Seasons in Basilicata (26 page)

“Okay. See you at eight.”

This time, I thought, I really have got to make amends to Giuseppina, otherwise our landlady-tenant relationship is likely to become a little bruised.

Fortunately, I had a small, but expensive, box of Perugia chocolates in the fridge. I'd bought it on a whim as a gift in reserve. The box was in the shape of a heart, with roses on it and a pretty pink ribbon and bow. Perfect, I thought. Anne agreed. So, I carried the chocolates and phone downstairs, knocked on Giuseppina's door, and was shown into her small, cozy living room. This time she was smiling. She had just risen from her armchair by the fireplace. A half-knitted something-or-other in funereal gray and black lay on a side table.

“Ah, you're knitting,” I said.

“Yes, for my son. For Gianfranco.” She grinned sheepishly but was obviously pleased I'd noticed her handiwork. “He good man.”

“Yes, yes, he is,” I agreed. Gianfranco had helped fix a number of small unworkables in our apartment, and I was hopeful that someday he might even get around to repairing our TV, too. Not that we expected to gain much by watching the five all-Italian channels, but the ludicrous game shows, with their flouncings of (for no reason we could understand) near-naked beauties might be good for a chuckle over dinner with Anne.

Giuseppina was a perfect hostess. There was no sign of any frustration over Sebastiano's incessant telephone calls. Instead she had me sit in her chair by the fire, served me a glass of that dark but
enticingly aromatic Amaro Lucano liqueur, and pulled out her bulging file of family photographs (we'd looked at it twice before, but she'd obviously forgotten). She reminisced about the achievements of her now-grown offspring and their voluminous families, and ended up almost weeping as she pointed to her late husband's photograph on the fireplace mantel. She whispered, half to herself, “So young, so young to leave us…only sixty-three,” as she had done twice before on prior visits. But I found her devotion and her constant wearing of black somehow very touching. Hers seemed to be not one of those decades-long ritualistic mournings but something still real and obviously traumatic. I could see the hurt: a sort of confused sadness tinged with a sense of injustice. “So very young,” she said again.

Fortunately the chocolates seemed to cheer her up, even though we had to go through the “Oh no, no, no, no,” “Oh yes, yes, yes, yes” routine before she finally opened the beguilingly decorated box and offered me one. And then she kept insisting that if there was anything I needed, I only had to ask, and that she was so sorry about the TV set (it had been carried from our apartment for repairs and now sat in a corner of her living room, like something in disgrace, its black screen turned toward the wall), and did I need any washing or sewing done?”

When Sebastiano finally arrived we were still making conversation, or at least communicating quite happily in bitty “Italianish” helped along as usual with lots of gestures, smiles, and shrugs…and glasses of that pungent liqueur.

Sebastiano smiled benevolently upon this scene of pleasant domesticity, and then, bless him, apologized most arduously for making so many calls to me. And Giuseppina said, “Oh no, no,” anything she could do to help….

So, that was a nice little resolution of things, and I knew that at least Sebastiano's next few calls would be dealt with pleasantly, with no more frowns on Giuseppina's part.

The rest of the evening went splendidly, too. The other Giuseppina and her husband, Bruno—she a plump, bubbling,
laughter-filled lady, and he a very loquacious farmer with a stern weather-worn face that kept cracking open into warm, ironic smiles—were both generous and amusing hosts. And although poor Sebastiano had to act as interpreter once again, he accepted his now-familiar role graciously as we blazed our way through a gargantuan dinner in a cozy cryptlike kitchen and dining room in the lower part of Donna Caterina's palazzo.

A
LIANO ALLEY

Once again I hesitate to describe all the gustatory delights of that evening, but I'm sure there are many who share my enthusiasm for exotic—especially home-produced exotic—fare. And presumably
there are also others who share my maxim: “Eat to enjoy and not to undertake a constant fiber-cholesterol-carbo-calorie–counting guilt-trip.” So here we go again: We began with a platter of sprawling antipasto—wafer-thin slices of home-cured
coppa
ham rolled around basil leaves and shavings of pecorino cheese; six different kinds of green and black olives; and wedges of a warm, pungently aromatic cheese-and-mushroom
frittata.
This was followed by brimming bowls of
farfalle
(“little butterfly” pasta) in a rich mushroom, tomato, and ham-stock sauce. Then came a
secondo
course of grilled pork chops doused in a garlic, parsley, and pepper sauce, with
al dente
slices of grilled zucchine, followed by a savory salad of four different “field greens.”

There was a brief lull, and then in rolled the desserts—a huge pumpkin-shaped cake stuffed with ricotta and chocolate (appropriately called a “pumpkin”) and squares of a deceptively simple-looking sponge cake so richly redolent of fresh lemons and lemon zest that you could swear you were actually eating whole, sweetened lemons.

Fresh fruit followed, as it invariably does in Italy—a help-yourself bowl of unpeeled oranges still with their leaves on, kiwi fruit (a very popular fruit there), bananas, and strange, elongated pears resembling—no kidding—male genitalia! The immortal triad. These both Giuseppina and Rocchina seemed to take great delight in peeling and then slicing deftly into munchable chunks.

And then of course came the inevitable chocolates, grappa,
limonce,
brandy, and final glasses of Bruno's homemade red wine. Like most of the wines we'd tasted in other homes, it possessed that strong, fruity thickness of flavor and texture that seemed to be a hallmark of Basilicatan country wines. We'd actually brought a gift of wine, a rather expensive Aglianico del Vulture, which Giuseppina accepted with a kind of condescending half smile, saying, “Oh, thank you both, but we'll be drinking our own wine, if that's all right with you”—a not unusual occurrence in southern Italian homes. A tour around the palazzo was suggested, to walk off this three-hour marathon meal. We readily accepted, wondering where the grand
rooms might be hidden. And they were indeed hidden. The whole structure was a maze of narrow, low-ceilinged staircases that emerged suddenly onto broad landings and hotel-like corridors of bedrooms and sitting rooms and a splendid dining room obviously used only for special family gatherings.

