North of Naples, South of Rome

by Tullio, Paulo;

  The real crowds arrive in the evening for the music and fireworks. Every night of the festa there is music in the Piazza Santa Maria. It is a varied programme, reflecting the Italians’ catholic taste in music. There is always a night with a rock band, one with Neapolitan music and one with a dance orchestra.

  My friend Graziano is a big, bearded Communist – well, nowadays he’s a member of the Democratic Left. He became a councillor at the last local election and was given the job of administrator in charge of tourism and culture. Organizing the entertainment for the festa is his job. Because of his political affiliation, in 1991 he was able to get, through the Chinese Embassy in Rome, a folklore troupe from Tsinan in Shantung province to come to Gallinaro. Since they were travelling to the valley anyway, the committee of the Atina Folklore Festival booked them as well, immediately prior to our festa. I went with Graziano to meet the Chinese in a hotel in Atina. We were met by the artistic director, the musical director and a sour-faced lady of indeterminate age who was introduced as the interpreter. It transpired that she spoke no Italian at all, only English – and that was pretty ropey. Still, we organized the times and got a list of what they needed by way of PA and props. They would also need to be fed after the show, all forty of them.

  As we drove back to Gallinaro we considered how and what to feed them. I suggested some kind of rice dish, but Graziano thought they must be sick of rice. We went to see Alberto, the mayor. He promptly decided that the only solution was, hang the expense, take them to a restaurant. There are two good restaurants in Gallinaro, one in the Hotel Tramps, the other Chez Vital. Vitale is a gifted chef even by Italian standards. We phoned both of these to get a rough idea of cost – both of them were well beyond the budget. We went to see Desiderio, who has the pizzeria on the road leading to the Chapel of the Baby Jesus. He promised us good wine, beer and a three-course meal that was well within the budget, so we booked.

  The performance by the Chinese the next evening was without a doubt the most impressive show that I have seen anywhere for a long time. There were dainty ballerinas of extraordinary elegance, jugglers, conjurors, musicians who played a bewildering variety of instruments, and stunning costumes. The performance was world class, and it occurred to me that this troupe must be wondering precisely what their political masters were doing sending them to a small, hill-top village in the remote mountains of Italy.

  After the show we led their bus to Desiderio’s, where he had laid tables outside overlooking the western end of the valley. I was seated between the sour-faced interpreter and the two directors; Graziano was at another table surrounded by six beautiful ballerinas. As a special treat Desiderio had laid each place with some prosciutto, as an antipasto – a little extra to thank the performers. I beamed at the assembled company as they began to eat. Suddenly all the Chinese were gagging inelegantly and spitting out the ham. The interpreter explained that they don’t eat raw pork in China. I tried to explain that it was not raw, to no avail: the meal was in danger of becoming a serious loss of face. No one seemed to be touching the wine either. I was beginning to panic. The rotund and jovial artistic director pointed to his glass and said the only words of Engrish that he knew: ‘Coca Cora.’ Within minutes all was well, smiles returned, the ham was forgotten and the tables resounded with happy laughter. No wonder this liquid has conquered the world.

  Despite immense goodwill, conversation was difficult. The interpreter had difficulty understanding me, while her attempts at English were as easy to decipher as an Inca quipu. Alberto, the mayor, arrived towards the end of the meal and after the introductions the artistic director got up to speak. It was clearly a formal address, thanking the mayor for the invitation to the festa, but was interspersed with loud belches. This seemed to have no effect on the Chinese, for whom it must be acceptable etiquette, but the effect on the Italians was dreadful to behold. They couldn’t stop giggling. The Chinese were clearly perplexed as to the reason for this and the artistic director bravely continued, belching all the while. This potentially embarrassing moment thankfully passed and there followed an exchange of gifts. We sat over coffee, continuing our efforts to communicate.

  ‘Are you all Communists?’ I was asked, with a finger pointing at Graziano.

