Streets of ‘Gomorrah’

Some patrons are dressed in suits and pull up to Le Vele in fancy cars. Rather than descend to the basement, they are met by runners—mostly teenage boys—who take the money and return with brown-paper containers. (Every few hours an SUV pulls up and a kid runs out with a brown envelope of money. It's collected often to discourage thieves and embezzlement.) The basement business is booming. By noon there are more than 20 cars in the parking lot and lines in the shops. By late afternoon, the cars are double-parked and the lines extend up the stairs. After school the children ride their bikes over the syringes and play football among the rats and garbage and stray dogs and cats.

It's nearly noon and Maria Amaro, 33, is still in her gray housecoat, sweeping the steps that lead to her apartment. Her three daughters, dressed in pink velour tracksuits, play inside on Barbie bicycles. She loved the movie "Gomorrah," but thought Garrone could have shown more of Le Vele's human side. "People are afraid to come here," she says. "Everyone thinks we're going to kill them." She describes a violent rainstorm a few days earlier. "I thought someone was throwing rocks down the roof," she says, pointing to the corrugated plastic roof over her tiny balcony. "But the rain was so strong the rats were falling off the roof like rocks." She laughs and points four stories down, where dead rats are piled on top of syringes. "It's bad for the children," she says. "They walk out of the house and they are playing on the syringes, playing with the rats."

Amaro, a stay-at-home mom, offers coffee inside her apartment, which is spotless. One of the most striking aspects of Le Vele is how clean family spaces are. Women constantly mop the plastic floor runners and sweep the cracked concrete stairs. There is something symbolic and disturbing about the frantic mopping and cleaning. The windows sparkle, the floors shine, the children are perfectly dressed. Amaro serves her espresso in the same white plastic cups as Lipurali. Her house is neat and orderly: the curtains are pressed, the dish towels folded, stickers of Padre Pio—Italy's patron saint of suffering—line the door; a china cabinet reveals expensive liquor and silver photo frames. The children are watching cartoons on satellite TV.

Amaro's neighbor Maria Mottola, 38, mother of four, liked the movie as well. "The attention from the film isn't bad for us," she says. "The reality is much worse even than what they show, but maybe this is an embarrassment for the country. When [Silvio] Berlusconi comes to Napoli, he never makes it here to Le Vele." Mottola's husband is in jail, but she won't say why. The cops drag people to jail "just to scare the rest," she says. "We hope to get through today and that tomorrow will be better."

At the top of the steps to the basement, Vicenzo Sperino is carrying a wrench and a handful of washers. He didn't see the movie. "I don't need to," he says. "I see the film every day in my real life. The government should be embarrassed. They show this filth and this criminality." As if on cue, a man in a black tracksuit staggers up to ask where to buy a syringe. Sperino takes his wrench and pretends to hit the man on the head. "I should have done it," he says with a laugh after the man staggers away. "One less. Get rid of them one by one." He worries for his children—ages 9, 8 and 6— but says he wants the same things most other people do: "For them to live happy and to be healthy. We live in hope. Basta."

Even in the current economic climate, the Camorra manages to keep business thriving. Saviano says the clans are the only ones still lending money to locals in southern Italy and that their business interests aren't suffering. "Naples is a city on its knees," he says. "But the clan is still profiting, and the profit comes at the expense of a normal existence for a lot of people."