I was trying to recollect Levi's description of this house in his book, and back at the apartment I found it. First came his revealing portrait of Donna Caterina Magalone Cuscianna herself (Levi didn't have much time for her “petty tyrant” brother and mayor, Don Luigi, who gets short shrift): “Donna Caterina was an active and imaginative woman, and she, in reality ran the village. She was more intelligent and stronger-willed than her brother and she knew that she could do with him what she wanted as long as she left him an appearance of authority.” Unfortunately, Levi was a little sparse in his description of their palazzo: “She welcomed me very cordially at the door and led me into the drawing room, simply furnished with gee-gaws strewn around; cushions with a clown design and stuffed dolls.” Bruno and Giuseppina's own furnishings could hardly be described as “simple.” They obviously liked their comforts—stereos, TVs, big stuffed chairs and elegant cabinets of fine dinnerware and crystal glasses. It was obviously a house they enjoyed living in.

Back in their small and cozy kitchen–dining room, conversation inevitably turned to Levi, whom Giuseppina and Bruno had met there in 1974, a year before he died. “He sat in that same chair that you're sitting in,” Bruno told me proudly. But apparently he was rather ill at the time so the meal had been a little more modest than ours.

“What was he really like?” Anne asked. This was a constant question of ours.

Giuseppina and Bruno were both full of admiration for the man, and their effusive descriptions included: “very big and gracious”; “very intelligent and a good conversationalist”; “a lovely smile”; “a very kind man”; “he obviously cared very much for the people here.”

But oddly, when we got around to discussing the impact of his
books and his role as a senator in the national government, the mood seemed to darken a little. Although Giuseppina and Bruno took great pains to emphasize, “What can one man do, after all, in a country like ours?” it was obvious they had few illusions about the changes, or lack of them, that had resulted from Levi's writings and actions.

“Nothing much has changed,” both agreed. “Look at Aliano. Do you think much looks different?” they asked us.

Anne gave what I hoped was a balanced response. “Well, the old parts certainly don't show much sign of change, but there's a lot of new public housing higher up the hill. That certainly wasn't here in the thirties. And from the homes we've been invited into, we see plenty of new bathrooms and kitchens and TVs and new furniture, and definitely no pigs or chickens living inside anymore!”

Anne obviously hoped that this last remark would generate a smile from Giuseppina and Bruno, but both were determined to minimize the significance of such details. “Well, of course the whole country has improved in ways like that, but…” and then it came, as we suspected it would…“this is still the South, and the North is the North, and whatever things may have got better here, have got much, much better up there. So, we're still the same as we were in that way. No real changes. No real industry that lasts. Young people have to go north to find work, the whole place is mainly old people now.”

Okay, I thought. I've heard all this before and I can see what they're getting at, so let's shift the emphasis a little to Levi's “dark side” perceptions.

Not much better there either. They both insisted vehemently (maybe a little too vehemently, I wondered) that it was “all in his imagination.” There are no witches, no werewolves, no shape-shifters or dual-natured people in Aliano—none of those things, they both insisted. And, as far as they could tell, they said, there never had been. These things were all part of the myth of the South. Something for the northerners to giggle about. “We were, are, normal people here. Same as anybody else. Just not so rich,” said Giuseppina sternly, her face losing its rotund jollity for a moment.

“Except for Giulio,” Bruno said with a sly smile.

“Aha! He's not normal. Not right in the head,” Giuseppina snapped.

“What happened to Giulio?” I asked.

Bruno pulled a dog-eared copy of Levi's book from a shelf by the fire. Interesting, I thought. Despite their dismissal of many of Levi's ideas, they keep his book so close at hand.

“You remember that thing about the devil,” Bruno said, searching for the passage. “Ah, here it is. This is what Levi wrote: ‘One night, an old man coming back from Gaglianello, felt a strange weariness all over him that forced him to sit down on the steps of a little chapel. He found it impossible to stand up and walk again. Something did not allow him to. The night was dark but from the ravine a beastly voice called him by name. It was the devil, there, among the dead, who barred the way.'”

“I remember that passage,” I said. “But what's that got to do with Giulio?”

Bruno laughed. “Well, he claimed that exactly the same thing happened to him up by the cemetery. Only a few months ago he came running down the hill to the piazza shouting that the devil was after him!”

“Stupid, drunk old fool!” Giuseppina said.

“I'm not so sure,” Bruno said mysteriously. “I could tell you…”

“Bruno! Enough,” Giuseppina said in a voice that did not encourage a response.

“…lots of tales too about our little
monachicchi
—our mischievious hobgoblins—who love to mess things about a lot and wear big red hoods and…”

“Bruno!”

I wanted to see Giuseppina smile again, so I decided we'd asked enough questions. I was tempted to mention that we'd recently heard that there was indeed a witch in the village. Not a fantasy witch but someone with “extraordinary powers” whom the older villagers at least seemed to regard with great respect…and fear. But I suspected that this might just open another Pandora's box.
Sebastiano's gentle shake of his head confirmed that we'd probably pushed the subject far enough for now. We respected his puckish insight and wisdom and nodded in agreement.

We focused again on the liqueur and the grappa and on lighter tales of village life and gossipy goings-on, and the evening ended with us all chuckling over the inane antics of local politicians and the endless schemes and dreams of our local, ever-ambitious, ever-visionary priest, Don Pierino. And finally a toast to increased prosperity and happiness for all of us.