Naples ’44

Place · Town

Rome

Rome is the capital city and most populated comune (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special comune named Roma Capitale with a population of 2.7 million in an area of 1,287.36 km2 (497.1 mi2), Rome is the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits.

In the book

Mostly referred to rather than visited: ‘the fall of Rome’, an internee escorted there for interrogation, Lattarullo’s funeral-mourning trade reviving once the city falls. It marks the war moving north, away from Naples.

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Appears in 14 diary entries.

  1. October 10 1943
    Amid the grim work of processing denunciations, Lewis is struck by the vivid street life and rituals of a working-class Neapolitan neighborhood.
  2. October 15 1943
    Introduction of Vincente Lattarullo, an eccentric, impoverished informant obsessed with justice and etiquette, who becomes a key civilian contact.
  3. November 5 1943
    New contacts Losurdo and Mosca reveal the same pattern as Lattarullo: impoverished nobility clinging to grand, half-empty palazzi.
  4. January 14 1944
    Amid a flood of usually-worthless rumors, one turns out to be true — an imminent Anzio landing — sending Lewis scrambling to trace a security leak.
  5. February 12 1944
    Lewis reflects on the cultural gulf between cosmopolitan Naples and the archaic, vendetta-bound countryside just miles away, as seen through Lattarullo's ignorance of it.
  6. March 3 1944
    An account of a bizarre, catastrophic Allied intelligence scheme prompted by fears that prostitution was being used to spread disease among troops.
  7. March 5 1944
    The growing, increasingly careless traffic of "line-crossers" and letter-couriers moving between Allied and German territory raises serious security concerns.
  8. May 3 1944
    The story of Domenico "Lupo" (Wolf), a released bandit who reorganizes his Camorra-style Robin Hood operation with Allied-issued credentials.
  9. May 11 1944
    A visit to the confident, well-connected prisoner Fortuna, who expects to be acquitted of a penicillin-racketeering charge despite Lewis's evidence.
  10. June 7 1944
    Lattarullo's improvised income as a professional "mourning relative" at funerals picks up again with the fall of Rome, complete with a rented car and driver.
  11. July 24 1944
    Reflections on Naples's theatrical character, including an elaborate deathbed farewell ceremony and a search of an arrested prince's opulent apartment.
  12. July 26 1944
    An almost novelistic assignment to escort a mysterious, allegedly dangerous female internee to Rome for interrogation raises awkward questions among the section.
  13. August 28 1944
    Amid outbreaks of typhoid, smallpox, and typhus in Benevento, the local Marshal remarks darkly on outsiders' inability to survive the harsh conditions.
  14. October 6 1944
    Back in Naples, Lewis finds the section overworked, understaffed, and increasingly worn down by illness after months of dispersal. He reflects that the strange fascination of the intelligence work itself — a kind of legalised eavesdropping on humanity — is what keeps him working dangerously long hours despite the toll.

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