by David Yeadon
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.”
EVENTUALLY, 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 Bs—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.
BUT 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 wh
ole 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.”
And I smile and think, yes, yes, indeed it is. And suddenly the world feels fresh, vigorous, and full of new possibilities. As do I. Especially when Anne emerges on the terrace with fresh cups of coffee and gives me a hug and murmurs softly, “There really is something lovely in the air today, don’t you think?”
UNFORTUNATELY this shift in the seasons was also the time for our departure. The date was fixed. We had to fly back to the U.K. to visit family, and then on to Japan, where Anne would resume her teaching. So, despite the rapidly improving weather, our mood became progressively more melancholic as our days in Aliano grew fewer.
On the morning of our departure, following a flurried week of feasts and tearful farewells (lots of buon fine, buon principio, “happy ending, happy beginning” wishes), Anne and I sat together quietly on our terrace for one last time, watching the village come to life in its normal ritualistic fashion. We were reminiscing about all our experiences and the kaleidoscopic range of things we’d learned over the months there. We realized that Aliano had given us abundant gifts of understanding, pleasure, and occasional “dark side” terrors. And even before we’d left, we were beginning to miss our house, our friends, and the way of life there that had opened up so many previously dormant aspects of our lives. And we were tantalized, too, by all the unlinked, incomplete threads of our experiences—the fact that we had yet to meet the elusive Maria, our village witch; enjoy Accettura’s strange and very pagan Festa del Maggio, which features the ancient fertility rite of “marrying” an oak and holly tree; spend time trimming the vines and olive trees on Bruno’s farm over in Sant’ Arcangelo; and complete our “Farm Diary” of all the tasks your average contadino family had to do to maintain its proud self-sufficiency.
There were also many other things still to be learned: where to gather the best wild mushrooms in the fall; how to hunt boar in the winter; what the local mayors would finally do to try and reinvigorate their small village economies (and, in Aliano, rebuild that bridge!); how to cook a real testarella di agnello—sheep’s head stew—(sounds ghastly, but if you close your eyes it’s utterly delicious) and stracotto di asinello (slow-baked baby donkey!); how to play that raucous card game scopa; how to make perfect pecorino cheese from fresh, still-warm sheep’s milk; and how to deal effectively and without blowing a gasket with the utter mistificazione of the Italian bureaucracy’s endless and inane rules and regulations.
All these things and so many, many more we had yet to understand.
And as for the fortunes and futures of our friends, so many questions and uncertainties. Would Giuliano’s kiln and his pantile-making prevail over the apparent disinterest of the locals? Would Sebastiano’s visions for “a new era of education” burst through the bottlenecks of bureaucratic controls? Would Margherita’s and Tori’s olive orchard survive more poor harvests? Would the schemes and dreams of Don Pierino and Aliano’s young and ambitious mayor, Antonio Colaiacovo, ever become reality? Would Antonio, the photographer, find a reputable publisher for his book? Would Nicolà’s farm become the “desert” he dreaded? Would Massimo ever get married? Would we taste Rosa’s Sunday lunch again? Would anyone ever finally capture a local werewolf? And on and on.
And to add to our list of “things incomplete,” who should call that last morning with his farewells but Antonio, as usual gasping with delight and enthusiasm at some new discovery. “Anne, David, you won’t believe…I have just beaten Graziella’s father three times at scopa, so now he respects me I think, and he may approve of my relationship with his daughter. At last! Oh, and you won’t believe…I’ve just found the dragon’s horns! Yesterday! Big, big horns. And part of its skull. You must come see! You remember that story we both read about the Prince of Colonna who lived in Stigliano in the Middle Ages who came down into the valley and killed a huge dragon there who had been eating virgins and all that kind of thing?”
“Yes, yes, I remember. I looked for the horns too but gave up and decided it was just another one of those local fairy tales.”
“Well, it’s not y’see. The horns are here, and the skull—hidden in this warehouse, because they’ve been renovating the church where they used to be displayed.”
“Antonio. This is fantastic. For you. Unfortunately we’re leaving in less than an hour.”
Antonio didn’t seem to hear me. “And the current prince—a direct descendant—Sebastiano and I have found him, too. He lives in Ireland, but he’s agreed to come back to Aliano so I can photograph him for my book, and he very much wants to meet you both….”
FOR A MOMENT, just a moment, we almost canceled our departure. We were not at all sure we were ready yet for the “real world”—a world without dragons, werewolves, and witches. But then we realized that, even if we stayed longer, we’d never stop unearthing new stories and experiences there.
So we gave thanks for all we’d gained, promised ourselves we’d return one day (soon), and wondered, after all those months, whether we really had discovered Levi’s “magic key.” The only way, he suggested, that one could enter and understand this strange and remote world.
Well, we decided, we’d certainly discovered the lock and explored that in considerable detail. A very complex lock, too. And I think we were offered the key, or at least a choice of different keys, on a number of memorable occasions. But none seemed to fit entirely comfortably.
NO, I’M SURE we have yet to discover the “magic key.” In fact, I’m not even sure there is a single magic key. Mezzogiorno catoni, mezzadri, braccianti, terroni, and contadini—all once referred to somewhat dismissively as “peasants”—are not a collective mass. Certainly there still exists a tight social cohesiveness reflecting the words of Petrarch: “The burdens and the chains of serfdom / are sweeter than wandering alone.” But despite the intimacy of village life and a generational intermingling that vanishes into unrecorded time, they are all still individuals, each with his or her own story and views on things and on life in general (the octos in their daily and often furious debates by the war memorial are proof enough of that). And each individual has his or her own key. Each individual must find his own lock. Many to enter, but many also to escape. Escaping has become a way of life here, particularly for the young of Aliano, and across Basilicata as a whole. For the older men and women it’s not really a choice, but they don’t seem to mind. Here is where their lives have evolved, individually and collectively. And for them to leave at this point—while they might exist more comfortably elsewhere with their families or even in institutionalized settings—appears not to be an option worth considering. This is where most choose to remain.
So, maybe that’s the real key—their deep, passionate, almost genetica
lly imprinted love for this wild and, in many ways, untamed place. Love possibly once again is the key. Maybe a love that is not always easy to understand, but love nonetheless. Maybe different from what we normally know as love, but after our many months here, we feel we can at least begin to discern the outlines and intensity of that underpinning emotion.
Dag Hammarskjöld wrote, “Love is the key, the out flowing of a power released by self-surrender.” Thomas Merton suggested that “love means an interior and spiritual identification with one’s brothers.” And it is indeed this combination of self-surrender to the flow of our experiences and our identification with the lives, events, feastings, and oh-so-human foibles and fears of our friends here, that made our time in Aliano so rich and memorable.
Once again, Anne Cornelisen captures the mood and truth in her powerful book Torregreca: “Lucania is real, and so are the Lucanians, who struggle today as they have for over 3,000 years, to wrest an existence from the rock and clay that makes up their world.”
And, of course, once again, there’s Pico Iyer, that renowned travel writer–philosopher, who believes that “all the great travel books are love stories, and all good journeys are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.” Here in Basilicata we enjoyed generous dollops of both, in addition to all the unceasing kindness, generosity, and love of so many newfound friends.