Some villagers were willing to grant that something might be wrong with the status quo. But they arrived at that conclusion via a different logic than the good-government types who sponsored the debate. If a man is so blessed as to have two offices and important Mafia friends, one villager argued, shouldn`t he spread the wealth about, sharing one of those honors with someone else?
Consistant in their thinking, Calabrians even judge religious affairs according to a decidedly practical standard. Showing visitors a local saint`s statue, the peasants will say, ”He has done a lot for the people,” and, for confirmation, point to bombs and shells that failed to go off during World War II, thanks to their saint`s intervention. Indeed, so many churches here are filled with unexploded American ordnance that you almost wonder how Gen. Mark Clark and the 5th Army ever made it up the Italian peninsula.
Statue stops lava
Once, when Mt. Vesuvius was erupting, just north of here, the peasants appealed their plight to St. Gennaro, but without avail. So they carried his statue out of their church, placing it directly in the path of the lava.
”You can either die or save us,” the faithful announced. Happily for both parties, St. Gennaro must have chosen the later alternative, for the lava turned to flow harmlessly into the sea.
That kind of thinking drives visiting northern Italians to despair, albeit it hasn`t stopped them from buying up whole stretches of Calabria`s shoreline for ticky-tacky beachfront developments and resorts. To Romans or Venetians, this is Il Mezzogiorno-the land of the midday sun-a less-than-polite term that implies that the inhabitants are too lazy to do much else but enjoy the region`s pleasant climate and ruggedly handsome terrain.
Northerners like to think theirs is the real Italy. They cite Dante and Machiavelli as northerners, and take pride that their part of the country hosted the Renaissance when, as it were, Europe recovered its voice after the long silence of the Dark Ages.
Yet if volubility be the standard, then Calabria seems more heir to the Renaissance than the North, although that is where the great museums are. In Milan and Florence, people speak quietly, politely and not all at the same time. Walking through those cities once having being here, a foreigner is struck by the eerie silence of the streets, and almost could think himself magically transported to more stoic lands, such as Germany or Scandinavia.
In Calabria, though, every human encounter is a high-decible affair. Because he recognizes no higher authority, governmental or intellectual, every Calabrian feels compelled to give his opinion on any possible question. There is no such thing as an innocent bystander when a cafe explodes in arm-waving debate. Stay silent, and you virtually forfit your humanity in the villagers` eyes.
Unticketed passengers
One day, we were returning here from Reggio Calabria, a town about 150 miles away. During the night, there had been a violent storm and, when we got to the station, the agent said that he didn`t know if the trains were running and he wasn`t selling tickets. A train did arrive, though, and we hopped aboard.
According to the Italian railroad system`s rules, there are two price lists for buying a ticket on a train itself. If the ticket booth is closed, you pay the same price on the train as if you had bought your tickets in advance. But if an agent is on duty at the station, you have to pay a premium to buy tickets on the train.
When the conductor came around, I and a few other passengers who had just boarded handed him money for tickets at the regular price. He insisted we would have to pay the premium.
We countered, saying that wasn`t fair because we had tried to buy tickets at the station, but they weren`t being sold.
”Why would that be?” the conductor asked. ”Wasn`t the agent there?”
Yes, he was, someone replied, but he wasn`t selling tickets. Perhaps the storm had knocked out electrical power to his ticket machines.
The conductor refused to accept that suggestion. Pointing to the trolley wires above the tracks, he noted that his train was obviously getting power, since we were moving. So why wouldn`t the station have electricity?
Several of us tried improvising hypotheses to account for both pieces of data. But every time, the conductor shot holes in the physics of our theories. ”No,” he said magisterially. ”You will just have to pay the premium price.”
Conductor gives up
Then he turned abruptly and marched through the car. He wasn`t to be seen again for the three-hour ride back to Cetraro, and made no further attempt to sell us tickets. From his perspective, I suppose, why should he?
After all, ticket fees go to a governmental agency in whose legitimacy he has no greater faith than any other Calabrian.
The argument over the proper price was the conductor`s thing. Once having won the verbal engagement, he had no need to trouble us further.
The train`s windows framed a kind of moving-picture synopsis of the terrible irony that is the Calabrian landscape. The soil here is so rich that from seaside to mountaintop, every square inch seems ablaze with vegetation. Indeed, more shades of green flash before your eyes on a train ride here than any place on Earth I know. At the shoreline, pine trees stand next to palms whose fronds bend deeply when the breeze is from the sea. In turn, they might be bordered with groves of lemon and lime trees.
But because so much of Calabria is mountainous, it is hard to make a living here by cultivating the soil. Most of the flatland is owned by commercial farming interests, just as it once was a monopoly of medieval aristocrats and, before them, the Roman patrician class.
The peasants have to scratch out an existence cultivating tiny gardens just outside their villages on plots so steeply inclined they seem vertical rather than horizontal slices of the landscape. To supplement their income, the men sometimes go abroad to work, which gives them a second geographical reference point, just like the Guisebelinas`.
For instance, one day, we encountered an aged man named Antonio who had worked in Germany, sending home money for his wife and 12 children, before returning to a seaside settlement just below Cetraro, where he has retired. We had stopped to ask directions at a cafe where he was seated with a few cronies.
A true Calabrian, Antonio said he would take us to our destination, which though only a couple of miles distant was, in fact, terra ignota, an unexplored land, to him. Still, he insisted on getting out his car, which from the resistance its motor offered, hadn`t been started in some time.
En route, Antonio talked about his years in Germany, slipping from Italian into that country`s language. For some reason, I responded in Yiddish, a language related to German that I learned at my grandmother`s knee.
”You are from Germany!” exclaimed Antonio, who obviously had been impressed by what he saw there.
New German friends
He beamed at me like a long-lost friend, refusing to hear my explanation that we were Americans. From then on, he would speak nothing but German, leaving me no choice but to follow suit. So, as we bumped along hillside roads in southern Italy, I had to dig out of memory the vocabulary of a language my Jewish ancestors spoke in Eastern Europe.
Once we stopped at an automobile garage run by his relatives, ostensibly to ask directions, but in reality so that Antonio could show off his new-found German friends. A little farther on, he pulled off the road at a bar where he insisted upon treating us to a round of drinks. On the way out, he whispered to the barman (switching for a moment back to Italian) that he would pay the bill later. I`m sure he didn`t have a lira in his pocket.
When he finally dropped us off, Antonio leaped out of the car to wrap me up in a great bear hug of an embrace. Italians kiss one another on each cheek in turn, when greeting and taking leave. But this farewell was like nothing I had experienced. My cheeks literally were running wet with his kisses before he let go reluctantly.
As he drove off, Antonio still was half turned-around in his car seat, waving goodbye. My guess is he doubled straight back to the cafe, to brag about his good friends from Germany.
Standing there in the road, I ran my fingers up and down my face, savoring Antonio`s salutation to the last drop. Months later, I still find myself reflexively putting a hand to my cheek, trying to prolong the visceral memories of Calabria, where no visitor is permitted to be a stranger. –
