Seasons in Basilicata (50 page)

 

L
ATER ON
, while lunch was being prepared on embers taken from the fire under the cauldron, one of the men approached me and we talked about the farm and Nicolà.

“Did you hear what the men call him?” he asked me.

“No. I didn't notice.”

“They call him
Cavaliero.
It is a name of great honor because he received many awards during the last great war. Then when he came back home he made this farm to grow wheat. And peoples say he saved our village, Accettura, because we had no much wheat and very little bread after the war. We ate weeds, wild onions, anything. But the
Cavaliero
grew enough wheat for all of us, and he did not charge high prices that other people did and that we could not pay. So he saved us. And people love him and respect him very much. And today that is rare: honor and respect. In the old days you earned respect, and it was very important. If you lost respect, you were nobody.”

 

T
HE
C
AVALIERO
, Nicolà, was toasted heartily over our huge casserole
pranzo
of pork chunks slowly simmering with bay leaves, olive oil, onions,
peperoncini,
and thick red wine. It was a simple-sounding concoction, cooked over a mound of smoldering embers in a huge earthenware pot, but when I tried to reproduce the superb dish on several occasions on our own stovetop in Aliano I never quite managed to capture its intensity and richness.

We served ourselves on old porcelain plates and, munching great
slabs of golden bread, we all stood around the slaughtering table, which had been covered with a plastic cloth to disguise its previous use earlier that morning. Nicolà's strong red homemade wine flowed from large glass flagons and the traditional cries of “
Buon appetito!
” and “
Salute!
” and my favorite “
Cin cin!,
” echoed against the thick stone walls of the barn.

I felt that I was experiencing, touching, something unique that morning. Maybe it was the absolute freshness of the meat and that mood of ancient, time-honored rites that seemed to permeate the atmosphere. Or maybe it was just the camaraderie of a bunch of hardworking men, mainly
contadini
farmers, who continued to share a timeless tradition together and would do the same thing every year until they themselves faded back into the earth—which, hopefully, would continue to be as fruitful as it is today.

But I knew that all would agree with Nicolà. If the land was not nurtured by people like them, it could indeed ultimately “become a desert.”

Postscript

Apparently the pork casserole we'd all enjoyed in the late morning was merely a prelude—a minor
merenda
(snack)—to a far larger traditional
pranzo
(lunch) at Massimo's restaurant overlooking Accettura. I hadn't realized this so I'd consumed the equivalent of a hearty midday meal with the men. When the time came for us all to move from the farm, I inadvertently glanced at the three grinning, decapitated pig heads hanging on the barn wall and decided: enough pork for one day. In fact, enough pork for quite a while. So, I slipped away from the farm, pretending ignorance of the celebratory feast. Looking back I realize that I possibly reacted a little too hastily and doubtless would have enjoyed a splendid, wine-and
grappa-
laced bacchanal, which, I'm sure, could have made a far more colorful tale.

As indeed it will. Next year, maybe.

Giuliano's Little Trick and Rosa's Magic

A week or so after the pig fest I experienced yet another rather unique, and certainly unexpected, event as part of my ongoing rites of passage here.

 

F
OR ALL HIS
tendency to portray himself as a kind of chuckling, good-natured bumbler, Giuliano apparently had a wily side, too. Others had warned me of this in a kind of warm-spirited, wink-and-nod manner, and suggested that I should be a little wary of the wheeler-dealer persona in his nature. But I preferred to take him as I saw him—as a generous and helpful friend who was always ready to advise and assist us and expand our network of new acquaintances and “interesting characters.”

But there was a particular day when I realized that maybe one reason Giuliano was so helpful and so willing to be seen with me around Accettura was the fact that the small village was rarely visited by “writers” (or any other outsiders, for that matter)—certainly not by writers writing a book on Basilicata and linked, albeit tenuously, to such venerable publications as
National Geographic
and the
New York Times.
It was a win-win situation. I benefited from Giuliano's help, and he, in some modest, secretive way, seemed to gain a little local kudos from his association with me.

