"I was in Naples at the beginning of the war, when the first bombings began. I went to have supper one evening with a friend of mine who lives at the Vomero. The Vomero is a high cliff that dominates the city from which the Posillipo hills branch off descending to the sea. It is an enchanting place and, up to a few years ago, it was a countryside with scattered little houses and villas lost among the greenery. Each house had its orchard, a few vines, a few olive trees and terraced embankments on which blossomed eggplants, tomatoes, cabbages, peas, scented basil, rose and rosemary. The roses and tomatos of the Vomero for beauty and fame are not inferior to the ancient roses of Paostum or to the tomatoes of Pompeii. Now the orchards have been turned into gardens. But in between the huge glass-and-concrete buildings a few ancient villas and humble farmhouses survive, and here and there the greenness of a lonely orchard fades sweetly into the vast pale blueness of the gulf; across the water, Capri stands out from the sea in a silvery mist; on the right is Ischia with its high Epomaeo; on the left the Sorrento shore can be seen in the transparent morrors of the sea and sky, and still farther to the left in Vesuvius, that gentlew idol, a kind of great Buddha looking down from the windowsill of the gulf. If one strolls through the lanes of the Vomero where it changes its name and is wedded to the Posillipo hills, between the trees and houses one can see the solemn and most ancient pine tree that shades Virgil's tomb. That is where my friend had his little rustic house and little orchard.

"While we waited for supper, we sat in the orchard under a vine arbor, smoking and talking quietly. The sun had already set and the light was being gradually extinguished. The place, the landscape, the time, the season were the same as those of which Sannazaro had sung; the breeze was Sannazaro's breeze in which the smell of the sea and the scent of the orchards melt into the delicate eastern wind. When night began to rise from the sea with its large bunches of violets already damp with nocturnal dew -- at night the sea puts on its windowsills large bunches of violets that scent the air, filling the rooms with the pleasing breath of the sea -- my friend said, 'The night will be clear. They will certainly come. I must put the presents for the British flyers in the orchard.' I did not understand, and I was puzzled as I watched my friend enter the house and come out carrying a doll, a little wooden horse, a trumpet and two little bags of sweets which he, without saying a word and perhaps mischievously enjoying my bewilderment, went about carefully placing here and there among the rose bushes and lettuce clumps, on the pebbles of the narrow path and on the edge of a bowl in which a family of goldfish softly flashed.

"'What are you doing?' I asked.

"He gazed at me with a serious expression and smiled. He told me that his two children, who were already in bed, had been overcome with a terrific fear during the first bombings, that the health of the youngest one had been seriously affected -- and that he had evolved a means of changing the fearful bombings of Naples into an entertainment for his children. As soon as the alarm hooted through the night, my friend and his wife jumped out of bed and, gathering the two little ones in their arms, began shouting merrily: 'What fun! What fun! The British planes are coming to throw their presents to you!' They went down into their cellar that offered scant and ineffectual shelter and, huddling there, they passed the hours of terror and death laughing shouting, 'What fun!' until the boys happily fell asleep dreaming about the presents from the British flyers. From time to time, as the crash of the bombs and the crumbling of buldings came nearer, the little ones awoke, and the father said: 'Now, now, they are throwing down your presents!' The two boys clapped their hands with joy, shouting: 'I want a doll! I want a sword! Daddy, do you think that the British will bring me a little boat?' Toward dawn, when the hum of motors moved off fading slowly into a sky that was already clear, the father and mother led their children by their hands into the garden, saying, 'Look for them, look! They mist have dropped them on the grass.' The two boys searched among the rose bushes, wet with dew, among the lettuce plants and the tomato stalks, and they found a doll here, a little wooden horse there and, farther off, a bag of candy. The two children were no longer afraid of bombings, instead they waited anxiously for them and welcomed them joyfully. Some mornings, searching through the grass, they found little spring-propelled airplanes -- undoubtedly poor British airplanes that those nasty Germans had brought down with their guns while they bombarded Naples to make Neapolitan children happy."

Pardon the typos; I'm having a fat-fingered Monday.

This is as fascinating as it is surreal. I must have this. I must!

From Pete Dexter's Train:

She sat in the guest house's kitchen with the blind man, watching him eat, glad she'd decided to come over. Thinking she should have done it earlier. He was shirtless, wearing trousers and shoes without socks. The room was tiny and the windows were shut and the air was close and warm. There was something familiar between them, as if they'd known each other a long time.

"My husband said you were a fighter," she said.

He smiled and put one of the sandwiches in his mouth. Half of it, actually -- she'd cut them in half. "Not consequentially," he said. "Turned out I don't have no tank." The food rolled in his mouth -- it reminded her of a clothes dryer -- and she wondered if he'd missed breakfast and lunch. She'd made four sandwiches and he picked up the second half, with the first one still in his mouth, and held it a few inches off the plate; he seemed to be feeling its weight.

"They's this man Art Love -- they call him 'Digger' -- he running the program out of his own pocket. Digger's the promoter, the referee, and the manager of one of the fighters in the main event, and he got me in there with Irish Jack McKinney, and we moving around a little bit, you know what I mean, and then along about the third or fourth round, everything suddenly gone black. Then Jack scream like he was bit, which I can't see the reason for that, except Irish Jack was a primal man. That man could hit you in the head and break your legs. Neverthemind, I'm about ninety percent sure Jack ain't knocked me out, but how can you be sure of something like that, standing there in the dark? I says, 'Jack? We still here?'

"And Jack says, 'Shit, I thought a spider got on me.'

"And I says, 'I was hoping you ain't knocked me out.'

"He says, 'No, but I think I might of got Digger.'"

"Who's Digger again?" she said.

"Digger Love, the ref."

"Right, Digger Love, the referee..."

"Shit, this boy of his named the Duke come into the ring with a flashlight and says they blown the main fuse, and this was at a little club out in Ohio, where they had all their connections down in the cellar, and as long as me and Jack was already dirty, would one of us mind going down there and putting a penny in the box, get us through the night so they don't have to give refunds and everybody could get paid.

"Jack says, 'I don't touch electricity' -- that man always knew his mind -- and so I guessed it's up to me do we get paid, and I gone down there with the Duke and he holding the light while I crawl in that cellar space and put a penny behind the main fuse. And that motherfucker light me up like Christmas. We go back upstairs -- I'm all covered with dirt and bugs and Jack is lost his sweat -- and they got a new referee 'cause Digger is too embarrassed to continue in the public eye, and I can still feel that feeling when the electricity lit me up. 'Jack,' I says, 'I don't touch electricity neither.'"

She looked at him, waiting for him to finish the story, but to Plural that was the finish. "What happened?" she said.

He didn't understand the question.

"The fight," she said. "Who won the fight?"

Plural thought for a moment, trying to remember; then he gave up. "Jack might knowed that," he said. "He kept track of them things better than me. The last time I seen him, though, we was cracked wide open together about old Digger Love, how it wasn't no spider at all, he just knocked poor old Digger right out from underneath his hair. It lit on Jack's arm, and Jack throwed that thing off like fire."

"The referee's toupee?" she said.

"Yes ma'am. Couldn't face his public without that rug on his head. It takes all kinds, I guess."

She looked at the blind man with tenderness, felt herself beginning to weep.

I gotta tell you, Lipstick Thespian: the Malaparte is a tough read. I'm two-thirds of the way through, and I've had to put the book down in horror about six times. Brilliant, terrifying stuff, all about the allure of cruelty and the horror of the everyday in wartime. It's nauseating.

Highly recommended.

This may be a slight non sequitur, but I love this photo:

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≡ Click to see image ≡