Seasons in Basilicata Read online

  Seasons in Basilicata

  A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

  Written and Illustrated by

  David Yeadon

  FOR

  CARLO LEVI

  WHOSE BOOK

  Christ Stopped at Eboli

  INSPIRED US

  TO EMBARK ON THE JOURNEY

  AND LIVE THE ADVENTURE

  AND

  ALL OUR BASILICATAN FRIENDS

  WHO MADE OUR EXPERIENCES

  SO DEEPLY MEANINGFUL

  —AND ALWAYS ENJOYABLE

  This is a closed world, shrouded in black veils, bloody and earthy—that other world where the peasants live and which no one can enter without a magic key…

  —CARLO LEVI, CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Illustrations

  A Few Notes

  The First Spring

  Prologue: A View from Our Terrace

  Chapter 1: The Lure of Levi

  Chapter 2: Entering “The Land of the Magic Key”

  Chapter 3: Seeking a Home

  Chapter 4: A Home in Aliano

  Summer

  Introduction

  Chapter 5: Mood Shifts

  Chapter 6: Celebrations

  Chapter 7: Strangenesses

  Autumn

  Introduction

  Chapter 8: Rhythms and Rites

  Chapter 9: Flowing

  Winter

  Introduction

  Chapter 10: Going Deeper

  Chapter 11: Closures

  About the Author

  Other Books by David Yeadon

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Illustrations

  Map of Italy/Aliano

  SPRING

  Castelmezzano and the Lucanian Dolomites

  Aliano and the calanchi landscape

  Accettura Alley

  Carlo Levi

  Basilicatan panorama

  Maratea Porto (near Sapri)

  Maratea

  Castelmezzano

  Pietrapertosa

  Matera

  Matera montage

  Fossa del Bersagliere—Aliano

  Accettura

  Accettura’s Maggio Festival

  Giuliano

  Don Pierino

  View from our Aliano terrace

  Woman in “Lower” Aliano

  SUMMER

  Craco ghost village

  Man at Carlo Levi house

  Felicia

  Traditional bagpipe band

  Aliano alley

  Pastori shepherd

  Stigliano potter

  Craco

  Terroni couple

  Elderly village woman

  AUTUMN

  Missanello

  Spagna family crest

  Vito

  Giuliano’s vendemmia equipment

  Vittoria

  Olive tree

  Margherita and Tori’s estate

  Missanello scene

  WINTER

  Aliano Carnevale

  Typical olive mill

  Calanchi landscape

  The pig slaughter

  Mingalone cantina

  Hill town near Potenza

  Giulia Venere (Levi’s witch)

  Aliano Carnevale

  Aliano—enduring, ongoing…

  A Few Notes Interpreters and Translators

  Readers might be impressed by the apparent alacrity with which Anne and I mastered the Italian language, particularly as this was only our third visit to the country and our initial linguistic capabilities were little more than a quickly learned series of “Useful Words and Phrases for Travelers” found at the back of a guidebook.

  And, to be honest, even when we left Basilicata almost a year later, our Italian was still rather elementary and our grasp of local dialects almost nonexistent. (Even the locals in different villages have problems with multitudinous regional dialects.) Fortunately Italians tend to have a far better grasp of English than Anglophones have of Italian, and we invariably found people close at hand who were willing to interpret for us. For longer interviews we usually asked our many friends in the villages to help out, which they usually did with surprising eagerness. People such as the Mingalones, the Villanis, Antonio Pagnotta, and Maria Cecere deserve special mention, not only for their interpretive skills but also for their many other kindnesses throughout our stay.

