'O Munaciello

The story

In Naples, in the alleys of the centre, among the washing lines and the votive shrines with their ever-burning candles, there is a story the grandmothers tell in a low voice. Not because it is frightening. Because it hurts a little.

Let us go back almost six hundred years. It is 1445. In Naples reigns Alfonso of Aragon, and the city is an anthill of workshops, of ships in the harbour, of ringing bells.

In one of those workshops, among the richest, worked a boy called Stefano Mariconda. He was an apprentice: he carried the fabrics, opened and closed the door, kept the accounts. He had neither a name nor money. But he had two eyes that burned whenever a certain girl went by.

That girl was called Caterinella Frezza, and she was the master's daughter. Her father was one of the richest cloth merchants in the city, and kept her at home like a treasure: beautiful, young, with a dowry that would have turned a prince's head. For her he dreamed of a noble husband. Certainly not a shop apprentice.

And yet, Caterinella and Stefano had looked at each other once, and then again, and then again. And after that there was nothing to be done.

They could not see each other by day. They could not speak in the street. They could not even brush hands. So Stefano found a way all his own. At night, when the alleys were deserted and the bells were silent, he climbed onto the rooftops of Naples. He walked softly on the tiles, still warm, among the chimneys and forgotten washing, with the black sea in the distance and the stars overhead. And he reached her window.

What sweet nights those were! From Caterinella's half-open window came a low voice, a stifled laugh, a sigh. Nobody must hear. Nobody must know.

But in Naples, as everyone knows, the walls have eyes, and the alleys have ears.

The Frezza family found out everything. And decided that this story had to end.

One night, while Stefano was walking on the roofs, as always, with a light heart, someone was waiting for him in the shadows. Caterinella was at the window, candle in hand, already smiling. She saw Stefano appear behind a chimney. She saw hands seize him. She saw a body fall into the void, without a cry.

So the story goes. And that night, something broke in Naples for ever.

Caterinella never spoke again. She did not weep, she did not cry out. She left the house, the shop, the family, and shut herself in a convent. And there, between those stone walls, a child was born.

He was a very small child, and not like the others. His body was misshapen, twisted, and his face looked like nobody's. The nuns looked at him with fear. But his mother, when she took him in her arms, looked at him with a love so great that there was no room for anything else.

She called him by all the sweetest names she knew. And had a little habit sewn for him: black and white, like a monk's. She thought that the dressing, perhaps, would work the miracle. That heaven, seeing that child dressed as a friar, would take pity.

But heaven did not answer.

And in Naples people looked at that little creature in his black and white habit, and laughed. "Look, 'o munaciello!" the boys shouted, which in Neapolitan means "the little monk". They ran after him in the street. They mocked him. They threw stones at him. He, the Munaciello, walked in silence, head down, clutching his habit.

Then, one day, he vanished.

Nobody saw him again. It was said that the devil had carried him off. Matilde Serao, the great writer of Naples, says only that he vanished mysteriously. The Frezza family, she says, were suspected of another death: that of Stefano.

And so the Munaciello died, with nobody to mourn him.

Or at least, so everyone thought. Because from that day, in the houses of Naples, strange things began to happen.

At night, a door would open by itself. A plate would fall from the cupboard and break into a thousand pieces. A chair would scrape across the floor, softly, softly. And in the darkness of the alleys, there were those who swore they had seen a tiny little man, with a hood pulled down over his eyes, who walked along the walls and vanished round a corner.

It was him. 'O munaciello.

But people soon learned one strange thing about him. He did not always play pranks. Sometimes, under a pillow or inside a drawer, someone found a gold coin. Just one. Well hidden, as if someone had left it in secret, shyly, without wanting to be seen.

Whoever was treated with respect received good fortune. Whoever mocked or chased him away found keys gone, glass broken, sleep disturbed.

That is why the old people said one thing, always the same. "If you see 'o munaciello, tell nobody." Because whoever tells it loses the luck. As if he, the Munaciello, were still ashamed to be looked at.

Others in Naples tell another story. They say the munaciello was never a deformed child, but a small, silent man, dressed like a friar, who worked as a "pozzaro": the man who cleaned the wells and the tunnels under the city. He knew every passage, every tunnel, every hole in the wall. He could enter any house without being seen, and leave as he had come. Sometimes he carried something off, sometimes he brought a gift. And so people, in doubt, never knew whether to thank him or to lock the door better.

Which of the two stories is true, nobody in Naples knows. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.

But even today, when in an old house in the centre a door swings ajar by itself, or a coin turns up at the back of a drawer where there was none, some grandmother raises her eyes to the ceiling, and says under her breath, without smiling:

"Thank you, munaciello. Thank you. And forgive us."