Murder In Matera Read online

  It dawned on me sitting there at Tataranno’s dining room table that Francesco was not only absent for his sons’ births.

  He wasn’t there for their conceptions, either.

  Leonardo and Valente and Domenico were all illegitimate sons. When it said Francesco was far from the town, he was way up in that prison in the mountains of Potenza.

  Francesco was not my great-great-grandfather.

  He was no relation whatsoever. He had been in prison the entire time. His only son was Rocco, who died long ago and never had any offspring. The Vena name was not our name. We were not who we thought we were. I was not who I thought I was.

  And the family murder was not my family murder at all.

  Not only was Vita innocent, but this man, this Francesco, was not a relation. The ground felt like it was shifting under my feet, as if one of those countless earthquakes were hitting Basilicata.

  It wasn’t a sense of relief I was experiencing. Relief comes when you find that missing kid’s sneaker you’ve been searching for for three days under the living room couch. Or when you finally get that long-awaited freelance check to pay your bills. It wasn’t even the relief you get when the test for cancer comes back negative. I had gotten those results before. This, this was something else. This was some kind of realignment of being, an erasing and rewriting of history. And since I wasn’t expecting it, since it had crept up on me, it took a few minutes to actually sink in. Disbelief and numbness, followed by a trickling of feeling that turned into a downpour, much like that hard rain I had experienced at the top of Pisticci. A soaking baptism.

  I needed to lie down.

  Beansie had not inherited a murderous gene, but had been an aberration, just like my mother had claimed, a product of a series of environmental forces, the lost twin, the cold mother, the car accident, being forced to write with his right hand. He was an archvillain in a family of petty crooks. The murder gene had not been passed down through the generations. My children, safely ensconced in Brooklyn this past month, had no trace of murderous Vena genes in their DNA. Because there was no trace of Vena blood in their veins.

  I went back and checked the copies of the birth certificates for those three babies—Valente, Leonardo, and Domenico—and realized that it didn’t say that Francesco was the father. It simply said that Vita was his wife. The babies were “born to Vita, wife of Francesco.” That was all. He had never claimed those sons as his own. I had never even noticed that wording before. When I went back to look at Rocco’s birth certificate, the wording was different. Rocco was “born to Francesco and his wife, Vita.” That was a few months before the murder, before Francesco was sent away.

  When I showed the birth certificates to Professor Tataranno, he nodded his head and said, “Yes, you are right. Francesco is not the father of those three sons. He would have several years to claim them as his own, which he never did.”

  It’s as if my family had been pardoned after years of being falsely accused of murder. Vita didn’t do it. She had been a loose woman. But that had saved us from those murderous genes. Vita was a hero. She had obviously slept with someone else and had delivered us all from evil. Her indiscretions had paved the way for our innocence.

  This was the piece of the family story I had been searching for, even though I didn’t know I was searching for it, the reason I had crossed the ocean multiple times and combed through these files. It was the knowledge I had inadvertently come all this way to find, the absolution, resolution, and piece of fruit that once bitten, would change our family history forever.

  But it led to another question: who the hell was my great-great-grandfather?

  Chapter 33

  TO EVERY BIRD, ITS OWN NEST IS BEAUTIFUL

  VITA HAD NOTHING TO LOSE.

  She worked now each and every day in the whitewashed masseria. Since Rocco was gone, and her husband was gone, and she had to eat somehow, she boldly knocked on Grieco’s door. Just as he had knocked on hers years before on her wedding night.

  The padrone had taken something from her and now she would take from him. She would offer herself up again in exchange for shelter, food, and protection.

  Inside the safety of his giant palazzo on the masseria property, with its rounded gun turrets surrounded by tall palms, with cactus and pines and citrus groves that left their sweet smell in the air, Vita made the first move.

  Maybe it was even a comfort for her, the idea of body pressed against body, a few moments of pleasure to forget the endless pain of losing your firstborn, your only son. And your husband.

  When Rocco died, something snapped inside her, some switch was thrown, some fuse forever blown.

