Seasons in Basilicata

by David Yeadon

  When I paused to put a new roll of film in the camera, he asked if I enjoyed the wine of Alianello. I replied that I didn’t know, having never sampled any.

  “Oh, Santa patata!” (Holy potato! a wacky local expression) he exclaimed, with a widening grin revealing his pink gums and large purple tongue. “Maybe then you would like to sample some of mine.”

  Hazy recollections of the rest of that afternoon include my first introduction to the delights of wining and dining in a Sassi-like cave (grotta or cantina) hacked out from the soft tufa rock beneath the prominent crag on which the partially abandoned village of Alianello Vecchio somehow still perches. Antonio called the ghostly remnants a paese sperduto (a god-forsaken place), and there was certainly something Craco-like and sinister in its broken walls and weed-clogged alleys.

  The approach to Angelo’s cave was precarious, even in a totally sober state. At least it was for me. Angelo tied his donkey to a tree by the road and then scurried off along a narrow rock ledge littered with loose stones, exhibiting the agility of a sure-footed goat, and pausing once in a while to look back at me as I followed with the pace and timidity of a turtle. If I stared hard at the rock face of the cliff I felt reasonably safe, but once my eyes strayed—as of course they did—to the edge of the three-foot wide path and the vertical drop of more than two hundred feet that lay beyond its eroded and very fragile-looking edge, my legs immediately developed the shakes and my pace slowed to a geriatric shuffle.

  TERRONI COUPLE

  “Very old path. A real sentiero,” Angelo called out, I think by way of encouragement, to assure me that for generations the path had withstood the ravages of time and the torrid climate and provided safe access to all the numerous caves scattered along its length. I nodded, but couldn’t quite seem to share his nonchalance. A rock suddenly shot out from under my right foot and sent me skidding toward the drop. The rock tumbled over the edge, and it was a long time before I heard it hit the earth far below. I backed up even closer to the cliff, using its occasional protrusions as handholds. I knew Angelo was smiling—maybe even sneering at my overcautiousness—but I decided not to look at him and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the path and the cliff. I wanted no more loose rocks. All I wanted, needed, was a glass of that wine of his to steady my nerves. Which it must have done, as I seem to remember, after our pleasant interlude together, strolling back along the same path with a confidence and braggadocio that were altogether lacking on my outward journey.

  Eventually we arrived at an overhang in the cliff face and an ancient wooden door set tightly in the rock. The door was padlocked with the kind of enormous contraption they doubtless once used to lock up castle dungeons. Angelo’s key was equally enormous—more than six inches long, very thick, and very rusted. Lock and key were joined, but for a while it appeared neither would submit to the other. Angelo spat, cursed, waggled the key, and thumped the lock with his fist.

  “Very old lock,” he explained unnecessarily. “Very strong.”

  Finally, with a series of deep rasps and grinds, something gave and the lock opened. Angelo pushed the thick, weather-gouged door inward.

  Daylight dappled the ancient walls of the hand-hollowed cave. As my eyes grew accustomed to the half-gloom, I spotted the marks of whatever chipping instrument—something like an adze perhaps—had been used to gouge out the interior. Although the space was not particularly large compared with the Sassi in Matera—a little over six feet high and maybe nine feet deep—it must have required enormous effort to complete the task. Whoever had undertaken the work had obviously been a methodical, practical, and even artistic man. The chiseled marks in the tufa were even and regular, and they caught the light in a rather pleasing manner. Depending on the angle of the cut, some facets were bathed in the full golden sheen of the sun while others glowed in various hues of bronze, amber, and ochre. There were shelves, too, cut right out of the rock, and hollowed areas for storage, which Angelo had used to good effect. On some rested small tools and boxes of nails and screws; on others sat various household items—plates, cups, and glasses—that suggested that he occasionally used the cave as a kind of vacation apartment. It seemed to be the ideal place, like one of those local shepherds’ baracche (huts)—a place to escape the intensity of the tight-knit village high above at the top of the cliff and enjoy a little solitary peace on a shelf of land boasting splendid vistas across the Sant’ Arcangelo Valley and the vast purple-blue Calabrian ranges beyond.

