Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Naples
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almost as big. Once I came upon an old woman,
nothing but skin and bones, almost naked, lying
on a rotten straw-mattress in a semi-dark sort of
grotto. I was told she was the ‘vavama,’ the
grandmother. She was paralysed and totally
blind, she had been lying there for years. On
the filthy floor of the cave sat on their haunches
half-a-dozen enormous rats in a circle round their
unmentionable morning meal. They looked quite
placidly at me, without moving an inch. The old
woman stretched out her skeleton arm and
screamed in a hoarse voice: “pane! pane!”
But when the sanitary commission started on
its vain attempt to disinfect the sewers, the
situation changed, my fear grew into terror. Millions
of rats who had been living unmolested in the
sewers since the time of the Romans, invaded the
lower part of the town. Intoxicated by the
sulphur fumes and the carbolic acid, they rushed
about the slums like mad dogs. They did not
look like any rats I had ever seen before, they
were quite bald with extraordinarily long red
tails, fierce blood-shot eyes and pointed black
teeth as long as the teeth of a ferret. If you hit
them with your stick, they would turn round
and hang on to the stick like a bull-dog. Never
in my life I have been so afraid of any animal as I
was of these mad rats, for I am sure they were
mad. The whole Basso Porto quarter was in
terror. Over one hundred severely bitten men,
women and children were taken to the Pellegrini
hospital the very first day of the invasion.
Several small children were literally eaten up.
I shall never forget a night in a fondaco in Vicolo
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