  Illustrations

  Some readers might also be curious about the intended mélange of styles I’ve chosen to use for my illustrations. In previous books I’ve tended to select one particular medium and stick with it throughout. But in the case of this book the images were often so distinct and strong in character that I decided to let them tell me which medium I should use—pencil, pen, bamboo pen, ink and wash, etc. I used a similar “let the subject speak” approach in a previous book, The Way of the Wanderer: Discovering Your True Self Through Travel. But of course that book was also about the way in which true travel can release “multi-self” aspects of oneself—the protean potentials we all possess but often, for one reason or another, choose to ignore. Being a celebrant of Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes” philosophy, James Hillman’s “community of many interior persons” approach, and Thomas Moore’s view that there is a “peacock’s tail” of human possibilities in each individual, I try to allow the serendipity and constant surprise of “randoming” travel nudge less familiar facets of myself out into the light of day to play. Ditto the approach to my illustrations. They’re all mine. They just reflect very different subjects and different “me”s.

  Individual Privacy

  Wherever possible I have retained the real names of the people we met in Basilicata, but in cases where they requested anonymity or where I sensed a potential cause for embarrassment, I have changed the names. But they know who they are…and how grateful we remain for their advice, kindnesses, and revelations.

  The First Spring

  ALIANO’S CALANCHI LANDSCAPE

  PROLOGUE

  A View From Our Terrace

  Mussolini was restless.

  The name of Massimo’s retired hunting dog was really Federico, but the animal’s arrogant, swaggering gait had always seemed so remarkably Mussolini-like in flair and style that his nickname had stuck. Now his enormous paunch heaved and rolled listlessly, and his legs and arms quivered, each to a different rhythm.

  “It’s spring. In winter he sleeps without moving, but when the blossoms come he’s always dreaming and twitching. He’s somewhere far away, in dog heaven,” murmured Massimo. He had a quiet way of talking, as if there were parts of himself he was disinclined to disturb. A single translucent bead of perspiration slipped gently down his bronzed forehead, along the bridge of his nose, and came to rest, slightly wobbly, on the tip.

  Massimo, a young, cherub-faced man, was owner with his father, Angelo, of the small Hotel SanGiuliano, in the town of Accettura. He had taken Anne and me under his wing when we first arrived in Basilicata and quickly became a close friend and general “facilitator” of our social and other local affairs. Today we’d invited him over to see our new rented home in Aliano.

  The three of us lay sprawled in various ungainly postures of utter relaxation on our terrace chairs overlooking the main piazza of our adopted hill village, a tiny community of a thousand residents, perched on a barely accessible ridgetop bound by canyons and gorges hundreds of feet deep. Here we were at last, deep in the mountains and forests of Basilicata, a wild and remarkably unexplored region in the instep of Italy’s “boot,” in a small settlement that can trace its origins back to at least 6000 B.C.

  It was unseasonably hot; even the normally cool breeze had heat i
n it. Massimo called it “the breath of Africa,” but at least it wasn’t the blast-furnace scirocco, a hot wind full of Saharan sand, that is the curse of Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) summers. In the distance the high, dark ridges of the forest of Gallipoli Cognato rippled in the heat haze. Far, far below, the broad valley of the Agri River was lost in ethereal mists.

  The scene before us would have done justice to Dante’s Paradiso. While the far ridges were thickly wooded, the valley sides were a quiltlike profusion of early-spring cherry and peach blossoms; ragged rows of olive trees with their tiny fluttering green-silver leaves and contorted monsterlike trunks; patches of tilled earth, moist and gleaming, awaiting early crop plantings; and the occasional golden-stone barn or small farmhouse wrapped in trellised vines. Incongruous clusters of Lombardy poplars rose like tall, green flames against the stony horizontals of classical Roman–era terraces. Despite a definite Dakota-like wildness in the scenery immediately around Aliano, the place exuded proud self-sufficiency, built upon an ancient peasant legacy of rites and rituals, and a deep trust in the munificence of nature. It felt strong, long rooted, and enduring.

