North of Naples, South of Rome

by Tullio, Paulo;

  All this historical baggage makes sense of much of what happens today. The flashy clothes, the jewellery, the new cars, all affirm publicly how far the owner has come from the land. Thinking about it now, I realize how odd I must have sounded when I regaled everyone with tales of my newly discovered bucolic bliss in the Wicklow hills. Chopping wood and growing food was exactly what everyone was trying to leave behind. My thatched roof must have sounded like a wilful return to the Stone Age. When you bear this in mind, the concreting of the old houses in the village takes on a different hue. What looks picturesque to a visitor is uncomfortable, draughty and cold to the inhabitant. How much better to have a roof that needs no maintenance, aluminium windows that keep out draughts, walls that don’t crumble. How good not to live in an old house.

  Some years ago an old farmer came to visit me. He stood in the hall looking around and his eyes fell on a pair of cioce – the traditional footwear – that I had hanging on a wall. ‘They may look picturesque to you,’ he said, ‘but if you’d had to wear them, they wouldn’t be on display.’

  Now that the basics such as housing and education are no longer priorities, there is a growing interest in culture in all its forms. The comuni of the valley have been quick to satisfy this desire. Most of them have set up a pro loco, an official centre designed to co-ordinate and organize cultural activities. As a result of this impetus, there are now museums that catalogue the valley’s history over the millennia; there are exhibitions of painting and sculpture, drama groups and an increasingly prestigious literary prize, the Premio Valle di Comino, administered from Alvito. There is even a growing awareness of ecology – Alvito runs the annual tree festa, as well as organized mountain walks; Picinisco has its mountain festival; San Donato its Nature Awareness week. Until recently a cultural wasteland, the valley is now farther ahead than any comparable area that I know elsewhere in Europe. In the gazetteer published by the valley’s tourist office (an oxymoron if ever there was one) there are over 200 hundred exhibitions and competitions listed throughout the year. In the short span of twenty years not only has the financial and social life of the valley undergone profound change, so too has its cultural life.

  Before this explosion of awareness Arpino was the only cultural oasis in an agricultural desert. It lies just beyond the Comino Valley, but its ties to the valley are many and ancient. Arpino was the birthplace of Marius – the general and reformer of the Roman army – and of Agrippa, Octavian’s general at Actium and the builder of the Pantheon, and of Cicero. For centuries it was the administrative capital that governed my valley, and for years a major industrial centre that gave employment to a wide hinterland. It has always been prominent historically for my own family. My parents’ first encounter was in Arpino. Because their schoolfriends were here, some of my earliest memories are of visiting this town.

  Today Arpino is the artistic and cultural capital of southern Frosinone. The new senator for this contituency is Massimo Struffi, who has injected a huge amount of energy in re-establishing his town as a centre for the arts. The Mastroianni Foundation, now located in the Castello di Ladislao, is here largely as a result of Struffi’s efforts. Arpino has been a rich town for 2,000 years, and for this reason it has a very different feel from any of the others near the valley. Its architecture is more grand, more beautifully embellished. Its piazza is covered in travertine and is now adorned with the sculptures of Umberto Mastroianni, Marcello’s uncle. The houses have the gloss of centuries of wealth, and the narrow, hilly streets have an air of quiet good taste. At first glance it has the look of a Tuscan town, a small jewel set in the hills of Ciociaria.

  My earliest memories of simplicity and poverty seem like recollections from another era, another world. The farmhouse at San Nazario is no longer a working farm, the river that bounds it now has no water in the height of summer. In Gallinaro the public wash-rooms where the women gathered to wash their clothes and chat are gone; no one washes their clothes in the Rio Molle by bashing them between stones as countless generations had before. Tarmacadamed roads reach where once only mules walked, hillocks sprout new buildings on every slope. Ponte Melfa, a tiny hamlet twenty years ago, is a thriving town. Everywhere you look there is evidence of human activity. Ox-carts and mules used as beasts of burden are almost entirely gone – small tractors have replaced them all. I suppose what I have witnessed has been the demise of the peasantry. The new structures that have replaced the old are far from perfect, but for the common man they represent a leap forward of centuries. No doubt their rough edges will be less apparent as time goes by, as people begin to forget how it was and simply live with how it is. Photographs of Gallinaro that I took ten years ago could have been taken 200 years ago, so much has changed since and so little before. In the Comino Valley the world of the contadino has all but vanished, leaving only scattered vestiges of centuries of tradition.

