Murder In Matera Page 11

  And they had no doubt they would make the right match—the bashad.

  When Vita was coming of age in the late 1860s, her mother would say to her “Non hai peli sulla lingua”—an idiomatic expression that meant literally, “You don’t have hair on your tongue.” It actually meant, “You always speak your mind.” And Vita always did.

  It’s what made her attractive to the boys in the village, that edge she had over them. She was smarter than they were, quicker, more direct, and they were in awe of Vita.

  By puberty, she was forbidden to speak to a boy without being accompanied by a guardian, but she would simply give them the look. The other girls—and women—looked away when a man looked at them, lowered their eyes in the usual submissive way.

  But not Vita.

  She stared right back at you, no matter who you were. The sindaco, or mayor, the pezzi grossi, the big shots, even the padroni. She stared you right down and seemed to say, “What the fuck are you looking at?” It wasn’t the malocchio she gave them. No. It was even stronger than that. It was an inner strength and confidence.

  It was moxie.

  Vita wasn’t beautiful, but she was sexy, the curve of her neck and the way she tilted her head when she listened. She was smart and wise all at the same time—what the Italians like to call “veramente in gamba.” The Italian version of thinking on your feet. But it meant more than that. Liveliness and love of life was hard to find in a place as miserable as nineteenth-century Bernalda. And Vita had it. Vita had it in spades—to quote an American idiom.

  She was so bold and so full of life that some of the other girls jealously called her a puttana, starting rumors.

  On top of it all, Vita was funny. All the women in our family were comedians. People often called Vita macchietta, which meant “entertaining little person.” She could turn a phrase. Tell a joke using a play on words, a favorite of Italian comedians. As the much hated tax man made his way down Via Cavour, Vita did a mean imitation of the man walking down the street—her legs bowed, her back hunched, her teeth bucked and eyes crossed. Vita was a skilled impersonator and mimic, like most of my great-aunts. The comedy gene had to come from somewhere.

  THOUGH THERE WAS NO SUITOR JUST YET, TERESINA SET ABOUT HER mother’s duty: gathering the girl’s linens, bit by bit, piece by piece. Even the poorest mothers provided a trousseau for their daughters. A bedspread was cut and fringed. Teresina made and gathered the pillowcases, the wool blanket, a mattress of straw, secondhand dishcloths and napkins, which she lovingly embroidered with tiny flowers and patterns.

  All Teresina’s spare linen from her own marriage was recycled and made to look like new. The embroidery was beautiful, because Teresina was a talented seamstress and weaver. She would pass her skills on to her daughter, teaching her the complicated pedals and strings of the wooden loom, which looked like the inside of a piano.

  In addition to the linen, Teresina and Domenico had to provide Vita with a chest for the linen and a chest of drawers, a board for kneading pasta, and one for carrying bread on her head to and from the communal oven.

  Her father, Domenico, an old man by now at fifty-five, made them all himself with his still-strong hands, from the wood he chopped from the public land, the few parcels of land that didn’t belong to the padroni yet.

  Before the wedding, the parents of the bride and groom agreed in an unwritten contract as to what linens, furniture, dishes, clothes, and glasses would be given away with the daughter. Richer families discussed an actual dowry—money and lands that would be transferred from one family to the other.

  And finally, the bashad was made. The love match. From the word “to kiss,” baciare. Vita Gallitelli would be engaged to marry a neighbor, Francesco Vena, seven years her senior.

  Who knows if Vita and Francesco were in love? Probably not. Few in Vita’s day had the luxury of marrying someone they’d fallen in love with. Marriage was for convenience, for survival, for having babies to help work the farm.

  Francesco knew Vita because he was friends with her brother, Leonardantonio, who was four years older than she was. Francesco had worked with him on the farms surrounding Bernalda and so he knew, from chatting every day with Leonardantonio, that Vita was not engaged to anyone. He liked the way she looked, her dark, thick hair, her long, lovely neck, and though she was small, her strong shoulders and hips.

  Before the proposal, he floated the idea of marrying Vita past Leonardantonio, who was almost as enthusiastic as Francesco was. His sister was getting old, entering spinster territory. His parents were starting to worry.

