Murder In Matera Page 19

  In college, my best friend, Nick, introduced me to his Greek family in the Bronx and they immediately took a liking to me, more so than Nick’s other friends. His aunts would braid my long, thick hair and his mother taught me the right way to pronounce spanakopita and taramasalata. They told me I seemed like a Greek, like one of the family. “Are you sure you’re not Greek?” they asked me, squinting.

  They were the first ones to mention the Italian/Greek saying to me, “Same face, same race.” In Greek it was “Mia fatsa, mia ratsa.” And in Italian, “Una faccia, una razza.” Their food, culture, and faces were so similar that they considered themselves brethren.

  Now I wondered if I really was related to Nick’s family. By Greek blood.

  I was Grieco. I could feel it in my bones.

  That afternoon I also reminded Professor Tataranno how Vita would later die, hit in the head with a sock full of rocks in Jersey City. His eyes narrowed. “You know that it’s a very typical weapon in Basilicata. The shepherds often use a sock full of rocks to scare away predators. And the brigands, well, it was their first weapon of choice.”

  I told him killing someone with a sock full of rocks was not typical in America.

  “Maybe,” he said, “maybe Francesco did make his way to America finally and took his revenge.”

  That had never occurred to me before. And it seemed kind of drastic, for him to wait all those years and travel there to kill his philandering wife.

  “Or maybe he hired someone in Jersey City to kill her,” he said.

  That seemed more plausible, since the area where Vita lived in Jersey City had a large community of Bernaldans. I thought of Francesco, stewing year after year, getting angrier and angrier that she had left with those bastard sons of hers, and working his way into a vengeful fury and hiring a friend in America to knock her off. Was it possible there were two Vena murders?

  I VISITED THE ARCHIVES IN MATERA ONE MORE TIME, TO SEE IF I could find any other murders or any other children born to Vita. I went alone this time. Imma was busy reading through the tangled calligraphy of the criminal file and Giuseppe was enjoying a visit from his niece and nephew, the children of his late sister Sabrina.

  He didn’t see them very often but they were here for several days with their father, Sabrina’s widower, staying in Giuseppe’s farmhouse. They ate big meals and told family stories. Giuseppe’s wife, Emanuela, made pasta coi fagiolini, spaghetti with long green beans that were now in season, a family favorite.

  I wondered if the children looked like Sabrina and if it brought Giuseppe any comfort to see them. Or maybe it made him feel worse. I didn’t have the heart to ask him. When I spoke to him on the phone, he used words that described how happy he was that they were visiting, but there seemed an underlying anxiety to those words. Giuseppe was always positive and cheerful, but today his voice sounded strained and full of sorrow, a way I had never heard it before.

  By now the staff at the Matera archives knew me well, and brought my files quickly. They even stood by to see what new information I discovered.

  Within minutes, flipping through the dusty book of birth certificates, I found another child of Vita. This time, a daughter.

  Her name was Nunzia. Born 1883, this time in Bernalda on Via Eraclea—the Italian name for Hercules. The same street where Coppola’s ancestors had lived.

  A daughter! It’s a girl, I nearly shouted into the archive room. Her name was a holy one, which referred to the Annunciation, when the angel came to Mary to tell her she was going to give birth. And give birth she would.

  This time to a little baby girl.

  Someone I had grown to know and love—Vita—had given birth to a new baby girl. Her final, wonderful surprise. The last reveal in a series of reveals.

  Vita, I felt, or the spirit of Vita, had tried to stop me from coming here and finding the story of her husband, Francesco. But I had persevered and she was revealing all to me now. You want it. Here it is, I heard her whisper to me.

  In Italian, naturally.

  Eccolo.

  No one in my family had ever mentioned a daughter. I wondered if Nunzia looked like Vita, like me or the other girls in my family. As with the previous three sons, Francesco Vena was listed on the birth certificate only as Vita’s husband, not the father, and was “away from the city.” In prison. Still. As late as 1883.

  A daughter. How about that? Vita had a daughter. Born in March, just like me. But why, I wondered, had no one ever mentioned her? And then it hit me.

