Capri and Procida: A Tale of Two Islands
双岛记：漫游卡普里和普罗奇达

The aperitifs arrived as the Capri sun dipped into an orange band across the Gulf of Naples and a couple on the terrace talked about how quiet the island had become. The hotel felt empty, and its barman, in elegant suit and tie, interrupted his revelry about the prepandemic days to shoo off a sea gull deprived of its usual tourist-scrap banquet.

开胃酒送来的时候，卡普里的太阳正没入洒在那不勒斯湾的橙色光带，露台上的一对情侣谈起这座岛屿变得多么安静。酒店里空荡荡的，穿着优雅西装、打着领带的酒保打断了自己对疫情前灯红酒绿的怀念，挥手赶走了一只海鸥，它也再不能享受游客剩下的残渣盛宴了。

“The birds,” the barman explained, “are famished.”

“这些鸟，”酒保说，“都要饿死了。”

意大利普罗奇达岛上的渔村科里瑟拉。

After more than a year of lockdown, the Italian islands off Naples are also hungry for visitors and a return to the bustling summer seasons that are their economic lifeblood. In May, glamorous Capri, that Italian Epcot of jet-set dreams, and its smaller, gritty sister, Procida, which feels like a neighborhood of Naples drifted out to sea, had managed to become among Italy’s first fully vaccinated islands. Prime Minister Mario Draghi urged travelers “to book your holidays in Italy.”

经历一年多的封锁之后，那不勒斯湾外的意大利岛屿也在渴望游客的到来和夏日旺季的回归，这是它们的经济命脉。迷人的卡普里是奢侈梦幻的意大利版未来世界，而它较小、较朴素的姊妹岛屿普罗奇达就好像那不勒斯的一部分漂进了海里，它们在5月成了意大利第一批全面接种疫苗的岛屿。总理马里奥·德拉吉(Mario Draghi)鼓励游客“订好来意大利的假期”。

Those travelers who do have a chance of hitting a rare, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime sweet spot in which thinner crowds, wonderful weather and more motivated, vaccinated hospitality make for memorable stays. To be on the islands these days is to be present for the stirring of great beauties who, having slept late, are fully rested, rearing to go and full of aspirations about what the future might hold.

这些游客确实可能遇上了一个罕见的、或许是千载难逢的时机，更少的人群、美妙的天气，以及打过疫苗的人们更加殷勤的款待定会让他们留下难忘的回忆。现在来岛，你可以叫醒那些沉睡许久、得到充分恢复的美丽，它们已经在酝酿盛放，对未来充满了期待。

But the two islands want very different things. On Capri, luxury restaurant and hotel owners thirst for a return to V.I.P. normalcy, while some residents hope a momentary relief from the cruise ships might trigger a re-appreciation of the island’s biodiversity and local culture. On Procida, where the 17th-century pastel-colored fishing village has served as the picturesque Italian postcard backdrop for movies like “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Il Postino,” locals are both hopeful and wary that their inoculations and a surprise designation as Italy’s Capital of Culture for 2022 will thrust them into the upper echelon of southern Italian destinations.

但这两座岛屿所期待的东西却大相径庭。卡普里的豪华餐厅和酒店老板都渴望VIP常态的回归，而一些居民则希望能短暂地不受游轮打扰，好好重新欣赏岛上的生物多样性和本地文化。而在普罗奇达，色彩柔美的17世纪渔村曾被《天才瑞普利》(The Talented Mr. Ripley)和《邮差》(Il Postino)等电影当作展示意大利绝美风情的取景地，当地人保持着乐观谨慎的态度，因为接种了疫苗和意外被评为2022年意大利文化之都(Capital of Culture)，他们的岛屿将跻身意大利南部高端旅游目的地之列。

Yearning for authenticity
渴望地道体验

Despite having over time visited nearly every corner of Italy, I had never been to either. Capri’s crowds and schlock-and-awe reputation scared me off. Procida was eclipsed on my radar by its larger neighbor, Ischia. But their Covid-free status, proximity to my home in Rome, and need to get away after a brutal year all added up to it being time to go.

尽管这些年来几乎走遍了意大利的每个角落，但这两座岛我都没去过。卡普里的人潮和混乱名声吓跑了我。因为旁边更大的伊斯基亚，我也没关注过普罗奇达。但它们没有新冠疫情，离我在罗马的家很近，再加上经历难熬的一年后需要好好放松，这一切都表明，是时候出发了。

On that first night in Capri, my wife and I walked along winding bougainvillea-perfumed paths devoid of luxury shoppers and Limoncello-buzzed crowds. We looked nervously at all the shuttered restaurants and the clocks on our phones. Back then, curfew still fell over the island and all of Italy at 10 p.m. Like the sea gulls, we were hungry.