  She was nineteen.

  Chapter 18

  FAITHFUL HOME

  PISTICCI HAD A CERTAIN LIGHTNESS AND AIRINESS ABOUT IT, since it was high up on a hill, within the clouds somedays. It felt so different from Bernalda. To get to the center, you had to drive around and around the hill at a pretty steep incline. Driving stick was especially challenging. But because the town was so vertical, many of the houses had views of the countryside. Bernalda was flat and laid out in a simple grid: you had to be at the very edge of town, at the town walls, to see the landscape.

  I took an apartment in Pisticci this time around: maybe it would be luckier for me. The people here were generally friendlier and more open. And as far as I knew, Pisticci was the last place Vita had lived before coming to America. So maybe the murder had happened here.

  Though it had a slightly bigger population, seventeen thousand, Pisticci was quieter than Bernalda. The men were gentlemen and the women were the prettiest in the region, I thought, although some of the older ones had mustaches.

  Some think the name Pisticci comes from the Greek phrase pistos spiti, which means faithful home. Pisticci always offered the Greeks a place to stay. And so I decided to make it my faithful home.

  My apartment was near the top of the town but was on the ground floor. It was clean and whitewashed on the outside, like all the buildings in Pisticci, with tall shutters and high ceilings that kept it cool most days. The place was simple but comfortable and decorated with framed paintings of Jesus and the Blessed Mother, and was fully stocked with pots and pans, sheets and towels, and everything I needed.

  Vita’s son, Leonardo, my great-grandfather, was born in 1879 in a house a short walk away. His house had a marble step outside, green wooden double doors, a second-story window, and a curved, red terra-cotta roof. It was much bigger than the one his brother, Valente, had been born in in Bernalda, and in a much fancier neighborhood. I wondered what had brought them here.

  Down the street from Leonardo’s birthplace at 34 Via Loreto was now a sign that told the history of the rione. “In this district there were: the homes of the Mayors, who were armed by the local squire, the houses of the priests, of the lawyers, of the doctors and the palatial residences that belonged to the noblest and wealthiest. . . .”

  On Leonardo’s birth certificate, it said the family had moved there for “work reasons” and that Francesco Vena was not present. At work, I figured. Maybe this time in the fields surrounding Pisticci.

  Leonardo’s birthplace and my apartment were near the center of town. I noticed a half-dozen churches nearby, twice as many as I had seen in Bernalda. The sound of church bells constantly filled Pisticci’s air, which smelled of fresh baked focaccia from the local bakeries. The fragrant breezes were cooler than in Bernalda, especially at night.

  I wasted no time in my local research, buying groceries on the main street, Corso Margherita, and asking everyone I met—the butcher, the baker, the vegetable seller, the gelato guy—about my family murder.

  The main corso was hopping with residents out taking their evening passeggiata, chatting, laughing, enjoying the cool evening weather. I thought about America and how everyone was shut up tight in their houses most nights, watching television.

  The corso in Pisticci was much shorter than the one in Bernalda and was made of shiny, long beige paving stones that reflected the lights on the street at night. It looked more like a dance
floor than a street. And the crowds waltzed along it all evening, stopping every so often to chat and gossip. The crowd in Pisticci was much different than Bernalda’s. Most of the residents of Pisticci were either very old or very young. It lent more of an innocence to the population.

  The Bernaldans really didn’t like the Pisticcesi and thought their town was boring, with far fewer bars and restaurants than Bernalda. They called Pisticcesi cafone—uncouth farmers (pronounced “ga-VONE” in dialect). The Bernaldans considered their town a city—even though they had no library, movie theater, or mass transit. The Pisticcesi knew they were a small town and were proud of it. I thought maybe the Bernaldans were just jealous.

  But their feud actually went back several generations, to the Fascist years in Basilicata. Professor Tataranno had told me the story years ago, the one involving Pascquale Gallitelli, who was dragged out from under his bed and beaten and then shot in the head. That day of bloodshed had started because the Pisticcesi had come to Bernalda looking for a political enemy. A riot broke out, and three people wound up dead. The Bernaldans were still angry at the Pisticcesi over it.

