Seasons in Basilicata (42 page)

A Sad Postscript During the Winter Season

Maybe rather than blessing us, Don Pierino possibly should have blessed the olive trees in the
calanchi.
They were having a tough time of it that year. Even in October the village farmers were predicting a
poor harvest and blaming it primarily on the weather, most of all on the unusually wet summer, which was a no-no when it came to nurturing the budding fruits.

And by December and January—normally the height of the harvest, with everybody out there handpicking the hard, green olives (not many tree-shakers in our area)—their predictions had proved to be all too true.

“Hardly worth going to the fields,” one old man told me.

“So, what will you do for olive oil next year?”

“Use less and buy more,” he replied stoically. After all this was not an altogether unusual occurrence. The old saying “One good year and two lazy ones” had proved to be a consistently true mantra down through the centuries. And the peasants accepted the paucity of their harvest with the same dogged spirit of fatalism that they applied to most of life's vicissitudes. A curse, then a shrug, then onto the next job, and the next task to be done in a lifetime of almost ritualistic rhythms.

I felt particularly sorry for Don Pierino. The harvest was so poor he'd decided it was hardly worth starting up the brand-new mill. The old one was still functioning, so it was assumed that the pressings of the meager baskets and sacks of olives brought in by disgruntled farmers would be handled there.

“I'm so sorry about your new mill,” I said to him when we met one day during what should have been the beginning of the harvest. “But they say it's not unusual, a bad crop like this. Y'know, ‘one good year and two lazy ones.'”

“One good and
one
lazy one,” he corrected me with a frown.

“Oh, sorry. I thought…”

“Well, I'm more optimistic than other people,” he added, with that sly grin of his. “I speak directly to the boss.” He looked heavenward and smiled.

Another Nonevent (almost)

Just as nature often played havoc with key seasonal events like the grape and olive harvests, so it did with more modest activities, like little saintly festivals.

 

It was happening again. Just like that Accettura cowboy rodeo. Another important local event, this time in Aliano, has been canceled at the last minute with no prior word of explanation or notification of any kind, if the number of confused faces standing along Via Roma was anything to go by. There were signs all over on glowing pink placards proclaiming Sunday, October 6th, as the day of the village's popular Processione della Madonna del Rosario, complete with two masses at noon and four o'clock, the procession itself at four forty-five, and a
complesso
(concert) starting around nine in the evening.

The streets had been given an extra-thorough cleaning by the town's two overworked sweepers, and the whole of yesterday, Saturday, had been raucous with the ear-splitting din of stage-assembly in the main piazza. Directly below our terrace, of course, on one of those unusually cool, sunny fall days when we'd
hoped to read and write peacefully outside, gazing at our beloved unhazed vistas of Pollino and her prominent Calabrian sisters to the south.

I forgave the workmen immediately. Assembling the forty-by-fifty-foot stage on rickety steel trellises on the sloping cobblestoned surface of the piazza could not have been an easy task, especially with the daily continuum of donkeys, tractors, Ape,
furgoncini, zanzare-motorini
(mopeds), buses, cars, and even the grape seller's van. He too had decided to park directly below my terrace and conduct his rowdy bargaining and disputes with scores of locals anxious to buy grapes and make their own wine for the year.

The grape van arrived about four o'clock, with more than a hundred and fifty twenty-five-kilo
cassette
of fresh-plucked red grapes gleaming in the sun. Then he departed with an empty truck at eight o'clock (leaving, much to the annoyance of our mayor, Tony, an enormous black stain of grape skins and juice on the piazza), long after the stage constructors had completed their task and adjourned to Bar Capriccio to celebrate a job well done…at least until a section of the stage railing collapsed and they had to reinstall it in the meager glow of streetlamps, with hands far less steady than they had been that afternoon.

Everything was set for the
festa
on Sunday. Today.

And here we are, Anne resplendent in an orange-silk trouser suit. And I'm dressed up a little bit more than usual, in neatly pressed slacks, polished shoes, and a brand-new, dark brown, made-in-Italy corduroy jacket, which I'd bought for an amazingly low price at the Carrefour hypermarket in Matera last week, and had not yet worn in public. All for what we hope will be an event worth capturing on film and in words of praise for the durability of local Catholic traditions, despite the village's noted
pagani
reputation.