  ‘No, no. The mayor’ – I pointed to him – ‘is a Socialist, so is our administration. That town over there’ – more gestures – ‘is Christian Democrat. That one is Communist.’

  I watched as incomprehension gradually spread over the interpreter’s pinched face.

  ‘This one Socialist. That one Democrat. Each town different, yes?’

  No. I gave up. I did notice, however, that although the two directors were leaning forwards, trying to glean the gist of what I had said, the lady refused to translate. I decided that she was no interpreter, given her lack of ability, but a member of the political police, determined that travel should not broaden the minds of her charges.

  Even in a town as small as Gallinaro large sums of money are spent on the festa. At the moment the state provides money, so does the region, the comune itself, and the individual donations from the villagers top that up. Some £30,000 is spent on bands, evening entertainment and fireworks. With this kind of money to spend, a festa committee can afford some good entertainers, even national stars. A large proportion of the money goes up in smoke. No festa is complete without the pirotecnici, the fireworks. They pepper the day with bangs, but at night the spectacular displays come into their own. No celebration would be complete without the noise, smell and visual delights of the fireworks.

  An average display for a small village like ours lasts about twenty minutes. There are no pauses, just a continuous barrage of light and sound in the sky. Some of the latest additions to the art of pyrotechnics are wonderful. There is a new firework that goes very high, explodes with a loud bang, and slowly becomes a huge blue sphere, perhaps 60 metres in diameter, which turns to green and finally red. Stunning.

  Aficionados of fireworks should not miss the festa of Settefrati. The Sanctuary of the Madonna in Canneto, high in the Apennines, is part of the comune of Settefrati. The statue of the black Madonna spends her summers in the mountains until she is carried back to Settefrati in procession on the evening of 22 August. Although the town of Settefrati is smaller than Gallinaro, the Madonna of Canneto has thousands of faithful adherents from all over the region, all of whom dig deep into their pockets for this festa. As the procession reaches the town the fireworks begin in earnest, and when she is finally home in her church the main event begins. Last year there were thirty-five minutes of pyrotechnic paradise, visible from most of the valley. This is a blessing, since Settefrati is almost inaccessible on that night because of the huge volume of cars and buses that start arriving throughout the afternoon.

  The tradition of the market and the festa is part of what gives Italian life its unique flavour. Both of these public events are common and highly visible, their delights easily available to the visitor. A few days spent among Italians reveals a whole gamut of idiosyncrasies, uniquely Italian.

  A visit to a bar provides examples aplenty. The function of a bar in Italy is not primarily to sell alcohol: there is food, coffee and tables at which to play cards. All over rural Italy men sit at bar tables playing briscola, tressette and scopa. This is a noisy activity, involving banging cards on the table, railing against ill-fortune, castigating your partner or opponent, and arguing with spectators’ opinions about which card should have been led.

  A visitor will quickly learn that a coffee, ordered and drunk standing at the counter, will cost very little; sitting at a table, it will cost more. How much more depends on where the bar is. In Sinella’s bar I don’t think there is any difference, but if the bar is in Piazza della Signoria in Florence, or Piazza San Marco in Venice, the difference is astronomical. Coffee is small, black and often already sugared on arrival – anything else must be specified. Standard sugar in Italy is as fine as caster sugar, while the salt is coarse. A peculiarity of bars i
s that they are full of children, running in and out buying ice-cream and soft drinks. Bars appear to have no set closing time; as long as there is someone buying something, they will remain open. In the summer in Gallinaro this can mean as late as three a.m., and more often than not the children are still there, refusing to go to bed.

  Paying in bars takes one of two forms. The old way, still the most common, is to order what you want, re-order again and again and only on leaving do you pay, never after each purchase. In the north of Italy and on motorways the prepaid ticket is more common. First you go to the cash desk and queue, reel off your order, pay, then take the docket to the counter, queue, and reel off your order again. Shades of Moscow’s Gum store.