  Other objects made the cave feel distinctly domesticated—a metal-frame bed covered with a thin mattress and an old raglike blanket; a couple of rough-hewn stools; flurries of red peppers hanging to dry on strings attached to hooks pounded into the rock ceiling; half a dozen very moldy salamis dangling alongside strings of garlic, onions, and even tomatoes, which had wizened themselves into tiny, leathery, burgundy-red skeletons of their once-ripe plumpness; and four fat, golden globes of homemade pecorino cheese. And then the wine: Four, three-foot-high wooden barrels and six fifty-five-liter glass demijohns, each with its small tap at the base for pouring.

  IT WASN’T LONG before our sampling began. Angelo pulled the two stools into the doorway by the path so we could enjoy the breezes and views while we sipped his brews.

  The oldest was a three-year vintage Montepulciano—dark, rich, and thick, with a strong bouquet and an enduring taste that moved from tart to a coy sweetness at the end. The youngest was this year’s production of a Sangiovese—more modest in flavor but with a bright fruitiness that made it seem effervescent as it bounced along the tongue.

  Between glasses he served slices of one of his salamis, which, once the mold and skin had been removed, had a deliciously pungent, salt-and–hot pepper flavor that seemed to grow deeper the longer you chewed, especially if you added pinches of the chili pepper and dried tomato that Angelo had crumbled onto a plate from the strings of them dangling from the ceiling. Oh, and some of his olives, too. Beautiful dark green creatures he’d marinated for weeks in an olive oil, vinegar, wine, garlic, and a hot pepper mix and served in an old cracked bowl with such panache and pride that you’d have thought he was offering the finest Beluga caviar. And around the edge of the bowl, he placed chunks of aged pecorino stagionato, gamey with its rich aroma of sheep’s milk, but creamy sweet when it melted in your mouth.

  Fortunately, and coincidentally, Angelo had spent a few years working in England, not far from Nottingham, where Rosa and Giuliano once had their shop. While his memory of the language had faded somewhat, as the afternoon eased along, we still managed to chat in wispy strands of English about his life and his family.

  The cave had been carved out of the rock by his great-grandfather, and although Angelo insisted that it had been used as a wine and curing cantina for a long time, I wondered if it had once also been a dwelling, as was the case with many places like this around Basilicata. I was tempted to ask but was unwilling to risk our new companionship by prying into things that might be embarrassing to him or, worse still, might make him suffer any brutta figura (loss of face)—a real no-no in these parts if you valued an enduring friendship.

  Under the convoluted, and often corrupt, land reforms of the sixties, Angelo’s father had been able to convert his mezzadro (sharecropper) status into that of a landowner of seven hectares of arable earth, olive trees, and a small vineyard, now defunct. (Angelo purchased the grapes to make his wine from other larger local vintners.)

  I asked Angelo how he felt things had changed since the feudal “quagmire days” of the notorious mezzadria system, when, on a whim, powerful landlords might increase their fifty-percent share of all crops grown by their peasant tenants to sixty or even eighty percent.

  “Well, I suppose some will tell you things are much better now. But I don’t think too much has changed, really. Maybe worse now in some ways. Less people work the land now. The old men, like me” (he laughed a deep, throaty laugh, spitting out bits of olive and cheese), “we can’t do too much. And the young men…well, they won’
t. They go away. You know old story. In past they go to America or Australia. Now today that’s not so easy, so they go to the North—Bologna, Milano, or Germany. Even England for some.”

  “So at least the education system, the schools, may have trained them for a better life.”

  “Porca Madonna! Dio Cristo!” he exclaimed. “What education?! Most of them go to do building or house-painting or stupid kinda work. No security. No pension. Some find government jobs, but only if they have many raccomandazione [recommendations]. And you know what they think of recommendations from Basilicata? They think we still animals down here. Even though now we own our own houses and our land, and now many of us have cars, TVs, refrigerators, all these things. Just like up in the North. But they still think we all pagani, terroni, mezzadri. So…” Angelo gave an enormous, sad shrug and took a long slurp of his wine. “So, what can you do? In our world down here much has changed, but it has not made so much difference I think…”

  The breezes were warm and playful. Grasses rasped and the sun was hot, but not unbearable. A strange halo of haze slowly revolved around Pollino’s huge, rounded summit. Elsewhere the sky was azure blue and cloudless.