  Nunzia probably hadn’t lived for very long.

  I reluctantly requested the book of death certificates. And there, that very same year, only two months later, is Nunzia. Another dead baby. I thought of the crib in my Pisticci apartment and dreaded going back there alone.

  I wondered if Vita’s milk had dried up. Maybe she had tried to feed the baby tainted goat’s milk or crushed-up solid food. Or maybe the baby simply caught one of the many diseases circulating through the neighborhood. Maybe Vita had given her a dose of poppies to calm her screaming and had given her too much. There were a hundred ways for a newborn to die in Basilicata in the 1880s.

  I scrambled back to the birth certificates and continued to search, in the hopes there would be another child. And sure enough, two years later, in 1885, another daughter was born, in February. Vita was thirty-three, the same age that her mother was when she had had her.

  This second daughter of Vita was also named Nunzia, born on the same street—Eraclea. Vita’s husband, Francesco, is again not present for the birth, being “far from the town.”

  I searched and searched but couldn’t find a death certificate for this new Nunzia.

  But there was one more surprise, the last one folded inside, waiting for me in that book of the dead. As I searched for Nunzia, I came across an unexpected death certificate. There, on the afternoon before I left Basilicata for the last time.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped, shaking my head. The clerk looked up from her daze and tilted her head as if to say, “What? What did you find now?”

  “My great-great-grandfather, Francesco. His death certificate,” I mumbled, still shaking my head. She smiled and went back to staring straight ahead. I’m sure she heard this kind of discovery every day. Of course I couldn’t go into the whole explanation of how he wasn’t really my great-great-grandfather, the story of the murder, which we had discovered in this very room, Contrada Avella, the courthouse, the prison sentence, Vita’s life as a concubine, the dead babies. It was all too much.

  I looked closer at the certificate and saw that he had died in 1887 at eight minutes past eight o’clock on the morning of November 28 in Bernalda. He was forty-three years old, fairly old for back then.

  One of the witnesses to Francesco’s death was a man named Filippo Grieco. Was this our Grieco? Our man? Age thirty-four? Could it be? I traced my finger over his name. Filippo Grieco. In slants and curlicues. Maybe he was my great-great-grandfather. Could he have been there, at his rival’s deathbed?

  No cause of death was listed. I wondered if heartbreak really could cause someone to die. Or maybe Grieco killed him. Or maybe he died in a card game. Maybe Vita killed him. Or maybe one of the brothers of Antonio Camardo had taken revenge, vendetta.

  One thing was certain. This death certificate proved that Francesco did not kill Vita or have her killed in Jersey City.

  I was finally ready to leave the dead in peace.

  Chapter 35

  DEPARTURE IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE BEGINNING OF THE HOMECOMING

  NOW IT WAS TIME FOR MY REVENGE.

  I headed back to Bernalda to find Miserabila and Leonardantonio, the two who had yelled at me on the street ten years earlier. I wanted to tell them the story they refused to share with me years ago, a story I was sure they knew all about. I had dreamed of this moment for years. It had helped propel me back across the ocean.

  I bumped into Leonardantonio on Corso Italia and told him what I had found, the murder file involving Francesco
Vena and Leonardantonio Gallitelli—his namesake. He flinched when I told him, but then tried to smile as if he were surprised and pleased. He had been right years ago. This was a Vena murder. Not a Gallitelli murder. He had known all along.

  The feeling of revenge wasn’t as satisfying as I had thought it would be. Revenge never was.

  I went around the corner and easily found Miserabila, who was sitting outside Maria Natale’s house on their small chairs near the corner of Via Cavour. Miserabila’s natural frown was turned down an extra notch when she saw me.

  I told Maria—and, without acknowledging her, Miserabila—about what I had found, the file containing the murder, the other babies, the whole story. But Miserabila did not respond. Either she didn’t understand my bad Italian or she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of seeing her upset. But suddenly I was the one who was upset. Not by her reaction or lack of a reaction. But when I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sadness beneath the miserable frown that I had never noticed before. Maybe it had always been there.

