Page 24 of Marcello

For instance, I kept seeing this weird clown-looking figure everywhere – occasionally in street art, but mostly as figurines sold by tourist shops and street vendors. The clown always had a gigantic nose, a black mask, and a white dunce’s cap. He usually wore a medieval-looking outfit: baggy white pants and a billowy white shirt.

One evening we were walking past an alley hung with strings of colored lights when I saw a bronze bust of the clown’s head on a brick pedestal. People were lining up to take photos of themselves rubbing the statue’s nose, which was brightly polished.

“Who the hell is that guy?” I asked Federica.

“Oh, that’s Pulcinella,” she said, pronouncing it pool-chee-NELL-uh.

“Who?!”

“He’s a character in the Commedia dell’Arte.” When I gave her a blank look, she said, “You know those puppet shows where the dolls hit each other with clubs?”

“Punch ‘n Judy?”

“Exactly. ‘Punch’ is short for Pulcinella. He’s basically the mascot for Naples.”

“Why?”

“Well, he’s a trickster character – sort of like a court jester. He seems dumb, but he’s actually incredibly smart. He may be poor, but he sees the world for what it really is. He’s lazy and gluttonous, yes, but he’s also hilarious and full of life – which is kind of how Naples is, too.

“We may not be the richest city in Italy, and we don’t like working any harder than we have to – but we know what’s what, and we know how to live life to the fullest.”

“What’s with the shiny nose on the statue?”

“It’s supposedly good luck if you rub it. Everybody who comes to Naples gets a photo of them doing it for Instagram, so his nose gets polished thousands of times a day by tourists.”

There were other things, too, that I didn’t understand.

Nearly every tourist store I saw sold sharp, twisty red things that looked like chili peppers. They came as pendants on necklaces… charm bracelets… and little versions on keychains. Pizza shops would sometimes have strings of them over their doorways.

“Why all the chili peppers?” I asked.

“They’re not chili peppers – they’re cornicellos,” she said, pronouncing them cor-nee-CHELL-ohs. Cornicello meant ‘little horn.’ “It’s a good luck amulet against the evil eye.”

“Why the hell is a little red horn good luck?”

“There’s a couple of different stories. One is that they’re versions of the cornucopia – the ‘horn of plenty.’ You know, those broken-off animal horns you see with vegetables and fruit spilling out of them. They’re, like, a symbol of abundance.

“I prefer the explanation that they’re actually penises, because in the ancient world, amulets and drawings of penises were considered good luck.”

“Oh, really now,” I said in a humorous, sexy voice.

She laughed, then whispered in my ear, “Yours is definitely good luck for me.”

Then she went back to speaking in a normal tone of voice. “Ancient Romans used to wear penis necklaces to ward off the evil eye and to bring them fertility and abundance.

“When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Christians didn’t like seeing all these dicks everywhere, so they tried to outlaw them. But in Naples, that didn’t fly. We’re incredibly superstitious and wouldn’t give them up.”

“So what you’re saying is, you hung onto your penises.”

She laughed again. “Not as hard as I hang onto yours – but yes. Anyway, over the centuries, cornicellos transformed from penises into the more religiously acceptable chili pepper shape. And they’re red because red coral was one of the traditional substances craftsmen made them out of.

“Red coral is supposed to absorb bad energy so it can’t affect you. You can also buy them made of gold and silver, which are supposed to be good for money, but those are more expensive, so most people get red coral.”

I looked around. “A lot of these look like plastic.”

“Yeah, the cheap tourist crap is plastic, but Neapolitans know that’s useless.”

The way she said it sounded like she took it seriously.