by David Yeadon
Giorgio’s audience remained still and silent for quite a long while, and—maybe it was just my imagination—but I could have sworn that the breezes up from the calanchi had turned colder. Much colder.
CHAPTER 6
Celebrations
A Little Education on Education
Our circle of friends in and around Aliano grew, not so much by our own initiative, but rather thanks to the diligence and direct empathetic involvement of our village priest—the make-things-happen maestro who had found our home for us. In addition to organizing Aliano’s many religious festivals and celebrations, Don Pierino was truly a persistent, if occasionally forgetful, network-creator.
“You really must meet Sebastiano Villani, Director of Education in Stigliano and the headmaster of our school,” he urged (for the fifth time now) when I met him by chance in Edenfruit. (Actually he gave Sebastiano’s full, impressively official title in Italian: Dirigente Scolastico dell’Istituto Comprensivo). The two ladies running the store, standing together surrounded by enormous latticework sacks of field-fresh onions and new potatoes, nodded enthusiastically. Doubtless their children attended his school.
“I will arrange for you, okay?” the good don said.
“Fine, great, thank you,” I said. But what I was really thinking was, Why is it taking you so long!?
“Oh, and he speaks English very good,” the don emphasized.
Ah, at last, another kindred spirit, at least in terms of language…but, as it turned out, also in terms of our mutual interest in and admiration of Carlo Levi.
“I CAN’T THANK Levi enough for making me a reformist teacher and a headmaster,” Sebastiano Villani told me emphatically as he led Anne and me around his school in Aliano, tucked away up the hill with glorious mountain vistas out of every window. Although Sebastiano was in his late forties, his round, pleasant face possessed an almost childlike aura of enthusiasm and glee, and his eyes glowed with energy and excitement whatever the subject under discussion…but particularly so if it happened to be Levi. Sebastiano had read all Levi’s books, had studied his philosophy when he was a teenager, and had been inspired, even at that early age, to ensure that the future form of education in local schools around Stigliano, and particularly in Aliano, would never be allowed to sink to the miserable, pathetically redundant methods that characterized the typical teacher’s approach in the 1930s.
“Let me read you what Levi wrote. I’m sure you’ve seen this, but just listen: ‘The teacher [Don Luigi Magalone, also the mayor and brother of Donna Caterina] was exercising his teaching function. He was sitting on a balcony just off the classroom and having a smoke. He had a long cane in his hand, and, without moving from his chair, he restored order within by striking through the window with astonishing accuracy at the heads or hands of such boys as had taken advantage of his absence to make a rumpus.’”
Sebastiano held up his finger in a “please wait” gesture, rumpled through the well-worn pages of his copy of Levi’s book, and then continued. “‘The children were gifted with insight, a thirst for learning…but they learned precious little at school with the inspiration of Don Luigi’s cane, cigars, and patriotic speeches; although attendance was obligatory they came out as illiterate as when they went in…yet no teacher could have asked for more eager pupils.’
“It was almost like a vision when I read this, a calling, you could say,” said this utterly dedicated, yet high-spirited and often very humorous man who had no reservations whatsoever about his chosen course in life. “Well, maybe just a few,” he said, laughing and making his thick, salt-and-pepper moustache jiggle, Groucho Marx–style. “I get so very tired of all the regulations. Endless regulations. And always new ones coming and confusing things. And the crazy thing is, all our schools are now autonomous. There’s not supposed to be a lot of government involvement. ‘You are free to set your own courses,’ they tell us, but then they keep inventing new regulations. It’s absolutely crazy!”
Sebastiano’s grasp of English was refreshingly extensive, and he knew precisely which words to use to make his points. There was no judicious mincing, no mundane platitudes or bureaucratic obfuscation that, as he said vehemently, “many headmasters use to avoid their responsibilities or to try to explain why nothing gets done and nothing really changes.”
Sebastiano was a true catalyst of change—making class sizes small and intimate, ensuring that his schools were models of creative stimuli and high achievement—and, more recently, a leading Italian proponent of information technology, arranging video conferencing, online courses for his teachers, and Internet and video link-ups between schools and students all around the world. He also coordinated the publication of lively newsletters for professionals and children, dealing with a vast array of topics, all generously reinforced with illustrations, photographs, and charts.
