Seasons in Basilicata (53 page)

An enormous, bowed-wall, ramshackle barn of a building loomed up in front of us. Its construction consisted primarily of huge square stones, but despite its massiveness, the whole place looked as if a quick kick in the right place or the merest nudge of an earth tremor—not even enough to cause a flicker on the Richter scale—would crumple the place in a nanosecond. Which would be a great shame, because Rocco's museum—actually an extensive collection of ancient agricultural implements, olive presses, wine barrels,
torchi
(grape-pressing machines), and hundreds of other carefully assembled, rust-bound knickknacks—was a masterpiece of visionary compilation. One man's vision, too: Rocco himself. A bright-eyed, smiling, lean-bodied man, perhaps in his early forties, who according to Sebastiano had spent most of his adult years assembling his collection “without seeking money from anybody. He did it all by himself,” said Sebastiano with great pride in his friend's accomplishments.

Rocco entertained us for an hour or so with the tales and histories behind his collection, which he seemed to regard as a roomful of personal acquaintances. He affectionately stroked the huge granite mill wheels of the seventeenth-century olive press; rubbed the cobwebby, leathery rotundness of a harness that was once wrapped around the necks of mules used to turn the tree trunk–thick central wooden pivot post of the mill; caressed in an almost sensual fashion the bowed oak staves of ancient wine barrels
still vaguely redolent of old vintages; rang the big bronze cowbells dangling from the walls; and invited us to feel the sharpness of the spiked collars once worn by sheep dogs as defense against wolf attacks.

Rocco's love for his own personal creation was infectious, and as we went on to explore his upper “romantic” rooms above the presses, we found ourselves in an attic dreamworld. Here was where he kept his cheek-by-jowl piles of “emerging collections” of artifacts. They were in such wonderful heaped confusions—enormous boxes piled with old books and manuscripts; an ancient fireplace adorned with hundreds of rusty keys, some the size of kitchen ladles; dust-coated religious icons and paintings; a mini-mountain of ancient sewing machines—that you wondered how he would ever reach some of the remoter piles. To some, I suppose, it would have been just a hopeless, haphazard repository of miscellaneous junk. But in Rocco's eyes it was more, and I could tell that, one day, he would sort it all out and display it as effectively and enticingly as all the other items in the rooms below.

We all left, inspired by the man's single-minded determination, and I wondered why he had so far refused to seek funding for his pet project.

“Ah!” Sebastiano explained with a frustrated shrug. “Paperwork. So much stupid paperwork to get even a small grant in this town, in this region. And he is a very proud man and not very patient! He has, like so many Basilicatans, an inbred contempt for laws and regulations and
statali
bureaucrats!”

“But surely this is a contribution to Stigliano,” I suggested. “There's no other museum here. Nothing really for visitors to see if and when they ever come here.”

Sebastiano chuckled cynically. “You know, last night I went to a meeting of the Regional Planning Council. They said they wanted to make plans for the future of this part of Basilicata and they invited the people in the town and from the villages to come to present their ideas.”

“And?”

“And what!? Nothing! There were less than twenty people. And no young people at all, and they are the future of this area.”

“No ideas either?”

“Oh, of course. The same old stuff. Bring new factories, new enterprises. Get rid of all the red tape. That kind of thing. And you know, in that small area in the valley between Stigliano and Aliano where they built a few roads and tried to get new businesses to come…”

“Yes, I know the place. It has three buildings on it.”

“Correct. Two are empty, and the other has been there for two years and they still don't have a telephone yet! Can you believe?”

“Unfortunately,” I said sadly but truthfully, “I can. But what other ideas came out of the meeting?”

“Oh, ‘let's make more tourism' was the big one! In this area, with almost no hotels, no fancy restaurants, not even a properly funded museum like Rocco's to show people our history and how we lived. Tourists need these things. You can't just say, ‘Hey, it's very beautiful and dramatic down here so please come and stay with us and spend lots of money.' You know, it's all so stupid. When I think…when I remember that my grandparents lived in one room here with farm animals and chickens everywhere…”

Rocchina was walking with us and she could see that Sebastiano was about to launch into one of his familiar and always spirited tirades about the stupidity of politicians and bureaucrats and anything else that smacked of pathetic attempts at “planning” and half-baked visions of “our great new future.” So, she gave him a loving but tough nudge, and he stopped in mid-sentence, blinked, and then exploded with one of his warm, throaty laughs. “I'm off again, eh?” he said to Rocchina, and she smiled and nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. “you're right. What we need now is a glass of wine.”

