Seasons in Basilicata (56 page)

H
ILL TOWN NEAR
P
OTENZA

“In a small forest. Not so far away.” He explained how he had just purchased, for the impressive price of twelve hundred dollars, a “truffle hound” named Lola. Today had been a kind of test day for the dog, and he'd been delighted by her prowess, not only in locating the elusive truffles in the earth around the roots of oak trees, but also in digging them up (“She very careful. Better than me!”) and even carrying them in her mouth—“But not with her teeth. Just her lips”—straight to Pasquale's outstretched palm.

It was obvious that Pasquale's investment, at least in his own eyes, had been a very sound one. He smiled a little complacently as he performed the ritual grating of two of the largest truffles, each the size of a table tennis ball, onto a plate, which was then passed with appropriate reverence around the table.

That was surprise number one.

Surprise number two came immediately after lunch, when Pasquale took us downstairs to show us his old bakery, now rented to a younger man. The tenant was in the kitchen creating tiny tartlets filled with
zuppa inglese
(an odd name for a kind of creamy custard) topped with clusters of chopped orange, kiwi, pineapple, and mango. The kitchen was as clean and sparkling as the store itself. Big loaves of bronze-crusted bread sat in piles waiting for the evening commuters coming home to Tito from Potenza, a few miles down the line.

I asked Pasquale if he ever made “weekend bread,” one of those richly aromatic mega-donut–shaped loaves Anne and I used to buy from the Arthur Avenue bakeries in the Bronx's own version of Little Italy. Not so evocative as the Mulberry Street madness of Manhattan but, in its own lower-key way, far more genuine and with a truly enduring neighborhood feel.

Pasquale didn't seem to understand my question, so I described the ingredients: chopped-up bits of leftover prosciutto, salami,
coppa
,
soppressata,
cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes, and anything else lying around that needed clearing out before Saturday, the big buy
ing day, when families were already salivating about and preparing for the week's great gastronomic climax of Sunday lunch.

Pasquale continued to stare at me, and I wondered if my poor Italian and gestures were not adequate to convey the magic of that special weekend, and only the weekend, delight. So I added another anecdote, a description of our “weekend bread” experiment with our local baker in Aliano, which we'd enhanced by adding an even wider variety of ingredients, including chopped olives, capers, anchovies, and peppers—a real multicolored mélange of ingredients and flavors.

Pasquale was still looking at me curiously. And then, to my surprise, he said, “Okay. I've never try, but I will explain to the new baker and together we make.”

“It's so good,” I said, still finding it hard to believe that “weekend bread” did not have its origins in Italy, and also surprised by Pasquale's quick decision. Basilicatans usually like to
riflettere
(reflect on things), sometimes forever.

“It sounds so beautiful,” he said.

“You'll make a fortune,” I said.

“A fortune would be very nice,” he said and laughed the laughter of a happy truffle hunter with a fine new dog.

As we were leaving I was presented with a box of pastries, a huge loaf of still-warm bread, and three fat salamis from Graziella's mother.

This was all most unexpected, I thought, and Potenza is looking better by the minute. And that's where the three of us went next “…for your real surprise!” said Antonio.

 

W
E STOPPED
by a cemetery below the old city, a vast complex of family vaults exhibiting a remarkable array of creative designs and
loculi,
those tiered compartments for coffins. There were hundreds of them, six tiers high, with “sideway” compartments of around three by eight feet. Little electric lights flickered; flowers graced many of the slots; and hundreds of those porcelain-etched photographs stared out at us. Antonio had stopped by the entrance
to the cemetery to buy a bunch of daffodils and, after we wandered through the mazelike confusion of
loculi,
he stopped at a tomb, rolled up an elaborate stepladder contraption on wheels, climbed to the top level (the least expensive level due to the precariousness of those ladders), and placed the flowers in a specially designed container by a memorial panel. I couldn't make out the name from the ground.

“Come and see,” Antonio said. Graziella grinned in anticipation. I climbed somewhat hesitantly up the swaying contraption and found myself looking at a marble panel with the name Giulia Mango carved on it. The significance didn't hit me until Antonio explained, “Mango was Giulia Venere's maiden name. And this is where she is buried. Look at her photograph. You will recognize her.”

