Seasons in Basilicata (12 page)

I was intrigued by the whole timelessness of the place, and the only real disappointment on that particular day was my inability to find anywhere to stay. The village didn't seem to possess even a
modest
pensione,
and there was no place for rent, according to my kind young friend at the coffee bar, who apologized and explained that “Housing here is very precious, and many people still live in very small spaces and they have nowhere for other people. This is not a place that knows many tourists people from away. We are not—how you say?—on the map. But I think it is very nice that you would like to stay. Maybe you could find a small hotel in a nearby town—Stigliano or Accettura—for a few days, and if you will call me at this number I will ask here in the village for you. Maybe something will happen. Maybe we will make something happen.”

He paused and ordered two more grappas for us. I tried to pay, but he waggled a long index finger topped with a perfectly manicured fingernail (very different from the stumpy, earth-ravaged hands of the old men here), adamant that he was the host and I was the guest. “We have a little saying in our Alianese dialect,” he continued. “
‘Chi caminete licchete, chi no restate sicche.'
‘He who looks always finds something to eat; he who stays at home shall never find a bite.'”

And indeed, that's precisely what happened on my second visit to Aliano just before Anne joined me a couple of weeks later.

Accettura and the Mingalones

As the sacred lunch and siesta time eased in at around twelve-thirty
P.M
., I drove back down those endless
tornanti
from Aliano and through that strange moonscape of eroded canyons and buttes feeling optimistic that somehow, before Anne arrived, I'd find somewhere in the village to live. But the slightly more urgent problem was, where to stay tonight? The previous night, sleeping in the DoDo on that bluff with views that went on forever across a Dakota-like landscape, was just fine. I had slept long and deeply, and would have slept even longer if the dawn chorus hadn't been so gloriously frenzied.

But right now, I decided, I'd prefer a bed and a bathroom, at an inexpensive hotel or
pensione,
in a room with a big terrace and more huge vistas of mountains and gorges. Not much to ask, I thought,
except that I haven't seen a single hotel anywhere in this wild, empty land, since leaving Matera.

Just go and flow with the flow again, suggested my optimist. Something always turns up.

Oh yes, right, mumbled my more pessimistic self. It's already siesta time, so nothing will be open until four o'clock, you're in the middle of all this nowhereness, and you don't even know which town you're heading for.

Oh yes, I do, chirped my optimist. Accettura. I like the sound of the name, and it can't be more than an hour over the Montepiano mountains to the north.

So, Accettura it was. And it did indeed take just less than an hour of fine upland driving across broad three-thousand-foot-high ridges bedecked with fruit and olive orchards and then through the great shadowy oak forests of Bosco Montepiano, where the air was cool and syrupy with mossy woodland aromas.

The trees ended abruptly at another high ridge offering more dramatic vistas. And there, a few hundred feet down the steep slope of a very deep, shadowy valley, sat Accettura, an appealing white, piled pyramid of houses and alleys rising on a rocky butte topped by a sturdy, castlelike church and bathed in brilliant silver-gold afternoon sunlight.

Perfect, I thought. Just the kind of place to relax in for a while if things work out right.

Which they did.

Thanks to Rosa Mingalone.

 

“S
OMETIMES
I
WISH
I were back in Nottin'ham. I really miss England, y'know.” The lady's cheerful Italian face sagged a little, and she half-whispered her remarks to me as we emerged together from Accettura's small (very small) supermarket just up from the main piazza. By chance (yes, I know “there are no coincidences”) I'd found this smiling middle-aged lady with a great halo of gray-white hair to be a most useful interpreter as I tried to discuss with the owner of the store the different qualities and characteris
tics of his five different types of proscuitto, all purple-pink and all equally enticing, despite hairy coatings of mold and other odd blemishes and growths, apparently indicators of fine aging.

“You don't wanna pay all that for one of those Parmas; everyone thinks it the best, but I think our local hams are much tastier m'self.” She gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Listen, if you're from Yorkshire like what you say, I bet you don't normally pick fancy stuff jus' 'cos it's got fancy prices, now d'you?”

It was most peculiar chatting with this obviously very Italian lady with a fluent grasp of English, an English delivered in an authentic Midlands dialect. And she was right: I didn't and I wouldn't. Then came the clincher.

“'Ow long 'as it been since you had a nice strong cup o' real English tea?”

“Weeks,” I said. “No, actually, months.”

“So, why don't you come over to our 'ouse and have a cup and meet my 'usband, Giuliano, and taste some of his prosciutto?”

“He makes his own?” I asked, ever hopeful of the authentic experience.

She gave a loud laugh and then covered her mouth as heads turned in the tiny store. “He makes everything 'imself! We've just moved from up by the church to a new home he's just finished so he can be closer to 'is olives and 'is oil and 'is fruit trees and 'is pigs and 'is
cantina
where he cures all 'is sausages and hams and
coppa
and
pancetta
and…everything else! Oh, and 'is wines. He loves 'is wines, an' what else?”

She paused and then chuckled. “Oh and 'is bricks. He makes bricks and tiles and all kind of stuff 'imself. The old way. Everybody loves 'is bricks.”

I couldn't believe my luck. Had I finally found a haven of homemade
cucina di casa
(
casareccio
) products? The kind of thing that northerners tend to assume is the birthright of just about every family living down in the Mezzogiorno, but which, when you actually get here, you discover is a little rarer than the Armani-Gucci romantics up there would like to think. And increasingly rare every year, too,
as Giuliano made adamantly clear as we all sat sipping Rosa's real English tea in their simply furnished new house, whose exterior was adorned with Giuliano's various types of handmade bricks, cornice mouldings, and pantiles.

