Seasons in Basilicata (60 page)

Other strange allegorical figures emerged, too, just as Levi described:

Skeleton-like figures appeared with white painted skull masks, along with odd characters dressed completely in black with tall stovepipe hats. Youngsters in capes and ghoulish headdresses—embryonic shape-shifters—pursued virginal (or so it seemed) maidens dressed in traditional peasant costumes of flowing white blouses and long black skirts. Others flounced about in 1940s-style clothes (possibly a reference to Levi's era) or parodied the ostentatious dress of
padroni
families and overuniformed officials. And every once in a while screaming, witchlike characters—
streghe
—would fly out of the shadows, scattering the crowds and scaring the children, and then vanish up the now night-black alleys.

Our friends on the terrace, despite their generations-long
Basilicatan heritage and their familiarity with all its
pagani
associations, seemed confused, even a little alarmed, at the tumult and occasional moments of terror in the streets below.

“This is…powerful stuff,” Sebastiano muttered, always intrigued by local myths and traditions.

Rocchina nodded and looked dumbfounded by the cacophony in the piazza. “They have other things here—like the festival of Aliano's patron saint, San Luigi Gonzaga—that bring many Alianese back home for a few days. And the
Viaggi Sentimentali
events all around the village celebrating Levi's book. But this…this is the real stuff of their heritage from
il tempo fuori del tempo,
‘the time before time.'”

“Wild, wild!” Margherita said and vanished downstairs to reenter the fray while Tori watched her with that constantly bemused expression of his.

“'Ave y'tried my wine yet?” Giuliano asked, always focusing on the hedonistic side of life. “S'one of m'best.”

Rosa ignored him and stood, rigid as a stone, watching the kaleidoscopic antics and saying nothing. I had the feeling she preferred to celebrate
Carnevale
in the more demure Accettura fashion.

Massimo was happily tipsy, smiling his cherubic smile and dancing across the terrace with whichever of our lady friends was willing to risk her dainty feet to his somewhat unsteady boots. Finally Graziella grabbed him and, despite the fragility of her delicate pointed-toe shoes, showed him that even an intoxicated buffoon could do the cha-cha if he allowed her to lead.

The two Giuseppinas were huddled in the corner by the woodpile, apparently ignoring the riotous ancics below and discussing matters of serious village gossip (many new “scandals” would emerge after the festivities were over). Bruno, like Giuliano, was seriously into the wine and dismissed all the frivolities below as “ridiculous…barbaric!”

As I expected, Antonio gave a more eloquent and considered summary of the whole strange spectacle. “It's pure Dionysian! It has the spirit of our ancient Greek—
Magna Graecia
—festivals for the God of Wine, Dionysus—Bacchus. It's a time for letting go, a devil-may-care spirit of getting drunk and being overtly sexual. Just look at the
phallic shapes of the noses, chins, and horns of those masks. And their underpants! They wear old long johns,
cauzenitt,
and other whatnots on the outside of their costumes. But it's also got some of our local shape-shifting elements—men being transformed into creatures, men turning into women, little girls becoming
streghe,
witches. And watch the people. See how they're laughing? But you can tell some are frightened. These beliefs and fears are still around even though the teenagers treat them as a bit of a joke. But to many it's not a joke at all. It reminds them of the old ‘dark ways' and all the terrors of the unknown, and the night.”

We had a close friend from the United States—Celia—visiting us for the week. Her reaction was a mix of bemusement, disbelief, and entrancement. “It's amazing…” was her first reaction, followed by, “You know, maybe I'll stay a bit longer.”

Anne laughed and said what we both were thinking, “That's just the way we both feel.”

 

E
VENTUALLY
, as the festival roared on into the night, we left the chill of the terrace and sprawled ourselves around the living room, sampling the homemade wine brought by each family. I'd explained that there would be no formal dining table seating that night and no Italian dishes would be served. Not a single one. I didn't have the audacity to compete with the highly nuanced subtleties of my friends' cuisine. Instead I had an “improv-blast” in the kitchen, concocting a host of obscure “fusion” dishes featuring elements of Thai, Indian, Chinese, French, and even a little British flavors and ingredients (thanks to Matera's Carrefour hypermarket), and serving them,
degustazione
style, in small portions.

And it worked—at least, I think it did—because there followed two hours of reassuring murmurings of pleasure, and nothing was left over, not even one of my oddest concoction: wafer-thin chicken breast rolled enchilada style around a rich stuffing of duck
foie gras
and crushed pistachios, quickly sautéed in “black butter” with capers, garnished with tiny strips of ripe mango, and served with cognac-flavored blinis!

The remainder of the dishes I'll leave to the imagination. (That's the problem with my improv cooking: I rarely keep notes and by the following morning I have forgotten half the creations I'd dreamed up.) Suffice to say, hours later, by the time the party and all the toasts to enduring friendship were over, our little gathering slithered together down the staircase to the door and out into a now-silent piazza, happy, giggling, and waving.

Anne and I watched, smiled loopy smiles, and quietly thanked this strange little village and our bizarre corner of Basilicata for all its abundant gifts.

Full Circle—Beginnings and Endings

Sometimes those frenetic
Carnevale
celebrations mark an early start to spring—a riotous last fling to lighten the long lenten days. Unfortunately, this year winter would just not quit. A sullen, shivery grayness settled over the mountains and stuck in the canyons. On most days, all we could see from our ice-and snow-bound terrace was a miasma of freezing mists, which made our isolated village feel even more remote and cut off from the rest of the outside world. Reading together, sprawled on a mattress in front of our cozy log fire (I had finally mastered the subtle art of fire-making using our hard-to-burn logs), became a prime activity of our days. Cooking up big bean-and–root vegetable soups ran a close second, along with listening to the three great
B
s—Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. A dinner out with friends became the highlight of the week, but even amid all the wine-and grappa-induced merriment, ran threads of winter blues that were hard to dispel.

