Seasons in Basilicata (4 page)

“And where are you planning to visit?” the young girl behind the counter asked the woman pleasantly, her dimpled apple cheeks glowing. “The South, maybe?”

The lady, who was undoubtedly northern Italian born and bred—tall, svelte, and queenlike in attitude and disposition, making a true
bella figura
—paused in mid-pen-flourish and stared at the girl in utter surprise.

When she had regained her composure, she said in a stiletto-sharp voice with a strident, clipped Milanese accent. “The South!?
O Dio,
no! No one travels to the South surely!
Solo i fessi stanno laggiù!
[‘Only fools stay down there.']—Rome is quite far enough.”

The girl behind the counter smiled brightly, probably assuming that this was just one of those little comedies of colliding cultures and Mezzogiorno jibes that northerners liked to make every once in a while to remind anyone who had the patience to listen that, of course, the North
was
Italy and the South was, well, the South. Another country. An undesirable, uncultivated appendage to the “true” Italy, full of muddled remnants of Saracens, Albanians, and suchlike “uncivilized peoples.” The land of the
terroni
(“the little peasants”). More African and Arabic than European. And certainly not a place to be driven through in a black Mercedes turbo, thank you very much. And, no, she was not joking. She spoke in the superior manner of the supremely confident, complacently full of old-money, high-culture
snobismo.
The counter girl understood this quite clearly, I think, and with a rapidly rising blush that suggested a possible southern heritage, she looked away and pretended to be searching for more interminable papers for the lady from the North to sign.

 

T
HIS ENDURING DICHOTOMY
between North and South is not altogether unfamiliar in other countries—particularly Great Britain and the U.S.A.—but in Italy it seems far more potent. Whether it is due to the fact that, until 1861, Italy was essentially a batch of loosely related nation-states, or to the striking economic
disparities between the two halves of the nation—the rich, industrialized, fertile, sophisticated, architecturely resplendent North, and the far more agrarian and underdeveloped South, with its rugged and ragged history of invasion and conquests—who can tell? Certainly the North African Arab invasions of portions of Europe from the seventh to the tenth centuries, most notably in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily, reinforced the prejudices of northerners that these regions had become tainted, “foreign,” and strange. Such a sentiment is reinforced today by clear radio reception in the South of wailing, quarter-tone music, obviously Arabic, from nearby countries such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, the last only ninety miles or so south across the Mediterranean from Sicily.

The fact is the dichotomy truly exists, and discussions about “solving the dilemma of the South” invariably and quickly lead to entrenched positions and virulent verbal skirmishes. One charmingly outspoken woman later told me in all seriousness that the South should declare itself a separate nation and “let the Mafia run it. They're much better at running things down here than any elected government!”

Carlo Levi's position on the subject is interesting, and indeed his antifascist ideas, which obviously ran counter to those of Mussolini and his cohorts, got him quickly arrested and placed in
confino
in Basilicata. Levi saw a very different future for the region, one far more radical than today's ambiguous and ambitionless policies and plans, most of which fade and fail through a potent combination of bureaucratic lethargy and incompetence, fiscal corruption, impractical visions, ineffective implementation, chaotic political continuity (fifty-nine Italian prime ministers since the end of World War II!), and more corruption—right up to the present day. Even Italy's media-mogul, billionaire prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been implicated. In power during our stay in Basilicata, he was desperately fighting a cartload of corruption indictments that threatened to decimate his political career.

Levi had no qualms about declaring that “many” have claimed to have mediated upon the “problem of the South” and to have formu
lated plans for its solution. “But just as their schemes and the very language in which they were couched would have been incomprehensible to the peasants (still a majority of the population in the south), so were the life and needs of the peasants a closed book to them, and one which they did not even bother to open.” He concluded that: “The state cannot solve the problem of the south because the problem is none other than the state itself…Plans laid by a central government still leave two hostile Italy's on either side of the abyss!” In the South he cited particularly the problems of “big landlord estates and their owners” and “middle class village tyrants…who cut the peasants off from any hope of freedom and a decent existence.” Levi's solution was dramatic in its visionary simplicity: “All of Italy…must be renewed from top to bottom. We must rebuild the foundations…with the concept of the individual. The name of this way out is autonomy…self-governing rural communities.” This, Levi stated vehemently “is what I learned from a year of life underground.”

Good heavens, I thought, as I signed the papers for my rental car and watched the northern lady stride off to claim her Mercedes, just what kind of place am I going to?

 

T
HE DRIVE SOUTH
became increasingly dramatic. As I left the great bowl of Rome behind, the mountains began to surge in on both sides of the freeway. To the east the snowcapped peaks of the Monti Simbruini, part of the Abruzzese Appennine chain, rose like cloaked wraiths above rugged foothills sprinkled with white hilltop towns. There they were, perched like clustered fairy-tale villages on the edge of impossible precipices, some so high above the Sacco River Valley that they seemed disconnected, inaccessible, and dreamily surreal. Rugged remnants of eleventh-century Norman castles, peering down from high-vantage-point aeries, added to the aura of romantic fantasy.

The mountains to the west rose abruptly, aggressively, from the valley floor and huddled, huge and ogre-like, striated with eroded, skeletal-white strata, their summits bare and wild. Freeway signs to
Naples, “Capital of the South,” beckoned, but I decided to save that intense and intrigue-laced city for a future visit and instead soared on southwards around cloud-cocooned Vesuvius and down into the mammoth ranges of the Alburni, Maddalena and Cilento Mountains. Here, I sensed, was the true topographic barrier between North and South, the place where the strangeness begins, a gateway to the great bastion of Basilicata itself.