And there she was: Carlo Levi's witch-housekeeper, guardian of the dark secrets and even darker
pagani
ways of Aliano. Her face was obviously far older than the one Levi painted in 1935 (she died in 1974), but it was her eyes that galvanized me. Deep, piercingly black, and looking right at mine as if she were still alive, they sent a scurry of fear down my spine to my toes. Antonio sensed their power too. “Amazing.” he murmured. “She is…here!”

Later he explained that, as far he knew, he was the first to trace her burial place in Potenza. “Much research in the records and then…
voila!
I finally found! I reach her. So, was this a good surprise for you?”

“Excellent,” I said. “And congratulations on your research.”

“Thank you,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Now, more surprises.” So—it turned out to be another typical “day with Antonio.” He and Graziella drove me around parts of Potenza I'd never explored before, and I found it to be a far more interesting place than I'd first thought, especially when we ended up at a just-completed house of an architect-friend of Antonio's. Perched on a hilltop with an encircling panorama of mountains and valleys, the house was the epitome of stone-wall solidity. I congratulated Antonio's friend on the
feng shui
elements of his site and his bold Norman watchtower-like design. He responded with an invitation
to visit his wine and prosciutto
cantina,
a bunkerlike place where we sampled four of his 2002 vintages. I left with a couple of bottles of his best blend of Malvasia and Aglianico grapes—my final surprise of the day.

And I vowed that if Antonio ever offered surprises again, I'd be wherever he wanted me to be in a flash. Even Potenza.

A Free Day

Thankfully, tranquil interludes floated between the escapades and adventures with Sebastiano and Antonio, and there were few interludes that Anne and I enjoyed more than a totally unexpected free day.

One might assume that, as we were living the simple life down there in the wilds of Basilicata, free days must have been more the norm than the exception. And to some extent, I suppose, that's true. We were largely the master and mistress of our minutes and months. And yet, time got filled, social obligations were met in a punctual fashion, and new people to talk to popped up like
porcini
in the
bosco
(forest). Before we knew it, another day would be almost over and it would be time for sambuca and prosciutto on the terrace, a modest bit of mingling during the evening
passeggiata,
and a leisurely dinner enjoyed, usually to a background of Bach or Mozart or occasionally, if the mood was right, a little jaunty slide guitar and Texas-drawl country-and-western music, followed by a few book chapters before bed.

So, when a whole day unexpectedly offered itself, with no constraints, we greeted it like we used to greet a spell of hooky from school: just like kids.

And this free winter day was indeed unexpected. Of course we were disappointed to miss the festivities of a long Sunday family lunch at Rosa and Giuliano's home in Accettura, but it couldn't be helped.

We had prepared for the event with salivary anticipation, wrapping a few gifts for the family, and we'd set off at the alloted time to
drive up the hill out of our village, admiring, as always, those surging vistas of mountains and distant ridgetop towns and…snow.

Snow!?

We hadn't thought to go out on the terrace to check the terrain that morning. There were fleeting shards of sunshine piercing through the curtains, so that was enough to encourage us to be on our way. But snow? We definitely hadn't expected that. Admittedly it was only on the highest slopes, up around Stigliano, but that's the way we had to go. It looked ominous, with Lord knew how many hairpin turns and vertiginous swirlings (we always lost count after seventy or so) along battered roads on the hour-long journey to Accettura.

“Why not just give Rosa a call?” Anne suggested, always cautious when it came to skiddy hairpin turns and the like. “Make sure the roads are clear.”

“Good idea,” I said, especially as we were just passing our one village phone booth.

And it was then that I noticed how cold it really was. Down on the piazza there was no wind, but up here, right where they put the phone (of course), blasts of frigid air froze my fingers to purple in seconds as I dialed Rosa's number.

We exchanged our usual effusive greetings and she told me she was “just making the pasta” for lunch.

“Rosa, it's not even eleven o'clock yet. It'll go very soggy by one o'clock!”

“No, David,” she said. “I'm
making it.
Rolling it, not cooking it!”

