by David Yeadon
I won’t belabor this little tale with more exuberant adjectives and exclamations of excellence. Suffice to say, I left Giusella’s little house convinced, once again, that the process of cooking is indeed a minor miracle. And that people like Giusella are the true miracle-makers, worthy of culinary sainthood in cucina di casa paradise.
And if there isn’t such a heavenly place, I would be honored to propose it to whichever higher powers might be listening. And I would remind them that cooking, the real casareccio casa cooking, is not about technique or flamboyance or fancy gimmicks or elaborate kitchen gadgets. It’s about wholesome goodness—so good you must have more—and about caring and love. Love for the ingredients, love for the often long processes of preparation, and, most important, love for those you invite to your table. It’s love in its most traditional, tangible, and delectable guise.
So, thank you, silent Giusella. Your love is in your creations, and they speak volumes. I tried to tell her this in my still-appalling Italian, and she, in return, offered her final farewell as I left: “Ca vo’campà quante campete u’cele e la terra.” I didn’t understand the significance of these words at the time, but I quoted a somewhat garbled version of them to Caterina a couple of days later when I told her of my morning of culinary education Accettura-style in Giusella’s kitchen.
“She said that to you!?” Caterina said, gasping.
“Why? Yes. Is it bad?”
“Bad!? No, no, no, it’s good, very good. It is like a blessing. She said to you: ‘May you live as long as the sky and earth shall last.’”
“She said that to me?”
“Yes. That is a great compliment. A wonderful thing to say. She must have really liked you.”
“I don’t know. She didn’t talk very much.”
“Ah well,” Caterina said with a wise little wink, “‘L’amacizia si mantenete, quanne u’stiauvuechie, vate e venete.’ ‘You keep friends by giving gifts for the gifts you receive.’”
“But I didn’t give her any gifts.”
“Well, she must have thought you did.”
And then I remembered another local saying offered by an elderly man I’d been talking to the previous week at Caffé Capriccio in Aliano. He was a fountain of information on the village, but at the end of our long chat he laughingly said, “‘Nu vecchie decite ca tenite nuuantanove anne e ancore s’avita ‘mparà.’ ‘Even when I’m ninety-nine years old I’ll still have so much to learn.’”
In these wild, mystery-filled mountains of Basilicata, I felt the same way. But then again, I reminded myself, we’ve only been here for a few short weeks and our plans were changing. Why not give ourselves a whole year, we wondered? That would mean three more seasons yet to go, which seemed a most enticing prospect…
Summer
CRACO GHOST VILLAGE
INTRODUCTION
“The summer was at its dreary pinnacle; the sun seemed to have come to a stop straight overhead and the clayey land was split by the burning heat…. A continual wind dried up men’s bodies, and the days went by monotonously under the pitiless light.”
CARLO LEVI
The less said about summer, the better.
It is not pleasant. It is hammer-and-anvil hot. It is a good time not to be here, and as the soporific, suffocating temperatures soar, and the afa (sultry weather) increases, the locals vanish too, at least those entitled to official vacation time. Life in the towns and villages of Basilicata grinds to a standstill as Italians rush, lemming-like, to il mare. The lidos along the flat, heat-hazed Metaponto Coast are crammed with bronzing bodies packed sardinelike in regimented rows of deck chairs, sunshades, and lounge beds. The time-honored daily rituals—sun-bathing, cream-and-lotion spreading; occasional sea dipping; candy-gloss and gelato-gorging; bambino-bussing; long pranzi (lunches); endless beach-blanket chattering and child-watching; bagnino (lifeguard) and near-naked ragazze (girl) admiring—fill the days nicely. Such activities are as neat and predictable as the fresh-cut fruits offered by beach-boy vendors, whose bronzed bodies titillate the ladies and bring out that deep-seated machismo lurking in the soul of every Mamma-pampered, forever-tan Italian male. All in all, not an enticing prospect, especially if one adds the unwanted panhandling by emarginati and drogati (social outcasts and drug addicts). So, recognizing the need to visit family in England, Anne and I left for a while and avoided at least the “dreary pinnacle” of that season of sear and shrivel.
