Seasons in Basilicata

by David Yeadon

  However, the ever-tenacious Carlo Levi did not. He even described in lurid detail precisely how such creatures with dual natures “both horrible and terrifying” should be greeted when they returned home from their nocturnal adventures:

  Only at the third knock can the wife (of a werewolf) let him in; by that time the change is complete, the wolf has disappeared and he is the same man he was before. Never, never open the door before they have knocked three times. They must have time to change their shape and also to lose the fierce wolf-like look in their eyes and the memory of their visit to the animal world. Later they will remember nothing at all.

  Well that’s fine for them, I thought. But what about me, us, the non–“dual-natured” of the species? I mean, as much as I agreed with the actor Peter O’Toole’s little maxim, “We are all protean,” I didn’t think he was including a capacity for werewolf shape-shifting. And how could anyone in the village know who their wolfish companions were? They obviously couldn’t keep lugging around “inane Calabrian pigs” all the time to sniff them out. And they certainly couldn’t discuss the matter sensibly with a giggly female barista like Vittoria and her monster mimicry and Jaws- theme renditions. And Don Pierino, our dear priest friend here, who had nurtured countless souls in the village for more than three decades and who thought he had lured them out of all that local superstition lore, how could he possibly clarify the matter?

  I asked him a couple of days later, obliquely of course, so as not to offend his priestly nature. But, as Douglas writes, “It was not popular as a subject for conversation,” so he politely evaded my question and we discussed the niceties of his upcoming Madonna of the Rosary festivities and other papally approved local rituals instead.

  So, I guess I’ll never know. But from then on I decided I’d watch the beauty of the full moon nights from our terrace and then, like the other villagers, shut the shutters tight and, following Anne’s sensible example, go to bed early.

  Aliano’s New Olive Mill

  While the vendemmia is the high point of fall, the olive harvest is the lynchpin event of the winter season. Depending on the climate, it can take place any time between November and February. And, of course, just as important as the olives themselves is the quality of the milling process that converts these acrid, hard little fruits into silky sheens of extra-virgin oil. And this year was supposed to be a special year: the year of Aliano’s brand-spankingnew, gleaming, stainless-steel, bells-and-whistles galore olive mill.

  DON PIERINO WAS definitely excited. You could tell that by the extent to which his usual leprechaun grin was now expanding into one of those full-blown Italian smiles: bright, white teeth fully exposed, sparkling eyes, distinctly rosy cheeks and nose, and an unusual restlessness in his normally placid, priestly manner.

  “In a few weeks we will have our first pressings in the new mill, our own frantoio!” he told us with unsuppressed glee as Anne and I sat together with him in his study. We’d been given a brief tour of the pink stucco–walled plant, just down the road toward Alianello, financed in large part by a grant from the European Union, and had been impressed by the amazing amount of complex, shining equipment, from the conveyor belts to the enormous vats in the storage and bottling room—all laid out in full accordance with those voluminous European Union homogenizing regulations. “Over four hundred pages!” the site foreman had proudly told us, as final sprucing-up of the plant was under way in October. Around the same time, the BBC World Service was remarking on our little shortwave radio about the horrendous scope of those EU requirements—over eighty thousand pages of them in small type—which the ten recently admitted new member countries had to absorb and follow to the last sub-sub-paragraph of gobbledegook. Not to mention the equally voluminous pages of appendixes.

  But somehow it had all been done here, and whatever stamps and seals and bureaucratic rites of approval were necessary for the new mill had indeed been achieved.

  “It was not always so very easy. The government can be…difficult, and our local people are often suspicious of new ideas, new initiatives. Change of any kind,” Don Pierino said as he handed me the colorful new brochure proclaiming the creation of the “Olio dei Calanchi Maiatica of the So. Coop. CO.ZO.A.” A sprightly logo showed five black olives growing on an olive sapling with separate roots rising from the summit of one of Aliano’s unique clay-soil calanchi buttes, all against a perfect blue sky. Then came the reminder of the benefits of olive oil in general: “The salutary effect of Olio Oil is undoubted: it is very good for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, regulates digestive processes, limits the tissue degeneration and reduces the risk of biliry calculous.”

  Other than the last phrase, which left us a little confused, the rest of it seemed quite modest compared to some of the promotional hype that appears in American and European magazines claiming just about every imaginable benefit of olive oil, from complexion and skin tone enhancement, to virility stimuli, to promises of excessive longevity and enduring well-being. Recently though there had been a few doomsayers who, reflecting that peculiar American delight in product-puffing and then product-busting (remember the oat bran, grapefruit, and pineapple diets?), had questioned some of these more outrageous claims. But I guess the olive oil–industry publicists knew all about America’s yo-yo publicity antics and had managed to keep the image of “virgin” and “extra-virgin” labelings as pristine as the Madonna herself.

  I read on, bemused by the brochure’s Italianish promotional phraseology:

  Our Calanchi oil is an oil of high quality, thanks to the earth on which grows the Maiatica Cultivar olive tree. It is a genuine oil whose bouquet is moderately fruitted and a young taste of celery and hay. It is produced by old methods (grindstone and cold-squeezing) that leave unaltered the organological and nourishing characteristics.