  This secret, not just the murder but the dishonor that came with Vita’s infidelity, had no doubt swirled around her family for decades and brought them disgrace here in Bernalda, had made their lives miserable. My branch of the family had escaped the dishonor. But she and her relatives had to live with this legacy every single day. Why was I throwing it in her face? I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that she shouldn’t be ashamed of Vita, that she had done nothing wrong. But I was afraid she would punch me.

  Maria hugged me and congratulated me, and told me to return with my husband and family next time. She couldn’t wait to see them again.

  Neither could I.

  I dropped in on Leo and said goodbye and thanked him for picking me up at the station, for all the meals and drinks he’d bought me and for introducing me to Francesco, without whom I might never have found the murder. He gave me a long hug and said, “Next time, don’t stay in Pisticci. You stay at my beach house.”

  I said goodbye to Francesco as well and thanked him for finding the listing for the criminal file in Matera. “I am eternally indebted to you,” I said. He smiled his embarrassed smile and looked down at his shoes. “Prego,” he repeated over and over. “Prego. Prego.” You’re welcome.

  My trip was almost through, and more than anything—more than gratitude or happiness or the need for revenge—I was feeling overwhelming relief that no more bad luck had befallen me this last week. I would soon be reunited with my own family. My real family. The one that still lived and breathed thousands of miles from here. They seemed like a dream to me now.

  The departure is nothing more than the beginning of the homecoming. It was yet another Italian proverb. So true, I thought. So true.

  I was going home.

  AND SO WAS VITA.

  Sometime in 1883 she and her two young sons pulled up in front of 102 Via Eraclea in Bernalda, their mountain of belongings transported by a horse cart belonging to Grieco. The address was just one block away from Miserabila and the apartment where I had lived ten years before this trip.

  Vita moved back from Pisticci a conquering hero, with beds for each of the boys and herself to sleep in, with armchairs and tables and shining pots and pans. She was no longer the lowest of the peasants, but now was somebody. The women still gossiped, but they made sure they did it quietly.

  The house was bigger than that other house on Via Cavour, even bigger than the one in Pisticci. It was two houses joined, with a second-story window and two steps up, like in Pisticci. The place was on the very edge of town, with a view of the Basento Valley below. A home with a view. She would give birth to her two daughters here.

  The street was named for Hercules—Eraclea—which was fitting. Hercules was a hero, but also a God, since he had been born from Zeus and a mortal woman. Like Beansie, he had been a twin, born from a separate sack, from two separate conceptions. And like Beansie, he was not suckled by his own mother, but by another woman.

  Hera, Zeus’s wife, was tricked into breastfeeding him. Her super-goddess breast milk gave him his legendary strength. He is named after her. But Hercules pulled so hard when suckling that he hurt poor Hera, and when she pulled her nipple away, her breast milk sprayed into the sky and created the Milky Way. Hera later tried to kill Hercules by placing two snakes in his crib. But badass baby Hercules strangled them.

  Hercules, part hero, part god, had a life of trial and pain. And I wondered if people in Bernalda knew the stories of the gods and heroes—the same ones that their streets were named after—and if they told them to their children, like I had told them to Dean. Vita probably had no idea that at the climax of Book XI of The Odyssey, Odysseus runs into Hercules in Hades. He’s the final ghost to speak to Odysseus in hell before he sails away, for home:

  Are you too leading some wretched destiny

  such as I too pursued when I went still in the sunlight?

  For I was son of Kronian Zeus, But I had an endless

  Spell of misery. . . .

  I thought of Vita and her endless trials and miseria and that final Herculean task of traveling across the ocean, not unlike Odysseus. She would live on Via Eraclea for only a short time, until she would make that final, fateful jump across the Atlantic. Vita was our family heroine, life giver to us all. Like all immigrant families, her pain and vice paved the way for our comfort and virtue. But like most Americans, we had also inherited the restlessness and discontent that had propelled nations across the sea.

