Seasons in Basilicata (24 page)

It's a pleasantly reassuring, and still surprising, realization.

 

I
LEAVE
the terrace, focal point of my daylong dawdling reveries, and go to greet Anne.

“Had a good day?” she asks, with her “Thank God I'm home after all those bends” smile of relief.

“Great!” I say, dreading her inevitable follow-on question.

“So, what have you been doing all this time?”

There's an uncomfortable pause, and I think, What the heck? She understands all my odd little quirks. Mostly.

“Well, to be honest, absolutely nothing. A little reading, but mainly just looking and thinking. And not much of the thinking bit either.”

“Ah, that's wonderful!” she says and obviously means it, exhibiting once again the serenity of her list-less life. “You really should do it more often.”

The Bagpipe Man

A day or two following my “dawdle-day” something happened that reminded me once again why this little “lost world” had become ever more enticing to both of us in all its nuances, strangenesses, and “dark side” undertones.

 

I
SHOULD START
by admitting that I have no idea at all if this story is true. Some of these bar tales, especially after one grappa too many and a bloodstream full of blast-your-socks-off, thimble-sized espresso shots, can start to verge away from what you might call the carefully annotated facts of a well-researched, journalistic-type story. But I was told by my interpreter-of-the-day, Enrico, that the story certainly had the smack of authenticity. Enrico was a lively lad just back from Naples University to visit his family for a long festival of something-or-other (how the Alianese seemed to love those festivals that no one else in the Catholic world had ever seemed to have heard of), and he actually said, in reference to the storyteller, “This guy's cool,” which I guess means anything you want it to mean.

I think though that he was a little skeptical at first of Giorgio Continanza's story, even though he had been brought up on Aliano's thick and ancient brew of
incanti
(strange enchantments), supersti
tions, local witches, healers, and fears of the dark, demon-laced supernatural. According to Carlo Levi, such emotions were entrenched and irrevocably imprinted on the psyches of local peasants and even in the minds of village dons, politicos (
podestà
), priests, and those notorious “sequestrators of property in lieu of tax payments”—petty officials who plagued the poorer populace in the thirties and, according to some disgruntled locals, still do today. And on every possible occasion and in every way imaginable, these dark tales perpetuated all the peasants' deepest fears and dreads.

But Enrico was taking his role seriously, despite whatever skepticism he may have harbored initially, and tried to give me an accurate translation of Giorgio's strange little story.

“This is not something from years ago,” Giorgio said by way of introduction as we all sat or stood at the bar by the
fossa.
“This happened only a few months ago. In Oliveto Lucano, over by Parco Galipoli. And I was there.”

On a recent backroad “randoming” drive I had come across this extremely well-hidden little hill village, tucked into the forest-shrouded slopes of the high mountainous Gallipoli wilderness. I stopped to ask directions, which were given erroneously, and I think intentionally erroneously, by some of the strangest-looking inhabitants of the region it had ever been my displeasure to meet. If anything weird or witchy were to happen, Oliveto Lucano would be a most appropriate setting, a true place of the ancient
Lucano dei pagani
—the spirit of pagan Lucano.

“It was November,” Giorgio continued. “Everything was very nice. Sunshine, but not too hot. I was visiting a cousin of mine. On my father's side. And we were sitting in the piazza at Oliveto enjoying a bottle of his wine. Not a very good wine, but it had been a bad year. For all of us.”

The audience, gathered around us at the bar, nodded knowingly. The previous year it had been a bad year for grapes in our part of Basilicata, too, and the problem with bad years was that, because you generally drank only your own wine, you'd be stuck with five or six hundred liters of acidic, vinegary rubbish for a whole twelve months
until the next crop. Or until you'd adjusted its flavor by
lavoro,
otherwise known as “favorable mixing.” No one ever admits to such activities, of course, although the local
vinai
(vintners) claim that all commercial wines are invariably well
lavorato,
and they rarely, if ever, drink anything they didn't create and age themselves. But from what I've learned, it's a common, if unspoken, local practice to balance out what might be called the unfortunate and fickle follies of fate and climate.

“So we were sitting and talking,” Giorgio continued. “His son was getting married in a few months, and he was not very happy with the bride.” Enrico tried to translate the particular words used in reference to the bride, but couldn't. I think “roving eye” was the expression he was looking for. “So, we were trying to think how things could be changed when we heard a very strange noise. It was something I remember as a boy, but I haven't heard it since then. It was—can any of you guess?” he asked his audience as he warmed to his own tale. “It was one of our Lucanian bagpipes, a very old
zampogna.
Not the small Calabrian type. This was the big one with that deep sound. Like an engine. A growling sound. And then the higher pipes on top of that. You remember?” A few older men nodded their heads slowly. Maybe they remembered. Such pipes are now museum pieces and rarely, if ever, seen or used in Basilicata. Or anywhere else for that matter.

“Anyway, the sound was coming up the hill into the piazza. A very unusual sound. And then suddenly this man, a total stranger, appears, walking very slowly, like he was at a funeral, and playing these pipes. Huge pipes. Almost as big as him. They were very dark. Some kind of animal skin with hair on it. Possibly the skin of the
cinghiale
[boar]. And he was dark, too. Dressed in black with a black cap and a long black jacket, almost like a coat.”

“Why was he in the village?” someone in the audience asked.