  16

  Damming the Molarino

  Anyone who has seen the film Jean de Florette will know what I mean when I say that water is important. Rainfall is sparse in the Comino Valley; what water we have during the long, dry summer is provided by the snow melting in the high Apennines. One main river flows almost the length of the valley, rising in the mountains above Settefrati. This is the Melfa, which joins the Liri near Roccasecca. A tributary, the Molarino, rises above San Biagio at the eastern end of the valley and joins the Melfa below Atina at Ponte Melfa, the Melfa turquoise green and the Molarino steely grey. There are a few small streams, such as Gallinaro’s Rio Molle, but otherwise this represents the water available to the valley’s inhabitants. If the mountains surrounding the valley are free of snow in April, water will be scarce in the summer, since rain cannot be relied on to keep the rivers flowing.

  Obviously water usage is controlled – it is metered and expensive, and mains water is not available all day. Sometimes in the summer the mains can be on for as little as three hours in the early morning. To make life bearable, most houses, including my own, have a large water tank which fills while the mains is flowing. In my case the system is then powered by what the Italians call an autoclave, a pump which pressurizes all the pipes to 2 atmospheres. On paper the system is great, in practice it needs endless adjustment and care.

  Once water was supplied by the comune. A few years before Thatcherism became popular in Britain, the comune sold its distribution system to a semi-private concern, the Aurunci. This company now supplies the water to the village and reaps handsome rewards for its efforts. Recently it has started charging the comune for the water it supplies to the drinking fountains, so they are slowly being removed – we are down to three. Fountains have been a feature of public places in Italy for more than 2,000 years; they are cool oases in the summer where a passing thirst can be slaked. Removing them removes not only a convenience, but a long, unbroken tradition.

  Gallinaro’s water comes from Canneto, the source of the Melfa, in the mountains behind Settefrati. From here the Aurunci pipe it to the towns that no longer provide their own supply. The pipe to Gallinaro runs up to the town under the road from San Donato. For years the road was a mess because of badly jointed piping that leaked continually. The leaks destroyed the sub-structure of the road, and the many attempts to patch up the faults left the road even worse. Like many Italian running sores, this one ran and ran. It took seven years before the water company decided to do the job properly and repair the road. Oddly, no one in the village ever seemed as angry about it as me; people shrugged, and tried to avoid the pot-holes.

  On arrival at the village the water goes into a large and very ugly water tower. The story of this tower is fairly typical of civic projects, not just in my village, but all over southern Italy. It was decided, logically, that the tower should be situated at the highest point in the village. Since the old church occupied that site, the next best, a small hillock behind the cemetery, was chosen. The only encumbrance to this plan was the eleventh-century church of San Leonardo, which was in the way. Once it was the shepherds
’ church – it was outside the town walls, thus keeping the smelly shepherds out of the town centre. It hadn’t been used for years, and anyway it was old, so the obvious course of action was taken: it was bulldozed, the top of the hill was levelled by removing all the topsoil, and the water tower was built, a giant phallus impudicus visible from just about anywhere. The flat area around the tower was designated a public park, the only problem being that nothing grows since all the topsoil has gone, and there is no easy path to get there. Still, rather like those Eastern European countries that issued postage stamps commemorating their satanic mills, you can buy colour postcards of the water tower in the mini-market.