  Because of her sass and her attitude, Vita was already known as a puttana. Now, it would be true. She was almost proud of it. Relieved, in a way. If they were going to call her a whore, she might as well reap the benefits.

  It would cause a small scandal. Having sex with Grieco again, this time at her initiation. But the scandal would die out, and be replaced by someone else’s scandal, another’s misfortune. The woman carrying triplets out of wedlock. Or the people down the street who had to send their crazy mother to the insane asylum in Aversa because she tried to cook the baby. No shortage of pain and scandal to replace Vita’s.

  Vita knew, from watching and listening to the neighbors’ gossip in past sex scandals, that her father would be rewarded for her actions by being given regular work. In most concubine setups, the woman’s father would move from bracciante to mezzadro—or sharecropper, where he would be given a small plot of land to rent and farm, with seeds, supplies, fertilizer, and a house provided by the landowner. Maybe he would even be bumped up to fattore, or steward, representing Grieco and overseeing the day-to-day business of one of his lattifondi, getting the best parcel of land for himself.

  Her mother no longer had to scrounge in the fields for a few bits of wheat to make into bread, for a stray tomato or babadool (dialect for pepper). Their suffering would end. Or at least be diminished.

  So when Grieco touched Vita, she didn’t recoil. And when he kissed her, she kissed him back. Tongue and all. She had learned how from Francesco. When Grieco told her he wanted her, she told him she wanted him back. She touched Grieco as Francesco had taught her to touch him, gently, but firmly, without fear, and with confidence. So different than Grieco’s proper wife.

  In this way, my great-great-grandmother, Vita Gallitelli, became a concubine.

  With Vita’s help, Grieco slowly peeled away the layers of her ragged pacchiana outfit until she stood defiantly naked before him, her dark and wiry hair pulled out of its usual bun and draped down past her shoulders, her wild, black pubic hair like the weeds she pulled in his front yard, daring him to come closer. That’s how I liked to think of Vita. Not cowering in some corner, afraid of his advances. But meeting him halfway. With nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. Looking like that portrait of Eve inside the cave near Matera, defying her husband, defying God. And even the devil.

  Have a taste, she would say. “Just one bite.”

  Vita’s virginity was long gone. Grieco had taken it years ago. She never had much honor to begin with in a place like Bernalda. She didn’t have a lira in her pocket. All she had was her body. And that face, that faccia di Gallitelli. It was a pretty face. Not beautiful. But pretty enough. Its skin still pliant and soft.

  She was only twenty-four, after all. No longer a girl but a woman, a young woman in her physical prime with full hips and breasts. And a sharp mind, as sharp as the knife the farmhands used to kill the pigs.

  Vita was furba—the female equivalent of furbo, feisty and wily and able and willing to take advantage of a bad situation, using whatever was at her disposal to get ahead, tricking the person who thought he was tricking you. Like a fox.

  She wasn’t shy. Vita was never shy. In fact, she liked being naked. It was much cooler and less confining. Why didn’t people get naked more often around here, like in the Garden of Eden, she wondered. It was only natural. Wha
t was the true point of clothing? she thought, as Grieco climbed on top of her.

  While she lay there, she admired his room: its clean, whitewashed walls and the intricate molding up near the ceiling, and his big, expansive wooden bed, with its carved headboard, with not only blankets but sheets. She had never lain on sheets before. Only itchy, woolen, dirty blankets.

  Grieco was married, she knew. But so was she. It wasn’t marriage she was after, but a foot up. A better life for her and her parents and brothers and sisters. And a few minutes of pleasure. In a life so hard and deprived all the time, in a place where you went hungry and sometimes thirsty for days, where your children died starving in your arms, what was the harm? Sex, she discovered, was one of the few pleasures. And it was free. Most of the time, anyway.

  From now on, in exchange for work, rent, and meat more than just two times a year, Grieco would visit Vita whenever he pleased, in her small house on Via Cavour.