On this particular day, Giuliano chose his moment well. We'd just enjoyed one of Rosa's splendid five-course lunches (another one of her “just a
spuntino
” [snack] masterpieces)—featuring as
secondo,
pungent, garlic-filled rolls of thin-sliced veal that had been slow cooked in her own rich homemade tomato sauce—and Giuliano and I were basking in the glow of glasses of grappa and Rosa's thimbles of robust espresso coffee.

“So, we workin' on your ‘farm calendar,' right, David? This afternoon?”

This was one of those on-off projects I'd begun weeks before. I wanted to create, mainly for my own education I think, a sort of month-by-month chart of all the things that small farmers had to do
in order to be traditionally self-sufficient in terms of producing their own olive oil, wines, cheeses, meat, prosciutto, and all those salamis, fruits, and vegetables—the lot. I wasn't quite sure what I would actually do with the chart. Maybe there was a part of me that wondered if Anne and I could handle a subsistence existence if we ever decided to constrain our peripatetic ways and settle down enough to try the “simple life” for a longer period

“Yes. I'd like that. We've got quite a few things to cover. Also I need more details on all those pork products you've got dangling from the rafters in your
cantina.
I want to know how you both make the perfect prosciutto,
coppa, soppressata….
”

“'Azright. Rosa knows all that. But she 'as to go out for a while so we can start that later on.”

“Okay. Fine with me,” I said, looking forward to another glass or two of grappa, for digestive purposes only, of course.

“So I was thinkin', maybe you like visit our school, where Rocco, my grandson, goes. It's a nice little school up by church.”

“Oh, I've been to quite a few schools, Giuliano. Sebastiano has taken me around to most of his places in Aliano and Stigliano.”

“…And the headmaster say he like show you 'roun'…”

“I honestly don't think I…”

“…'bout two o'clock this afternoon. If is awright with you.”

Giuliano looked at me appealingly, and I realized that he'd already set the visit up. He wasn't really
asking
me, but
telling
me what our agenda for the afternoon was to be.

“Course, if you don' wan'…” he said with a sad frown.

What the heck? I thought. I could hardly say no when I'd just enjoyed a superb lunch at his home, and we had nothing else to do anyway until Rosa came back later on.

“Okay. That's fine,” I said, sensing I had been cleverly nudged into a corner. Often my first reaction to such a situation is to become unusually assertive and openly negative. I guess that's what happens when you've spent a large part of your life “on the road” and you treasure your personal freedom and boundless choices almost as much as life itself. But this time, I surrendered with barely a whimper.

A few minutes later we were rolling up to a very airy contemporary structure set on a high bluff overlooking the village and the sequence of ranges and hill villages that eased eastward into a heat haze. Most of the schools I'd seen previously had similar locations, and their classrooms invariably had large picture windows offering enormous vistas of wild Lucanian landscapes—a refreshing improvement on the hovel-like pit that was Aliano's school in the thirties and described so evocatively and with outrage by Levi.

I assumed that, as had occurred on my other visits to schools in the region, I'd be shown the halls bedecked with proclamations and school awards and photographs of soccer teams, and then a few of the classrooms filled with charts, projects, maps, and artwork done by the children (another notable improvement on Levi's morose descriptions of the typical classroom environment in his days).

But this time things were a little different. Suspiciously different. When we arrived the headmaster came out to greet me formally, saying how honored he was to have “a very famous writer from America” visit his small school. I looked at Giuliano, wondering where the “very famous writer” label had come from. He nodded and grinned mischievously. Then the teachers, all women, were introduced to me one by one. Fortunately the first to be introduced spoke and taught some English, so the comments of the others, with references to my twenty-odd travel books and
National Geographic
magazine and my illustrations, etc., were translated with embarrassing floridity. Once again I realized that Giuliano had been here and prepared the ground well by telling them about my books and articles. One glance at his glowing face, basking happily in reflected glory, was enough to confirm my suspicions.

That glance should also have warned me of things to come.

The hallway was suddenly full of marching lines of young pupils—all the girls in white Alice in Wonderland–type “over-dresses” and all the boys in traditional royal blue smocks. They walked summarily in single file past our little gathering of teachers and down the corridor into one of the larger classrooms at the end of the building.

