Seasons in Basilicata (37 page)

At first her noises seemed like the jumbled racket of intense anger or hatred. But as I listened, fixed to the spot and with no intention of intruding further, I detected rhythms in her chilling tirade—like a violent incantation: a spell, a curse.

There was little or no sound beyond low grunts and growls from the person in the house. At one point the door almost closed, but the woman in black stabbed at it with her cane, so it remained ajar as her ceaseless torrent of viciousness continued.

I expected all the doors and shutters in the alley to open. Surely others must have been disturbed by that eerie and frenetic monologue. But nothing. No lights. No opening of doors. Just that one door.

And then that, too, was suddenly slammed shut.

But the woman continued: hissing, spitting, and now banging furiously on the door with her cane in a rapid tattoo, beating in time to that same sequence of violent words and sounds.

The lights inside the house were switched off, and the street was now almost entirely dark…but light enough for me to see the old woman suddenly stop her tirade and turn, with remarkable agility, in my direction. I immediately pulled back behind the corner, dreading her approach. Surely she couldn't have seen me? How could she sense I was even there?

There was nothing now but silence. I wanted to run, but my feet,
almost as in one of those dreamlike scenarios where your body refuses to do as it is bid, remained rooted to the cobblestones.

E
LDERLY VILLAGE WOMAN

After more silence I very slowly peered around the corner again and into the blackness. And there was nothing. No one was there. This seemed most peculiar. The alley was a dead end, so there was nowhere for the woman in black to go except past my hiding place.

But no one came. And there were no more sounds. Just that deep, somber silence. And that night-shroud of utter Conradian blackness.

Despite the fact that Keats's “Ode to Autumn” reflected romantic English scenes, his lilting line “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” could apply, this year at least, to our remote, mountainous corner of Basilicata just as well as it did to that beloved poet's bucolic vales and dales of Somerset.

This is surprising, given the strident Italian summer of storms and searing heat and a prognosis for the upcoming season verging on the utterly pessimistic. Our friends predicted a mediocre
vendemmia
(grape harvest) in October, a dearth of wild mushrooms and chestnuts to pick and wild boar to hunt in November, meager fruit production, and, worse of all, a pathetic olive harvest late in the year or early next year. Not an enticing prospect for the months ahead. Autumn was usually a time of abundance and even a little taste of affluence for those
contadini
who were able to harvest more than enough for themselves and their families and and have surplus fruit, grapes, and olives to sell to their friends or in the piazza marketplace.

As it turned out, the prognosis was a little overpessimistic, certainly as far as the
vendemmia
was concerned. Much of Italy did indeed experience mediocre-to-plain awful harvests, and the government decreed that 2002 would certainly not be a banner year for
fine vintages or wealthy vintners. But our part of Basilicata seemed to escape the widespread misfortunes of the North. Despite a sudden, virus-driven destruction of the ripe tomatoes, which in September were reduced to black mush overnight in many gardens and farms (alas, no two hundred liters of homemade
conserva di pomodoro
per family this year), the grapes swelled to plump, rot-free, juice-filled maturity and produced far better wines than expected, much to the surprise and delight of all our friends. And of Anne and me too, whose almost daily burden it was to sample and splurge on new vintages to the point where water became a rarity. (Ah, the sweet suffering and sacrifice of authentically dutiful research…)

An Unexpected Supper with the Famiglia Spagna

Who are all these people? I wondered, as I strolled into Massimo's hotel in Accettura one Saturday evening and realized that the small lobby bar was packed with a crowd of Americans talking at one another in that uniquely excitable “lemme tell ya” manner that seemed to be a hallmark of stateside camaraderie. And then one of them, recognizing a fellow
straniero
(foreigner), almost pinned me to the wall with an enthusiastic “How ya doin. Good to see ya.”

We'd barely introduced ourselves before the American launched into his tale. “Believe me, you've never seen a barbecue like the one we had this afternoon. Lemme tell ya, Dan—It's Dan, right?”

“Actually, no, it's David. Or Dave if you—”

“Right, so, like I'm saying, Dan, they get this massive stand with a grill and big logs on it and they burn the logs until they're red-hot and the embers fall down through the grate. Then they shovel up the hot embers and put them on another grate, and the meat goes over this second grate so the flames never touch what they barbecue. Only the heat from the embers, ya see. Flames are a real no-no. And, believe me, this was the most beautiful meat you've ever tasted. No burning. No charring. They cooked all kinds of stuff: lamb's liver,
lamb chops, chicken, pork, not
porchetta
(suckling pig), but nice, big, juicy strips. And all that, mind you, came after a massive
antipasto
of homemade pecorino cheese, handmade from their own sheep's milk, mozzarella from their own cows, fried peppers that crackled and crumbled in your mouth like real tasty potato chips, lots of
prosciutto crudo
and salamis and mortadella—the genuine stuff with crushed peppers in it—and wine, rivers of real good red wine, all homemade, so much it still makes my stomach groan just to think about it.”

