But, as at the bottom of all joyous things in this land of Cockayne, there is an ever-flowing vein of bitterness. This carnival, that turned all the gravest persons and things in the town into fun and masquerade—this carnival was a merciful thing. From autumn to January the damp, grievous scirocco had blown in Naples' streets, overcoming the energies of healthy people, and making invalids' maladies worse. The winter crowd of foreigners was smaller than usual. Many works had been stopped for a time, and those just starting had been delayed, so that many poor people slept on the church steps under San Francesco di Paola portico and the Immacolata obelisk in Piazza Gesù. A great wind of fasting had blown with the scirocco, so that the official carnival, carried out by the desire of thousands, was intended, if it succeeded, to satisfy for ten days at least a lot of starving people, from shoe-binders to flower-makers, from tailors to shop-clerks, from wandering salesmen to the small shopkeepers. Twenty days' carnival!—that is to say, ten days' bread, and a relish with it. The idea had been taken up at once. All helped, even the least enterprising, knowing they were putting out their money at good interest. Carnival, carnival, in the streets and balconies, in the gateways and houses!
On that Shrovetide Thursday the damp winter scirocco had got a spring softness. Toledo Road, where the carnival spread from one end to the other, both in its popular and fashionable form, had put on an extraordinary appearance. All the big shops were shut. The tradesmen and their ladies wished to enjoy the day's outing, also they were nervous about their plate-glass windows. All the signs were covered with linen or tow, as were the gas-lamps. As to the common smaller shops, they had taken out the glass and put up wooden platforms, and the owners, with their friends and children, sat with a store of caraways, having to do battle almost face to face with the people on the pavement; but they bravely flourished their ladles all the same. The balconies on the first floor were all differently draped with bright, cheap muslins, put up with a few nails or pins, with a very Southern and rather barbarous love of gay colours, some in the style of church decorations, blue, red, white, and gold, some tucked back with big camellias, roses, and dahlias, to make the balcony look like an alcove, an actress's room, a saint's niche, or a wild beasts' show even. The finest and smartest hangings began near Santa Brigida. Some Swiss gentlemen had had a chalet put up in their balcony, and the ladies wore simple, rather silly costumes, with hair down, a big cap, and gold crosses at their necks. Just after that, at Santa Brigida, a great man's natural son had hung his balconies with dark-blue velvet, covered with a silver net, which might represent the firmament, the kingdom of the moon, or the sea, but, at any rate, it surprised the good Naples folk. A balcony near the Conte di Mola Lane was made into a kitchen, with a stove, kettle, frying and stew pans, and eight or ten youths of good family worked as cooks and scullions, with white caps and aprons. A famous beautiful woman, whose beauty brought her wealth and led her into deadly sin, had changed her balcony into a Japanese hut, all stuffs and tapestries. Now and then she appeared wrapped in flowing, soft robes, just gathered in at the waist, with her black hair caught up in a shiny knot held by pins, her eyebrows arched in an unvarying look of surprise.
The common people smiled admiringly as they passed. They said, with their vague one idea of the East, 'The Turk, the Turk!' All these balconies, draped from one end of the street to the other, and the shop decorations, began to make one dizzy with bright colours, firing the imagination, giving that quick feeling of voluptuous joy Southerners get from outside impressions. Towards eleven, wandering salesmen began to go about, shrieking out their wares. They sold little boxes of inferior sweets made in bright colours—red bags, green and white boxes, lilac and yellow horns, carried in big, flat baskets in one hand. They sold artificial flowers also, made into sprays, cockades, and bunches, tied on to long poles. Real flowers were sold, too—white camellias and perfumed violets, from big baskets; also masks, ladles, linen bags for caraways, red and yellow paper sunflowers, that twirled round at every breath of wind like wild things. They sold a bad quality of caraways, bought cheap, intended to be sold dear in the blind, furious time of the battle.
At mid-day the traffic in sweetmeat-boxes, flowers, musks, and windmills began. Already the crowd began to fill the balconies and pavements, running up hurriedly from all the side-streets. On the first-floor windows and balconies a living, many-coloured hedge of women swayed about. There was a shimmer of girlish forms brightly dressed; their faces gently moved up and down like big pink and white flower-heads, with a blood-red touch now and then from an open parasol or scarlet hat. The balconies and windows of the second story were filled with still more excited people, whilst on the fourth children and girls here and there had thought of letting down a basket tied to a long bit of ribbon to fish with, smiling from above on some courteous unknown, who put a flower, some sweets, or a chocolate-box into the baskets of these smiling beings so near the sky. The people increased everywhere. Traffic with the hawkers went on from the balconies to the streets, with loud discussions, offers, and rejections, making the noise twice as great.
