Seasons in Basilicata (27 page)

 

“C
OME BACK ANYTIME
you want—both of you!” Bruno insisted as we all waddled a little unsteadily to the door. “Even for a bath, if you wish!” (We'd admired his elegant bathroom and mammoth tub and moaned about our own miserable shower.)

And who knew? We might just do that. Because I suspect they didn't tell us all they knew about our strange little adopted village.

“Methinks they did protest too much,” Anne mused before we both fell into a deep, food-fuzzy sleep.

Three Markets, a Funeral, but No Wedding

The next day brought far more lighthearted experiences (at first…).

 

“Y
OU CAN ALWAYS
tell when the Thursday market is coming,” Vincenzo Uno (my nickname for him) moaned in his little general store on Via Roma. Of course his face was invariably set in a perpetual moan-mode, so it was very hard to tell the difference. (Vincenzo Due, his assistant, maintained his perpetual, all's-right-with-the-world smile.) “People spend less. For two, three days they buy just the basics. No luxuries. Not even
prosciutto crudo
or fancy shampoos. They're waiting to see what all those
maliziosi
peddlers will bring.”

Well, if these men are peddlers I thought, they must be a modern market kind. No more donkeys with panniers packed to their wicker brims there, or those little three-wheeled Ape contraptions pow
ered by souped-up lawn-mower engines, where goods were once displayed on the rear flatbeds. Today they arrived in the early morning in large, custom-made vans, which become instant stalls, complete with awnings, storerooms, dozing places (in case the selling got a little slow or the sun a little too scorching), and even, in a couple I noticed, traveling kitchens and mini offices for cash-and record-keeping. They were set up from the top of the hill, where Giorgio Amorosi kept his vast winter woodpile, and all along its steep curve for a quarter mile or so, ending virtually in Piazza Roma. On a particularly busy market day, I counted more than thirty vans nose to tail down the hill, with just enough room left for the occasional big blue
corriera
to squeeze through.

By nine o'clock, with the aroma of coffee and warm baking bread wafting past the church, the hill was a jostling swirl and jumble of black widows, eager children, modern mothers with fancy hairdos, and young girls in their most curvacious jeans and peek-a-boo halter tops, which seemed to be the rage all over the world. There were a few men too, but they seemed to prefer the role of spectator or occasional advisor to a wife or relative if they felt that the
malizia
were not bargaining in good faith. I heard one old man dismiss the whole elaborate market as
merdaio
(literally “a shit heap”), another as a
mercato di bestiame
(cattle market). Whispered phrases like “
È un ladro!
” (“He's a thief!”) floated about.

If you had ready cash—
contante
—bargaining was all part of the fun. This was unheard of in stores, where those little price stickers were gospel and no one would ever think of questioning the equanimity of the storekeeper (especially Vincenzo Uno). But at the market it was a real free-for-all. A skeptical “
Quanto costa?
” (“How much?”) was all it took to get the ball rolling.

There were a couple of things I wanted to buy, but I thought I'd watch the wily techniques of the black widows first. And they were good. Very good. Maybe it was something in the Arabic-Saracen bloodlines that ran through these remote villages, but those ladies would start at around forty percent of the asking price and rarely agree on anything above sixty percent. And what an Aladdin's cave of
China-produced goodies were on display there! Everything from hundreds of fake Rolex watches, fake cellular phones (why?), fake diamond rings, and fake leather handbags; to cheap perfumes, flick-knives, clocks, radios, and kid's toys galore; to pellet guns with remarkably authentic-looking Walther-style designs; to nonstick pans by the hundreds; to mountains of duvets, sheets, and towels; to acres of jeans in every imaginable rip-off hue and style; to hunting vests and jackets; to enormous aluminum pots, which, if I understood one lady correctly, were for “boiling pigs.” (They certainly seemed big enough for most of the local pigs I'd seen, which appeared to me to be a little on the scrawny side. Aliano apparently had yet to discover the advantages of the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, which had enough meat to feed a large family for a year.)