  Above the text was a sumptuous color photograph of the cooperative’s new bottles and five-liter-can packagings set among a cornucopia of sunflowers, stone jars brimming with green and black olives, gorgeous spring-green salads, garlic, peppers, and ancient and very battered cooking pans.

  On the reverse side a photograph of the dramatic buttes and crags of Aliano’s calanchi country was reinforced by more delightful pidgin English text:

  OLIVE TREE

  Aliano is the village of Calanchi; huge hills of white clay that makes evocative sceneries, that can be compared to those of Goreme Valley in Cappadocia (Turkey), Nebraska and Dakota…. Aliano has a huge acheologic patrimony dating back to Eighth Century, B.C. Traditions, rituals and religious feasts still practiced in Aliano, in a village made famous by Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, help to comprehend the culture and history of Basilicata.

  Don Pierino watched us closely as we folded the brochure. “So,” he asked. “You like?”

  “Very impressive,” I said truthfully. The fact that the So. Coop. CO.ZO.A. had managed to put together a convincing presentation of the quality and uniqueness of Aliano’s one remaining staple crop (admittedly in rather bizarre English)—and in doing so had possibly saved the local farming traditions from fading into the mists of economic obscurity—was indeed admirable.

  “I hope the oil is as good as this leaflet says it is,” I said. “As good as that famous Florentine Conca d’oro [“Golden Basin”] oil!”

  The good don gave an eloquently expressive gesture that suggested the undoubtedly supreme excellence of our village product, expanded enthusiastically upon the brochure’s claims, and expounded at great length on the very special characteristics of the Maiatica olive.

  We nodded enthusiastically too, thinking our friend was a natural publicist. Put him on some TV program about the unique bounties of Italian home-produced gastronomic delights, and Aliano might well find its young men scurrying back from the urban fleshpots of Bologna and Milan to capitalize on the small family farms they’d so long regarded as old-fashioned, archaic, generational culs-du-sac of nonambition.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “You may ha
ve given little Aliano a whole new future.”

  “Yes, once again!” Anne added. She was always impressed by the priest’s get-things-done abilities, which to date had included the creation of the local Levi museum, involvement in all restoration activities and in the Parco Letterario Carlo Levi Viaggi Sentimentali outdoor theater and cultural events, and publication of the town’s spritely little magazine La Voce dei Calanchi.

  “Oh, I hope, I hope,” Don Pierino said, clapping his hands delightedly in a “from your mouth to God’s ear” spirit, although I was sure he was far too respectful of the higher powers ever to use such prosaic phraseology.

  “So, when does the pressing begin?” I asked.

  “When the harvest starts. Maybe in two or three months. And then we should have our first new products for distribution. Everything should be benessere (comfortable).” He was so excited I could have hugged him. (Certainly I had no problem hugging other people, but, I thought, maybe priests don’t go in for that kind of thing.) However, as we prepared to leave, telling him that we’d be there to celebrate the first extra-virgin cold pressings, he came around from behind his desk with his arm outstretched for a normal handshake. And I thought, what the heck, this man has given more than thirty years of his life to salvaging and nurturing not only souls, but the economic well-being of this little village in the middle of this wilderness. So I hugged him. And, after a moment’s surprise, during which I could feel his hands sort of flustering about, he returned the hug. A good one, too. Not quite bearish but certainly—what’s the word they used in church?—very beneficient. And he gave me a blessing, too. I got a personal blessing, which is a very rare occurrence for me. Come to think of it, maybe a first. His blessing of Anne was even more florid, although I noticed that, with her, he stuck to a demure handshake of farewell. Very correct local behavior apparently, especially in the presence of husbands.

  A Sad Postscript During the Winter Season

  Maybe rather than blessing us, Don Pierino possibly should have blessed the olive trees in the calanchi. They were having a tough time of it that year. Even in October the village farmers were predicting a poor harvest and blaming it primarily on the weather, most of all on the unusually wet summer, which was a no-no when it came to nurturing the budding fruits.

  And by December and January—normally the height of the harvest, with everybody out there handpicking the hard, green olives (not many tree-shakers in our area)—their predictions had proved to be all too true.

  “Hardly worth going to the fields,” one old man told me.

  “So, what will you do for olive oil next year?”

  “Use less and buy more,” he replied stoically. After all this was not an altogether unusual occurrence. The old saying “One good year and two lazy ones” had proved to be a consistently true mantra down through the centuries. And the peasants accepted the paucity of their harvest with the same dogged spirit of fatalism that they applied to most of life’s vicissitudes. A curse, then a shrug, then onto the next job, and the next task to be done in a lifetime of almost ritualistic rhythms.

  I felt particularly sorry for Don Pierino. The harvest was so poor he’d decided it was hardly worth starting up the brand-new mill. The old one was still functioning, so it was assumed that the pressings of the meager baskets and sacks of olives brought in by disgruntled farmers would be handled there.