The headmaster watched them pass with a look of paternal pride and then asked if I was ready.

“Sorry?” I said, already suspecting what the answer would be. “Ready for what?”

“Well, Giuliano said he thought it would be very nice if you could talk to our pupils about yourself and what you do.”

My smile suddenly felt very tight and tense. “Oh, he did, did he?” I looked around for Giuliano, who was now conveniently half hidden behind two of the teachers and studying some framed documents on the hallway wall with rapt attention.

“So, if you would like to come with me…” the headmaster said, indicating the way down the corridor to the classroom, which resounded with the giggles and shouts of young pupils, doubtless delighted by a chance to miss afternoon lessons.

And there they all sat, fifty or so of them, with expectant faces—some smiling, some as solemn as little magistrates—and ranging in age from seven to eleven. Then the teachers marched in and arranged themselves, sentrylike, along the walls and by the door. Barring a hasty exit on my part, which I must admit seemed a tempting “fight or flight” option for a moment or two, I realized I was now expected to entertain these youngsters and the teachers by…by doing what?!

It's not that I was unfamiliar with the lecture circuit and expectant audiences, but usually I was well prepared, with notes and even a slide show. In addition my listeners were usually adult and ardent lovers of travel and adventure tales, relatively familiar, at least vicariously, with many of the countries Anne and I had explored, and possessing patient attention spans…and were invariably fluently English-speaking!

I realized that I was faced with a black hole of experience. I had the distinct feeling of being sucked into sensory oblivion. I had never before talked to a gathering of very young schoolchildren. I think my sister's experience as a schoolteacher and her descriptions of the terrors of “keeping the little darlings focused and amused for more than thirty seconds at a time,” had convinced me that such a
challenge was one I was quite happy to forgo for the rest of my natural life.

Until today.

And no one was helping me. Teachers had hissed and cajoled the room into timorous silence, and were now watching me intently, with anticipatory half-smiles on their faces. The headmaster gave a brief speech in Italian, presumably a promo-pitch for my appearance, and then nodded smilingly to indicate that the floor was now all mine. And, of course, Giuliano was by the window, giving me one of his broad, encouraging grins.

It was at that moment that I spotted Rocco, Giuliano's physically disabled grandson. He was sitting in the front row in his wheelchair, his face beaming with expectation and pride as he indicated to his friends that “this is the man I've been telling you about who is always eating far too much of
Nonna
[Grandmother] Rosa's food at our house” (or something along those lines). His smile—always a beautiful smile that seemed to glow with the pure pleasure of living and learning—did the trick. He and I had been chatting a few weeks previously about the things he enjoyed most at school and the dreams he had for his future. And suddenly I knew exactly what I would try to talk to these eager young pupils about: I'd talk about dreams and how the life that Anne and I were trying to live (propelled by serendipity, luck, and pure bloody-minded zaniness) actually still seemed to reflect our earliest dreams.

And so, assisted by the English teacher, who offered to interpret (I have no idea how well, but she seemed to enjoy herself), I began.

“When I was a very little boy, I remember having this fantastic dream. I was in this big, big balloon painted with red and blue dots and floating high above the ground and being blown along by warm breezes all over the world…” (Fortunately there was a big map of the world on the wall behind me—the perfect prop.) “Whenever I wanted to explore somewhere—mountains, lakes, deserts, big cities—I could pull on a little rope and the balloon would float down out of the sky and rest on the ground, and I could get out and go off
to meet the people who lived there and eat strange foods with them and dance their dances and listen to all their wonderful stories. And then, when I had learned and seen lots of things, I could get back in my balloon and pull another rope and soar back up into the sky again and go looking for somewhere else to explore and to learn about. And you know what happened? That dream—the dream I had when I was about your age—came true. And for a long, long time I have been exploring the world—anywhere I want to go—sketching, writing, taking photographs, eating really strange foods, and listening to lots and lots of people tell me about their very different, but always very interesting, lives.”