“No one knows. There was no festival. The circus had been months ago. So everyone in the piazza—there must have been a dozen or so of us—just sat and wondered what was happening. Then…” Giorgio paused for a hefty swig of grappa (a feat I have yet
to accomplish with any semblance of flair or panache; I'm still an insipid sipper) and continued. “Then he came to the center of the piazza and just kept playing. Not a nice tune. Sort of like a funeral march. And we sat, and he played on and on, and people were coming out to see what that strange sound was. Women came and children too. And he kept on playing. Very sad music, not nice at all. And then he stopped and took off his cap and went around the piazza wanting money. Can you believe it! Money! For that racket!”

The bar audience had now grown. Even the young girl at the espresso machine had come from around the counter to join us. Giorgio's tale was obviously unusual, and he was certainly worth listening to if you had nothing particularly interesting to do except sip coffee and grappa and watch the clouds massing ominously over Pollino and say things like, “I see there are clouds again over Pollino…” I was entranced by our storyteller's fingers. They were long and delicate, like those of a concert pianist, and seemed to have an unusual knack of capturing the mood and pace of his tale. As his voice rose, so would his fingers; as it descended to a growly whisper they would turn downward and flutter; in moments of emphasis they would suddenly point outward at the audience like those of an orchestra conductor commanding a dramatic drumroll. Quite fascinating. Almost hypnotic.

“So, nobody gave him anything. A few even got up to leave. But the man just stood there. All in black. His face dark, too. Like one of our local Albanians” (a few knowing nods in the audience at this point). “Then he put his cap on again and went back to the middle of the piazza, pumped up his bagpipe, and this time he played something very different. Very nice, in fact. Much lighter. And people started smiling. So, he kept playing for quite a while and then stopped again, took off his cap, and went around the piazza for a second time. But still no one gave him anything. You know the people in Oliveto Lucano. Real
maliziosi
(mean). They don't like to part with money, for anything!”

Heads nodded again, and Giorgio's audience pressed in closer. “Now, he obviously didn't like this, and we thought he would go
away, but he didn't. He went back to the middle of the piazza, put his cap back on, pumped up his pipes again, and this time started playing dancing tunes, silly tunes like the old
pastorale
for children. And then something very strange. We were just sitting there, and children started coming out of the houses and the little streets and they all began dancing. Childish stuff. Like a game. Girls and boys. And the man started dancing, too, even though the bagpipes were so big. And he began dancing around the piazza, and people started clapping to the tune, and more children came, and they all were dancing around him. And for a while it was very nice, and I think if he'd taken off his cap again, even the Oliveto Lucanans would have given him some money this time!”

“But then…” Giorgio's voice deepened, and people clustered in closer. “But then it all became very strange. Some clouds came over the mountain—very dark clouds, like for a storm—and they blocked out the sun. And a wind started. A cold winter wind. Coming out of the pines in the forest. And everything got very dark. But the children didn't seem to notice. They just kept coming into the piazza and dancing and following the man around and around until…” Another grappa swig for Giorgio, which emptied his glass. The girl rushed forward and took it into the bar for a refill. The audience was utterly quiet now: not even a dog barking in the street (a most unusual occurrence) and none of those irritating crackling little tractorettes either. Just silence. Giorgio knew he had captured his listeners, and he began to relish his role as a village storyteller, a true local
narratore delle fiabe.

“Until…he began to lead the children out of the piazza. Some of the old men laughed and laughed even more as the man turned around and made a ‘be quiet' sign to them, as if he wanted them to be part of a game. So everyone just sat there, giggling, as the man danced out of the piazza with the children, maybe twenty or more of them dancing after him. And you could hear his pipes, all the happy tunes now, and the children singing to his tunes. I could hear them skipping and jumping on the cobblestones. We all could. And I was thinking, when is he going to come back and collect his money. I had
a euro all ready for him. He was strange but he'd livened up that miserable old place.”

T
RADITIONAL BAGPIPE BAND

More grappa for Giorgio. And more utter silence.

“And then it all became very odd. The music had been fading, and we were thinking he would lead them around the church and then back into the piazza but then we realized that there wasn't any more music…and there weren't any children either….”

Giorgio's pauses were becoming more theatrical, and his gulps of firewater grappa more substantial. And yet, as I looked at him, even though I didn't know him at all, it seemed that it was not all theater. There was something in his eyes that appeared disturbed. Even a little fearful.

“So, then there was nothing. Just this cold wind out of the forest and the black clouds and no sun. And it really was cold. Almost like the middle of winter. And people started looking around, and the women were calling their children's names. The men stood up, and the women were suddenly running across the piazza and around the corner. I could hear their shouts, and then their voices got higher and higher. They were frightened, really frightened. Screaming, some of them. I could hear their cries echoing as they ran uphill in the narrow alleys behind the piazza, looking for their children. We followed, of course. Everyone left the piazza. But it was so strange. There was no sign of them anywhere…no sounds of the pipes. Nothing. Just that blackness over everything.”

Giorgio paused. He was obviously moved himself by the memory. His audience waited, giving him time to sip his grappa again, until someone asked the inevitable: “So, what happened? What happened to the children?”

Giorgio blinked and coughed and began again, a little more slowly: “It was very, very odd. We'd all gone running around trying to find the bagpipe man and the children. We looked everywhere, but there was no sign of them. So one by one we all came back to the piazza and…”

Giorgio's audience couldn't wait. “And what?!” they cried almost in unison.

“Well,” Giorgio said, “they were all there. Every one of them. No bagpipe man, but all the children, lined up like for a school parade or something. Just standing. Not smiling or anything. Just standing. Waiting.”