  Queueing in Italy is an art-form. It is not the ordered Anglo-Saxon file of first come, first served, rather a loose grouping with a common purpose. Most bus-stops appear to have no queues at first glance. Near the stop people idly browse in shop windows, or stand around in casual groups, generally giving the impression that the bus-stop is of no interest to them whatsoever. When a bus arrives, or rather if it does, there is a sprint for the door and a scrum. No quarter is given to the sick or elderly; whoever has the strongest elbows gets on. This is called menefreghismo, or, I’m all right, Jack. Friends of mine who go to London delight in playing a simple game. On busy pavements they deliberately walk into a hapless Londoner and then giggle childishly when the Londoner says ‘Sorry’ instead of an Italian response such as, ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going, arsehole?’

  Queues in shops follow much the same pattern as at bus-stops. First served is he who gets to the counter first and catches the assistant’s eye. To say, ‘I think this lady was before me,’ would be fesso. It is everyone for themselves and woe to the slow or polite.

  At home, in private, the Italians are close. The need for personal space is not as important as it is in northern countries. Many households will consist of mamma, babbo, the bambini, Nonno and nonna and perhaps an odd zia as well. In this extended household of three or more generations the bambini are happy to remain until their late twenties. Despite appearances, mamma is the sole but benign ruler of this kingdom. The paterfamilias is accorded all kinds of small respects, such as being served first at meals, being given the choicest morsels, having his coffee sugared and stirred, his fruit peeled, his shoes polished and his general needs catered to by all the females in the household. He will also decide when the pasta is cooked to perfection. Do not be deceived; although accorded these symbols of power, the real podestà is mamma. She controls virtually all aspects of the household – its members and its economy. Women have real power in Italy, so they can afford to make small gestures to the male ego.

  Most Italian women combine their role as mother with a job outside the home. To some extent this is facilitated by the structure of the standard working week – six hours a day, six days a week. Effectively this means that one parent can always be home from work in time to meet the children from school. State-run nursery schools take children from the age of three and give them lunch before busing them home. This makes it easier for both parents to have a job, secure in the knowledge that their children are not loose on the streets. Life in Italy is hard unless both partners in a marriage have a job. One income, unless enormous, leaves you near the poverty line.

  Children spend a lot of time with their parents. Babysitting is a new concept, especially in our valley. Children accompany their parents everywhere – to restaurants, to parties, even to nightclubs, where they dance and stay up to all hours with the adults. Far from children being disapproved of in public places, they are welcomed with literally open arms. I remember eating in the Zi Teresa in Naples, a waterfront restaurant built over the sea, when my son was two or so. He was tired, bored and cross. Within moments the waiter had whisked him off to the kitchen, where he spent the evening, returning when we were leaving on the chef’s shoulders, wearing the chef’s hat. More than once strangers at other tables in restaurants have asked the children to join their tables, amusing the little dears until we had finished eating. I must confess that there were times when, after a long car journey accompanied by incessant squabbling on the back seat, this Italian indulgence of children came as a welcome relief. There is no doubt that Italy is an easier country to travel in with children than France or England. Far from making it harder to get a table in a restaurant, your chances are improved by small, tired faces demanding food.

  People who worry that the European Community will lead us eventually to a pan-European culture with all national characteristics absorbed into a communal soup should take heart from Italy. Despite being an original signatory to the Treaty of Rome, it is no more German or French now than it ever was, nor, I am sure, will it ever be. The idiosyncrasies that make a country what it is have evolved over millennia; political and economic union will change little of that.

  14

  Religion

  I only once saw a Pope in the flesh. I was fifteen and the summer holidays were at an end. Our old family friends Memmo and Wanda Regoli were driving me to Rome airport from Sora. There was no Autostrada del Sole then; the road to Rome was the Casilina, through Frosinone, Anagni and Valmontone. It was in Valmontone, about half-way to Rome, that we came to a stop. Traffic was blocked and crowds swarmed. Like good Italians, instead of finding a way to proceed with the journey, we joined the crowds to find out what was afoot. Pope Paul VI was about to pass through in a motorcade. From my vantage-point at the side of the road I saw an open-topped car approaching slowly, with the Pope standing up between the front and rear seats. This is no easy place to stand and wave, even for a young and energetic man, so the Pope had help. Sitting directly behind him on the back seat was an aide, whose job was to keep his arms extended forwards and upwards while the Pope half-stood and half-sat on the outstretched hands. When we resumed our journey, Memmo taught me to say in Arpino dialect: ‘Ho visto il Papa, e uno che teneva la mano sul culo.’

