"Nicholas Royle - Flying Into Naples" - читать интересную книгу автора (Royle Nicholas)

Flying into Naples
a short story by Nicholas Royle

Flying into Naples the 737 hits some turbulence and gets thrown about a
bit. It's dark outside but I can't even see any lights on the ground. I'm
a nervous flyer anyway and this doesn't make me feel any better. It's
taking off and landing that bother me.
But when we're down and I'm crossing the tarmac to the airport buildings
there's a warm humid stillness in the air that makes me wonder about the
turbulence. I wander through passport control and customs like someone in
a dream. The officials seem covered in a fine layer of dust as if they've
been standing there for years just waiting.
No one speaks to me and I get on the bus marked "Centro Napoli". I'm on
holiday. All I've got in Naples is a name, a photograph and a wrong
number. The name is a woman's -- Flavia -- and the photograph is of the
view from her apartment. The phone number I tried last week to say I was
coming turned out to belong to someone else entirely.
I've worked out from the photograph and my map that the apartment is on a
hill on the west side of the city. There's not much more to go on. It's
too late to go and look for it tonight. Flavia won't be expecting me --
beyond occasional vague invitations nothing has been arranged -- and she
could take a long time to locate.
I knew her years ago when she visited London and stayed in the hotel where
I was working the bar. We knew each other briefly -- a holiday romance, if
you like -- but something ensured I would not forget her. Whether it was
the sunrise we saw together or the shock of her body in the quiet shadow
of my room over the kitchens, or a combination of these and other factors
-- her smile, my particular vulnerability, her tumbling curls -- I don't
know, but something fixed her in my mind. So when I found myself with a
week's holiday at the end of three difficult months in a new, stressful
job, I dug out her letters -- two or three only over eight years,
including this recent photograph of the view from her apartment -- and
booked a last-minute flight to Naples.
I'd never been there though I'd heard so much about it -- how violent and
dangerous it could be for foreigners, yet how beautiful -- and I would
enjoy the effort required to get along in Italian.

I'm alone on the bus apart from one other man -- a local who spends the
20-minute ride talking on a cellphone to his mistress in Rome -- and the
taciturn driver. I've come before the start of the season, but it's
already warm enough not to need my linen jacket.
I'm divorced. I don't know about Flavia. She never mentioned anybody, just
as she never revealed her address when she wrote to me. I've been divorced
two years and a period of contented bachelorhood has only recently come to
a natural end, and with the arrival of spring in London I have found
myself watching women once again: following a hemline through the human
traffic of Kensington, turning to see the face of a woman in Green Park
whose hair looked so striking from behind. It may be spring in Berkeley
Square but it feels like midsummer in Naples. The air is still and hot and
humid when I leave the bus at the main railway station and begin walking