And it's around four-thirty
P.M
. now and, I guess, the second mass is almost over, and scores of expectant faces will soon be pouring out and joining the spectators already gathered along Via Roma. So we stroll toward the church to sneak a peek at the congrega
tion…and the place is empty. Gloomy and echoey. No lights except those odd explosions of electric “candles,” with their flickering, flamelike lightbulbs. And we're thinking, this is all very strange and maybe we'll walk up to Don Pierino's place and ask him what's going on and…

And here he is, ambling happily down the hill to the piazza in his flowing black priestly robes, and I'm walking up to him with arms outstretched and palms raised in an “what's up?” gesture. (I'm learning the Italian body-language vocabulary pretty fast now.) and he's smiling and reaching out to shake my hand. We shake hands, and I ask, “
Dove è il processione?
” He smiles his little leprechaun smile and says, “Ah, that's next Sunday now.” And I ask why, and he says, “Because of the weather.”

Which stumps us both for a second. We look up at the sky in case we'd missed something (a huge hailstorm or maybe a sudden tornado). But no, it's still blue and bright as it has been since the first thing this morning, and so I do another one of those fancy body-language gestures, which is intended to mean: “What are you talking about? The weather's beautiful, and it's a perfect day for the
festa,
especially as we canceled a Sunday lunch with Rosa and Giuliano just to be here and she's peeved at us because of the short notice we gave her and because she'd cooked a special dish—either rabbit or boar or horse, I forget which—and we're here instead, ready with camera and tape recorder to capture some authentic local color…so where is it?!” (At least that's the gist of what I try to indicate in an admittedly rather over-the-top series of gestures, but it's possible some of it gets garbled in my exasperation, modulated, of course, by an attempt not to be too rude to the good don. It also being Sunday. And him being the local priest, now being watched by the whole street.)

“The forecast said storm,” he explains patiently, still smiling benignly at us both. “So, we've changed it to next Sunday. Please try to come.” And with that and another firm “I know you will” handshake, he's off down the street, presumably to let everyone else know that they could all go home and relax and try again next week.

 

S
O, NOW IT'S
the following week, Sunday, and the weather's perfect. The stage is still standing as it has been for the last seven days, creating a dangerous traffic hazard (one bowled-over donkey and two minor fender benders), and everyone is convinced that finally the procession of the Madonna of the Rosary will really take place.

And it does, following Don Pierino's schedule precisely. Two afternoon masses and then at four-thirty the doors of the church are flung open and out comes the life-size statue of the Madonna, bedecked in blue and cream-colored robes and wearing an elegant crown. She is being carried a little precariously by six village stalwarts. Don Pierino is out front in an ornate cassock with green and gold trim and carrying a battery-powered microphone. He starts to walk and chant rather mournful litanies with the straggling crowd of a hundred or so villagers following behind him in a rather raggedy
processione
made up almost entirely of women. The women are supposed to echo equally mournful responses, but either they don't know the words or the weather's just too beautiful for somber chants and the like, so they remain silent, with the exception of six “black widows,” right behind the rocking Madonna, linked arm in arm and singing out the responses with dirge-delight. It's all a little disharmonic. The good don has a limited vocal range—a wavering voice much amplified by the microphone—and a remarkable ability to switch key in mid-chant, which leaves the widows with a considerable range of notes to choose from. So, in true democratic fashion, they each choose a different one. Some falter rapidly due to a lack of lung capacity, while others keep going far too long in felinelike crescendos.

But no one seems to mind. At least they've got their procession at last. It wobbles down Via Roma, past the bars where, to give them credit, the octos stand and tip their hats as the Madonna (whom many still regard in their
pagani
hearts as a thinly disguised manifestation of Demeter, the ancient goddess of the earth) moves by,
and then promptly sit down again to resume their raucous card games.

The aim of the procession seems to be to meander slowly through the nooks and crannies of the village, bringing the festivities and blessings of the church to most parts except the old section far below (too steep downhill) and the new section (too steep uphill). Anne and I follow them, behind a rather excellent local brass band with four enormous euphonia, three French horns, some superbly in-tune trumpeters, and a dozen or so younger members with flutes and clarinets. They give the whole affair some rousing inspiration, and the crowd increases. By the time we all return to Piazza Roma, we're around two hundred strong, and Don Pierino gives the band permission to “let it rip” as the elegant Madonna is returned to her prominent position near the altar inside the church.

The band needs no encouragement. Enough of those sonorous, plodding hymns! And in a bizarre mix of the sacred with the profane, they're off, with whirlwind renditions of popular tunes, well-known Basilicatan folk songs, some catchy Germanic lederhosen-band oompah-pah, oompah-pah clapping songs, and even a few racy renditions of bar tunes, with some of the band members singing the ribald chorus lines. The crowd loves these, and joins in on the naughty bits. At least, we think they're naughty by the expression on the singers' faces and their lusty emphasis on certain key lines.