Who is this guy? I was thinking. And what is he talking about?

Then all the Americans suddenly moved into the adjoining dining room, and I sort of got carried along in the rush. Even after we'd sat down the man was still talking enthusiastically at me as if he'd known me for years, describing in colorful detail all the nuances of the afternoon's bacchanal while taking great mouthfuls of the hotel's excellent steaming-hot, four-cheese pizza topped with proscuitto and salami.

“And to think if we'd just kept paying the taxes, we could still have had all this,” chirped the young man seated next to me at the table. “The 1806 palazzo in the square outside, the huge farm, that country palazzo, our own chapel and coat of arms, our own saint, San Rocco Famiglia Spagna, and even our own town procession, the one we saw today for our own special saint!”

“Don't even talk like that!” snapped the older man who was still giving me a saliva-producing description of his barbecue experience. “My father, Emilio Spagna, lived in that palazzo, but he left here in 1892 and made it clear he never intended to return or claim any of our Spagna inheritance. And he never did. So, don't even start thinking like that.”

The young man accepted the reprimand with a wry grin. “Those Accettura Spagnas were sure worried though at first, weren't they, at the barbecue?”

The older man pulled away in exasperation and shrugged his shoulders at the rest of the gathering in a kind of “what the hell do I do with this kid?” gesture. I turned to Massimo, who, as usual, was
patroling about as master of ceremonies at his hotel. “Who are all these people?” I whispered. In typical generous American fashion they had invited me to join them in their “light supper” of endless pizzas and wine, and I still had no real idea who they were.

“Ah, very important family,” Massimo whispered to me solemnly. “The American Spagna side of the family. Originally from Spain, in the 1600s, I think. The other part of the family, the Accettura part, owns the large palazzo with the big green door just above the piazza, by the big statue, and also a big farm outside town. But most of the family live in Potenza. Very important people. Judges, politicians, doctors. The procession today all through town—I am very sorry, David, I forgot to tell you—was to honor San Rocco of the Famiglia Spagna, who protects people from plagues and other nasty things. They keep him in their own special chapel inside their palazzo that is very beautiful.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “So these are all Spagnas here tonight?”

“Yes, they're all part of this same big Spagna family. These people are from all over America—Florida, New York, Pennsylvania—all over. And they come to meet their relatives who still live here in the palazzo and at the farm. And I think they're having good time, eh?”

Yes, indeed. A very good time. Brothers, cousins, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and in-laws: twenty or more of them in the dining room all devouring Massimo's superb pizzas baked in his wood-fired oven and knocking back countless flagons of Massimo's homemade plonk. And despite their enormous barbecue lunch, they were still looking fresh and frisky and fascinated by their newfound history.

Ben Spagna, the tanned, silver-haired gentleman who had described the unusual barbecuing technique he'd witnessed that afternoon, produced an enormous hand-drawn family tree he'd been given by one of the Accettura Spagnas. “This guy—I forget his name—he's a doctor. One of my cousins, I guess. He musta spent weeks, months, researching all this. Look, that's the date the palazzo was built. Eighteen hundred and six. And there's my grandfather's birth, in 1841, and my father's in 1872 and…look! This is me and
my wife, Betty, in this box here.” Betty was a demure, smiling lady who sat quietly next to Ben as he enthused about his newfound Italian family. She occasionally pulled out her enormous Nikon with professional speed-drive and mega-flash to photograph the antics of this increasingly boisterous reunion.

“She's really into photography,” Ben said.

Betty smiled demurely.

“She's won a heck of lots of prizes, too, in North Carolina, where we live. Got some published too.”

Betty continued smiling and maybe blushing a little.

“Anyway, like I was saying, these Spagnas—the Accettura side of our family—seem to be doing all right. Big new farmhouse. Plenty of land. Olives all over the place. Animals. You know, a real farm.”

“And they could all have been ours if we'd just kept paying the taxes…” mumbled the young man again, obviously intent on niggling Ben.

“I've told you. That's enough of that,” snapped Ben.

Betty smiled, demurely again. And then, when she spotted my camera, a far more modest version of her own mammoth creature, she decided that was enough of all this demure stuff and started asking me questions about my own photography. And, as is often the case, it turned out that we shared similar interests and we even knew the same New Jersey neighborhoods where Ben's father had done “pretty damn well” in real estate until he lost it all in the 1929 crash and died “a man of much more modest means” in 1949.