Caraways were not to be thrown before two o'clock, by the committee's express order, but some stray fights were started already. At San Sepolcro corner a peasant nurse, slowly swinging her petticoats, was fired at by some school-boys at close quarters. A grave gentleman, in top-hat and long great-coat, was violently assaulted in Carità Square. He tried to go at them with his stick, but he was hissed. Then he called for the police, announcing pompously he was Cavaliere Domenico Mayer, a State functionary; but the police would not help, saying it was carnival, and that he should not tempt people with his top-hat. And then the misanthropic Secretary of the Finance Department, full of bitterness, had gone into the San Liborio Lane to escape. A lady in a broad-brimmed hat, not able to move from one spot in the pavement near San Giacomo, had a continuous shower of caraways poured on her by a child on the third story. She heard it fall on her felt and feathers without daring to move or raise her head, in case she got the caraways in her face.
At two o'clock exactly a cannon-shot was heard in the distance. Then there was a sigh of relief from one end of Toledo to the other, from the street to the upper stories, and the crowd swayed about.
The four Rossi Palace balconies, first floor on the right, looking into Toledo, were draped in blue and white linen, caught back by big red camellias. Luisella Fragalà and her guests had thought of white and blue dominoes, with high, ridiculous hats and red cockades, and all the Naddeos, all the Durantes, all the Antonaccis, fat or thin, young or old, wore dominoes made in the house themselves to save their clothes from white powder, and, according to them, give an elegant look to the balcony. Some looked like big bundles, others like long ghosts; but the carnival madness had overcome these middle-class women. Besides all, trade was flourishing in these days. So many goods were sold; the men came back to the house in high good-humour, whilst all winter had been one complaint, and economy had got narrower and harder to bear. How happy they were, all these placid, industrious little women! In this time of carnival excitement they could share, in their blue and white fancy dresses and red cockades. Luisella Fragalà had thought out the costume, and that monkey Carmela Naddeo took up the idea at once and made others follow suit. They were all there, ladles in hand, guessing what sort of carriages were to appear, exaggerating, contradicting, shrieking, laughing, hanging over the railings to see if any carriages were coming round by the Museum. Only sometimes a cloud came over Luisella Fragalà's face; some unhappy thought was behind her brown eyes. Perhaps she was troubled by the thought that the balcony hangings would be spoilt by the confetti. Perhaps she would have liked to keep the shop open even on that profitable Carnival Thursday, her love of selling having instinctively grown so great, as if by that alone she saw a chance of being saved from imminent peril. Perhaps she secretly regretted Cesare Fragalà's absence. He was often away lately, and had disappeared early that Thursday, too. But these clouds were fleeting. Luisella was going about from one balcony to another with her hood down, vainly looking for places for the Mayer family, who had come without being invited. All quietly snubbed them, so as not to give up their places, saying to each other that the mother and daughter had no dominoes, and they made a false note on the balcony. They set themselves in the third row, the mother, as usual, rheumatic, and wrapped in flannel to the finger-tips; the girl's big eyes still dully misanthropic, as were her swollen, discoloured lips; the brother, as usual, very hungry.
'We will not get even a chocolate-box,' they grumbled one after the other, muttering with their unending rage against humanity.
But the great carnival wave, with ever-increasing force, swallowed up their rage against mankind also. The noise among the carriages got tremendous. The confetti war had begun between them and the pony-carts, done up with myrtle as an attempt at decoration, all being well filled with masqueraders of both sexes dressed in bright-coloured calicoes. The Parascandolos, who lived on the other side of the Rossi Palace, kept their balcony shut, for the Signora considered herself in mourning; but Don Gennaro Parascandolo, in a Russian linen dust-cloak and cap, with a bag of sweets hung round his neck, after walking along Toledo, greeted from hundreds of balconies, where his past, present, and future clients were, had gone to his club at Santa Brigida, and from there, amid a group of young and old boon companions, made a life of it, as they said there. They joked about him, asked him how many cars he had lent money for, and if it was true his collection of bills was increased by many princely autographs. Ninetto Costa, the smart, lucky stock-broker, who had his own reasons for making a fuss with him, said, to flatter him, that not a handful of caraways was thrown that day he was not interested in either providing or scattering. Don Gennaro Parascandolo laughed paternally, not denying it. He answered those who asked him for coppers as a joke, 'I have had to get the loan of forty pounds from a friend to hold carnival with.' Others around shouted, whistled, but always flattered him. One never knew when one might fall into his hands. He stood out among them all by his great height and the little cap oddly set on his big head, throwing ladlefuls of caraways at the carriages and pony-carts.
Slovenly, in her black dress, grown greenish, and her torn shawl-fringe, Carmela the cigar-maker had set herself at the corner of D'Affitto Lane, looking at the passing carriages with her hollow eyes, her fine fresh mouth working impatiently, the only feature that was still young in her worn face. Handfuls, ladlefuls of caraways often new from the balconies and the street, frequently hitting her face or back; but she only moved a little to avoid it, smiling at the annoyance, and cleaned her face with a corner of her shawl.