It just so happened that, as we were retracing our steps back to the Villanis' apartment, up one of the steep, still-misty streets, I spotted a brightly lit wine shop with barrels and demijohns and bottles and someone pouring wine into liter flagons from a huge container finely carved with an heraldic crest and baroque flourishes. I
signaled to Sebastiano that I'd found a timely source for his wine and pushed open the door into the warm, aromatic store. “
Buona sera,
” I said to a half dozen or so men standing or sitting around a wooden table filled with platters of sliced salami and mortadella and thick slabs of bread. And I was thinking, what a great little place, a sort of shop-cum-bar with free snacks to boot and a dozen or so different wines to choose from.

“Ah,…David…” I heard Sebastiano whisper behind me. But I was intent on getting him a glass of wine. In fact six glasses—one for each of us.

“
Sei vini, per favore,
” I said, smiling at the man pouring the wine from the elegantly carved barrel.

There was what might be called a pregnant pause—actually more like an ominous silence.

“David, David!” It was Sebastiano again.

“It's okay, Sebastiano,” I said, my confident take-charge persona in full romp. “I've found your wine.
Sei vini, per favore,
” I repeated.

More silence. All the men were staring at me in the oddest manner—in alarm, I think, as if some space alien had just popped in for a quickie before devouring the lot of them.

“Er, David, please. This is not a shop…”

I paused. “No, it's some kind of bar, right? So let's have a drink.”

“No, David. This is private house. This is someone's
cantina.
It belongs to that man there, I think, the one with the bottle.”

At that point, with Anne giving frantic “what are you doing now?” signals through the open doorway, Sebastiano took over, apologizing profusely for my intrusion and doubtless implying that he'd be quite happy to retreat without creating further embarrassment and drag this crazed Englishman with him before he started to get offensive.

But it didn't quite happen that way at all. Because at that magic little moment, serendipity began again, and I just sort of watched, as I have done so many times before, as the wonder of human warmth and humor and kindness worked its spell and things rolled along
without plans or schedules or anything else other than the willingness to “let things flow as they will.”

The men suddenly roared with laughter at my stupid mistake, dragged out chairs from a corner, insisted we all join them at the table to enjoy the salami and mortadella and to sample their splendid wines “
di casa.
” Which, of course, is exactly what we all did, with the three ladies giggling in embarrassed delight, and Topol grinning like a gargoyle, and Sebastiano muttering, “Whatever…” and stripping off his overcoat and joining the increasingly rowdy throng.

I think it was about six o'clock in the evening when we started our “
cantina
crawl” home. First in that warm, barrel-lined hideaway. Then, as we were leaving, Sebastiano remembered another friend, farther up the street, who also had his own
cantina
and was renowned for producing his own fine wines from Melfi, using Aglianico del Vulture grapes. So, for a half-hour we stopped at what was a roughly converted garage. Most cantinas are precisely that, simple garages often transformed into little masterpieces of male conviviality, complete with fireplaces, TVs, refrigerators, stoves, sinks, tables, and armchairs. They're basic, but ideal places for card bouts of
scopa;
bawdy repartee at the soft-porn panderings of evening television soaps; hearty celebrations of the glories of fine, home-blended, crafted brews; and even commiseration and commonsense counseling for any member of the group suffering from temporary melancholia or even momentous troubles in matters of the heart.

And so it went. One
cantina
led to another and another until, finally, by sheer chance, we were invited by a young man to visit his “very new”
cantina,
which, judging from the applause by our
cantina-
of-the-moment occupants, was an honor bestowed upon only the favored few.

