I returned after almost forty years, at the invitation of a friend, to the former Franciscan convent of Vittorio Emanuele Street full of curiosity. Because I had slept there for a few weeks, as a temporary accommodation, when I was in my early twenties Gino Grassi he had hired me as a trainee journalist in Napoli Notte nearby, calming the anxiety of my father who feared that I would never realize my dream. He obsessively repeated to me that being a journalist was a bit like being an actor: if he doesn’t find a theater company that will hire him, the actor will never make it. Instead, he claimed, a good degree in law and a good competitive exam in the judiciary and he would have felt more at ease about the future of his son.
My theatre company, after the glorious years of Napoli Oggi with Horace Mazzoni in Monte di Dio, it was in a sort of basement a few steps from the convent where I became an intern and where I worked in the last room with some small leaks in the ceiling which we remedied with a basin when it rained more insistently and the water, drop by drop , entered the room.
Taking advantage of my prolonged absence, the rather run-down Franciscan convent in my memories abandoned the “gift” of crumbling poverty and became a hotel, San Francesco al Monte, with a breathtaking terrace overlooking the enchantment of the Gulf of Naples. Of my personal memories and of the old convent there is nothing left, but the shock to the heart was as strong as the time of a lifetime. Especially if it has spared you nothing.
Anna Ummarinohostess and my guest, with her husband who created the work, Mario Pagliarithey tried to tell me a beautiful story made of art, religion and quality tourism, but I stopped them because my mind and heart were galloping backwards too quickly. I laughed when the story ended on a (true) anecdote about Il Mattino and its umbilical relationship with the city. During a weekend at her country house in Pontelandolfo in the Benevento area, Anna asked her domestic worker to go buy Il Mattino and Il Giornale at the newsstand. She had asked for the first for her and the second for her husband, but the domestic worker came home with two Mattinos because the newspaper in Naples is Il Mattino. He said to me: always remember it, every day, and thank you for the pride of being Neapolitan that you are giving us back with a daily story made of things we have done, but that sometimes we hadn’t noticed. I got back into the car confused. I really wanted to go back to the newspaper.