At Lagonegro, perched high in a mountain cleft, I paused at one of those remarkable freeway service centers, gaudy with restaurants, motels, and mini-supermarkets crammed with elegant and tantalizing displays of regional delights—huge, golden wheels of bread; aged, mold-encrusted cheeses; wrinkled salamis; prosciutto; odd-shaped pastas; oils; olives; wine; and endless bizarre liqueurs. This was my first real encounter with Italian gastronomic overabundance, and my basket seemed to fill itself, abundantly. I obviously bought far too much but convinced myself that, if I got into the impromptu Italian picnic mode, nothing would be wasted. My enthusiasm was doused somewhat as I handed over a king's ransom in brand-new euro bills to the cashier, but her empathetic nods and her obviously impressed smile at my gourmand's selection and capacity made me feel I was already adopting the appropriate
dolce vita
attitude toward gustatory excess.

On the way out, manhandling two enormous shopping bags, I noticed a photograph on a promotional display showing the nearby and very appealing little coastal town of Sapri, sprinkled around an idyllic bay against a backdrop of soaring ranges. My impulsive explorer–self immediately resurfaced, informing me that this was obviously an ideal place for a brief sortie. “Time is all yours,” he reminded me, “for as long as you need or wish.” And that little encouraging mantra kept repeating itself as I hairpinned down two thousand feet of riotous mountainscape to the Caribbean blue Tyrrhenian Sea.

Viva's Views on Almost Everything

“You can call me Viva,” she said. “It's Louisa Vita, really, but I like Viva better, don't you?”

I do, particularly after half an hour with this dynamic young lady of light and life, who spoke excellent English and happened to be the breakfast hostess at a little hotel I'd discovered right on the beachfront in Sapri. This funky-spirited, smart-dowdy, rich-poor, want-to-be-better-but-can't-seem-to-make-it-happen seaside community just on the wrong side of the Basilicatan border had
turned out to be a perfect place to pause for a day or so before continuing on into the increasingly dramatic mountainscapes of the South.

M
ARATEA
P
ORTO (NEAR
S
APRI
)

Viva is one of those buoyant young women whose lives have suffered unseemly numbers of slings and arrows and yet who still seem to emerge more sprightly, and certainly wiser, than ever. She'd asked if I'd like coffee, and I nodded blearily. Then we began talking, and the only time during our long roller-coaster chat—and a most unmemorable “continental” breakfast at the hotel (“You'd like an omelet?” she said. “Well, so would I, so would everybody. But, in this place, no omelets. No cook!”)—that I ever saw her vivacity wane was when she mentioned her husband…her
ex-
husband.

“I made mistake,” she said. But it wasn't too clear if she was talking about her divorce or her decision to move to Sapri. “There's nothing to do here.
Nothing!
I don't know why I came. Escape maybe. To get far enough away, and hide. It's happening so much in Italy now. After seven years of marriage: divorce, with one child. Did you know we have lowest birthrate in Europe? In Italy! The land of romance, love, and passion! Isn't that crazy? But it's the way things are. And the family gives everything for that one child. Especially if the child is a boy, and even if he's thirty he's still a child and often lives at home with Mamma. Or if not, the family follows him around to look after him. But it's always work. Work, work, work. Men, women: everybody work all the time to buy things and make it good for family, and for that one child! Stupid! Here I work in this hotel from
h
eight (Viva had an endearing habit of adding
h
's in the oddest places) to ten in the morning, and I get a thousand
h
euros a month, but my rent is five hundred, my babysitter is three hundred, my car and food and things, five hundred, so I don't know what to do. Where are all the rich men, I ask! Maybe I could meet a nice doctor, but they are all married. They make lots of money and, just like all those lazy
statali
government workers, retire early and go and live in other fancy places. Never Sapri, of course. Never Sapri!”

“Viva,” I said, stopping her strident flow and trying once again to keep her on track. “You were telling me about the divorce.”

She paused in mid-breath. Her vibrant, vivacious face puckered for an instant. “Mistake.
Aghh!
” She shook her head. It was a sign to move on to other subjects.

“Anyway, you were also telling me earlier about the problems in the Mezzogiorno.”

“Ah, Mezzogiorno!” Life returns. Viva revived, in that press-button passionate way Italians have of dealing with their rousting, everything-out-in-the-open emotions. “Those politicians. Talk, talk, talk. Promise, promise, promise. You give me your vote and I'll bring you lots of jobs and factories and better roads and new houses. And what happens? Nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing! Have you seen the A3 road from Salerno to Reggio? The main highway from the North to the South. How many years have they been ‘improving' that stupid road? And look at it! It's rubbish! The most dangerous main road in the country! And all those villages on the tops of the mountains. All full of old people. All the young ones have gone to the cities. Just the very old ones left. And even if the young ones stay because the politicians say, ‘We will bring you jobs,
molto lavoro,
' what do you get? Stupid jobs for a few weeks, building a road or a public toilet that nobody needs or uses, or a wall around the town hall, and then, no job! So, no pension. No—how you say?—security. And then they say, ‘Let's bring tourists,' and all the mayors say, ‘My town first! My town first!' So they all try fancy ideas to bring tourists. And in Sapri, you know what the last idea was? You saw that huge, half-finished building as you come in from Maratea? Massive, isn't it? Well, it was supposed to be a cement factory about thirty years ago, and they said, ‘No, cement is wrong. We need tourists.' So they left the thing just standing there like it was a bombed building and they tried to get people from the North to come down and make it into a fancy resort and, oh dear, surprise, surprise! Nobody came.”