But outside that narrow sphere, interesse
(Odyssean self-advantage) is the mainspring of their actions. Whence
their smooth and glozing manners towards the stranger, and those
protestations of undying affection which beguile the unwary - they wish
to be forever in your good graces, for sooner or later you may be of
use; and if perchance you do content them, they will marvel
(philosophically) at your grotesque generosity, your lack of
discrimination and restraint. Such malizia (cleverness) is none the
more respectable for being childishly transparent. The profound and
unscrupulous northerner quickly familiarizes himself with its technique,
and turns it to his own profit. Lowering his moral notions, he soon - so
one of them expressed it to me - "walks round them without getting off
his chair" and, on the strength of his undeserved reputation for
simplicity and fair dealing, keeps them dangling a lifetime in a tremble
of obsequious amiability, cheered on by the hope of ultimately
over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is
pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the
success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business,
and the devil take the hindmost! By all means; but they who are not
rooted to the spot by commercial exigencies nor ready to adopt debased
standards of conduct will find that a prolonged residence in a centre
like Naples - the daily attrition of its ape-and-tiger elements - sullies
their homely candour and self-respect.
For a tigerish flavour does exist in most of these southern towns.
Camorra, the law of intimidation, rules the city. This is what Stendhal
meant when, speaking of the "simple and inoffensive" personages in the
Vicar of Wakefield, he remarked that "in the sombre Italy, a simple
and inoffensive creature would be quickly destroyed." It is not easy to
be inoffensive and yet respected in a land of teeth and claws, where a
man is reverenced in proportion as he can browbeat his fellows. So much
ferocity tinctures civic life, that had they not dwelt in towns while we
were still shivering in bogs, one would deem them not yet ripe for
herding together in large numbers; one would say that post-patriarchal
conditions evoked the worst qualities of the race. And we must revise
our conceptions of fat and lean men; we must pity Cassius, and dread
Falstaff.
"What has happened" - you ask some enormous individual - "to your
adversary at law?"
"To which one of them?"
"Oh, Signor M - - , the timber merchant."
"L'abbiamo mangiato!" (I have eaten him.)
Beware of the fat Neapolitan. He is fat from prosperity, from, dining
off his leaner brothers.
Which reminds me of a supremely important subject, eating.
The feeding here is saner than ours with its all-pervading animal grease
(even a boiled egg tastes of mutton fat in England), its stock-pot,
suet, and those other inventions of the devil whose awful effects we
only survive because we are continually counteracting or eliminating
them by the help of (1) pills, (2) athletics, and (3) alcohol.