 

B
UT THEN
one day in March, things changed….

A fly. A single, common garden housefly. That's all it takes. A fly on the wall by our bed, admittedly looking a little shaky as it waddled toward the ceiling, but a fly nonetheless. The first we'd seen in months.

There is also something strange in the air today.

And not only in the air, which is unusually clear—the light almost Venetian crystalline—but also in the sounds of the village.

Because there aren't any. And no one on the streets either. As we stand on our terrace overlooking the piazza, we're surprised, almost alarmed, by the absence of cars—particularly Aliano's profusion of ancient
cinquecento
(the indomitable “little mules” aka Fiat 500s); the rackety scuolabus; those noisy
motorini,
tractorettes, and Apes; the dogs, peddlers, trilby-hatted octos on their benches, street sweepers, gossipy groups of women in doorways, and other women polishing steps or brushing the minutest flecks of dust from their personal bits of sidewalk; and most surprising of all, none of those endlessly scurrying black-clad widows.

At least the bakery is open. We can smell that always enticing, early morning aroma of their fresh-baked delights, from enormous four-pound rounds (just about the shape and size, I imagine, of prehistoric mammoth droppings) to those deliciously airy, fist-sized bread buns. But, odd again, there's no sign of anyone popping in for their daily basics.

Surely we don't have another fiesta in progress that someone forgot to tell us about? We can't blame Massimo this time because, for him, Aliano is just about as back-of-beyond as you can get, despite the fact that it's only an hour's drive from Accettura. And not Sebastiano either because he's off somewhere at one of those “let's revolutionize education” conferences that make headmasters deservedly feel so much better about their roles as creative catalysts for change in their local improvements, but unfortunately don't always seem to result in many real widespread changes at the national level.

But that doesn't alter the fact that this silence and absence of…anything…is rather disconcerting. In spite of our occasional tirades about the regular morning flurry and din, which often curtails our required seven hours of sleep (we're late-night people, devouring books often until the early hours), we suddenly miss all the normal village tumult and the little morning rituals of life here.
We've got used to them, I suppose, with a kind of “when in Aliano” acceptance. And, of course, despite all our ever-increasing network of local friends and acquaintances, we're still outsiders here, observers, so what right do we have to carp about whatever happens in the village? It's been going on for hundreds of years. And, after all, work starts early in Aliano, especially if you've got tiny fields and orchards to tend and nurture, often miles away, deep down and way across those hazy
calanchi
canyons.

And yet, despite all the strange silence, it is an exceptionally beautiful day. And unusually warm for a late-winter morning. What breezes there are brush past our faces like soft, diaphanous silk. And they possess an aroma, a perfume, very different from the winter morning pungency of wood smoke from a hundred chimneys and homes desperately trying to generate enough heat to lure lazy risers out of bed and into cold kitchens and bathrooms. I'm not very perceptive when it comes to aromas and the like, but I would say this is definitely a blossom of some sort. Maybe almond. They say almond is always the first to flower around here in the early spring. And then cherry, although we don't have many cherry trees in these parts. And then the fruit trees, the apple and pear trees particularly. But they come much later on, when the trees are convinced that the season has really changed and that they won't be zapped by a sudden snap of frost or a flurry of hard hail that would destroy the delicate flowers and threaten the quality and quantity of the summer's cornucopia.

But it's not spring, my little calendar-controller reminds me. Why, only four days ago we were skidding around on sneaky patches of ice on the cobbles and cursing the biting winds that made a stroll to the local store for milk and eggs tantamount to an arctic expedition.

Well, that's as may be, argues my little optimist. But you've got to admit, it really does feel different today. Even your body feels live-lier, less stiff and creaky than usual. And the coffee seems to taste better. And we're not wearing thick anoraks as we stand here together gazing out at the Pollino massif, so crisply profiled and devoid of haze that we feel we could almost walk to its snow-she-ened summit in a brisk morning hike.

And you know, I'm thinking, I like this. I like the silence and the stillness. And I like the sense that, after those long months of early evening darkness and constant battles with our recalcitrant fire in the living room, and walking around the house in thick jogging-suit clobber, our slowly revolving globe may just be inching over a little in its wobbly circumnavigations and allowing the sun more direct access into our tiny cranny of the world.

And there is color too—a pure, Wedgwood-blue sky, softer than a late spring or summer blue (on some summer days the sky is almost white against the blinding sun), but still a real blue from the Stigliano hills, across the whole of the
calanchi
and the valleys and the foothills and out over the Calabrian ridges, making them sharp as razors in the crystalline light. And the sun is giving off a soft, rich heat that is so different from the crisp chill of clear winter days. We can almost smell spring in the warmth. And it is barely nine
A.M
.

Then everything changes.

The church bells across the piazza suddenly begin frantic peals of celebratory chimes and the massive oak doors are flung wide open, and out they come: the octos, the black-clad widows, the mums and dads and schoolchildren and teenage nymphettes and punky boys, and the whole panoply of people who made up our potpourri village populace. Here they come, pouring out across the piazza in what, from my terrace, looks like the linear pattern of neutrons and quarks and all those other “strange” particles that appear out of nowhere when atoms collide in those enormous accelerator machines. And off they scatter, up the streets and alleys with the speed and lightness of step that seems so different from their usual sluggish winter meanderings.

I see Giuseppina heading across the piazza to our home and I wave. She looks up and gives a wonderful, warm smile.

“What's happening?” I call out.

She pauses, then opens her arms wide and calls out, “It's spring coming, David.
Primavera!
It's almost spring! We celebrate.”