  I asked Angelo to tell me what life was like when he was a child. His eyes glazed over and he sighed. He was silent for a while, then spoke quietly: “It’s little things I remember most. Everyone was farming then—husbands and wives—all working on small pieces of land, sometimes a long walk from the village. So that’s what we all did, and you didn’t think about it. But the little things…like the foccaccia, warm from the bakery with garlic and little bits of tomato on top. We almost lived on that. We dipped it into our own olive oil. It was beautiful. And pasta. Lots of pasta. Maybe a little meat—salami, rabbit, lamb, even cinghiale—on weekends, but mainly pasta with olive oil and the conserva di pomodoro my mother made. A beautiful sauce with garlic and basil and little pieces of fennel. That gave special taste. Different from what others made. I could always tell hers. Sometimes my grandmother brought her own sauce, but it was just tomatoes and salt. You had to add things to make it good to eat. I think our home, my mother, had the best cucina di casa [home kitchen] in Alianello. All the family used to wait for her to shout, ‘Andiamo a tavola!’ [‘Come to the table!’]”

  Another long silence. I decided not to interrupt. He would tell me things if and when he was ready. And then suddenly he laughed, his wrinkles undulating across his face like things moving under his skin. “Oh, the toilets! I forgot. We had those great chamber pots—zio peppes they were called or, if you are polite, vasi da notte. There was always argument about who should carry those outside when they were full and pour the stuff down the ditch. And we all lived in one room, you know. Eight of us. With a small cantina at the side for the mule, pig, chickens, three cats, maybe four, and rabbits. We tried to keep six rabbits but sometimes we got very hungry and…well, we might only have two or three then. But, oh, they tasted so good in my mother’s wine-and-pepper sauce, and then she would curse at all the washing-up which she had to do in large bowl using sand and ashes from the fire. She kept soap for real washing—clothes and things like that. Soap was very expensive. Some people made their own soap from pig fat after they killed the pig and hung all the salamis. But they used lye in it, and it was dangerous. If they got the mix wrong it could burn your skin and your eyes. And now today when I go into our local store in Aliano, although it’s very small, I see two dozen, maybe more, types of soap and detergent and washing-up liquids…and all so cheap too!”

  Angelo laughed, a deep, warm, rumbly sound that echoed back into the cave. “Yes, it’s all so crazy! Once we had almost nothing—and not so long ago either—and now we’ve all got these new things in the stores. And all the TVs, too. My grandmother used to refuse to watch. She said the Pope should ban TV—all those naked women and stupid, rude shows and all the bad news about a world full of sin and evil things. She was very angry. And very strong. Like most women here. They say the men are the head of the house—the capo della casa—but…well, maybe that’s what the women like us to think. But I don’t think so. The young children worship their mothers like Madonnas, but as they grow up they see that she’s tough, too. Like my wife, Maria. She can be very sweet and kind, but she’s also very good at keeping all our affairs organized and looking after our money. There’s not very much, but she makes sure we use it carefully and save some.”

  He paused, nodded, and smiled to himself, lost for a while in some pleasant reverie about his domestic life. Then he was off again. “Once we had five bad years here in a row, crazy times: The hot winds, levante and libeccio, burned up the olives, the grandine [hail] flattened the wheat, the grapes got some kind of fungus, and most of our house crops—tomatoes, onions, zucchine, and things—were lost. But somehow Maria looked after the children and also went out and got jobs, little things: sewing, cleaning, teaching music. And she made sure we got through okay until things were better. And she never complained or got angry like some of the other women—real bitches, some of them. Hard, crude, always cursing, and shrieking.”