  Attention turned to our impromptu picnic among the rooftops. On a large, flat village-made piatto (plate) lay wafer-thin, almost translucent slices of prosciutto crudo, a gift from Giuliano, our sprightly, sixty-three-year-old friend, also from Accettura. The prosciutto had maintained its purple-red luster and salty sweetness. “This piece has been cured in my cantina [garage] for two years,” Giuliano had told Anne with pride the previous evening as he handed her a hefty slab of pig thigh wrapped in cheesecloth. He was a stocky little bull of a man, with a raspy voice, a lilting lisp, due largely to the absence of front teeth, and an almost constant cherubic grin that wobbled his facial tundra of sun-scorched cheeks and jowls beneath his sweat-stained, flat coppola cap. “I use only salt. No chemicals. They spoil flavor. This one is special one. More deeper taste. Most peoples have a pig, but I feed mine on special nuts. Makes very, very tasty.”

  Giuliano had also handed Anne an enormous round of golden, crisp-crusted, high-domed bread. “From Rosa, my wife. More better than from forno [bakery]. She thinks you very nice lady.” Anne had smiled, maybe even blushed a little. But Giuliano had blushed even more when he added, “And me, permesso, also I think same.” Then he promptly covered up his embarrassment at such an intimate revelation and insisted that “one day, very soon, you will come for big country breakfast on big fire down at my kiln in the valley.” This was his great pride—an ancient, three generations’ old brick kiln and clay pit, at which, he claimed, he worked as the last handicrafter in Basilicata of classical Roman–style curved roof pantiles.

  The other snacks for our picnic had come courtesy of Massimo himself, who, like most male residents of Accettura, considered himself something of a do-it-yourself macellaio (butcher). Deep from his own cellar he’d brought pungent slices of mortadella (baloney), soppressata (head cheese), pancetta (bacon), a dark and chewy salami, and moist chunks of coppa (cured neck of pork), along with a garlic and scorching-hot peperoncini dipping sauce and a delicious olive oil–shiny caponata of chopped eggplant, tomatoes, and olives.

  “My own tomatoes and my own olives,” he’d boasted, stretching out his hands and long fingers, delicate as praying mantises. Almost every family in the village seemed to have its own small vegetable plot, and all invariably claimed to produce “the best.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he’d pulled out a bottle of wine from his ever-present shoulder bag of boar hide with needle-like sproutings of boar hair. “I think…I hope you will both like this,” he said as he vigorously stroked his cheek, then ran a thick-fingered hand through his unruly mop of black hair (both signs, we’d learned, of his quirky, gift-giving insecurity) and gently handed us a ten-year-old Aglianico del Vulture, the pride of Basilicatan wine making, and one of southern Italy’s most renowned reds. The label was Paternoster, according to the oenophilic cognoscenti the finest winery of the region, way up in the northeastern sector of Basilicata, near the ancient pre-Roman city of Melfi.

  “Bellissimo!” I said, as we gushed our gratitude.

  “Andiamo,” said Massimo. “Let’s go, let’s eat.” But we could tell he enjoyed our thanks. He loved giving little spontaneous gifts, and his face glowed like a happy, benevolent angel.

  And that was our downfall on that warm afternoon: A couple of glasses each of that gorgeous, almost black, wine, along with the ham, salami, olives, Rosa’s bread, and golden chunks of homemade sheep’s-milk pecorino cheese—courtesy of Nicolà, Massimo’s grandfather, who lived in “the family Great House” over in the next valley—and we had little incentive or energy to do anything other than watch the doings and dawdlings in the piazza below us.

  THE DAY OF MASSIMO’s merenda picnic on our terrace had begun early. Very early. The emergence of dawn—which Anne and I loved to watch from our terrace—had brought the usual dove-and-cockerel chorus, echoing along the spooling streets and alleys that tumbled down the hillside and rolled to a stop around the church and the ancient village fountain. Then came the regular, and very traditional, flurry of activity: the four coffee bars along Via Roma opened promptly at six-thirty, doling out endless tiny cups of super-strength espresso, corretto shots of grab-your-throat grappa (“eau de vie”), and cornetti (sweet croissantlike pastries). The slowly expanding huddles of older men in berets and ancient, battered trilby hats began to gather around the bars. The oldest, some barely able to walk, held court from their plastic chairs, while the “younger” men (the sixty-to-seventy-five age group) stood respectfully nearby, listening to the murmured wisdom of their elders. Then the small stores began to open: the latteria, farmacia, frutteria, tabaccheria, and the two macellerie.