  The antagonism only grew in 1933 when Mussolini took some Metapontan land under Pisticci rule and gave it instead to Bernalda. When you go to the beach in Metaponto now, the signs say it falls under the comune of Bernalda. Which still pisses off the Pisticcesi.

  THE PEOPLE IN PISTICCI SHOOK THEIR HEADS IN MUCH THE SAME way the Bernaldans had when I asked them about the murder. They had never heard of it. No was no, no matter how polite you were or how pretty the view was.

  At the butcher shop, though, the face of the woman behind the counter brightened when I told her my story and that my family name was Vena. Finally, I thought, someone who knows the story. She held up an index finger and ran to the back of the shop. I closed my eyes and imagined her returning with a picture or a letter or some family memento.

  Instead she emerged with a look of satisfaction on her face and a bottle of Amaro Lucano in her hands.

  It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me.

  Whenever I mentioned the name Vena here, someone inevitably pulled out a bottle of this local bitter liqueur, manufactured by a family here with the same name. The factory was on the outskirts of town, protected by a sliding yellow gate that had VENA written across it in giant blue letters.

  Vena was written on the bottle’s label as well, next to a picture of the pacchiana, a woman dressed in the local costume of the region. She had a colorful skirt, a white puffy blouse, and a red vest, with her hand on her hip and her head tilted in a very saucy pose. The founder of Amaro Lucano, Pasquale Vena, was born in 1871, around the same time as Leonardo and Valentin, Vita’s sons. Pasquale had gone to Naples with his brothers and had watched them sail for America. But he stayed behind and got a job and eventually invented Amaro Lucano.

  Three brothers in Naples. Two sailing away to America. All named Vena.

  On my more optimistic days, I liked to think it was our family and that Pasquale was the “lost” son of Vita. Maybe she was even the model for the pacchiana on the label, posing before she left for America.

  I had written letters to the Amaro Lucano clan and told them the few facts I knew, hoping they could shed some light. They never wrote back. I even tried visiting the factory, but they said all the family members were at a family reunion. Without me. Which was all right, since they were probably drinking Amaro Lucano, which I couldn’t stand. It tasted like Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup. Pisticci’s generous residents, hearing my family name was Vena, offered me shot after shot of free Amaro Lucano. And to stay in their good graces, I obliged for the first twenty times or so. But I really hated the stuff.

  Every time I passed the factory, I shuddered because a huge sign, a replica of the bottle, lay on its roof. The thought of that much Amaro Lucano made me queasy. All the bars, cafés, and restaurants carried it, and one café in particular—Bar Vena—had an enormous dusty bottle on its top shelf.

  I told the lady butcher thank you, that I knew all about the Amaro Lucano–Vena connection, and declined her gracious offer of a free shot. I ordered a half pound of pork chops and headed home.

  VENA WAS A MORE COMMON NAME IN PISTICCI THAN IT WAS IN Bernalda. I wondered if my great-great-grandfather Francesco was from Pisticci originally. The next day, Giuseppe and I searched through the Pisticci records to see if we could find a birth certificate for a Francesco Vena several years older than Vita, born in the 1840s or ’50s. But there were several Francesco Venas around that age. It was hard to tell which one—if any—was our man.

  Imma spent the day in Bernalda wrangling with the clerk there, trying to find some family records. The next day she planned to travel to Matera with Francesco, the lawyer to whom Leo had introduced me. I had thoroughly searched those Matera files years ago but I wanted Imma to take a second look to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

  Giuseppe and I visited my great-grandfather’s at 34 Via Loreto, hoping to turn up a clue to Vita and Francesco’s story. An old woman down the street—Mrs. DiBello—had the key to the place. But the landlords, who lived in Turin, had told her not to let anyone in. We thought maybe we could sweet-talk her.

  Mrs. DiBello was sitting outside her house with her husband, Rocco, perched quietly on small wooden chairs topped with square pillows covered in white floral pillowcases. They were in their nineties and spoke only in dialect. Giuseppe introduced me and quickly, though smoothly, explained my quest, moving back and forth between dialect and proper Italian—with lapses into English—so we could all understand.