But I did notice a couple of interesting things in this open-air bargain-basement bonanza. First, other than a few items of bottled fruits and pickles and
produzione propria
(home produced) items, no one seemed to be selling the regular, daily grocery goods found in village stores—a wise political move. Nor were there any secondhand clothes, which had been a prime feature of two other, smaller day-markets I'd visited in villages even more remote than Aliano. Obviously our little village was now regarded as possessing a more discerning class of clientele—certainly a notch or two up from the Carlo Levi days. And a clientele, too, who obviously had a serious desire for fresh, new, gleaming-white and sensually black
indumenti intimi
(intimate garments), with a heavy emphasis on
reggiseni
(bras) and
mutandine
(panties). I don't think I'd ever seen such enormous piled displays anywhere—great snowy peaks of them, with at least four stalls that sold nothing else. And very democratic they were in their range—from the gargantuan, corsetlike contraptions, with elaborate elasticated sides, to the most dainty (but not over-daring, you understand, this is definitely not thong and crotchless, un-Catholic country) little lingerie creations. And what was so fascinating was the delightfully intimate way the rough-looking peddlers would discuss all the particular highlights and nuances of each kind of bra or panty with their whispering female customers—and at
great length, too, if they sensed a likely sale. Also, maybe because of their tactfully nuanced approach and their obvious willingness to give each lady their fully focused attention, I saw little sign of the raucous bargaining antics over all those made-in-China products.

Finally I decided to enter the fray myself—no, not for ladies' panties—feeling fewer qualms about bargaining once I'd observed the black widows' techniques. Ask the peddler's price, name your own price, scowl or shrug (preferably both) at its rejection, start to walk away, then be called back for renegotiation, and finally arrive at a suitable compromise that saved face for both contenders and ended in smiles and winks of mutual admiration for a deal well done.

The only thing was, when I finally reached the piazza and the door to our home, I realized that I'd amassed far more than I needed to equip the little house. Why had I agreed to buy
six
tea towels for a knockdown price when I needed only two, which even at full price would have saved me six euro? And that five-euro Walther-look-alike pellet pistol? What exactly did I have in mind for that? And the wok-shaped Teflon pan? Why would I possibly need that when there were four Teflon pans already in the house, and I didn't have any of the necessary wherewithals to prepare a Chinese dinner anyway! (They weren't big on oyster sauce, sesame oil, hoisin, and black-bean paste in Aliano, for some odd reason.) And as for that penknife…true, it was only three euro and had a beautifully polished rosewood handle, but it was plastic! Well, it certainly
looked
like rosewood, and anyway, the peddler had come down from six euro….

Markets are sneaky things. I think Vincenzo Uno and I were both relieved when the peddlers vanished after lunch and left us two weeks of normal, everyday, buy-just-what-you-need, set-price shopping. Vincenzo Due, of course, was still smiling his beatific smile, seemingly oblivious to all the angst and minutiae of village life.

 

B
UT
G
IULIANO
had other ideas about markets.

“Try to come over to Accettura next Tuesday,” he told me on the phone in his typically enthusiastic manner. “It's our biggest market
of the year. All the way down the hill. Much bigger than Aliano. And there's a second one, too, same day, just outside town. Very interest. Market for animals. All farmers and shepherds. Very much fun for you and Anne, I think.”

“Okay,” I said a little hesitantly, having had my fill of markets for a while.

“And I think there's funeral, too. You said you want to see funeral. Local funeral.”

“Oh, really? Well in that case…”

“And wedding, same time.”

“On a Tuesday? Sounds like an odd day for a wedding.”

“No, no. Is special day. Good day for weddings. Okay?”

Giuliano's special days were not always as “special” as he claimed. But I loved the man and his unstoppable lust for the good life, even in these penurious, peasant-heritage hills.

“We'll be there,” I promised. “See you for espresso and
corretto.
”

“Okay. Good.
Va bene,
” he said, and I could almost hear him smiling his big toothless smile.

 

I
WAS IN
A
CCETTURA
at ten-thirty
A.M.
the following Tuesday, trying to find a place to park the car. Anne decided that it was her turn for a “dawdle-day” on our terrace. She gently reminded me that our tiny home was for once adequately stocked with “market things” and that I should try to be merely a spectator. I agreed but checked my wallet for euros, just in case.

I'd never seen the little town so crowded, so I decided to wiggle my convoluted way through the inane, serpentine back streets, hoping to find a space to park on the far side of the town, on the San Mauro Forte Road. I finally found one—almost a quarter-mile walk back to the main piazza, where the market was in full swing despite the threat of rain.

