The Girls of Piazza D'Amore

by Connie Guzzo-Mcparland

  Visitors to the fair who did not need accommodation were the gypsies. Arriving in large numbers, they camped out in the open fields, sleeping in makeshift tents, doorways, or on the bare church floor. The women wore long skirts, colourful scarves with fringes, dangling earrings, and shining gold necklaces. They carried dirty babies on their hips and went around the village asking for money. In exchange, they would tell fortunes, remove evil spells – the malocchio – or curse you. Some people used their services, but no one trusted them. Household items mysteriously went missing when some gypsy visited. Mother didn’t believe in the evil eye or the gypsies’ magical powers to predict the future.

  “If they know how to tell fortunes, why don’t they improve on their own, instead of going around begging?” she used to say.

  I was especially intrigued by how they lived. You couldn’t tell who was married to whom. They spoke a funny Italian and, among themselves, an incomprehensible language.

  “Where do they come from?” I wanted to know. But no one ever seemed to know the answer. “Where do they go from here?” Nobody knew.

  On the first day of the fair, gypsies passed by Piazza Don Carlo, shouting, “Pots soldered like new.” A young girl, about my age, held a baby on her hip. She smiled, waved at me. I wanted to talk to her, to ask her about school and about where she lived, but Mother shooed them off. She admonished me, as she did each chance she got: “It’s better not to start talking to them. They have their ways. They’ll make you believe that day is night, night is day. You’ll never win with the zingari.”

  The following day, my friend Bettina and I were sitting on her doorstep, looking at one of her older brother’s books, a thick novel, I Promessi Sposi, that everyone in Italy studied in high school. The young gypsy with the child sneaked up on us.

  “Ciao. What are your names? Mine is Maria.”

  We introduced ourselves. “Where do you come from?” I asked. She shrugged and asked if she could look at the book. While leafing through it, she asked if we would be going to the fireworks the following night.

  “Yes, do you want to come with us?” I asked.

  Maria answered quickly that she’d join us. She said we should wait for her on the road across from the Timpa just before the fireworks started. She then asked if she could borrow the book for the day.

  “It’s my brother’s,” Bettina told her. “I can’t give it to you.”

  “I don’t want to keep it, just look at it. I’ll bring it back tomorrow at the fireworks. But if you want it before, come and see me at the aqueduct, where I’m staying.”

  “We can pick it up when we go to the fair, after Mass,” I said, looking at Bettina. Maria was off with the book before Bettina could answer.

  “What will I tell my brother when I get home?” Bettina asked.

  “Tell him you lent it to me,” I said.

  The morning after, on the day of the feast, Bettina came by my house early. She said she wanted to go to the aqueduct before Mass, to get her book back. “It’s your fault,” she told me. “You got too friendly with her. I don’t think she can even read. She’ll probably sell it at the fair.”

  “We’ll get it. Don’t worry.”

  Vendors were busy setting up their stalls for the busiest day of the fair. We walked past pigs, chickens and donkeys for sale. Farmers inspected the animals, haggling over prices. The family from Sierra San Pietro was busy laying out their pots and pans on a table, while Alfonso, in a new suit, leaned across the table and spoke animatedly with the brothers.

  Wearing new woolen dresses, long, thick stockings, and ankle-high shoes, we walked to the aqueduct, near the cemetery, where a band of gypsies had camped out. There too, a gypsy was negotiating with a farmer over a donkey; others were sitting soldering old copper pots, while some women nursing babies stretched out their hands whenever someone passed by them.

  Maria, holding the same child she had carried the first day we saw her, sat next to the man who was selling the donkey. The farmers took a wad of money, counted it, and passed it to the gypsy, who then passed it to Maria. She counted the money and nodded to the farmer. He took the donkey by the reins and walked away, smiling.

  As we approached her, Bettina told Maria, “I want my book.”

  “I’ll bring it to you at the fireworks. I told you already.”

