Ninety is 'a paura, fear. The board ends on it, the lotto wheel ends on it and the tombola basket ends on it, and it is the only square where the position and the figure feel like they were chosen together.
It is also the end of the dream sequence Serao wrote down in 1884: a dead man is 47, a dead man who speaks is 48, one who weeps is 65, «il che vi ha fatto paura — novanta», and the fright of it is ninety.
- 90
- 'A paura
- fear
- Row 81–90 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
No source explains the pairing, and it is the one square where the lack of an explanation is almost satisfying: the last number on the board holds the thing at the end.
Other things filed on 90
In Neapolitan life
Serao gives 90 a second reading in the same paragraph, and it is worth having. Reading a street knifing into numbers she ends «novanta, il popolo» — ninety, the crowd. Fear and the mob on the same square, in the same book, four lines apart. Modern lists print only the fear. Nothing about any of it changed a draw: ninety balls went into the basket and one came out, and Serao's whole chapter is an argument that the city knew this and staked its rent anyway.
90 in the smorfia — frequently asked
No source says. Ninety is the last number of the lotto wheel and of the tombola basket, and the figure that sits there is fear.
Serao's 1884 reporting gives it two values in one paragraph: fear, and il popolo, the crowd. Modern lists keep only the first.
It is the highest, not necessarily the last. Numbers come out of the basket in random order; 90 is simply the top of the range.