  By this time the two street sweepers were out, the brothers Antonio and Salvatore Grossi. Each wielded his handcrafted broom, the brushes of which were actually made from still-green branches and sharp little leaves of broom, a tough plant that grows in wild, clumpish profusion all around the town on the rock-pocked slopes beneath the wild calanchi canyons and buttes. In the distance were the vast oak forests of Montepiano and Parco Gallipoli, and the exotically eroded pinnacles and fangs of the Lucanian Dolomites. This had become one of my favorite places to sketch, around these soaring, four-hundred-foot-high spearheads of stone, home to the tight-packed, chaotically mazed and alleyed hill villages of Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano, and their even more intensely warrened and nearly vertical “Rabatanas,” or “Saracen quarters.” I’ve found no places anywhere in Italy quite so hidden or dramatically blended with the landscape as these places. And I’ve looked. I’m a fanatical lover of hill towns and their jumbled fantasy forms. But these two tiny communities are indeed unique and, as will be revealed later, in far more intriguing ways than merely for their idiosyncratic architectural attributes.

  As lunchtime approached, the midday heat increased in the piazza and it began to empty, except for the ever-present, neurotically active Pietro Petracca, Aliano’s notorious geriatric parking attendant. Despite the absence of any significant traffic (Aliano is, after all, very much off Basilicata’s beaten track and Basilicata doesn’t really even have much in the way of beaten track in the first place), Pietro somehow manages to ticket enough unfortunate locals for minute regulatory transgressions to justify his job—much to the chagrin of the village’s young drivers, who have been plotting revenge for his vigilance for months but don’t seem to have arrived at any concerted plan yet.

  We watched the older men slowly disappear into the maze of wriggling, shadowy alleys and stepped streets that lead to the “high town” on top of Aliano’s hill and curl around its main church. This edifice is impressive externally, with its bold brick-and-stone massiveness, but dustily threadbare and devoid of decoration inside. The residents of Aliano are mainly small-plot farmers and olive-growers, so excessive churchly exuberance does not reflect their ancient peasant and, as they proudly call them, pagani ways.

  Two sequences of
the daily up-and-down, street-climbing rituals that are typical of all hill villages were now complete. After a long lunch and traditional siesta, there would be another downhill flow to the coffee bars in the late afternoon, followed by the evening ritual of the passeggiata, which, in the warm months, is a nightly norm across much of Italy. This is a time when you truly feel the throbbing heart of the community, with its ageless tradition of eventide bonding and mingling—older couples serenely strolling in fine attire (dressing appropriately for the ritual is still considered important by most participants); young families with their baby carriages gazing adoringly at their extravagantly indulged offspring; young men, bulging with adolescent angst and machismo, emerging from shadowy huddles to see and be seen, and to wink at and whisper to the molto belle primped girls walking arm in arm. Pretending not to notice, particularly if their parents are close by (which they usually are), the girls, in turn, giggle, wriggle, and flounce their long, dark hair in coquettish disdain. Meanwhile, the huddles of stooped octogenarians observe everything while continuing their never-ending, arm-waving, gesture-accompanied debates, like true characters from central casting. But there are subtleties too—unspoken rites of passage, performance, and manners—which were only slowly revealed to us over our long stay there.

  MUSSOLINI GAVE A DISTINCTLY eloquent burp but remained asleep and still comically restless. We laughed and raised our glasses to his neurotic obliviousness. “I think it is not so easy for him at this time,” Massimo said sleepily. “He’s my hunting dog. He goes with me in late autumn, when we shoot the cinghiale [boar] and the capriolo [deer] in the forest—our wonderful winter meat! Then he’s not so fat. Last year he was very energetic, fit. He almost caught a wolf…” Massimo paused for effect, “…and also a bear!”