With this episode I wanted to attempt an impossible reconciliation.
Don Giovanni — in Mozart’s version, which at ten years old I knew by heart — was one of the heroes of my childhood. Together with Christopher Columbus, but that’s another story.
As an adult, I fell out of love with him, to the point of symbolically sending him to hell during the #MeToo movement. A choice I supported politically for a long time, but one I always paid for emotionally: how do you dismiss what formed you?
On this pilgrimage to Our Lady of Pompeii I tried to imagine an escape route from that ending: not an absolution, but a new way of looking at desire, power, guilt.
Curiously, it was precisely this episode that won over my mother — the same mother who, at the beginning, was invoking compulsory psychiatric treatment in front of my narrative experiments. It was here she stopped worrying and began to see artistic value in what I was writing.
That it took a poem by Don Giovanni dedicated to his mother, written with the help of ChatGPT, perhaps proves that Uncle Sigmund F. had many reasons.
And it is a bit sad, yes. But also beautiful. Because sometimes artistic experiments are able to make peace where life cannot.
Previous episode: —-> Episode 9 – The Strength of Women
Mother,
no woman gives birth in silence.
Your body screamed and the world began,
but neither of us knew that that scream
would remain between us like a door left ajar.
I have passed through many rooms since then,
loved women, cities, ghosts,
looked for your breath in theirs,
in every abandonment the sound of your voice.
You taught me, without wanting to,
that love is a risk and a fault,
and I turned that lesson
into a career of escapes.
Today I dedicate to you my slow step,
my ability to stay, even just for an instant.
My lantern does not seek salvation:
it only lights the road that leads back to you,
the part of me that still listens to you
when I stop performing.
Don Juan
Naples, a veiled morning. The Hermit does not begin with a journey, but with a return.
I wake fresh, rested, with that lightness only fine rain can give to thoughts.
From the balcony I see the courtyard shining like a promise. It rains that tiny rain that in Palermo they call assuppa viddani — it doesn’t wet, but it gets into your bones and stays there, discreet, insistent.
It’s perfect for a pilgrimage, and I decide that today I will go to Pompeii.
When I open the door, he’s there: Don Giovanni, in flesh, habit, and smile.
He has a worn hood over his head and in his fist a polished wooden staff. He looks like a friar — or rather, a friar disguised as himself.
“I’m coming with you,” he says. “To Pompeii. I want to claim my forgiveness.”
I look at him, half annoyed, half amused.
“Claim what, excuse me? You tricked them all!”
He shrugs, and with that air of seasoned actor declaims:
“It’s all love.
He who is faithful to one alone is cruel to the others.
I, who feel such vast sentiment,
love them all;
but women, who cannot calculate,
call my good nature deception.”
I sigh.
“Listen, save this nonsense for the priests. Come along if you want, but I’m not responsible for you. If the Madonna strikes you down on the spot, that’s your problem.”
He laughs. A clear, ancient laugh that makes even the doorbell tremble. Then he offers me his arm.
“Well then, my hermit, let’s both go confess — each with our own ghost.”
And so, under the drizzle, we begin to walk toward the station.
We go down Via Port’Alba under a rain that now seems more determined, as if it wanted to discourage the uninitiated.
The air smells of paper, coffee, and bookshop mold — the ancient breath of Naples when it wakes up. Don Giovanni and I walk slowly between the bookstalls. He keeps muttering verses under his breath; I check whether I brought the umbrella.
And then, suddenly, a figure appears: it is Saint Caterina Volpicelli, Neapolitan mystic and founder of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart — a practical saint, all earth and fire.
A vortex of wind lifts her veil, and suddenly she is there, in front of the door of her birthplace, with the grace of someone who has lived enough not to need to explain herself anymore.
She is small, luminous, with eyes that speak of fever and vigil. Her voice is low but piercing; Neapolitan turned to silk, almost French in elegance, but with the accent of someone who has seen too many miracles to fear them.
“Ué, what are you two wretches doing? Alone, too, in this weather that looks like it’s raining inside your souls!”
Don Giovanni and I freeze.
She comes closer and looks at us both, like a mother who recognizes her children even when they change face.
“Bring people with you, my children. Go through the ruins of Pompeii and choose well whom to call: no more than two. One begins a journey in a cemetery in two or in four — the others, trust me, will come on their own.”
Her voice lowers, becomes almost a breath:
“And remember… don’t eat anything.
No bread, no pomegranates, no offerings.
In Pompeii one goes to look, not to take.