And what a
cantina
this one turned out to be! It was more like an elegant
taverna.
From the outside it looked the same as all the others—utterly unimposing with large, dark-painted double doors. But as the young man led us inside and switched on the lights—halogen spots, no less—we were regaled with a mini-disco of sorts:
four enormous black speakers, two large-screen TV video sets, comfortable armchairs, a baronial-size fireplace with a roaring fire, an upper level reached by an elegant wrought-iron spiral staircase and crammed with barrels and wine-making equipment, and a very professional-looking bar. And, at the front, a most impressive latest-technology keyboard setup with more switches and dials than your average recording studio, and a full-blown karaoke system—my first in Italy—complete with overhead TV screen for displaying the lyrics.

In less time than it took to drink a couple of glasses of the young man's fine wine and congratulate him on the excellence of his elegant hideaway, he was at the keyboard—pounding out bossa novas, tangos, heavy metal, and Beatles rock—and gesturing for someone to pick up the cordless mike and sing something. Something in English, he thought would be a good idea. An idea much supported by my laughing companions, except for Anne, who looked ready to slide herself deftly under the table as soon as the music began.

So, there I was, mike in hand, and with those beautiful introductory chords to John Lennon's “Imagine” playing and the lyrics starting to scroll down the overhead TV screen. Without a moment's hesitation (it's amazing what a few glasses of wine will do to release the exhibitionist self), I launched into that splendid anthem of gentle anarchy and love. And what I heard coming back on those megawatt speakers was this deep, chocolatey, tears-in-your-beer, echo-chambered rendition, which sounded like no sound I'd ever made before. In fact it had been years since I'd picked up a mike, a relic of my decades-past guitar and folksinging era, but I must admit, in all immodesty, that I think even the late Mr. Lennon might have given at least a cursory nod of acknowledgment at what poured out into the elegant
cantina
that night.

Then came the applause—real, spirited, and, I think, genuine—from our small group of wandering wine-imbibers, (Anne included, much to my relief) as the last lingering chord faded. And I thought, my God, I've done it! My first karaoke experience. Despite four years of living with Anne in Japan, I'd always managed to avoid the
karaoke spotlight. And you know what? I loved every second of it. And especially singing a song of such power and intensity.

So all that of course led to another round of
vino
and a reminder of something I'd read in an Italian cookbook that “conviviality is the greatest Italian condiment.” Then it all began to get a little blurry. I know that our sociologist friends had to leave for home, and Rocchina decided to return to the apartment, but Sebastiano, Anne, and I somehow floated on, at one point joining another group—a bunch of teachers in yet another
cantina
—who were discussing the final designs for their school's February
Carnevale
float. (I was told later by a kindly Sebastiano that I had made “some very useful suggestions in that area,” but neither Anne nor I had any idea what they could have been.)

Finally, by chance, but of course not at all by chance, we caught up with some of the same bunch of Sebastiano's friends we'd met at Margherita's dinner party—Tori, her husband, the barber, the professor, the frustrated politician, the genius who had prepared all those wonderful mushroom creations, and a couple of others I vaguely remembered from that long and lovely bacchanal.

And wouldn't you know it, they were assembling at yet another
cantina,
which doubled as the barber's shop (a single and very ancient black-leather swivel chair by a huge mirror seemed to be the barber's only accoutrements). They were all about to prepare dinner, so of course we stayed, after a brief foray to fetch some bread, which they'd forgotten, from Rocchina's parents who lived nearby, along with two more tipples to see us on our way.

Back at the
cantina
the wine flowed and the conversation rolled. Sebastiano interpreted for us whenever he could, between his own bouts of rhetorical excess. Once again we covered the gamut, from Bush and Iraq and North Korea, to Basilicata's hopeless regional planning, to the second trial of ex–Prime Minister Andreottti (a Mafia corruption case too convoluted even for most Italians to understand), to the problem in trying to run small farms these days, to the difficulty Italy seemed to have in being taken seriously by other members of the EU. “Fifty-nine prime ministers in sixty years
since the end of World War Two! No wonder they think we're crazy,” said the barber vehemently. “And our latest one, Silvio Berlusconi, is also being prosecuted now for bribery and all kinds of financial finanglings.”