He picked up a copy of his international newsletter for schoolchildren, Our Neighbors. “Listen to this letter we printed from a child in Greece. It was sent on the Internet to us. He explains about his grandfather’s grape harvest, which is very similar to ours. So, it helps create a link between our two countries:
I am at my grandfather’s vineyard to harvest grapes. This is the first year we harvest grape since the years before the vines were so little that they could not produce grapes. We take the fruit boxes. My grandfather cuts the beautiful bunch of grapes and puts them in the boxes. As soon as I learn how to cut the bunches I take the scissors and start cutting. It’s much fun to harvest grapes and sometimes I eat some even if my hands are dirty. When it gets late and there are only a few vines to harvest, we have to cut the bunches as soon as we can and at last we fill the boxes. Then we get back to our country village and in our garage we squash the grapes by hand because there aren’t many. It has been a very interesting thing to harvest our grapes.
“The key for our young students is cultural change,” Sebastiano said, his eyes gleaming with a missionary’s fervor. “That’s the only way to help them to progress. Learning to speak English properly, in conversation and discussion, is very important because their future will be based upon conversation and communication. All around the world. Of course that must be reinforced with ways to expand the South, our poor Mezzogiorno, economically.” Sebastiano’s eyes glazed. “Sometimes…sometimes I wish I could do more. But I am only a teacher. I can help change attitudes but…I cannot provide the factories.”
“You have a hard job,” I said.
“Of course it’s hard work,” he said, his beaming face showing no signs of the stress he claimed plagued the life of anyone who tried to “make a difference.”
“But you look pretty happy to me,” I said.
“Of course I’m happy. I’m doing what I always dreamed I’d do. And I’m annoying the people I should be annoying—the ones Levi described as the people to whom change is always a threat no matter what benefits it might bring. You see, there are, particularly in Italy, two kinds of people” he said. “The first are the peasants—and I don’t mean peasants in the old terroni or mezzadri (sharecroppers) sense; I mean in a positive sense, the ones who work hard and get things done and produce useful goods for other people.”
“And the second?”
“The second are all those “little power people”—Levi’s ‘Don Luigis’—the ones who grab and hold on to their little bits of control and authority, often given as a favor by some gens group—that’s what we call our ‘old-boy networks’ over here—and who achieve nothing of any real value. They work as little as possible, like our statali [government] employees, who can retire before they’re even fifty on full and generous, index-linked pensions and are renowned for their useless paper-shuffling, their hour-long coffee breaks, and not coming back to work after the siesta because they’ve got only a thirty-five-hour—even less, really—workweek. Levi called them ‘middle-class village tyrants’ when talking about Aliano and the Mezzogiorno. He wrote, ‘They live off petty thievery and the bastardized tradition of feudal rights
and under Fascism this middle class took over and identified itself with the power of the state.’”
“Yes,” I said. “Levi got pretty outspoken in that last section of his book.”
“Outspoken!? He was advocating revolution—colpo di stato—at least in Mussolini’s eyes. He demanded ‘a new kind of state which must be renewed from top to bottom, to remove the unbridgeable gulf between the individual and the state.’ And he was correct. It’s still an enormous problem today, particularly in our South, and I believe some kind of self-governing autonomy is vital. Similar to what we’re supposed to have in our schools.”
“Surely, though, there are more than two main groups? What about the very rich and the huge landowners and the big power guys and…”
“Oh, yes. Of course. But Levi simplified things, mainly to show that most people fall into those two categories he described. And the hard work and production of the peasants is so often made difficult or impossible by the stupidity and complacency of the second group.”
“Yeah. I guess that happens all over the world.”
“Possibly. But in Italy it is worse because we do nothing about it. As a teacher I see it all the time. I only hope I can help make things a little better for our next generation.”
“I’m sure you—”
“—will? Well, maybe. Who knows? But I have good teachers working with me. In fact, you will meet some of them. I will arrange.”