  This event made me realize that the Pope was a man, no more, no less. For all the trappings of majesty, he still needed a steadying hand on his bum. The inhabitants of Valmontone had enthusiastically turned out to see him, but were equally iconoclastic in their comments on his mode of travel. In many ways this is symptomatic of the Italian view of the papacy.

  The largest single influence on life in the Comino Valley over the centuries has been the Roman Catholic Church. In central Italy this influence has been felt not only spiritually, but also in a very material sense, since the Church was for centuries its civil ruler. The Papal States varied in extent over the years, depending on the degree of acquisitiveness of the incumbent Pope, but most of the time the territory was a wide band across the middle of Italy acting as a buffer between the northern city-states and the southern Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – or the Kingdom of Naples, as it was known in its final years.

  Italian history is full of battles, with Popes at the head of their armies leading crusades that were venal in everything but name. If you lived in the Papal States, the Pope was all-powerful in the realm of the spirit and of the body. His agents dispensed indulgences and absolutions for the soul, whilst other agents collected tithes, taxes and levied soldiers. There was no part of daily life that was not controlled or affected by the papacy; after so long a run – more than 500 years – echoes of the pontiffs’ reigns are not hard to find.

  To understand how the Roman Church has interacted with the Comino Valley, a little history is in order. The end of the Spanish viceregal rule, the decades of Austrian administration and the foundation of the Kingdom of Naples all had little effect upon the lives of the inhabitants of the Comino Valley. Life in the 1700s was much as it had always been in the preceding centuries, but a reasonably clear picture emerges of valley life as written records begin to be more abundant. In 1703 the population of Gallinaro stood at 492. This rather low figure is certainly the result of the Great Plague of 1656, which probably left the town with about 400 citizens. By the end of the cent
ury the population had reached 1,044 – about what it is today. This growth was partly organic, but partly due to the inclusion of the hamlet of Rosanisco in the 1795 census. Without that, Gallinaro’s population had grown to approximately 750, so there was an increase of 50 per cent in a century. As a result of this population boom, the town began to spread southwards along the crest of the hill and pressure on the food supply began to be felt. The commonage in Rosanisco and Pietrafitta came into cultivation to help feed the swelling numbers. Emigration, noted as early as 1541, began in earnest. In the spring of 1764 half the inhabitants of San Donato, a neighbouring town, emigrated to Rome, Sonnino and Puglia. The Gallinarese who returned from the annual migration to the Pontine marshes brought back barely enough money to cover their taxes, and frequently malaria as well. A further tithe on the migrant workers was made when they changed their Roman money for ducats. In the early eighteenth century Bishop Gagliano of Sora issued decrees preventing officials from profiteering from exchange rates. 1764 was a year of famine in the valley, and Gallinaro parish records show that eighty people died that year, the majority with ‘fame destitutus’ written against their name. As ever, famine affected only the poor.

  It is worth recording the distribution of land ownership taken from the land registry of Charles III in 1744. The total acreage of Gallinaro amounted to 5,965, broken down as follows:

  acres

  Church 2040

  Town council 447

  Ducal estates 77

  Local landowners 584

  Landowners from other towns 2817

  The 584 acres belonging to the inhabitants of the town were divided among ninety-two families. The largest holding of 132 acres belonged to the Bevilacqua family. Ten families, including my ancestor Francesco di Tullio, had more than ten acres. The remaining 273 acres were divided among eighty-two families. Since the average family had eight members, this last figure means that some 650 people were trying to eke a living from less than 300 acres.