  “My brother wants it this morning,” Bettina said.

  “I don’t have it. I lent it to my friend.”

  “You told us we could come and get it anytime we wanted.”

  “How can I give it to you if I don’t have it?”

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “She had to go to Amato with her father to buy a donkey. But she’ll be back this afternoon. Wait for me before the fireworks. I told you already.”

  We had no choice but to leave without the book, and to join our mothers at church for High Mass. We didn’t tell them that we had walked all the way to the aqueduct by ourselves.

  After Mass, Comare Rosaria invited Mother and me to her house before lunch to have a drink in celebration of Lucia’s name day. She served us a glass of homemade sweet yellow liqueur, which tasted like Strega, and some almond cookies. Lucia seemed animated but distracted, as though something was on her mind.

  “Lucia has found a nice boyfriend,” Comare Rosaria said, as though she were making fun of her.

  “Don’t you start telling everyone about a boyfriend,” Lucia said, sounding annoyed and leaving the room.

  Comare Rosaria explained that, the previous evening, Lucia had consented to consider an engagement to her guests’ brother from Canada. Comare Rosaria, at first, was not excited about the proposal, because of the age difference, but the brothers convinced them that Pasquale was a serious, hardworking man who had built his own business. He also owned a house and a car. Lucia would live like a lady there, and wouldn’t need to go to work, unlike many women who emigrated. Alfonso had negotiated all the details in favour of his sister. Pasquale would pay all the expenses related to the wedding and the trip. After listening to her brother’s arguments, Lucia agreed to correspond with the man and to send him her picture, but she would make the final decision only after meeting Pasquale in person, in the summer, when he was expected to visit his family.

  “If it’s destined, it will happen,” Mother said.

  “He seems serious and settled, not like these young men around here who don’t know what they want,” Comare Rosaria explained. “In a few years, she can sponsor her brothers in America. There’s nothing for them here.”

  “Then maybe we’ll all be in Montreal one day. You too, Comare Rosaria,” Mother said.

  “Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” Lucia, who had been listening from the other room, said. “I won’t have an official engagement until I see him.”

  Comare Rosaria whispered, “In the last months she’s become like a ghost. She doesn’t eat or talk to anyone. At least this man will keep his word.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s young and has a life ahead of her,” Mother said.

  Then Comare Rosaria held up the picture of a small man sitting on the hood of a big white car, his teeth white and large against his suntanned, bony face.

  When we got home, Mother said, “I can’t imagine Lucia married to that man.”

  At the fireworks, there was no sign of Maria. Bettina was upset and cried. She was expecting a good spanking from her brother.

  Rosaria and Lucia were accompanied by their house guests. People kept congratulating both Lucia and the woman from Serra San Pietro.

  “It’s hard to keep things secret in this village,” Comare Rosaria whispered to my mother. “The family gave her a gold necklace and bracelet, and they want some guarantees before leaving that she’s as serious as they are, so, unofficially, they’re engaged.”

  The morning after, as the village was emptying of its vis
itors, I walked with Bettina to the aqueduct. Maria’s family was nowhere to be seen. Bettina cried again, but her problem seemed small compared to that of the farmer who had bought the donkey the day before. He was cursing and screaming at the remaining gypsies because they couldn’t tell him where to find the man who had sold him the animal. His new donkey had disappeared during the night while he was at the fireworks.

  When they heard the stories down at Piazza Don Carlo from the postman who delivered the afternoon mail, they all made fun of us girls for lending something to a gypsy and expecting to get it back, and they especially laughed at the farmer who had bought a donkey from a gypsy and then left it unattended.

  In spite of what happened, I felt sorry for Maria.

  “Do you think that Maria ever goes to school?” I asked Mother.

  “Maria who?”

  “The gypsy with the baby.”

  “How can she go to school, poor girl, when her parents drag her from village to village with that baby stuck to her hip while they go begging for work? It’s not a life for anyone.”