“Absolutely. Fine. Wonderful,” I said as I felt our little network of links and attachments growing. And once again, all thanks to our good and loyal friend, Don Pierino.
Dinner at Donna Caterina’s Palazzo
In the same way that serendipity seemed to shape our “dawdle-days,” it also brought spontaneous, and invariably enticing, surprises. Especially when Sebastiano was involved, following up on his promise to introduce us to some of his teacher-friends.
THERE WAS A KNOCK on our door. Well, actually, it was more like a persistent rattle, which we ignored at first, thinking that someone had left the door to the street open and an errant breeze had billowed its way up four flights of stairs. But a second and more persistent series of rattles made me realize that this was no errant breeze but the odd sound that Giuseppina made when she was standing outside our apartment door trying to gain entrance.
Why she just didn’t knock in the normal manner eluded me. Maybe she thought rattling was more polite. Anyhow, there she stood on the shadowy stairs, holding out her cellular telephone (almost everyone in the village used cell phones due to the utter unreliability of the one Telecom Italia public phone way up on the windy top of the hill). Giuseppina was obviously in the middle of lunch, to judge by her insistent chewing and by the bits of cheese stuck to her upper lip. I invited her in. “No, no,” she said, pointed to her still masticating mouth, and thrust the phone into my hand. Then, before returning downstairs and indicating that I could return the phone when I had finished, she mumbled, “Sebastiano.” And I said, “Who else!?” but she didn’t seem very amused this time. On the other occasions she’d had to make the climb up to our apartment with the phone and announce, “Sebastiano,” she had at least smiled.
I tried to suggest to Sebastiano that maybe we shouldn’t continue the habit of communicating in this way, making poor Giuseppina climb the stairs every time, but he laughed in a kind of smug manner and suddenly I remembered that he was Giuseppina’s boss! (Giuseppina did occasional cleaning at one of his two Aliano schools.) So, I thought, Hey, I’m just the middleman in this little arrangement. Let them sort it out.
“So, David, are you two doing anything tonight?” Sebastiano asked.
I hated to admit that we weren’t doing anything except looking forward to a quiet evening together.
“So, how would you like to have dinner in the palazzo off Via Roma, where Don Luigi and Donna Caterina used to live. You remember? He was the mayor—the little dictator—and the village teacher when Levi was here. He was a man with an amazing ability for self-deception. And she was his sister, a very clever and powerful woman. It might be interesting for you to see where they lived. It’s quite an important place.”
Despite our previous plans for gentle indolence and at-home indulgence, this sounded like an excellent idea. Anne agreed. So, I said, “Excellent idea.”
“Good. We, Rocchina—my wife—and I, will pick you up about seven o’clock. I think you’ll like the people who live there now. Giuseppina, the same name as your landlady, is one of my teachers, and her husband, Bruno, is a farmer. They make all their own foods. And Giuseppina is a very, very good cook!”
“Okay,” I said. “See you at seven.”
So, seven o’clock came and I was sitting in my neatly pressed trousers with my clean shirt, wind-dried on the terrace after a good scrub, and recently polished shoes. Anne looked immaculate despite the fact that she had brought barely half a suitcase of clothes with her. And there was that rattle at the door again. Funny, I thought, Sebastiano normally rings the intercom buzzer to be let in. Well, maybe the outer door was left open.
I walked to the door saying, “Ah, Sebastiano, you’re right on time…” but it was Giuseppina again, holding out her cell phone and not smiling at all. “Sebastiano,” she grunted, thrusting the phone into my hand, and then vanished down the stairs before I could even mumble apologies or thanks.
“Hi, Sebastiano,” I said “Boy, you’re really giving Giuseppina some hearty exercise on all these steps.” This delicate rebuke seemed to float right over his head.
“David. Very sorry. Some school things. We’ll be late. Okay? About eight o’clock. Okay?”
“Okay. See you at eight.”
This time, I thought, I really have got to make amends to Giuseppina, otherwise our landlady-tenant relationship is likely to become a little bruised.