在卡普里的第一个晚上，我和妻子沿着弥漫九重葛香味的蜿蜒小路散步，没有奢侈品购物者，也没有喝罢柠檬甜酒的嘈杂人群。我们紧张地看着所有关着门的餐厅和手机上的时钟。当时，岛上和整个意大利仍在晚10点后实施宵禁。和海鸥一样，我们饿了。

In the center of town, we followed some voices around a corner to the Hangout pub. Locals talked about school, and children ran around. We reluctantly ordered burgers and, as if characters in a Patricia Highsmith story, bumped into friends from Rome whose romantic getaway had turned into a reckoning over whether he cared more about her or his sailboat. Then their friend, the son of an Italian diplomat who had summered at his family villa in Capri for decades, turned the corner with his wife. We were suddenly a pod.

在城镇中心，我们循着街角的声音来到了Hangout酒吧。酒吧里，当地人聊着学校问题，孩子们跑来跑去。我们不情不愿地点了汉堡，然后，就和帕特丽夏·海史密斯(Patricia Highsmith)小说中的人物一样，遇上来自罗马的朋友，他们的浪漫之旅变成了一场灵魂拷问：他更在乎的究竟是她，还是他的帆船。后来，他们的朋友——一位意大利外交官之子，几十年来都在卡普里岛的家族别墅避暑——与妻子的关系转危为安。我们一下就成了一个小团体。

“Capri is coming back different, stronger,” Lorenzo Fornari, the Capri veteran, explained to me. He spoke rapturously about the Zagara orange blossoms growing atop the island’s towering Mount Solaro that he uses to flavor Solaro, the artisanal gin he had started making with local farmers.

“复苏的卡普里变了，变得更坚强了，”十分熟悉这里的洛伦佐·福纳里(Lorenzo Fornari)向我解释道。他兴致勃勃地谈起生长在岛上高耸的索拉罗山上的扎加拉橙花，他用橙花来给索拉罗酒调味，这是他与当地农民开始手工酿制的杜松子酒。

A couple of days later I visited him in his terraced garden filled with kiwis, figs, lemons (one of which he plucked from a tree and used as a map to explain the island’s geography), wild fennel, even banana leaves.

几天后，我拜访了他的梯级花园，里面种满了猕猴桃、无花果、柠檬（他从树上摘下一颗，用来讲解这座岛的地形）、野生茴香、甚至还有香蕉树叶。

“I swear,” he said. “Everything grows on this island.” A test batch of the spirits had just arrived from the distillery, and he dropped a sprig of rosemary into a glass of it before a final taste test. He approved and talked about how Capri needed more such sustainable projects, and how he worked with local artisans and a cooperative of farmers in Anacapri, the much larger, and less polished, part of an island, which, he said, had “a lot to offer.”

“我发誓，”他说。“这个岛上什么都能长。”一批测试酒刚刚从酒厂运来，在最终品试前，他往酒杯里放了一枝迷迭香。他对酒水表示认可，还说卡普里需要更多这类可持续项目，以及他如何与当地匠人和阿纳卡普里的农民合作社合作，阿纳卡普里是卡普里岛上面积更广、但没那么时髦的片区，他说那里“有很多东西可看”。

An exorbitant taxi ride across the island brought me to Anacapri, where a line of schoolchildren in uniform wished “buon appetito” to the people lunching in the garden of Gelsomina, one of the first spots on the island to serve the famously airy caprese ravioli, cheese-stuffed pasta sweetened with their garden’s tomatoes. As a waiter explained to a lone group of tourists that the island was usually overcrowded, his sister, Gelsomina Maresca, said “We are hoping that the Americans come back.” Just not too many of them, she added, as her mother cut baby artichokes in the kitchen. “Anacapri is getting bigger but we hope it will never arrive at the level of Capri. It’s too commercial. We’re authentic.”

我花了昂贵的出租车费，穿越小岛来到阿纳卡普里，一群穿着校服的小学生正朝着在Gelsomina餐厅庭院里吃午餐的人们说“请尽情享用”，这是岛上最早供应著名的卡普里空心意式饺的餐厅之一，庭院里种植的番茄为这种奶酪馅的意大利面食增添了甜味。服务生向唯一一组游客介绍该岛以往如何人山人海，他的妹妹杰索米娜·马雷斯卡(Gelsomina Maresca)说，“我们都希望美国人能回来。”只要不太多，她又说。她的母亲正在厨房里切着小洋蓟。“阿纳卡普里越来越有名了，但我们希望它永远不要变成卡普里的样子。那太商业化了。我们才是正宗的。”

Authenticity, of course, means different things to different people. Others in the fashionable center of the island argued that tourism and hospitality, starting with the Emperor Tiberius 2,000 years ago, were in Capri’s blood and that, for all its natural beauty, the island was not without its prodigal guests.