At seven o'clock the band is still blasting out its extensive repertoire. Then, as the crowd continues to grow, two vans suddenly roll up packed with boxes of electronic equipment, scaffolding, klieg lights, man-size speakers, guitars and other instruments, a huge drum kit, mikes, and miles of thick electric cable. Anne and I are back on our terrace now, watching the frantic scene below in amazement as four young men, proficient as robots, erect their complicated stage set and test out their forty huge lights. Then, as the street band rounds off its own splendid show with a very popular and spirited tune from
Titanic,
and is rewarded with thunderous, stomping applause, the stage hands set about doing their sound checks and
drum tests and voice balances, and all those other complicated pre-event preparations. These seem to take forever due to the fussy perfectionism of a young man with a long ponytail and dark glasses, who sits at an enormous control box with more switches and levers and slide knobs than a Cape Canaveral launchpad and howls out instructions in a series of catlike wails.

There's a brief interlude, when an odd tape compilation of Sade, the Rolling Stones, U-2, and some anonymous, mind-numbing, techno-pop, hip-hop syncopations blasts out into the piazza. A clarion call for the concert. And it works. An even larger crowd gathers and then, at nine o'clock on the dot, we're off.

A group of four gorgeous, long-haired ladies leap onto the stage—a Spice Girl–type quartet but without the gaudy costumes—and launches into a series of upbeat Latin-style songs backed by trombone, sax, trumpet, a manic drummer, a guitarist, and a superb keyboard artist. There seems to be no end to the range of sound effects that the keyboardist can generate from his dual keyboards, which is a relief because, from what I can tell, the guitar player is making a real mess of his solos and rhythm riffs.

The band keeps up a rip-roaring, samba-tango–bossa nova pace going for a long set, with the girls—in their identical elegant dark suits with definitely daring décolleté and seventies-style bell-bottom trousers (obviously fashionable once again to judge by the outfits of Aliano's teenagers) dancing, arm-waving, and singing in harmonious synchronization. The crowd loves them. The youth of the village are hip-hopping up a storm. The males are on one side of the piazza, prancing around with shifty-eyed, gum-chewing machismo, and the girls are on the opposite side, finger-fluttery and bathed in the glow of ripening femininity, lost in their own whirlings and complicated MTV-inspired sequences of arm gesticulations.

We decide it's time to go down and join the festivities, but as we do, the band comes to the end of its act, and then it all starts to fall apart. I have no idea who decided on the sequence of the show's attractions that night, but as soon as the girls leave, with their sexy
little waves and wiggles, up leaps a comedian dressed like a clown, except for the fact that he's wearing the traditional blue and red smock of an elementary-school boy and one of those enormous multicolored backpacks that are currently all the rage with European kids. But he's lost the crowd before he even begins his endless patter. I can see them pulling back down the street, some vanishing into the bars, others huddling in the shadows hoping the four girls will return soon.

The comedian's only real audience is a bunch of very young children—who obviously love his depiction of them and who react to his every clownish antic with screams of delight—and a few bemused parents, who stand around enjoying their children's laughter. I feel sorry for the comedian. He knows that the crowd wants the lanky, long-haired ladies back, with their erotic stage presence and fast-beat, pop-song renditions.

But rather than bring them back, quickly, the show's director sends up a middle-aged, over-the-top, Mario Lanza–style crooner, presumably a real torch-song charmer in a nightclub setting, but definitely a nonentity tonight for Aliano audiences. He dies, too, just like the clown, and his pleading “
Grazie, mille grazie
” echoes around the half-empty piazza and generates only a scintilla of sympathetic applause.

A young girl with a beautiful solo voice follows, but she is backed by a recorded, rather than a real, band, so she stands alone and a little forlorn as the chill night breezes begin to blow. Even more people drift away. Put the four girls back on, you twit, I want to shout at the show's director, but I don't. Instead Anne and I wander together down to the Bar Capriccio for a cappuccino. We realize that the whole thing is dying, becoming yet another nonevent, so we decide to call it a night.

 

I
N THE MORNING
, when I peer over my terrace railing, it's all gone: the elaborate scaffolding, the lights, the speakers, the mikes, even the stage itself. Piazza Roma is back to its normal, pleasant vacuity, edged by coteries of those chatting octos, of
course—sometimes I wonder if they ever actually go to bed—and the cheerful, bleary-faced street sweepers out with their brooms, trying to remove the last bits of evidence that anything of any import happened the previous night.

Which, I guess, it didn't really…except for those samba-prancing ladies with their long, dark hair swirling and bell-bottoms twirling. They were good, and maybe they'd brought a little something real and classy of the outside world into this remote community. And maybe the community appreciated all the effort that had gone into the show…maybe…