Fortunately, I had a small, but expensive, box of Perugia chocolates in the fridge. I’d bought it on a whim as a gift in reserve. The box was in the shape of a heart, with roses on it and a pretty pink ribbon and bow. Perfect, I thought. Anne agreed. So, I carried the chocolates and phone downstairs, knocked on Giuseppina’s door, and was shown into her small, cozy living room. This time she was smiling. She had just risen from her armchair by the fireplace. A half-knitted something-or-other in funereal gray and black lay on a side table.
“Ah, you’re knitting,” I said.
“Yes, for my son. For Gianfranco.” She grinned sheepishly but was obviously pleased I’d noticed her handiwork. “He good man.”
“Yes, yes, he is,” I agreed. Gianfranco had helped fix a number of small unworkables in our apartment, and I was hopeful that someday he might even get around to repairing our TV, too. Not that we expected to gain much by watching the five all-Italian channels, but the ludicrous game shows, with their flouncings of (for no reason we could understand) near-naked beauties might be good for a chuckle over dinner with Anne.
Giuseppina was a perfect hostess. There was no sign of any frustration over Sebastiano’s incessant telephone calls. Instead she had me sit in her chair by the fire, served me a glass of that dark but enticingly aromatic Amaro Lucano liqueur, and pulled out her bulging file of family photographs (we’d looked at it twice before, but she’d obviously forgotten). She reminisced about the achievements of her now-grown offspring and their voluminous families, and ended up almost weeping as she pointed to her late husband’s photograph on the fireplace mantel. She whispered, half to herself, “So young, so young to leave us…only sixty-three,” as she had done twice before on prior visits. But I found her devotion and her constant wearing of black somehow very touching. Hers seemed to be not one of those decades-long ritualistic mournings but something still real and obviously traumatic. I could see the hurt: a sort of confused sadness tinged with a sense of injustice. “So very young,” she said again.
Fortunately the chocolates seemed to cheer her up, even though we had to go through the “Oh no, no, no, no,” “Oh yes, yes, yes, yes” routine before she finally opened the
beguilingly decorated box and offered me one. And then she kept insisting that if there was anything I needed, I only had to ask, and that she was so sorry about the TV set (it had been carried from our apartment for repairs and now sat in a corner of her living room, like something in disgrace, its black screen turned toward the wall), and did I need any washing or sewing done?”
When Sebastiano finally arrived we were still making conversation, or at least communicating quite happily in bitty “Italianish” helped along as usual with lots of gestures, smiles, and shrugs…and glasses of that pungent liqueur.
Sebastiano smiled benevolently upon this scene of pleasant domesticity, and then, bless him, apologized most arduously for making so many calls to me. And Giuseppina said, “Oh no, no,” anything she could do to help….
So, that was a nice little resolution of things, and I knew that at least Sebastiano’s next few calls would be dealt with pleasantly, with no more frowns on Giuseppina’s part.
The rest of the evening went splendidly, too. The other Giuseppina and her husband, Bruno—she a plump, bubbling, laughter-filled lady, and he a very loquacious farmer with a stern weather-worn face that kept cracking open into warm, ironic smiles—were both generous and amusing hosts. And although poor Sebastiano had to act as interpreter once again, he accepted his now-familiar role graciously as we blazed our way through a gargantuan dinner in a cozy cryptlike kitchen and dining room in the lower part of Donna Caterina’s palazzo.
ALIANO ALLEY
Once again I hesitate to describe all the gustatory delights of that evening, but I’m sure there are many who share my enthusiasm for exotic—especially home-produced exotic—fare. And presumably there are also others who share my maxim: “Eat to enjoy and not to undertake a constant fiber-cholesterol-carbo-calorie–counting guilt-trip.” So here we go again: We began with a platter of sprawling antipasto—wafer-thin slices of home-cured coppa ham rolled around basil leaves and shavings of pecorino cheese; six different kinds of green and black olives; and wedges of a warm, pungently aromatic cheese-and-mushroom frittata. This was followed by brimming bowls of farfalle (“little butterfly” pasta) in a rich mushroom, tomato, and ham-stock sauce. Then came a secondo course of grilled pork chops doused in a garlic, parsley, and pepper sauce, with al dente slices of grilled zucchine, followed by a savory salad of four different “field greens.”