“Oh, all right, of course. Always homemade pasta on Sunday. I forgot.”

“They'd kill me if it wasn't,” she mumbled, but I could tell she was smiling. She was justifiably proud of her homemade pasta.

“Rosa,” I said, putting on my let's-get-down-to-business voice, “I see a lot of snow over your way….”

“Oh yes, there's snow all right. And ice.”

“How are the roads over top?”

“Very icy. I just said.”

“So…is it safe to come over?”

“Depends what you mean by safe, doesn't it?”

“For us, Rosa, in that little DoDo they farmed off on me at the rental place.”

“Well…” She seemed uncertain. And then she made our decision for us. “No, I reckon you best stay where you are.”

“What about our lunch?”

“Come next Sunday. And call me Wednesday morning, too. Giuliano says he maybe doing another pig next week” (not a particularly enticing prospect after my earlier pig-butchering experience).

“You don't think that…”

“No.”

“Okay. I'm sorry. We were looking forward to a big feast.”

“All the more for us, isn't it?” she said with her sly Italian-Nottingham humor.

“Oh, very nice!” I said.

“No, seriously, leave it today. There's likely going to be a lot more snow. Come next week.”

“Okay. Love you. Hugs to everyone.”

“Aye, all right.”

“You'll miss us though, won't you?”

“Who's this speaking then?”

“Good-bye, Rosa.”

“Bye. See you next week. Love to Anne.”

That was it. Our gargantuan lunch had been canceled. Instead we had a whole free day to do anything we wanted. Anne was disappointed…for about as long as it took to change her expression from momentary glumness to one of a kid with a bunch of free lollipops thrust into her hand.

“Let's go back home and snuggle up by the fire,” she said, grinning.

“We didn't light one.”

“So, let's light one!”

And thus another one of those all-too-rare freedom began.

 

M
ANY YEARS AGO
I wrote a short essay based around this idea of a gift of unexpected freedom. It had happened many times, but one occasion always stood out when, on a whim, we'd canceled one of those weekend-in-the-Caribbean trips at the last minute and somehow managed to get a full refund. In celebration of our unexpected savings, we spent the three days—three whole wonderful, fantasy-filled days—cocooned in our apartment in New York luxuriating in the timelessness of time and enjoying some of the best journeys we'd ever taken together. Journeys into ourselves. In a living room quickly converted, with ceiling-suspended sheets, into a sort of sultan's tent filled with cushions and pillows and surrounded by our favorite books and our favorite gourmet foods. We'd lavishly spent our refund buying delicacies we rarely if ever had the chance to enjoy and wines that we'd always wanted to sample but could never seem to justify the costly indulgence.

So that's how we celebrated our first “WWW”—Wonderful Wacky Weekend: with phones unplugged; blinds closed so that time became fluid, untied to the stages of the day; guitar nearby for impromptu bits of songwriting; a stereo for our favorite music; and notebooks handy for ideas or thoughts or anything else worth recording.

And after it was all over (we spontaneously added another day to the magic of it all) I wrote a story about this odd and wonderful experience, and who should decide to publish it but the
New York Times,
and later the
Washington Post,
and then a number of other magazines, including the
National Geographic Traveler,
which initially had some qualms about printing an “in favor of not traveling at all” piece but did so anyway.

That particular free day in Aliano, of course, was not exactly a full-blown three-day WWW, but it's not so much the amount of time you give these occasions as the kind of mood and spirit you allow to evolve.

I can't remember all the details of that particular occasion (some of them are private and therefore would not seem particularly special to others anyway), but I know they included our reading to each
other; listening to two Beethoven symphonies (as if for the first time); my cooking some odd but tasty “improv” concoctions whenever the mood struck; and Anne mapping out schemes and dreams for the rest of our lives. Well, for the next year or two at least. And so on. Just hour after hour of doing whatever we felt like doing together and wondering why we hadn't done it far more often. I mean after all, we are approaching our senior years—with emphasis on the word
approaching
—and time is not quite so infinite now as it had once seemed way back in our courting days. It had taken on a more considered aspect, an increased realization of its value and its preciousness. And unexpected free days like this one showed just how precious time could really be.