I never did find Giuliano that day. Rosa thought he'd gone down to his kiln “to make some more of them blinkin' bricks.” (Ah, how I loved her wonderful Nottingham-England-Italian accent.) “Come for lunch anyroad, seein' as you're 'ere.”

I accepted her invitation and set off to explore this remarkable market. Just as Giuliano had promised, it wound its way up both sides of the main road into the second, higher piazza and on and on to the top end of the town by the two roadside bars. The bars were the favorite spots of Accettura's octos, who sat and played cards all day long in the spring, summer, and fall in that perfect sun trap offering fine vistas of Bosco Montepiano, Parco Gallipoli, and the Lucanian Dolomites—views of which you could never tire.

The peddlers in Accettura had the same custom-designed, instant-stall vans I'd seen at Aliano, but there were many more of them here—at least eighty—offering a much broader array of delights (no four-foot-high piles of panties). This was far more serious stuff, and as
vendemmia
time would soon be approaching, there were all the necessary tools for wine-making: mountains of huge plastic
cassette
(boxes) for the grape harvest; great six-hundred-liter plastic vats for the first-run pressing; cascades of fifty-five-liter demijohns in “faux-wicker” (plastic) baskets; mounds of vicious-looking secateurs for cutting the vine stalks; wooden rakes for stirring the wine must; and elaborate, engine-powered and manual
macchine per macinare,
into which the grapes were fed for crushing.

There were even offerings of olive harvest necessities, although the harvest wasn't until December or January: hundreds of cans and plastic containers for oil storage; acres of bright blue and green nets; and three-legged
tramalli
(stepladders) of all sizes for the farmers who still shook the olive trees to release the fruit onto ground-spread nets rather than using the far more arduous, but locally preferred, hand-picking process.

“You can always tell the difference in the oil,” I'd been told by Giuliano. “Lazy olive-harvesting oil is like lead; mine is like liquid gold because I pick every fruit by the hand.” He was meticulous in everything he did, despite his seemingly casual attitude toward life in general. When it came to harvesting grapes, olives, or tomatoes or to making his wine, his oil, or his September tomato
conserva di pomodoro
(actually, exclusively Rosa's job), or creating his beloved
sausages and salamis, something I had yet to see, he certainly had no time for “bending the edges” (cutting corners). His grand “day of the pig” was to be early in the new year. His supply of this year's salamis had almost run out, as he was notorious for giving away his popular porky creations to family, friends, and neighbors—and even to outsiders like Anne and me, whom he happened “to 'ave takin' a shine to,” as Rosa had told me.

The rest of the market ran the gamut from the familiar—household knickknacks; pans; cheese graters; towels; curtains; rip-off tapes and CDs; cheap electric gizmos and gadgets; cushions, pillows, and duvets; winter jackets, coats, and shoes (at least ten shoe-and-boot stalls); and jeans, jeans, jeans—to the more exotic—huge brass cowbells over eighteen inches high; small sheep and goat bells; beautifully carved shepherd sticks; flat caps and trilbies (even a few felt Tyrol-styled hats with high peaks, narrow brims, and pheasant-feather trim); enormous Chinese butchering cleavers heavy enough to decapitate a bull with one stroke; beautiful German butchering knives; and, a particular oddity at one stall, a line of eighteen-inch-high Madonna statuettes “guaranteed to make real tears” (an intriguing and popular characteristic of many church Madonnas in the South).

I enjoyed a delicious, if hasty, early lunch at Rosa's: a traditional Basilicatan soupy mix of pasta with lentils accompanied by wafer-crisp, deep-fried zucchine blossoms stuffed with a succulent mix of homemade cream cheese, eggs, and basil, and, as a separate course, fresh, briefly blanched French beans tossed in Rosa's rich homemade olive oil. Rosa always seemed perfectly happy to cook in fits and starts, depending on who happened to be hungry at the time, possibly a throwback to when she and Giuliano ran their own restaurant way up in the
Bosco.
I thanked her with a kiss, a hug, and a box of Swiss chocolates I'd picked up at one of the stalls, and scurried off to see the animal market just outside town.