当然，各人对“正宗”的理解各有不同。生活在岛上时尚中心的另一些人则认为，从2000年前提比略皇帝(Emperor Tiberius)统治的时代开始，旅游和好客就流淌在卡普里岛的血液里，不管有多少美丽的自然风光，这里从不乏豪客。

“What a pleasure to hear from you,” Nicolino Morgano, 64, the owner of the Scalinatella, a sumptuous boutique luxury hotel, said into the phone behind his front desk. He promised the return customer her usual room and impeccable service. Capri, he said to the woman on the phone, “is ready to give you the usual emotions.”

“接到您的来电我们非常高兴，”尼科利诺·摩根诺(Nicolino Morgano)在前台对着电话说道，现年64岁的他是豪华精品酒店Scalinatella的老板。他向那位回头客承诺，会为她保留惯常的房间，为她提供完美的服务。他对电话里的女性说，卡普里岛“已为她准备好一如以往的感官体验”。

“People keep calling and saying they are coming and that ‘I want my table,’” said Francesco De Angelis, 55, whose family owns the venerable La Capannina restaurant. Days before reopening, four generations of the family, all vaccinated, sat in their quiet dining room, surrounded by clean glasses, photos of famous patrons such as Dustin Hoffman, and told stories about others, including Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas, before him. They could feel Capri’s energy coming back.

“人们一直打电话来说，他们要来了，‘我要订我以前的那张桌，’”55岁的弗朗切斯科·德·安吉利斯(Francesco De Angelis)说，他家正是著名的La Capannina餐厅的老板。在重新开业的前几天，已经接种了疫苗的一家四代人坐在安静的餐厅里，周围是干净的玻璃杯，以及达斯汀·霍夫曼(Dustin Hoffman)等名流顾客的照片，他们还讲述了在霍夫曼之前光顾的其他名人的故事，包括迈克尔·道格拉斯(Michael Douglas)和柯克·道格拉斯(Kirk Douglas)。他们能感觉到卡普里岛的活力又回来了。

“It’s joy, joy, joy,” Mr. De Angelis said.

“就是喜悦、喜悦、喜悦，”德·安吉利斯说。

‘The year of rebirth’
“重生之年”

Italy’s culture ministry also had reawakening in mind when it chose nearby Procida, a low-slung volcanic island of nearly 4 square kilometers (about 1.54 square miles) and 10,000 people, as 2022’s Capital of Culture. Procida would “accompany us in the year of rebirth,” the culture minister said in a decision that prompted what the Procida mayor, Raimondo Ambrosino, told me was an “explosion of joy.”

普罗奇达是个低海拔的火山岛，面积在四平方公里左右，人口只有1万，意大利文化部选择它作为2022年的文化之都，意图也是促进复苏。普罗奇达将“在这重生之年陪伴我们”，文化部长在宣布这一决定时表示，普罗奇达市长雷蒙多·安布罗西诺(Raimondo Ambrosino)告诉我，这带来了“一阵欢腾”。

Mr. Ambrosino, who was an extra in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” said Procida, the first island in Italy to be fully vaccinated, had planned a dense schedule of cultural events that included the “regeneration” of abandoned places. The ruined 16th-century Palazzo D’Avalos, which in 1830 became a prison that ultimately held some of Italy’s most hardened criminals until it closed in 1988, would become a cultural center. The old lighthouse could be a museum about the surrounding sea life. The old medieval walled Terra Murata town at the northern tip of the island, where the Abbazia San Michele Arcangelo features a Nativity scene made from shells, could be spruced up.

在《天才瑞普利》中跑过龙套的安布罗西诺说，作为意大利首个全面接种疫苗的岛屿，普罗奇达已经策划好了密集的文化活动日程，包括对废弃旧址的“重塑”。废弃的16世纪建筑达瓦洛斯宫(Palazzo D’Avalos)在1830年变成一座监狱，在1988年被关闭之前，这里关押了意大利一些重刑犯，后来又成了一个文化中心。古老的灯塔可以改建为一个介绍周边海洋生物的博物馆。位于岛屿北端的城镇特拉木拉塔(Terra Murata)被中世纪的古老围墙环绕，坐落于此的圣米歇尔·阿尔坎杰洛修道院(Abbazia San Michele Arcangelo)展示了以贝壳制成的耶稣诞生场景，这里也可以进行修缮。

But really, he said, they had no intention to make any big changes.