There are ranks of dead listening to those who talk too much.”
Don Giovanni, slightly annoyed, removes his hood and answers with his usual irony:
“My saint, I don’t eat — I taste life! It’s not my fault if it has good flavor.”
She looks at him with bright, almost tender eyes.
“That’s why you’re always dying, my son. You mistake every mouthful for a kiss, and every woman for forgiveness. But today this is not about love: it’s about staying alive.”
I stay silent, nod.
“Yes ma’am,” I say. “Promise. And you,” I turn to Don Giovanni, “don’t be an idiot. You already owe too many redemptions.”
He laughs softly, a little wounded in pride.
“You’ve taken from me even the grace of sinning with style.”
“No,” says Saint Caterina, turning toward the street where the crowd begins to flow like a multicolored river.
“The true graces are the ones that are taken away.”
Then she disappears, simply, like a drop dissolving in the rain.
We remain there, Don Giovanni and I, under the old bookseller’s awning, among piles of volumes and the smell of miracle.
“Well then,” he says, “the ruins of Pompeii. Whom do we call?”
The rain has become thinner, almost a mist brushing the face and leaving in the air a taste of iron and sulfur.
We reach the gate of the ruins when the sky has that white, dull light of dreams about to end.
Don Giovanni stops, shakes off his habit, and looks at me with the seriousness of an actor before his debut.
“Here we are, my soul. The city of the buried and the reborn. Here even stones dream of returning to flesh.”
I sigh. “So, whom do we call first?”
He turns toward the ruins, raises a finger, and smiles like a teenager caught in the act:
“The only possible one. The patron goddess of this place. She who created and destroyed us more times than can be counted.”
Then, with theatrical steps, he climbs onto a fragment of column and begins to intone — with that voice vibrating between sin and prayer — his old serenade:
“Deh, come to the window, o my treasure…”
The air seems to respond.
A gust rises from the sea, carrying scent of salt and lily, and from the ruins of the Temple of Venus a shimmer rises — like dawn reflected on water.
Then slowly, the light takes shape. It is she.
Naked and veiled at the same time, like in Botticelli’s dream.
Her hair moves on its own; the shells at her feet open as if breathing. Every drop of rain stops mid-air, suspended, so as not to touch her.
Don Giovanni steps forward and bows, but does not dare speak. Venus smiles, sweet and ironic at once — she looks at him, then at me.
Her voice is music, but not flute nor lyre — it is the sound of desire itself. Gently, she begins to sing as well:
And I immediately reply, with a spark in my eyes, under my breath:
“Sure, sure… he’ll understand.”
Suddenly I feel my blood turn to wind, and before I even realize it, I am already following the trail of perfume and light Venus leaves behind her.
The drizzle of Pompeii falls thin, like a stumble of the sky. We three — Don Giovanni, Venus, and I — walk among stones, vines climbing broken columns, mosaics trembling with memories.
Don Giovanni wants to invoke Jupiter:
— “A little male authority never hurts, come on.”
— “Male my foot,” I reply. “Let him rest; he’s already done enough lightning and horns.”
Venus laughs softly, an echo of shell:
— “He is always convinced that commanding means being loved.”
In the end, we settle on the Genius Augusti: imperial and authoritative, but of unknown gender.
Of course, Don Giovanni insists on beginning, but I block him:
— “You always sing. Now it’s my turn.”
And I start singing, with a bit of Milanese theater in my heart, Ho visto un re by Enzo Jannacci.
A king who cried sitting on the saddle…
Venus and Don Giovanni do the chorus, a bit messy but tender:
“Poor king!
— And poor horse, too!”
We continue like this, singing and laughing, until the last verse.
The silence that follows is so deep that even Don Giovanni — for once — is quiet.
I add a comment:
— “There’s your problem, my dear genius: you wanted Octavian to play both Rex and Augur. Emperor and Pope in the same head. And see how the family ended up? Germanicus poisoned, Caligula stabbed by his own Praetorians, and that fine specimen Nero as the seal of the dynasty. Did that seem like a happy ending to you?”
Venus sighs, her breath smelling of copper and myrtle:
— “Whoever mixes the fire of power and the altar always ends in ashes.”
Don Giovanni, however, doesn’t give up the joke:
— “Well, at least I go to ashes alive and by my own decision.”
I give him an affectionate elbow:
— “Then laugh all you want, King of Nothing — the Madonna awaits you with a broom in hand.”
The laughter that follows is ancient and new at once, as if from every stone a ghost were laughing.