  “Is it possible that after all these years no one knows where the gypsies go?” I pressed my mother, again.

  “You’re really hard-headed,” Mother said impatiently, folding the letter she had just received from father. “They’re zingari! How can I explain it to you? They’re people without a home. That’s why we call them zingari.”

  I pulled the letter from my mother’s hands.

  Montreal, 12/13, 1955

  Cara Teresa,

  It has been three months already since I left. I can’t tell you how much I miss you and the children. My health is good and I hope that you and everyone else are also fine. Here, we’re buried in snow. The days are short, but still too long for me. Construction stops in the winter, and I have no work. I spend the day reading the newspaper, walking around the house, playing with my nephew, and helping my sister cook dinner. By four in the afternoon, it’s already dark, and everyone runs home, eats, and gets ready for bed. My poor sister has a house full of men, eight in all, counting her boys, and she never stops with the washing, ironing, cooking and preparing lunches for us. The little money we give her for our board hardly pays for all the food we consume. Sometimes in the afternoons I go to an Italian bar in the hope of making some contacts and finding work. I’ve just made the acquaintance of a Calabrese who has made lots of money and runs a band that plays at processions and Italian feasts. I already played once with them. For me, it’s a good pastime. With Francesco, we’re planning on starting an orchestra to play at Italian weddings. If it works out, we can make some extra money. I have a lot of company, and in that sense it’s better than living alone as I did in Milan, but the work here is not the same. People that tended goats in Italy have become contractors here. I just got my card as a bricklayer, but I won’t be using it until next summer. For now, I go begging for any small repair job I can get. But these small Italian contractors pay in cash without declaring me, so I can never collect shiumaggiu, which is what they pay here to those that don’t have work.

  Francesco is starting the paperwork to sponsor Tina. But he’s young and has been spending all his money going out every Saturday night with the French girls. I’ll have to lend him a bit of money. I’m doing it for Tina, not for him. She didn’t deserve what Michele did to her. Rest assured that I’ll make whatever sacrifice to call for you as soon as possible, hopefully by next year. It’s the only reason I decided to come here in the first place, to give you and the children a better life. If I can only get through this first winter, then next summer should be easier. With my bricklayer card I get paid up to three dollars an hour, and if I work most of the summer, I’ll make enough to rent and furnish an apartment and call for you. I’m still paying the government every month for the loan on the boat trip, and I have to show I have enough to sponsor you. By next year, half of Piazza Don Carlo will be in Montreal.

  Give my regards to your family, and don’t neglect to take the children to visit my father and mother every Sunday afternoon, and don’t be too strict with Luigi. I heard you hung his bicycle from a beam, so he can’t reach it. Let him use it once in a while. Tell him I’ll buy him a better one when he gets here, and the streets here are all flat. I’m glad that Caterina likes her new teacher. Here, there are parks everywhere, with swings and all kinds of toys for them to play with in the summer, but don’t think it’s all paradise – winters are long and hard for everyone.

  I’m sending you a money order, which should last you till next time I write. Buy the children some candies and oranges for the Befana, and buy my parents some coffee and sugar. Buy three packs of cigarettes and give one to your brother, one to my father, and one to my friend Amadeo, when you see him. Tell him that the band leader here was interned during the war for being a Fascist, and yet the first piece of music that the band plays when we go marching is Faccetta Nera. Not only would we be pelted by the Christian Democrats of Piazza Don Carlo, but we would be arrested in Italy for playing it. Here nobody complains. In fact they applaud, and the Canadians smile and don’t know any better. I wish I could send more, but whatever I saved has to last until I get regular work again.

  Dear Teresa, we’re very, very far, and we have to spend Christmas away from each other. I can’t even ask you to be with me by looking at the moon every night at ten as I used to from Milan, for when the moon is out here the sun is getting ready to rise over there. I can’t wait for this long winter to be over and have you in my arms forever.

  Wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Kiss the children for me. With all my love,

  Giuseppe

  My father was my mother’s first and only boyfriend and the only man she ever loved. In the true Calabrian code of behaviour, my parents were never allowed to be alone together until their wedding night, though she admitted to furtive love letters pitched through her window when her father was not around. Theirs was not an arranged marriage.

  My mother often spoke of how, before the war and before they were married, my father used to gather his musician friends and serenade her under her balcony. The makeshift band played the same favourite song, Scrivimi, night after night, until one night my grandfather, tired of hearing it, threw a pail of hot dishwater out the window and scurried them off.

  My mother’s father, Gabriele Mancuso, born in the nineteenth century, even before Italy was unified, lost his first wife and then remarried at sixty years of age with a twenty-two year-old widow, and fathered my mother and three other children with her. In spite of this healthy reproductive activity for a man his age, he was a very stern disciplinarian. My mother never complained about the strict moral rules to which she had been subjected as a young woman. In fact she derived a certain sense of security from the old traditions, since they had done her no harm. She had all she wanted out of life – the man she loved, a home in Piazza Don Carlo, and then two beautiful children. But the war spoiled it all. It first took the men away from their families, then caused the devastation that forced the men to wander in all corners of the country begging for work.

  It didn’t seem to have registered in my mother’s consciousness that the state of the economy in southern Italy before the war had been just as dire. She spoke of life before the war with longing. The village was full of young people serenading each other; the young men put on mystery plays during the major religious holidays; a musical band played outdoor concerts regularly; and fairs during the major religious holidays attracted people from all around the area. Walking down alleys in the summer evenings one could hear the laughter of women sitting on doorsteps in groups, and the men who paraded back and forth playing tricks on each other to entertain the women.

  Her own family had always been well provided for. Her youthful mother, Stella, was a force of nature, looking after a horde of stepchildren, some older than she, running a bakery, and supervising work in their extensive farmlands while raising her own young brood
. My mother’s distinguished father sat behind the grocery store counter all day and played court to his friends. He also worked as a tailor, specializing in sewing the heavy pleated skirts and vests used by women for their costumes, a trade practiced by very few tailors in the village. The tradition of the pacchiana costume died with them, and so did the pre-war bucolic existence in the village.

  I had only heard the broader lines of my mother’s particular family history, just as one of the many odd phenomena of life in an insular village at the turn of the century. With my new focus on writing, I now marvel at the many potential love stories to be harvested from those ancient village tales.

  One such tale starts like an eighteenth century melodrama, with an abandoned baby, Luigi Anastasia, born in 1897. His father, like many men in the village, had gone to Argentina to work, but unlike the others who returned after amassing a bundle of money, he neither returned nor made any contact with his young wife and baby boy. The wife, out of resentment, desperation and dire straits, took off to Egypt to work as a nursemaid. She couldn’t bring the baby with her, so she left him in the care of her mother’s elderly cousin. A year, two years passed, and Luigi’s mother didn’t find her way home. Call it negligence, lack of resources, or just plain egotism – nobody pinned a reason for her extreme forgetfulness – but she never returned for him, and neither did his father. The cousin died. Her husband, also getting on in years, was half blind and couldn’t care for the young child indefinitely. A neigbour, Teresa, had married a well-to-do young tailor, landowner and merchant, Gabriele. Teresa had one child after another, six in all, and baby Luigi slipped into her household as one of her own. He lived with her family until his eighteenth birthday, when he became engaged to Caterina. His future brothers-in-law had all emigrated to America, and they encouraged the young man to join them there to work on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Luigi had never known hard manual labour. He had taken up the trade of stone mason, but never worked at anything more strenuous than small repair jobs around town – fountains, terraces, cemetery crypts. He couldn’t get used to the slave-like conditions in New York’s Lower East Side, where the immigrant men lived. Years later, he would say, “They called us dagos and frisked us if we wanted to go in a movie theatre or a bar. But that was before Mussolini came and made the world respect us.”