Living in Limbo

AT THE END OF DECEMBER 2020, a tremendous storm surge hit the seafront of Naples. Waves of more than 30 feet, pushed by a wind that roared at nearly 55 miles an hour, slammed into the central coast of the Bay of Naples with a fearsome energy, driving the city to retreat inside. Pictures of that amazing event, taken from the balconies of apartment buildings or from the cars of the unfortunate people still on the street, made the rounds of the Internet and were reproduced by the main Italian news outlets.

Some days later, I drove the short distance to the center of Naples to give a copy of my just-published novel to a gentleman who had written a blurb for the back cover, a retired top editor of RAI, the Italian broadcasting company. We went for a walk along the Partenope sea drive because, as a good journalist, he wanted to show me the destruction that the waves had brought about. The street had been cleaned up, the wreckage removed, thus returning it to life with its usual traffic. But the sidewalk along the waterfront was still not passable, cordoned off by black-and-red caution tape. Only when we arrived at the point of greatest wave impact did I realize how violent that invasion of the sea into the city had been. The stone