但他表示，实际上他们无意做出任何大的改变。

“We don’t have to do anything new,” Mr. Ambrosino said as he reclined in the shabby City Hall against an open window facing the sea. Maybe the national attention, government funds and additional tourist dollars could be used to refurbish the island’s many ruined buildings into new Airbnbs, he said, but there wasn’t any appetite for luxury hotel complexes. “They tried to build one once,” he said. “And it came to a bad end.”

“我们不需要做任何新东西，”安布罗西诺靠在破旧市政厅里一扇能望向大海的窗前说。他说，全国的关注、政府的资金和更多的游客收入或许足以将岛上许多损毁建筑翻修成崭新的爱彼迎(Airbnb)酒店，但这里的人对豪华酒店综合体没有任何兴趣。“他们曾经试图建过一次，”他说。“结果却非常糟糕。”

If Capri is stained by decadence, Procida is marred with decay. But there is a Havana-like romance to its shabbiness, to the fallen plaster caught in chunks by nets above the altars or dusting the seats in the churches, to the older women with their forearms folded on windowpanes as they stare motionless at the sea, to the gray blotches left by disintegrating pastel facades that are like a Rorschach test on what type of Italy you see here. Is it run down or the real thing? Something to move beyond, or to keep at all costs?

如果说卡普里只有点点荒废，那普罗奇达则满是衰败。但它的破旧带有一种哈瓦那式的浪漫，诸如祭坛上被尘网覆盖的腐坏石膏像或是教堂里落满灰尘的座椅，前臂交叠搭在窗上一动不动盯着大海的老婆婆，粉彩外墙裂开后留下的灰色斑驳，就像罗夏墨迹心理测验，考你在这里看到的究竟是意大利的哪一面。是腐朽还是真实？是该向前发展，还是不惜一切代价留住？

Procida doesn’t seem sure either. The mayor acknowledges that the culture award would draw more tourists, but he says there are only so many ferries to bring them, and that the island nominated itself so that it could stay the same and “to tell our young people about our past so that they would understand they had a future.”

普罗奇达自己似乎也不确定。市长承认，文化之都的殊荣会吸引更多游客，但他说，能把游客带来的渡船只有那些，而且他们提名自己就是为了保持现状，为了“对年轻一代讲述我们的过去，这样他们才会明白，自己还有未来”。

He saw Procida’s past, present and future as an authentic story of a seafaring people, where native sons, as they had for centuries, become fishermen and cruise and merchant ship captains. After long and often well-paid spells at sea, they would return to wild, almost imperial, gardens, fragrant with the lemon trees planted by their mariner ancestors who harvested citrus to fight scurvy at sea. But now those inhabitants favored oranges and apricots, angel’s trumpet flowers and broom. On land, they stroll unbothered down treacherous streets without sidewalks but filled with Vespas sputtering under portly drivers, tiny Ape trucks making deliveries of concrete, and hundreds of the whizzing electric bicycles, equipped with a little seat for a child or groceries, that have become the preferred mode of transportation.

他将普罗奇达的过去、现在和未来视作一个航海民族的真实故事，土生土长的子孙们就和几世纪以来的先人一样，成为渔民，以及游船和商船的船长。在海上度过漫长且收入颇丰的岁月后，他们将回到繁茂的、堪称帝王般的花园，那里满是柠檬树的馨香，果树都是由他们的水手祖先种下，收获的柑橘能帮他们在海上抵御坏血病。但现在，居民们喜欢种橘树和杏树，大花曼陀罗和金雀花。在岛上，他们无忧无虑地漫步，危险的街道上没有人行道，来来往往都是肥胖司机开的伟士牌小摩托、运动混凝土的小型Ape卡车、以及呼啸而过的数以百计的电动自行车，这些自行车配有可供儿童使用或放置杂货的小座位，已成为人们首选的出行工具。

“If anything,” Mr. Ambrosino said, “the Capital of Culture puts us too much in view.”

“要说作用的话，”安布罗西诺表示，“文化之都让太多人看到了我们。”

The last thing its locals wanted were crowds of tourists visiting discos, pubs and luxury boutiques to clog things up. God forbid anyone suggested they open up a tourist trap to sling coffee. “They want to be the guests. That’s why the rhythm is what it is. There’s no rush.”