Upon our return in early September we asked our friends how they’d managed during the hell time, and we were met with furrowed brows and frustrated expressions that seemed to say, “Why even think of reminding us?” So we stopped asking and assumed that nothing much had occurred during our absence other than pure stoical, day-by-day existence and a constant search for relief from that notorious southern sun. No one contradicted our assumption.
And thus we resumed our lives in Aliano in the waning heat of that long and unusually hot summer.
CHAPTER 5
Mood Shifts
Some Tourists Come to Town
When we returned to Aliano, tourist season—not that Basilicata has much in the way of tourists—was still rolling its multitudes across Italy, and our little village was about to experience a brief (very brief) touristic interlude.
IT WAS A BRILLIANT, brazen evening. The swifts were out as usual, swiftly wiping out mosquitoes and everything else that might intrude on our enjoyment of the sensual slipping-down of the sun, the approach of a predinner calm, and Aliano’s gentle and informal passeggiata. I was at my table on the terrace, also as usual, watching the colors deepening over Pollino and wrapping up a useful afternoon of writing, with a couple of sketches thrown in when the mood struck.
I thought I’d stroll down to the fossa, have a sip or two of one of those obscure Italian liqueurs at Café Rosa, and then return home to cook us dinner, a dish I hadn’t quite decided on yet. Something spicy. Possibly tomatoes eaten raw with a little olive oil, basil, fresh-ground black pepper, and thin slices of mozzarella di bufala, one of our favorite of the regional specialties. Maybe I’d make that the antipasto and add some slices of Accettura caciocavallo cheese, reated from the milk of a special local breed of white cows.
And then a bus arrived. Not one of the usual blue public buses that rattled their way up and down the tornanti three times a day to and from the main square. This was something much more souped up, with flashy logos and brilliant rainbowed paintwork that almost put the evening sun to shame. And it was full of faces, a most unusual sight. The public buses were invariably near empty, to the point where one wondered why they even bothered to run them. Except that this was Basilicata, the new oil-rich, but still job-poor, Basilicata, a place with a future, maybe, and certainly one to be treated with a little more respect than in previous years when it was regarded, accurately I guess, as very much the back of beyond.
Anyway, in rolled this remarkably colorful, ultrasophisticated luxury tourist coach, its occupants’ faces gazing outward in bewildered fashion. It pulled up in front of the church, its back end taking up a substantial part of the Piazza Roma.
The old men by the war memorial and on the benches down Via Roma stared in disbelief. Tourists? At this time of day? In the tail-end of the season? Even at the peak of summer, Aliano was way off the traditional tourist routes, although, over the last few years there had been a growing “cultural tourism” interest in its links with Carlo Levi and in its ancient and strange traditions. But in mid-September?
The octos rose up, hats adjusted and walking sticks rampant, and waited with curious bemusement to see what would happen next.
A bunch of rather weary, tornanti-tossed, summer-clad visitors slowly emerged from the dark-windowed interior of the bus and blinked in the bright early evening light. They all milled around an attractive female guide, who was explaining, I assumed, why they were there and what they should be looking for and at.
“…in twelve minutes,” I heard her say in English.
I had m
issed most of the early commentary, but definitely heard that last bit. I was quickly off the terrace and down into the piazza in record time and standing with the octos listening to the guide’s fragmented pitch about peasants, regional poverty, and Carlo Levi.
“This is the church he described in his book,” she told them, “but there’s no time to see the museum.” And then came her reminder: “Don’t forget, we’ve got only twelve minutes. Please be back in time. We have to be in Potenza for dinner.”
Potenza! That’s quite a drive, I wanted to tell them. Your guts will be so twisted and tortured by the tornanti that you’ll never eat dinner tonight.
But they were already off, cameras flashing at the old men posing—yes, posing—for cute “character” pictures, and then vanishing up the side streets behind the church.