  A few verses after meeting Hercules, Odysseus sets sail.

  And quickly they went aboard the ship. . . .

  And the swell of the current carried her down the Ocean river

  With rowing at first, but after that on a fair wind following.

  Chapter 36

  LAST SUPPER

  EVERYONE IN TOWN KNEW THAT IMMA’S PARENTS, MIMMO and Virginia, were wonderful cooks. Mimmo had a large, round belly, a drooping mustache, and the typical big, brown downturned eyes of Basilicata. Virginia was fit and pretty, with a slight overbite and dark circles under her eyes, probably from all the housework and cooking. With their six-hectare farm in San Basilio, near Giuseppe, they grew many of their own ingredients, putting to shame many of the chefs at the local resorts and fine restaurants. They grew parsley, plums, olives, grain, figs, artichokes, and citrus.

  My last night in town, they cooked a farewell dinner for me and invited Giuseppe and his wife, Emanuela, as well as Professor Tataranno and his wife, Carmelina. Imma’s father, Mimmo—short for Domenico—was from Pisticci originally, but had settled in Bernalda because his wife, Virginia, was Bernaldese. Here a man usually settled in the hometown of his wife, since the wife’s family provided help in raising the children.

  Their house was in the newer, more modern quarter of Bernalda. It was three stories high with comfortably plush furniture and a fireplace, over which hung a hundred-year-old copper bed warmer, a scardalet, belonging to Mimmo’s grandfather from Pisticci. During World War II, the family had had to hide it, since the government was confiscating all copper for the war effort.

  Imma was Mimmo and Virginia’s only child, and they had poured all their knowledge and every ounce of love and wisdom into her, including their love of food. It was as if Imma’s family, and all of the families in Bernalda, were making up for all those meals that their ancestors had never eaten. They had gone hungry for centuries without access to their own land, which was divvied up among the ruling class—the 1.4 percent of the population.

  But now things were different. On Christmas Eve, for instance, typical Lucani didn’t just have the Feast of the Seven Fishes, like most Italians did. They had thirteen different kinds of fish. Food was abundant, and so they partook, happily, though not greedily, sharing it with whoever showed up on their doorstep.

  I was lucky to be standing there.

  MIMMO AND VIRGINIA SERVED THEIR OWN YOUNG, FRESH ASPARAGUS and pickled artichokes, which were from the first harvest—spolverata—so
they were especially tender. I had no idea that fruit trees and vegetables had several flowerings and that the first was usually the best.

  They made three kinds of focaccia (one with green onion, another with peppers, and one with tomatoes), an arugula salad with sliced veal and a tangy balsamic dressing, delicately fried zucchini and grilled eggplant, alongside cappacuolo slices laid out like a deck of cards, and six kinds of cheese (ricotta salata, scamorza, provolone, soft, sweet ricotta, salty burrata, and strong, sharp caciocavallo, aged two years). To accompany the cheese was fig jam, which Virginia had made from her own figs. Virginia served a green salad with a magical dressing that she claimed was simply vinegar and oil but couldn’t have been just that, sausages that Imma had stuffed herself, and hearty, thick Pisticci bread to swipe our plates when we were done. The bread from Pisticci was better than Bernalda bread, made with a special, natural yeast and baked in a tall oven.

  Many of the delicacies were served on beige pottery painted with tiny blue flowers, each like a child’s version of a daisy, made of six indigo dots. It was the typical pottery of Basilicata. I had a platter just like it back at home, which I had somehow carried back on the plane with me after my first trip.

  Lemon sorbet made by Virginia with lemons from the farm was rich and tangy and served in our prosecco glasses, with some prosecco poured on top. When it was all over, I had a small glass of acidic grappa with Mimmo, to destroy the contents of my stomach.

  I toasted everyone during dinner and thanked them for their help and patience with my bad Italian and endless questions. I thanked Giuseppe’s wife for lending me her husband, and Imma’s parents for letting me spend so much time with their only daughter. And I hugged Professor Tataranno and thanked him for all his knowledge and wisdom.