  AFTER VALENTE, THEIR FIRST SON, WAS CONCEIVED AND BORN IN Bernalda, Grieco would place Vita in a house in Pisticci, away from her family, away from the gossipers. It would be easier to visit her there and she wouldn’t feel the stares of the other women, at least not right away.

  Though it helped the family financially to become a concubine, socially it was suicide. Immorality was thought to be passed down from one generation of women to another, so the misdeeds of one wife cast a shadow on all her female relatives. It was best to move to Pisticci.

  It was only a matter of time before news of Vita’s new lover and her sons reached the prison cells of Santa Croce. Maybe a new inmate from Bernalda who had heard of the scandal delivered the news to another inmate, who passed it along to another and another and then to a guard who menacingly, hurtfully told Francesco with a laugh, “Hey, Ciccio. I hear your wife is fucking another man.”

  Francesco was so angry, he wanted to bend open the iron bars, climb out, and first kill the guard and then travel over the mountains for three days to find Grieco and kill him with his bare hands. Kill them both. Vita, too. Vita must have known this, but what could she do? How would she survive without her husband?

  Since Grieco was a landowner who employed not only her family but Francesco’s, there was really nothing Francesco could do. Padroni could do as they pleased with the wives of their workers and their workers’ families. And Francesco, sitting alone with all those hours to think in that lonely prison high up in the mountains, eventually realized it was all his fault. Vita never would have strayed had he not stolen those pears and gone to prison. She had loved him. He knew it. But he was not there providing for her. What the hell did he expect?

  But still, some nights Vita worried that Francesco would escape somehow, tunnel out of that terrible place, steal a horse, and ride all night, making his way in a blind rage back to Bernalda.

  In Pisticci, she could hide from him. At least for a little while.

  VITA’S LIFE BEGAN ANEW. SHE HAD VALENTE, BORN IN A TINY STONE house in Bernalda at the end of Via Cavour, where it turns and deposits you onto Corso Italia, the main street of the historic district, where the jail is and the old tavern where Rocco was born and Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

  Valente was an unusual name in this part of Italy. It meant able-bodied and talented. An incredibly unorthodox and optimistic name to give your son in a place like this.

  Before Valente could even walk, Vita was pregnant with the next, Leonardo, whom she named after her brother and her mother’s father, her grandfather Leonardantonio Lupo. Lupo, they called him. The wolf. Because he was especially hairy.

  A third, Domenico, was born two years later. She named him after her father, but he would die, stillborn. It wasn’t like when Rocco had died, though, not as devastating, since she had the older boys to look after now. There was no long mourning period. No comatose state of denial.

  For a time, life was good in Pisticci. Vita loved her new house, with its marble step outside, its wooden double doors, second-story window, and high barreled ceiling. It was her own. There was a saying in Italian, “To every bird, its own nest is beautiful.” Some nights, on her way back from Mass, she stood over the Dirupo and watched the grillaio falcons and rondini circle at sunset. On a clear day, you could see the Ionian Sea from this high up. It would sparkle in the sun. She had never seen it close up. But like Isabella di Morra in her lonely castle in Valsinni, Vita looked at the sea from afar and dreamed. She didn’t lament her fate like Morra, who waited in vain for sails to appear in the distance and come and save her. Vita dreamed of sailing away. On her own. Without a man.

  She took walks up to the Chiesa Madre, even in the rain, and sometimes gazed at that sorry pietà and thought of Rocco. But now she had two new sons, from a rich man. They ate better. Slept better. The boys, as they grew, would not work in the fields as she and Francesco had, but would train with the local barber. A maestro. With the master. Their hands were soft, like hers once were and like Grieco’s, not rough and calloused like Francesco’s.

  Barbers were respected. They sometimes performed minor surgeries, like pulling teeth or applying leeches to let the blood of those suffering a fever. They could read, and wrote letters for people to send to their loved ones in America. Valente and Leonardo would learn to read and write. Vita would make sure of that.

  And on their nights together, when the boys were out and before Grieco gathered his things to head home to his wife and children, Vita asked him about going to America.