Giuliano was a stocky, ball-faced, middle-aged man with prominent teeth (six, to be precise), a stubbly chin, and eyes brimming with energy and enthusiasm. Despite a Notthingham accent, his English was not as extensive as Rosa's, even though they'd left Italy and lived for more than twenty-five years in that city, running a special continental foods store. But what his conversation lacked in eloquence, it made up for in content and scope, and his remarks were usually amplified with self-explanatory gestures, shrugs, winks, and nudges. And certainly his views on today's young generation and their lack of respect for the “old traditions” were eminently clear as he pointed to a very large and elegant funnel-shaped fireplace in the corner of the room.

“Y'see, that's where you see the difference. Those are all my bricks.” He pointed proudly to the thin, rustic, rough-cut, salmon-colored bricks that he'd crafted so carefully into a three-sided funnel that met the ceiling in a flurry of his finely detailed miniature fired-clay sculptures of a Madonna and child (of course) and then looser renditions of some of his friends. “You don't see many fireplaces built like that. People use factory bricks because they're cheaper, but they just don't have…” at this point he got up and waddled across the room to stroke his creation fondly “…this kind of feel and texture. Here, David, c'mon and touch it.”

So, there the two of us stood (much to Rosa's amusement) caressing the rough bricks and even the grouting and admiring the subtle variations in color, including the three darker bricks he'd selected as focal features of his fireplace.

“These is very special. There was special minerals in that piece of clay so when they were fired they came sorta volcanic and melted inside the clay like.”

And that's how they looked—centers of chocolate fudge–like swirl dotted with air bubbles, neatly framed by salmon pink clay edges.

“C'mon,” said Guiliano. “Let me show you som'thin' else.”

He was one of these eternally restless types, so I allowed myself to be led and forgot whatever plans I'd made for the rest of the day, which wasn't too difficult, really, as I hadn't any.

As we left the house, Rosa gave another of her hearty laughs and called out, “Watch 'im. You may not be back 'til dinner!” And, as things turned out, she was right. But what a day it became—one of those days you always hope for when you let things happen as they will and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

 

G
IULIANO WAS A FOUNT
of knowledge about Accettura and the surrounding countryside, and he provided a rich running commentary as we sinewed along narrow alleys, up and down endless
steps, moving from piazza to piazza in the intensely bundled and tightly bound little town.

ACCETTURA

“This is a very old place y'know. They've found things 'round 'bout that go back six thousand years, but our town today was started in the tenth century
A.D
. And we got many beautiful things: Our big church right on top of t'hill, the
Annunziata
—very old, lovely paintings. We got the Scarrone neighborhood with lotsa big carved doorways and palazzos more n'two hundred years old. We only small with people—maybe two n'half thousand or thereabouts—but we got so much. Lotsa shops, coffee bars, a real big street market every two weeks, a new cinema we just renovated, a communal place for butchering pigs and sheep and cows, olive mills, and lotsa
cantinas
and
tavernas
[a more up-market kind of
cantina
] for makin' and
keepin' wine. Lotsa those. I'll show you mine later. You'll like. Now 'ow 'bout some coffee?”

The man was irrepressible. Maybe not many foreigners visited his little town, but if they did, they couldn't find a more congenial or energetic guide. And when it came to Accettura's famed festivals, Giuliano's eyes gleamed as he described the SanGiuliano celebrations in January, the great Mardi Gras–flavored
Carnevale
in February, the San Rocco di Spagna celebrations in September (“that's a special saint for one of our famous palazzo families”), and the great Madonna di Ermoti celebrations—“The Flower Festival” and the
Festa del Maggio
(May), which he described as “the best thing you'll ever see in Basilicata.”

Over our espressos he half-whispered the details, as if sharing some deep and ancient secret. “Every
pagani
know this festival. People come from all over Italy, all over the world, to see this special thing. They say it's been done here for thousands of years as a big fertility celebration. Goes on for days. Thousands of people watching as our lads and those big white oxen bring down a huge oak tree from out of the Montepiano forest. Another bunch carries a holly tree from the Gallipoli forest, with lots of singing and dancing and food. And then—and this is the real
pagani
bit—they marry the two trees by grafting them together and lifting them a hundred feet, m'be more, into the air. And then it all gets real crazy. People shooting guns to knock prizes out of the trees—some others climb right up to the top—and there are processions and choirs and women carrying great
cende
candles on their heads. Supposed to be good for marriage, they say. It's real beautiful. Like I said, the best thing you'll ever see in the whole of the Mezzogiorno!”

Obviously my choice of Accettura had been most fortuitous. Now all I had to do was find a place to stay.

“Oh, thas no problem,” Giuliano said, grinning. “You stay at my hotel.”

“You own a hotel?”

“Well,” he said, chuckling. “It's got my name on it, Hotel SanGiuliano. C'mon, I'll show you. It's a nice place, not so big but
nice rooms, good food, and good people who owns it. I'll see if Massimo's around. He and his dad run it. See, there it is. Right on our big piazza.”

And a more enticing place I couldn't have wished for. Set back a little from the cafés and bars around the piazza, the SanGiuliano rose four storeys from the cobbled street, its cream-and-lemon stucco walls gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

“Lovely,” I said, and then spotted a large terrace right on the top of the hotel.

“Is that one of the rooms up there, right at the top?” I asked Giuliano.