  Rocco was even shorter than I was, with red, ruddy skin, a long nose and chin, and big ears that had apparently kept growing after the rest of him had stopped. He was like a happy Italian elf. His wife, who was even smaller, looked a lot like my mother, with a round, flawless face, but with eyeglasses.

  The DiBellos refused to give up the key, despite some gentle prodding from Giuseppe, but they were happy to tell us what it was like for their parents to live here years ago. They remembered living in the house with their animals, their chickens, a pig, and a mule, just like in the books I’d read. These people were like a time machine, taking me on a personal tour of the life my ancestors had led.

  “I named all my animals when I was a boy,” said Rocco. His mule was called Ciccio (“CHEECH-o,” short for Francesco). “Their ears would prick up when I called their names.” I laughed and then asked if naming your pigs and chickens made it harder to kill them around slaughter time.

  Rocco shook his head. “It wasn’t sad when the time came to kill them,” he said. “Besides, we only had meat three times a year, festival time—Christmas, Easter, or the feast of St. Rocco in summer. It was just a part of life.”

  His family was rich enough to own Ciccio, he said, who was kept in the back part of the house and whom his father rode to the farm before the sun rose each day. A manger with straw in it for Ciccio to eat stood beside the bed.

  “There were no bathrooms or outhouses in those days,” he said. “Just a pot—a zio pepe—and then a barrel in which you put that waste, which was then rolled down to a spot close to the cemetery and dumped.” He pointed in the distance with his wrinkled, stubby finger.

  Mrs. DiBello went inside and came back out with her mother-in-law’s pacchiana costume, the same kind worn by the woman on the Amaro Lucano label. I had never seen one of the actual costumes, only photographs and drawings. Until the 1950s, all the women in Pisticci, Bernalda, and the surrounding villages wore the same outfit day in and day out.

  This outfit looked like it was brand-new but Rocco insisted it was a hundred years old. Mrs. DiBello held up each part of the intricate costume, pronouncing the name of each piece in dialect. The long colorful skirt was called a stuan, which came all the way down to the feet. This one was green, a color meant to bring luck, with pleats and a single line of lace about three-quarters of the way down. Underneath that women wore a petticoat, called u suttanin. The white blouse
, a cammis, had puffy short sleeves and was worn over a lanetta, the undershirt. The black apron, u s’nal, with a strip of black lace near the bottom, was worn on top of all the layers. The most colorful piece was a red velvet vest—u sciupp, bordered with a blue edge and decorated with gold braids on either side. Accessories included a belt and a scarf of white lace, like a handkerchief, called a sciarpett and also a fazoletto, a kerchief or veil worn over the head. This one was sheer purple.

  Men’s clothing was much simpler, a pair of black corduroy pants and a black velvet jacket, with a white, collarless linen shirt and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the rain and sun off your face. The jacket had four pockets, usually used for cigarettes and for a white cotton handkerchief, a much more utilitarian version of the lady’s sciarpett, with which to blow your nose, wipe your sweaty brow, wave in surrender, filter dirty water, lend to your girlfriend in her time of need, cover your mouth when there was smoke, or tie as a tourniquet. You name it, the handkerchief did it.

  Boys wore knee pants until they were around thirteen or fourteen and girls a simple blouse and floor-length skirt until they reached puberty and were allowed to wear the incredibly complicated pacchiana outfit.

  Giuseppe said the intricate costume, worn by all classes of women, helped promote a sense of community among them, but I knew that the real reason they all wore such a complex getup was to make it difficult to get undressed quickly. You couldn’t easily fool around or have a fling when you had to take all that clothing off and then put it back on again, though I didn’t mention this to the DiBellos or to Giuseppe. I thought about how I would have hated wearing all those layers. I was always hot. In fact, I was sweating right now. I thought early June would be better than August, but, naturally, my luck, Basilicata was in the midst of a pre-summer heat wave.

  The DiBellos apologized for not letting us into Leonardo’s house and seemed genuinely sorry. But they were loyal to the absentee landlords and wouldn’t budge about the key, as much as we tried to convince them. As a consolation, and to give us shelter from the punishing sun as noon approached, they invited us into their own home. They said it wasn’t that much different than Leonardo’s place.