The Sleeper of San Gregorio

Morning Hands

朝の手

At ten to seven the Via San Gregorio Armeno was still a lane like any other in Naples: wet paving, a delivery van idling in front of the baker’s, and shutters going up one after another like eyelids. Only when the dealers from Japan and Munich sent their lists and the first coaches arrived, would the lane become again what it had been for centuries: one long workshop in which shepherds, sheep, pizza makers and popes made of clay stood on shelves and looked back at you.

7時10分前、Via San Gregorio Armenoはまだナポリのどこにでもある路地にすぎなかった。濡れた石畳、パン屋の前でエンジンをかけたまま停まっている配達車、そして瞼のように一つずつ上がっていくシャッター。日本やミュンヘンの商人たちが注文票を送り、最初のバスが到着して初めて、この小路は何百年も続いてきた姿、すなわち粘土の羊飼いや羊、ピッツァ職人や教皇たちが棚の上に並んでこちらを見つめる、一本の長い仕事場へと戻るのだ。

Concetta Esposito drank her coffee the way she had drunk it for two years: at the counter of Peppe’s bar, both hands wrapped round the little cup as if she were cold. She was not cold. Her right hand trembled worst in the morning, a fine, even tremor that you could not see while the hand lay still and could not miss the moment it was asked to do something. The left hand held the right one steady. Peppe, who had known her for forty years, never filled the cup to the brim for that reason and never asked why.

Concetta Espositoは、この二年間の習慣通りにコーヒーを飲んでいた。Peppeのバールのカウンターで、寒さに凍えるかのように両手で小さなカップを包み込んでいる。寒くなどなかった。右手の震えは朝が最もひどく、手を休めていれば目立たないものの、何かをしようとした途端にはっきりと現れる細かく規則正しい揺れだった。左手がその右手をしっかりと押さえている。四十年来の付き合いであるPeppeは、だからこそカップの縁いっぱいまでは注がず、理由を尋ねることも決してなかった。

She was fifty-eight, with strong shoulders and a broad, calm face that already lived on in more than a dozen cribs as the face of a washerwoman or a market woman, and since the age of twelve she had painted the heads of the figures in the Bottega Esposito, whose blue door stood opposite the entrance of the church. Her father Vincenzo had opened the Bottega in 1961. Six years after his death his photograph still hung above the till, and the dealers still said, when they took the faces in their hands: that is the Esposito hand.

彼女は58歳で、がっしりとした肩幅と、すでに十数個のプレゼピオで洗濯女や市場の商人として生き写しにされてきた幅広で穏やかな顔立ちをしていた。教会の入り口の向かいにある青い扉のBottega Espositoで、十二歳の頃から人形の頭部を描き続けている。亡き父Vincenzoが1961年に開いたBottegaだった。彼が世を去って六年が経つ今も写真はレジの上に掲げられており、商人たちは顔を手にとって眺めるたび、今も変わらずこう口にした。「これぞEspositoの手だ」と。

“Too hot,” said someone beside her. Don Ciro Mazzella, seventy-seven, for sixty years the man behind “Mazzella since 1921” on the other side of the lane, stood with his back to the counter and looked at the street, not at her. “The coffee here is too hot for hands, Concetta. It always was.”

「熱すぎるな」と隣で声がした。77歳のDon Ciro Mazzella。小路の向かいにある「Mazzella dal 1921」を六十年にわたって守ってきた男が、カウンターに背を向け、彼女ではなく通りを眺めながら立っていた。「ここのコーヒーは手には熱すぎる、Concetta。昔からずっとそうだ」

She put the cup down, carefully, with both hands, and the faint clink on the saucer sounded to her like a confession. In forty years Ciro had never looked at her kindly, and he did not do so now. He had called her father a dilettante and her a Madonna of slowness, and nobody in the lane would have bet that he could keep quiet about anything that served him. He paid for his espresso, touched his hat, and walked across to his shop without looking back.

彼女は両手で注意深くカップを置き、受け皿にカチャリと小さく鳴った音は、まるで自白のように感じられた。Ciroは四十年間、一度たりとも彼女に親しげな目を向けたことがなく、今もそうだった。かつて彼女の父を素人と呼び、彼女のことは「のろまのMadonna」と呼んだ男であり、自分に有利な事実を前に黙っていられる男ではないことなど、この小路の誰もが知っていた。彼はエスプレッソの代金を払い、帽子の鍔に指を当てると、一度も振り返ることなく自分の店へと渡っていった。

Samir was already waiting at the blue door with the key in his hand that she had given him a year ago and that he never used without ringing first. He was nineteen, born in Naples to parents from Sfax, slight, with a pencil behind one ear and an envelope in the other hand. “The Chamber of Crafts,” he said. “In the letterbox this morning. I haven’t opened it.” But he looked like someone who had read it without opening it.

青い扉の前では、すでにSamirが待っていた。一年前彼女が彼に渡したきり、一度もベルを鳴らさずに使ったことのない鍵を手に持っている。彼は19歳で、Sfax出身の両親のもとナポリで生まれた。細身の体つきで、耳の後ろに鉛筆を挟み、もう一方の手には封筒を握っている。「手工業会議所からです」と彼は言った。「今朝、郵便受けに入っていました。僕は開けていません」。だがその表情は、開けずとも中身を読んだ者のそれだった。