  Another long, introspective pause. Then Angelo continued quietly. “I thank God I am lucky to marry my Maria. And she always say to me, ‘We’ve had all our bad luck. Things can only get better now for us.’ And she was right. They always did. And when we look after another small farm, she work with me in the fields until our fifth child came. A bad birth…” Angelo paused. Obviously his memories hurt. “I thought I’d lose her, Maria. Baby came the wrong way. There wasn’t time to get her to Potenza, to the hospital, so everything was done at home like all the others. And you know…” He paused again. “She never cried once. She…just bit into the blanket until it was all over. Not a single cry of pain. She knew that was the old way it should be: no cries. Although it was very, very bad for her.”

  This time the silence went on longer than usual, so I poured us both another glass of his Montepulciano and decided I had to say something: “A toast, Angelo. You’re very lucky to have such a fine wife, so let’s drink to your Maria!” And we did, almost draining our glasses in one gulp. “And to you, too, Angelo, to a fine winemaker, genius of the art of salami-creation, and master of olive marinades.”

  “…And very happy man, too,” Angelo added with a big grin.

  “Why?”

  “Because although we are not rich peoples, we are autonomi—our own bosses—not dipendenti [employed workers]. Also we don’t have two much sotto le stelle [stress] in our lives. And, of course, I am also happy because my wife lets me come here and drink and eat and talk to peoples…good peoples.”

  “Thanks, Angelo. I owe you another cigar.”

  He turned and gave me a quizzical grin. “Eh! Who say I was talking ’bout you!?”

  Our wine-daft laughter echoed in the cave behind us, rolled over the edge of the cliff, and drifted off in the direction of Pollino’s hazy halo and the beginning of a lovely, luminescent sunset.

  Freedom Is the Absence of Choice…or Not

  Between these sudden spontaneous happenings, the simplicity and slow, steady pace of daily life here encouraged moments of reflection, so bear with me on this story. We’re taking a little diversion, but I promise we’ll soon return to Aliano.

  ONE OF MY FATHER’S unrequited ambitions in his later life was to write a book with the title This Freedom. He mentioned it many times with a wistful look in his eyes, usually after he’d closed up his grocery store in the small village where we lived on the fringe of the once-great Yorkshire coalfields. He would slam the door tightly shut, turn the lock with a sigh, and climb the stairs for a “quick wash” (he was very fond of that word “quick”: quick drive, quick nap, quick lunch, quick cup of tea). Then, without a scintilla of quickness in it, he would go into our lounge above the garage, sit at his old upright Steinway piano, and play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata or some gorgeous Debussy prelude or fragments of Chopin or Mozart or even parts of a Bach concerto, with all the grace and touch of a concert-hall maestro.<
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  My father’s life had not been particularly easy. Born to a rather poor Catholic family of Irish descent with younger siblings galore, he’d seen his beloved elder brother die a terribly slow death from lung-destroying mustard gas at the end of World War II. Later he played the piano for silent movies at local picture houses to boost the meager family budget. He rarely saw his father, my grandfather, who was a popular world-touring, music-hall performer, billed as “Yorkshire’s Own Harry Lauder,” from whose apparent successes the family rarely benefited financially. But Dad persevered at the piano, and his talents were recognized by a local mill owner, who adored the classics and who encouraged my father to take the scholarship exam for the London School of Music.

  My father passed, the mill owner offered to support him financially during his studies in London, and for once the world looked very rosy…until a series of sudden calamities in the family, including a sudden marriage for one of the other brothers, made Dad suddenly responsible for supporting his mother and younger sisters. London and a life of music and concert-hall recitals were now out of the question. He became an engineering draftsman briefly and then an insurance salesman until, not long after he married, he was posted to the British Air Force in Australia in World War II.

  Four long years later, he returned home a very different man, according to my mother. He was frustrated and disillusioned by the disasters of war, and by the loss of his job at the insurance company, a job supposedly “held in trust” until the war’s end.

  So, he became a shopkeeper. “It may not be much, but at least it’s all ours,” I remember his saying when he showed my sister and me our new home. His face showed a mix of emotion: pride in his independence and “freedom,” but I also remember seeing tears in his eyes. Music still coursed through his veins. The lost opportunity of his youth still rankled, dangling as a constant reminder, like a rotten carrot on the end of a broken stick.