I followed one young couple into the store across from the bakery. Anne had reminded me on the way down to the piazza that we needed eggs, and as I was selecting each one carefully from a large bowl full of fresh-laid beauties, I heard the most bizarre exchange in a regal-toned Oxford English accent.
“Oh, no, no, darling, no please,” came the enticing whisper from the female.
“Why not? You love it!”
“Oh, well, all right,” she said, giggling. “But do it now, quickly, before I change my mind.”
“I know you want some just as much as I do.”
“Yes! I know I shouldn’t. But I really do. Please. Now!”—followed by mutual giggles and then silence.
I peeped around the aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of some energetically erotic antics performed by the two obviously highly charged tourists among the piled packets of dried pasta and beans. But regrettably, the scene was dismally anticlimactic: She was merely devouring a bar of dark Perugia chocolate, and he was in the process of unpeeling a hazelnut-crumble.
Outside I saw a group of more elderly visitors behaving far less demonstratively. There were strolling slowly down Via Roma to the fossa and Café Rosa, mingling with the briscola card players (vehemently cursing and table-thumping) and the younger men lolling against the railing, ultracool in the face of this invasion of plump matrons and hairy-kneed retirees.
I wandered closer and instantly recognized their accents: that wonderful, in-your-face, “you don’t fool me, mate” Yorkshire dialect, complete with “luvs” and “Ah’ll ’ave a pint, George,” and the ladies’ “Well, I never…” murmurings.
“Evenin’,” I said to a huddle of them staring blankly up the street toward my house and obviously wondering why they were there and what they should do next.
“Evenin’, lad,” said one elderly gentleman (so elderly I couldn’t take offense at the “lad” bit. In fact, it rather lifted my spirits). “You one of our lot?”
“No, no. I live here. Up at t’ top end of the street. Just by t’ church.” (How easily that strange northern England vernacular emerged with barely a second’s hesitation.)
He looked at me quizzically and nudged the lady next to him, his wife, I presumed. “Gladys. Lad ’ere lives ’ere. An’ ’e’s a Yorkshire lad bi’ sounds o’ it.”
“I am Yorkshire,” I said. “Born in Castleford, near Leeds.”
“Tha’s kiddin’,” he said.
“No. No kiddin’. Ah’m a Yorkshire lad and I’m livin’ ’ere for a bit. Lovely spot. So, what are you lot doin’ in these parts then?”
“Don’t ask me, lad. We’re on this ’ere archaeological trip. Greek and Roman remains and all. Some Etruscan stuff, too. They said we were comin’ up to see this ’ere village. Somethin’ ’bout a fella wrote a book ’bout all the weird goin’s-on roundabout.”
Another man stepped forward. He was a lean, tall, ascetic gentleman with an aristocratic bearing, dressed immaculately in a safari-type outfit, but he immediately destroyed the image he gave by addressing me in the broadest of Lancashire accents. “’E’s talkin’ ’bout that Jewish chap…what’s ’is name…”
“Carlo Levi.”
“Right. That’s ’im.”
“Have you read his book?” I asked. How pleasant it would be, I thought, to share a few musings about the man whose words and sentiments had lured Anne and me there in the first place.
“They gave us some stuff but, to be reet honest, I ’aven’t read it yet.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “Best be gettin’ back to t’ bus. She only gi’us a few minutes.”
“Seems a rather short stay.”
“Aye, well. These trips are all like that, you see. Y’ come in, gerra few photies and you’re off again. ’Ardly time for a pint an’ a trip to t’ loo…’s all a bit daft, really.”
We strolled up Via Roma together back to the gleaming, multi-color coach, bathed in the last scarlet flare of a very dramatic sunset.
“So you live ’ere then?” the man from Lancashire asked.
“Yes. That house there right in front of you, with the terrace. Great place. Fantastic views.”
“What for?” he asked. “You on ’oliday?”
“No, I’m a writer. My wife and I are doing a book on this area.”
He stopped abruptly and gave me a long, withering look. “You…” He seemed at a loss for words. He looked at the house, then at me again, and then spun around to take in the huge purpling vista of Pollino and the wild calanchi landscape and all the tight-knit charms of the little village.