  “I’m so sorry about your new mill,” I said to him when we met one day during what should have been the beginning of the harvest. “But they say it’s not unusual, a bad crop like this. Y’know, ‘one good year and two lazy ones.’”

  “One good and one lazy one,” he corrected me with a frown.

  “Oh, sorry. I thought…”

  “Well, I’m more optimistic than other people,” he added, with that sly grin of his. “I speak directly to the boss.” He looked heavenward and smiled.

  CHAPTER 9

  Flowing

  Another Nonevent (almost)

  Just as nature often played havoc with key seasonal events like the grape and olive harvests, so it did with more modest activities, like little saintly festivals.

  It was happening again. Just like that Accettura cowboy rodeo. Another important local event, this time in Aliano, has been canceled at the last minute with no prior word of explanation or notification of any kind, if the number of confused faces standing along Via Roma was anything to go by. There were signs all over on glowing pink placards proclaiming Sunday, October 6th, as the day of the village’s popular Processione della Madonna del Rosario, complete with two masses at noon and four o’clock, the procession itself at four forty-five, and a complesso (concert) starting around nine in the evening.

  The streets had been given an extra-thorough cleaning by the town’s two overworked sweepers, and the whole of yesterday, Saturday, had been raucous with the ear-splitting din of stage-assembly in the main piazza. Directly below our terrace, of course, on one of those unusually cool, sunny fall days when we’d hoped to read and write peacefully outside, gazing at our beloved unhazed vistas of Pollino and her prominent Calabrian sisters to the south.

  I forgave the workmen immediately. Assembling the forty-by-fifty-foot stage on rickety steel trellises on the sloping cobblestoned surface of the piazza could not have been an easy task, especially with the daily continuum of donkeys, tractors, Ape, furgoncini, zanzare-motorini (mopeds), buses, cars, and even the grape seller’s van. He too had decided to park directly below my terrace and conduct his rowdy bargaining and disputes with scores of locals anxious to buy grapes and make their own wine for the year.

  The grape van arrived about four o’clock, with more than a hundred and fifty twenty-five-kilo cassette of fresh-plucked red grapes gleaming in the sun. Then he departed with an empty truck at eight o’clock (leaving, much to the annoyance of our mayor, Tony, an enormous black stain of grape skins and juice on the piazza), long after the stage constructors had completed their task and adjourned to Bar Capriccio to celebrate a job well done…at least until a section of the stage railing collapsed and they had to reinstall it in the meager glow of streetlamps, with hands far less steady than they had been that afternoon.

  Everything was set for the festa on Sunday. Today.

  And here we are, Anne resplendent in an orange-silk trouser suit. And I’m dressed up a little bit more than usual, in neatly pressed slacks, polished shoes, and a brand-new, dark brown, made-in-Italy corduroy jacket, which I’d bought for an amazingly low price at the Carrefour hypermarket in Matera last week, and had not yet worn in public. All for what we hope will be an event worth capturing on film and in words of praise for the durability of local Catholic traditions, despite the village’s noted pagani reputation.

  And it’s around four-thirty P.M. now and, I guess, the second mass is almost over, and scores of expectant faces will soon be pouring out and joining the spectators already gathered along Via Roma. So we stroll toward the church to sneak a peek at the congrega tion…and the place is empty. Gloomy and echoey. No lights except those odd explosions of electric “candles,” with their flickering, flamelike lightbulbs. And we’re thinking, this is all very strange and maybe we’ll walk up to Don Pierino’s place and ask him what’s going on and…

  And here he is, ambling happily down the hill to the piazza in his flowing black priestly robes, and I’m walking up to him with arms outstretched and palms raised in an “what’s up?” gesture. (I’m learning the Italian body-language vocabulary pretty fast now.) and he’s smiling and reaching out to shake my hand. We shake hands, and I ask, “Dove è il processione?” He smiles his little leprechaun smile and says, “Ah, that’s next Sunday now.” And I ask why, and he says, “Because of the weather.”

  Which stumps us both for a second. We look up at the sky in case we’d missed something (a huge hailstorm or maybe a sudden tornado). But no, it’s still blue and bright as it has been since the first thing this morning, and so I do another one of those fancy body-language gestures, which is inte
nded to mean: “What are you talking about? The weather’s beautiful, and it’s a perfect day for the festa, especially as we canceled a Sunday lunch with Rosa and Giuliano just to be here and she’s peeved at us because of the short notice we gave her and because she’d cooked a special dish—either rabbit or boar or horse, I forget which—and we’re here instead, ready with camera and tape recorder to capture some authentic local color…so where is it?!” (At least that’s the gist of what I try to indicate in an admittedly rather over-the-top series of gestures, but it’s possible some of it gets garbled in my exasperation, modulated, of course, by an attempt not to be too rude to the good don. It also being Sunday. And him being the local priest, now being watched by the whole street.)

  “The forecast said storm,” he explains patiently, still smiling benignly at us both. “So, we’ve changed it to next Sunday. Please try to come.” And with that and another firm “I know you will” handshake, he’s off down the street, presumably to let everyone else know that they could all go home and relax and try again next week.