  The Apennines that surround the valley are made of limestone. A careful look at the white rock reveals the fossils of all the tiny sea creatures compacted to create these mountains. Since the Apennines are the source of the rivers, the water is high in lime. When the summer comes and the rivers run very low or dry up completely, all that is left is a brilliant white slash cutting through the valley, the stones of the river bed dazzling in the bright sun. From late June onwards, both the Melfa and the Molarino have no flow at all much beyond Ponte Melfa. More and more is being extracted for irrigation, leaving no more than the odd pool of gasping trout. Even that small flow is threatened by a new scheme to provide irrigation; it will leave both these water courses bleached, barren wildernesses.

  Since the 1930s there has been a plan to create an artificial lake in the valley directly below my house. The soundings have all been made, the project has been appraised and considered for sixty years. It has also been argued about interminably in Sinella’s bar. The source of contention is the purpose of the lake. It is not planned as an amenity for the valley, but is to provide water for irrigating the plains of Roccasecca, well beyond the valley to the south-west. What makes the villagers so angry is that the lake would be closed to the public, so there would be no fishing, no boating and no swimming. What there would be is mosquitoes. Since the lake would be slowly emptied during the hot months, the muddy banks would be exposed, providing an ideal breeding ground for the insects. However, I would stake my life on the fact that all the argument has no purpose, for the lake will never be built. If the money couldn’t be found to do it when times were good, there is no chance now.

  In the heat of summer my mind turns on only one thing. I need water to plunge into. Ever since I was a small boy the only solution to this urge was to get up extremely early in the morning and go to the sea. The early rise was vital to miss the heat while driving and to find a parking place. The nearest coast to us is the Tyrrhenian – Formia, Gaeta and Terracina being within reach. In the 1970s we got a superstrada from Cassino to Formia, which made life easier, and more recently we have a superstrada from the valley to Cassino, making the trip easier still. The only problem is the crowds. Italians seem to find twenty lines of beach umbrellas an acceptable environment, whereas for me it is a vision of hell. Over the years I have explored every little cove, nook and cranny from Terracina to Scauri, and every one of them is known to every Roman and Neapolitan, and they’re packed.

  I had solved the problem by simply not going to the beach, but as my children got older they wanted to swim. One summer we tried lakes. There is a beautiful lake at Posta Fibreno, at the western end of the valley. You can hire pedaloes, there are bars, it’s amazingly pretty and the water is marginally above freezing. No matter how hot you get, three inches over the ankles is all the average man can take of this. It’s frustrating, the water is so clear, it looks so right – and yet it’s just too cold for swimming.

  I bought a military map, which showed minor roads and tracks that give access to ponds and lakes. On the map was an obvious candidate, Lago di Barrea. This is up in the Abruzzi National Park, not too far as the crow flies, but a long winding trip by road of just over an hour – about the same as going to the beach. We packed a picnic and left for the mountains, driving through San Donato, through the pass at Forca d’Acero and into the National Park. The highest point is just under 1,200 metres above sea-level. The road passes through the beech forests that cover the mountains where we go cross-country skiing. From the pass the road drops down towards the Sangro Valley, a vista that suddenly opens before you after leaving behind the heavily forested roadsides. The first sight to greet you in the National Park other than trees is the town of Opi. As the road makes a sharp left-hand turn you see it, exactly the shape of a coffin, stretched along the crest of a hill, laid out before you. These mountains and this valley have always been unspoilt wilderness and are still today the preserve of bears and wolves.

  When my father was a young man there were partridge and ptarmigan in these mountains and he used to come here by horse to camp out and shoot. At that time this whole area was inaccessible by car; on horseback or on foot was the only way to get here. Every time I see Opi from here I remember my father’s story of a hunting trip with his dog, Volpe. Vipers are a hazard in these mountains; a walk off the beaten path requires high leather boots for protection and a syringe of snake serum in the pocket. My father accidentally disturbed a viper and Volpe rushed in to defend him, taking the bite. With Volpe on his shoulders my father walked to Opi to find an old hunter that he knew who had the antidote. By the time he arrived four hours later, Volpe was in rigor and the outlook was bleak. Father left Volpe with the old man and went home, knowing that the dog was close to death. For a week the old man nursed the dog, for the first three days turning the dog from one side to the other every four hours, day and night. When my father returned, more in hope than expectation, it was early in the morning, barely daybreak. The houses were shuttered, nothing stirred. As he began the steep climb up the main street through the village a wild barking began from the other end, shortly followed by the descent of a galloping Volpe, wagging and yelping a greeting.