Suddenly, a column splits in silence and a breath of heat comes out. Not flame nor wind — a breath of sand and sulfur.
The Genius Augusti manifests, but it has no human face. It is a djinn, an ancient spirit of fire, with eyes full of molten coins.
Its voice is not spoken: each of us hears it inside our own chest.
— “I am not god nor king. I am what remains when power burns. Follow the flame until it makes you laugh again.”
It leads us down Via del Lupanare, among peeled arches and obscene paintings that now seem like icons, while a procession of women comes toward us.
They are not ghosts — but living women, flesh and blood. The sex workers of Naples, with their skirts rolled up and hair like burning lamps.
They have heard that the Madonna awaits us, and they want to go with us.
— “We want to talk to her too,” says one with a hoarse voice. “Not to ask forgiveness. To make her understand.”
I look at them, and Don Giovanni freezes mid-step. Venus, who recognizes them as daughters, smiles sideways.
— “And what case do you want to present her?” I ask.
The eldest lifts her chin:
— “Our case. That we are neither saints nor whores. That work is work, and dignity is not grace but right. We’re for the New Zealand model, you understand? No more exploiters, no more bosses. Contract, health, respect. And no hypocrisy. If God exists, he can’t be afraid of our bodies.”
(A parenthesis for the reader: in New Zealand, in 2003, the Prostitution Reform Act decriminalized sex work and recognized the rights of those who practice it — health, safety, freedom of choice. A law that replaced morality with dignity. Perhaps the Madonna, if she is Mother, will understand.)
Meanwhile Don Giovanni hums softly, almost melancholic:
“They called her Bocca di Rosa / she put love beyond anything else…”
The women glare at him with such force that even that proud libertine falls silent.
One approaches him and answers, sweet but firm:
— “With this story of doing things for love, sir, you’ve fooled millions of women. Love, love… and you make us pay dearly for it. You kill women’s bargaining power, so they end up enduring relations with you instead of negotiating them as equals.”
The djinn emits a crackling sound that seems like applause — or perhaps wind. It points to a descending alley, where the air grows clearer, almost silver.
— “Down there,” it whispers inside our bones. “There awaits the Woman who does not judge. But do not approach if you still carry shame.”
I pull up my hood and say:
— “Then we’re ready. No one here is ashamed anymore.”
Venus laughs.
The prostitutes join us, in a strange, beautiful procession — among laughter, stumbles, and the smell of wine someone stole to bless the road.
Don Giovanni closes the line, humming the final verses of Bocca di Rosa, with a tremor that seems sincere:
“And with the Virgin at the head,
and Bocca di Rosa not far behind,
they parade through the village
sacred love and profane love.”
The djinn follows us as a shifting light, and Pompeii, for an instant, seems alive again —
not the buried city, but the one that laughed at itself before it was drowned by the wrath of the sky.
It is barely raining when we cross the threshold of the Sanctuary of Pompeii.
The interior is deserted, glossy with wax and incense. Light filters through the stained glass like through still water: blue, gold, blood red.
The prostitutes remain outside, under the portico; they light candles in bottle caps and, with voices thick with wine and tears, improvise a chorus.
Venus kneels before the altar, but she does not pray: she sings.
She does not sing in Latin nor in Italian; she sings a language that tastes of iron and salt, and yet we all understand it.
I am my mother’s savage daughter…
I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice…
Her voice fills the nave like wind among stones. The women outside respond, repeating the refrains like waves returning to shore.
I feel a lump in my throat: my mother and all mothers in the world are in that song, with hands dirty with blood and shit.
Don Giovanni, beside me, lowers his gaze for the first time, while from the back of the church a glow rises.
The painting of the Madonna does not move, but begins to vibrate as if a river of light were flowing through it. Venus’s voice grows higher, and the chorus erupts:
We are our mother’s savage daughters…
At the height of the chorus, Don Giovanni smiles.
— “There,” he says softly, “is the only woman I cannot deceive.”
Then, without a sound, he takes a step toward the painting. The glow envelops him: one instant he is there, the next he is not.
Venus falls silent; I turn — where he stood remains only an echo, a scent of sweet smoke and sulfur, and perhaps a laugh.
I do not know whether the Madonna took him to hell or to paradise. Perhaps she simply led him to understanding. Perhaps it is the same place.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The prostitutes gather their candles and laugh like children.
Venus and I step out.
The sky above Pompeii is a very pale gray, and somewhere inside me, I feel that an old maternal song has finally fallen asleep.
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