  She tried to convince him that once Francesco was released from prison, he would find her, no matter where she was in Basilicata. He had killed before and he would kill again. He would surely kill her and maybe even Grieco and their sons. Though she didn’t really believe that. It was unacceptable to kill an amorous landowner, even if he was sleeping with your wife. And Francesco wasn’t all that bad. He was just trying to be a good provider, stealing those pears. Sometimes she even cried for him—her Ciccio—thinking of him all alone in that awful prison up in the mountains in Potenza.

  But that’s not what she told Grieco.

  Night after night, she tried to convince him that Francesco would be coming for her. Maybe Grieco even fell in love with her. Not love at first sight, but the opposite.

  Love over time.

  After practically living with Vita for several years, Grieco was starting to fall in love with her. With her long, dark, thick hair and her stubborn streak, her soft hips and small hands, her crooked smile, round face, and black eyes that were so dark they caught any light in a room, no matter how small, and threw it back at you like the surface of a dark lake. Lagonegro, he thought. That was a town not too far from here, Lagonegro, where they said the model from the Mona Lisa was buried. Vita looked like Mona Lisa, in fact, except her hair was curlier. But she had that same uncertain smile, that same full face. That same confidence and, in Vita’s case, false air of nobility.

  Maybe Grieco liked the way Vita stared you down and never looked away first and how she sometimes had a bad temper. He laughed sometimes when she lost it, which made her even angrier. When she got that angry, he tried to hug her, hug it out of her. But she pushed him away, like an angry child. He laughed and laughed and walked away, leaving her in peace to cool off. And slowly she came back to him, in her own time.

  He loved the way she smelled, too, a heady mix of the outdoors, the garlic she used to cook with and a natural musty smell, which he was pretty sure was coming from beneath that big head of hair. He loved how funny she was.

  And maybe, just maybe, Vita fell in love with him.

  Love over time. When he fell asleep in her bed and didn’t rush off, Vita had a terrible desire to reach out and touch his receding hairline and his back and his face. To run her hand along its rough surface, feel the stubble smooth in one direction and prickly in the other, as she ran her hand back and forth. To trace her finger on his full lips, which her sons had inherited. And when he awoke, she would look him in his dark eyes, and not with her usual boldness, but with a tenderness s
he wasn’t used to feeling or offering. A tenderness he wasn’t used to seeing. And before she knew it, she was in love with this man. Though she wouldn’t admit it at first, not even to herself. Certainly not to him. It would only complicate things.

  These feelings made her angry for a while. Grieco noticed her bad mood and kept his distance. But the anger faded and was replaced with elation, every time he walked in the door, a quick flutter in her heart and stomach as if a small family of silk moths were living there.

  We had nothing to go on, no love letters or diaries from Vita, so what wasn’t passed down by mouth died in its own time. Love didn’t last, except for the babies that were born from it.

  Just because there were no love letters, didn’t mean there was no love. So I imagine a love affair for Vita, not just sex for comfort. A love so deep she tried to convince him to let her leave for good, to give her and his sons the money to flee. To America. Because Vita was like all the women in our family, always wanting something more for her kids, wanting a better life for them, no matter what the cost.

  He would think about it, Grieco told her. But he had already thought about it, and had started putting money aside for their long, long journey.

  Chapter 34

  ONE FACE, ONE RACE

  IT WAS NOT ONLY ACCEPTABLE IN SOUTHERN ITALY TO KILL A wife who cheated; it was expected. Professor Tataranno told me the night of prima notte was one thing, but to carry on a full-blown love affair was quite another. And when Francesco got out of prison, he would likely kill Vita, or at least beat her badly. It was also acceptable for him to kill the man who was sleeping with her. Unless, of course, he was the landowner.

  Grieco.

  When I thought about it, it all made sense, really. I told Tataranno that people had always mistaken me for Greek. When I was a kid, my mother would pick me up for lunch from school and take me to a diner across the street. It was a Greek diner and the people in there loved me. They told my mother they wanted to adopt me because I looked like them and because I loved their chicken orzo soup.