She was speaking to Fabiano. They were walking on again among the chattering people. They had come to the wooden station where the tram-lines converge.
“Is it this way?”
“Si, Signora, quite near the Grotto. Take care, Signora.”
“It’s all right. Thank you.”
They had crossed now and were walking up the street that leads directly to the tunnel, whose mouth confronted them in the distance. Hermione felt as if they were going to enter it, were going to walk down it to the great darkness which seemed to wait for her, to beckon her. But presently Fabiano turned to the right, and they came into a street leading up the hill, and stopped almost immediately before a tall house.
“Antonio and Maddalena live here, Signora.”
“And Ruffo,” she said, as if correcting him.
“Ruffo! Si, Signora, of course.”
Hermione looked at the house. It was evidently let out in rooms to people who were comparatively poor; not very poor, not in any destitution, but who made a modest livelihood, and could pay their fourteen or fifteen lire a month for lodging. She divined by its aspect that every room was occupied. For the building teemed with life, and echoed with the sound of calling, or screaming, voices. The inhabitants were surely all of them in a flurry of furious activity. Children were playing before and upon the door-step, which was flanked by an open shop, whose interior revealed with a blatant sincerity a rummage of mysterious edibles—fruit, vegetables, strings of strange objects that looked poisonous, fungi, and other delights. Above, from several windows, women leaned out, talking violently to one another. Two were holding babies, who testified their new-born sense of life by screaming shrilly. Across other window-spaces heads passed to and fro, denoting the continuous movement of those within. People in the street called to people in the house, and the latter shouted in answer, with that absolute lack of self-consciousness and disregard of the opinions of others which is the hall-mark of the true Neapolitan. From the corner came the rumble and the bell notes of the trams going to and coming from the tunnel that leads to Fuorigrotta. And from every direction rose the vehement street calls of ambulant venders of the necessaries of Neapolitan life.
“Ruffo lives here!” said Hermione.