Pompeii back to Naples on the Circumvesuviana

I love the word Circumvesuviana because it sounds so much like circumcision but I can say it in mixed company. The C sound at the beginning is pronounced Ch.

Rome, Maryelen B&B, July 9, 2008, 7:48 AM

The train was already crowded when we boarded. It had come from Sorrento and was only halfway through its journey. We sat next to another grizzled character who had spread his belongings over three of the four facing seats. He cleared two seats and let us sit down. At first, we didn’t say anything to each other, but after a few minutes, he asked in Italian if we were American. We struggled through sporadic conversation about New York and Los Angeles, Frank Sinatra and the mafia, before I began to sense that he was likely homeless, or at least some kind of conjurer who tries to turn other people’s waste into money.

Spread on his lap was an intricately annotated racing sheet with the numbers of the horses that had come in first, second and third in recent races, probably over the weekend. In his hands, he held a huge stack of crumpled and discarded betting slips that he had collected, about the size of three or four decks of cards. Each in our own language, but clearly enough that each understood what the other was saying, we communicated that he was comparing the bets to the results to see if anyone threw away a ticket without claiming his winning, but he wasn’t having any luck either.

From his pocket, he drew out a small black box, like a hinged eye glass case but smaller, like a ring box only bigger, and showed us two tiny gold coins, like miniature dimes. One was a commemorative John Kennedy piece, the other was a Roman reproduction. He beamed so much it seemed like those must have been his prized possessions, as if he wanted to show us he was a man of consequential possessions after all. It was a poignant exchange.

As we disembarked onto the platform in Naples, my mom and I reached for our cameras to take a picture with him, but a young women stopped us and said it wasn’t safe to open our purses. I’m still not sure if she meant in front of him or just on the platform with all of the people around, but he had said already said goodbye and moved off in the other direction.