And I thought, isn't it strange how once again the great circles and spirals of coincidences keep conjuring up serendipitous meetings of this kind. Here am I, thirteen thousand miles from our home (for the moment) in Japan, and discussing the New Jersey Palisades, even down to specific apartment towers along Boulevard East, where Anne and I once lived in our New York period and enjoyed spectacular vistas over Manhattan—views that insular Manhattanites rarely saw because they hardly ever left the city, except for hedonistic weekends in the Hamptons and other upmarket havens. They certainly wouldn't tell anybody if they ever slipped under the Hudson
into no-no New Jersey territory. And here's this family gathered together from all over the United States, meeting in a kind of roots search with another branch of the family—the Italian side, which happens to be one of the lynchpins of Accettura, a remote hill town in the middle of nowhere, and who can trace their Spanish roots back into the 1600s, when they left Spain after losing some battle or other and sought refuge in this mountain wilderness. And today there'd been a big procession (and one I'd missed owing to Massimo's forgetfulness) for their very own patron saint whom they kept locked up in their very own chapel in their very own palazzo, which just happened to be one of the largest houses in Accettura.

S
PAGNA FAMILY CREST

And to think that I wasn't even going to stop off at Massimo's hotel that evening. I'd had a long wearisome drive to Potenza, where I'd tried to get excited about the remnants of that old hilltop city but couldn't, and then had been served one of the worst lunches it had ever been my displeasure to eat in southern Italy, in a restaurant that was supposed to be one of the city's finest.

All in all it had not been a memorable day, and I'd been looking forward to getting back for a
sambuca
on the terrace with Anne. But then the day was transformed as I was lured into this friendly family gathering to devour pizza and drink heartily of good country wine.

As I've said before, there's an awful lot to be said for serendipity and for just letting things take their own natural course. You just never know what will pop up next.

The Cowboys Who Couldn't

What popped up next was a minor, but intriguing little event that reflected a very appealing feature of life here: the enthusiasm exhibited by villagers for festivals, fairs, “special events,” and anything else with life, fun, food, wine, and endlessly gregarious, gossip-laden social mingling.

Massimo was a remarkable, if not always reliable, source of information on such events and would invariably call us up a day or two in advance with his “David, Anne, you've got to come and see…”

On this particular occasion, it was supposed to be some kind of cowboy rodeo roundup display for local Basilicatans, who didn't get much of that kind of thing in the normal course of their lives. According to Massimo, it was to be held at a recently created public recreational area high up in the magnificent forest of Parco Gallipoli, west of Accettura. It wasn't too far west, according to the map, but it certainly seemed a long way after countless hairpin turns and curlicues on an increasingly dramatic drive to the top of the ridge where the event was planned. Massimo had insisted that it was “only just a short way” out of town. But with his eternal optimism and his categorization of every event and experience—no matter how overwhelming or traumatic or grueling—as an “only just” experience, we should have reckoned on a longer, more arduous drive.

But we were glad we'd come. The views across the forested mountains to the dragon-teeth peaks and arêtes of the Lucanian Dolomites, five falcon-flying miles across the valleys to the west, were well worth the challenging drive. Massimo had insisted we get there before the crowds, by three at the latest. Even allowing for his tendency to exaggerate, we arrived at four and still found nobody around and a lot of empty tent booths with nothing in them. Eventually we located the bar Massimo had told us he'd be running, but of course there was no sign of our friend. The only people around were a bunch of surly men huddled in a corner under a pall of cigarette smoke, dealing cards and looking for all the world like a
remnant of Pancho Villa's army who'd decided to play hooky for the day. I guess it was their American West gear that gave such a distinct impression—high-heeled cowboy boots, tight jeans, massive decorated belts, and large brimmed Western-style hats verging on south-of-the-border Mexican size.

“Are we too late for the rodeo, or whatever it is?” I asked in appalling Italianish. They paused briefly in their
slam-bang-dunk
card game and gave us a collective “who the hell are these crazy dudes interrupting our game and let's plug 'em full o' lead just to see 'em die real slow” kind of look. From a mumbled response that emerged after what you might call an “icy silence,” we gathered that the event had not even started. Great, I thought. There goes another afternoon wasted following up on another of Massimo's suggestions. And then in came a burly, overweight character—obviously the boss of the show—dressed even more elaborately Tex-Mex than the others. He was bawling into a cell phone and spitting out the obviously distasteful residue like tobacco juice. From fragments, we gathered that, along with half a dozen other imminent catastrophes, one of the trucks carrying the bulls for the rodeo hadn't arrived. After that, it was all over. Another hour later and there was still no Massimo, no audience, and no cattle.

The “boss” was rapidly approaching apoplexy, but he decided that he and his cowboys (
butteri,
I think he called them—a rather soft-sounding name for these surly hands) had at least better smooth out the sand in the stockade pen created for the event. So they all gathered around an ancient Land Rover, alongside some tall and appealing female cowgirl groupies with long dyed-blonde hair, ornate vests, jeans they must have been poured into, and ultra high–heeled cowboy boots. The boss had found some kind of ancient, rusty sand smoother, or whatever they call those heavy cast-iron contraptions, but couldn't find chains to attach it to the Land Rover. Eventually they used rope, which, after two circuits of the stockade, broke and broke again and broke again, until someone found some tougher rope.