  At the bottom of the hill is the Sangro river, where we turn right for the town of Villetta Barrea. Beyond lies the lake. The whole look and feel of this valley is very different from mine. It is entirely pastoral, the local economy still as it ever was: milk and cheeses, and of course timber. The air is far cooler here than it would be at the beach, and the lake looked tempting as we arrived. As it turned out, the lake has no obvious shoreline, at least not in summer. Before you can reach water deep enough to swim in, there is a long walk, ankle deep, through marshy reed beds, mud oozing between your toes. The heat made us all keen to swim, but this was not a perfect arrangement. As far as I can remember we only went there twice.

  The lack of water was getting to us. We all agreed that staying in Gallinaro would be amazing if only there was somewhere to swim. My friends couldn’t understand my problem. ‘There are two big swimming pools in Gallinaro, in Tramps and in the Oasis. Go to one of them.’ These pools exist all right, but if you ever thought the Italian Riviera was crowded, you haven’t seen these pools. The noise level almost approaches that of physical pain and you can smell the chlorine from the car park. I wouldn’t swim here by invitation, let alone pay heavily for the privilege. My wife succumbed to the children’s entreaties on a few occasions and took them, but, like me, chlorine and noise is not her idea of heaven.

  It seemed insurmountable. Building our own pool behind the house would be an amazing solution, but financially it was a non-starter. Anyway, it would have to be a very small pool in order to fit. I thought I had it licked when I found a large, fold-away plastic pool in a shop in Atina. We set it up in the garden, filled it with nearly one thousand litres of expensive water and jumped in. It was great water for splashing in, too small for anything more than two strokes, but at least it was on our doorstep for whenever we felt like it. Unfortunately after two days the water was green and smelly and the pool developed a leak. Another idea bit the dust.

  That night, lying in bed, it came to me. Many years ago a cousin from Casalattico had taken me to the upper reaches of the Molarino where some huge concrete barriers had been built to control the raging torrents of winter which continually th
reaten to undermine the bridges that span it. It was a hazy memory, but I was sure we could find the place.

  The next day we drove along the road to San Biagio, turning down any road or track that looked as though it might go towards the river. Occasionally we got near the water, but there was just a shallow trickle, not what we were looking for. And then we found it. Not exactly as I remembered, because the large concrete barriers lay smashed, broken like kindling. Whatever flood had done this must have been pretty ferocious. Behind one broken barrier we found a pool deep enough to get into. What flow there was fell into it from three feet above, creating a mini Jacuzzi. Things were looking up. The children shouted: further upstream they had found a much larger pool, deeper and wider. Someone had used river stones to make a shallow dam, deepening the pool a little. The water was refreshingly cool in the midday heat, very clean and very clear. We swam until half-past one, alone in the Molarino, with no sight or sound of anyone else. Apart from the pool, the river bed was dry for nearly all of its width, a brilliant white-stoned highway slicing through the forest which lined its banks. Looking upstream, the purple shape of Monte Cavallo was framed perfectly by the trees on either side. Heaven.

  By two o’clock the people who had built the stone dam arrived. We knew that was who they were because they had a proprietorial look about them that told us to shift. We moved to the smaller pool and made do. Over the next few days we found that the locals did not arrive until two: we had the use of the big pool until then. It wasn’t that they were ungracious, only that this was obviously where they had come for the past fifty summers, and who were we to invade? The daily temperatures were in the mid-thirties, so we came here with our picnic lunch day after day.