“You **** jammy bugger!”
I laughed out loud. It had been years since I’d heard those northern “street” words.
“It’s not a bad place, is it?” I said rhetorically.
He stared at me again, chuckled, scratched his balding head, and then said: “Not bad!? It’s bloody champion, mate. Tha’s got some reet gumption finding summat like that. Do me no enda good to stay ’ere for a bit an’ stop all this ’arf cocked runnin’ around! All this lovely eatin’ ’n’ drinkin’ ’n’ loungin’ about…” (the last bit added with envy tinged by a distinct touch of Anglo-Saxon disdain at overt hedonism).
“Yes, I bet it would,” I said.
There was a long pause, and then he turned to me with a laugh and added, “Aw, sod off!”
I think he meant it kindly, even though Yorkshiremen and Lancashiremen rarely see eye to eye about anything.
Then they were gone. The guide did a quick head count, smiled at me and the coterie of villagers gathered around the bus, still gaping vacuously, and pulled the coach door shut.
In a short while all was quiet again. The shadows were deepening. The old men were returning to their benches. Dogs were barking. Coffee cups clinked in the bars. And all was as it had been a quarter of an hour before.
I returned to our terrace to watch the moon rise. Anne and I toasted our little village with glasses of chilled sambuca, and I wished I could have shared a bit of all this with my north of England visitors. They looked as if they could have done with some slowdown and silence.
It’s a strange life, I thought. This organized-trip type of tourism. Never did quite understand it.
In Carlo Levi’s Prison
After the tourists’ hasty departure, I realized that, although I knew the Levi Museum and the new gallery of his artworks well, there was one place in the village I hadn’t yet explored: his place of confinement, his prison.
WHEN HE WAS first brought to Aliano by the police in 1935, Levi was left to find his own lodgings. Of his first option he wrote that he was, “closed in one room, in a world apart, where the peasant lives out his motionless civilization on barren ground in remote poverty, and in the presence of death…The air was black with thousands of flies, and other thousands covered the wall…I felt I had fallen from the sky, like a stone into a dark pond.”
But eventually he was offered another house:
by far the most impressive structure in the whole village. From the outside it looked decidedly gloomy with its blackened wall, narrow barred windows and all the marks of long neglect. It had been the home of a titled family
which had gone away long ago; then it had served as a barracks for the carabinieri, and the filth and squalor of the walls inside still bore witness to its military occupation. Strips of plaster and cobwebs hung down from the gilded and painted ceiling and stalks of gray grass had pushed up through the cracks in the tiles. As we went from room to room, we were greeted by a quick, furtive sound like that of frightened animals running for shelter.…I threw open a French window and went out onto the balcony…when I stepped out of the darkness I was blinded by the sudden dazzling light. Below me lay a ravine…and infinite wastes of white clay, with no sign of human life upon them, shimmering in the sunlight as far as the eye could see until they seemed to melt away into a white sky. Not a single shadow broke the monotony of this sea on which the sun beat down from overhead…how could I manage to live in this noble ruin overlooking the bottomless sadness of this desolate countryside. But my new home had the advantage of being at the lower end of the village, out of sight of the mayor and his acolytes; I should be able to take a walk without running at every step into the same people and the same conversation.
And yet, Levi wrote later, that “in spite of my work…the days went by with the most dismal monotony, in this death-like existence, where there was neither time, nor love nor liberty.”
Things worsened for him in the approaching winter:
The wind came up in cold spirals from the ravines…went straight through a man’s bone and roared away down the tunnellike paths. There were long, heavy rains…the clay was beginning to break up and slide slowly down the hillsides, a gray torrent of earth in a liquefied world.…I had a choice between freezing and weeping…as the world just beyond my door melted away in the rain. Then came the snow…a stillness and a silence thicker than before settled down around the lonely mountain wastes. I gazed into the wind-swept grayness, as if I had lost all my senses and slipped out of time into the wastes of eternity from which there was no return.