “What the hell is this about a pizzeria and a crazy guy?”

’O Pazz meant ‘the crazy one.’

Federica laughed. “You know who Banksy is, right?”

“Yeah – a street artist who does spray paintings all over the world. Nobody knows what he looks like.”

“Exactly. ’O Pazz was the nickname for a wild guy who used to ride his motorcycle through the backstreets of Naples fifty years ago. He’d do all sorts of crazy stunts and make the cops chase him around. He became a stuntman in movies, then retired to start a pizzeria. When Banksy painted the Madonna, ’o Pazz was afraid that somebody would vandalize it, so he put this frame around it to preserve it.”

We admired the artwork a few minutes, then left.

A block away from the Banksy, I saw a glass and wood cabinet attached to the side of a building.

In the lower half of the cabinet were flowers and religious icons: a statue of the Virgin Mary and a bust of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.

The upper shelf held modern-day photographs in tiny frames. The biggest picture was of a tough-looking guy in sunglasses. Another photo was of an older woman – maybe his mother. A third was of a guy who looked like Tony the mob boss from The Sopranos.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Federica had that I just smelled a fart look she got whenever she hated something. “A bunch of assholes trying to pretend somebody wasn’t a piece of shit.”

Bells started going off in my head. “What do you mean?”

Her face twisted up with real hatred.

“You see these all over Naples. They’re shrines to somebody who died – probably that guy in the sunglasses. The religious stuff is to convince people he was a good guy, deep down,” she said with vicious sarcasm. “Maybe his family even contributed to charity in his name. Anything to paper over the fact he was in the mafia.”