Medieval Calitri Borgo by Night
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(With due Credit to
the Unknown Photographer) |
Return to Old Yet New Norms
We finally kicked the tires, pulled the chocks, and lit the fires (appropriate Top Gun Maverick jargon?) that had blocked our movement, holding us back from Italy these past years. Now, we were off. Our first touchdown aboard Aer Lingus would be in Dublin on our trek onward to Naples and finally by car to Calitri. We had no idea what returning would be like. Gone from bucolic Calitri since November 2019, I sensed it might feel strange after such a long absence to be there again. What would it be like? Would it mirror our first visit, when in 2006, we arrived mid-afternoon and drove a switchback road up into town from the Ofanto River valley below? As I navigated that climb, I recall Maria Elena’s comments. With each turn, they ranged from incredulity to amazement. Calitri was a far cry from what she had imagined. This wasn’t the stylish Italian Riviera or Renaissance Tuscany filled with art cities. No, we were in southern Italy. It is politely known as the Mezzogiorno though at times in condescension, it is made light of and referred to as Africa. We would learn that what it lacked in wealth, it more than made up for with an outpouring of friendliness. What it was and remains was a faithful example of Italian life, built on a timeline of simplicity, featuring a quieter, less complicated, far more refreshing lifestyle than what we were accustomed too.
Back then, we had arrived when Calitri was at
rest, its streets idle of activity, its doors closed, its stores shuttered. It was like a Hollywood set awaiting its
actors. This was the afternoon slump of
the riposo when the town restored itself and its inhabitants rested for
a few hours. Honestly, today after such
a long absence, I hold a trickle of worry.
I’d had plenty of time to play imaginative mind games. I guess it would more aptly be defined as apprehension. Would these streets have the familiarity we
once knew, the enveloping ease of the townsfolk with their former welcoming
hugs? Would Rosa, the greengrocer, pick
up where she and Maria Elena had left off exchanging names of vegetables, each trading
in their native language? Seeing faces hopefully
absent masks, would they move above a smile in a riot of pleasurable surprise on
seeing us? Would our arrival serve as a
sign that the miserable anguish of COVID was over and the cathartic relief of
‘old norms’ had returned? Was it too
much to expect? For us, could we once
again look forward to enriching the pages of our memory with new, long absent
adventures? Over two and a half years,
31 months to be exact, was what we had paid. Had all this time extracted an irreplaceable
fee? Had any of our acquaintances
perished? Too many anxious questions, far
too many question marks. Nevertheless, I
looked forward to regaining the rhythm of our earlier stays, back in the saddle
as it were, hopefully to soon be incapable of speaking without moving my hands.
Once again able to travel, we had recently been liberated
from the isolation of Zoom meetings, social distancing, invasive nose swabs,
and N95 masks. In fact, just today,
another barrier was removed with the elimination of the need for COVID testing
in order for us to return to the USA.
Thinking about it, ours was nothing like the confined life of hiding and
ever present fear of death Anne Frank endured in WWII. Our quarantine was limited to social
distancing and the inconvenience of a mask, and if truth be told, a rather low
probability of death from a virus which thankfully others worked daily to contain. Anne had to hide away in an attic for two
years with the certain diagnosis of death if discovered by the Nazis. Not even close in comparison, today there is
convenience even in our hardships.
Maybe I’m being overly aspirational, too hopeful
for things to be the way they were. Here
I am, assuming things would be different when we have certainly changed. A lot of time has passed. We couldn’t even recall the trash schedule:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday umido (moist garbage), with Tuesday and Thursday
reserved for dry trash? But then, is it
the other way around or on other days?
Yes, time plays tricks. Its activities
are evident when we can’t recall a schedule or when a glance in a mirror reveals
its incessant busywork. Without question,
we were definitely different. Now of a post-prime
vintage, during our absence we had grown older, more than simply gray hairs and
liver spots. We were stiffer, far from
spry, well accustomed to brutte schiene (bad backs). No doubt, it would seem a longer, lengthier
walk from the piazza through the clock tunnel to our home in Vico Ruggiero. The trans-Atlantic quarantine had represented
a pause, but our arrival heralded a new beginning, a new chapter in living our
dream.
Rounding a few bends of Strade Statali 7
(State Highway 7), past the lofty town of Cairano, we would feel the reality of
having arrived. Moments later, we’d catch
sight of Calitri jutting from a cluster of hilltops, lost in the memory of
centuries. Closer still, when we spied
rooftops clad in red half-pipes of clay, we’d know we’d returned. If we were on schedule, it would be a
flashback to that first arrival during the riposo. No one would be around. No matter how tired we were from our travels,
we would have to make it to the passagiatta, that traditional evening
stroll of the townspeople, followed by dinner at popular Tre Rose. Yes, that was the plan.
We survived the walk, clicking and clattering our luggage over the stone pavers. It seemed that
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| Key in the Lock Welcome Home |
Inside, we quickly discovered evidence of change.
Over the years, there have been visitors
who have stayed in our home. They
apparently enjoyed redecorating. For
some time, we couldn’t find various items beginning with the rugs! We discovered a bedroom rug at the top of the
stairs by the door to the roof patio, while another for the guest room was
rolled up out on the sun porch. The microwave had a bowl still inside and for
some strange reason all the plugs and cables to the TV system had been
removed. That took a while to figure out
and rearrange. Things just weren’t where they belonged, but
that is to be expected. After a few
minutes search, we gave up and crashed following close to 30 hours on the
road.
We had no food other than various unopened packets
of pasta, now well dried and a jar of long expired pees, so around the proper
Italian time of 8 PM, we ventured out to explore and have that promised dinner
at Tre Rose. The peanuts and soft
drinks we’d consumed on our various flights had counted for nothing. This would constitute our 53rd wedding anniversary
dinner. We may have overslept il
passagiatta by an hour or so because there were few people still
about. It was after all suppertime and
while not necessarily at Tre Rose, the townsfolk were certainly scooting
themselves up to a table somewhere. Driving
there, we were surprised to note that several businesses were permanently
closed like the popular pizzeria Non Solo Punto Pizza across the street from
Paldo’s Café as well as the Bontà Calitrane wine and cheese bar along
with Tiffany Bar and Blueberry Bar. They appeared likely victims of COVID, unable
to survive the absence of patrons during the extreme Italian lockdown. Although the plague still lingered, on the
streets there were few telltale masks visible.
The following day, I saw men sitting maskless side-by-side on benches along
Corso Garibaldi moving occasionally only to avoid an intense sun. This was an improvement over what we observed
on our flight across the Atlantic. Onboard,
a young woman wore two facemasks the entire flight, and on boarding, sanitized
her seat area and tray table with disinfectant wipes. Other than that, masks were rare. A good
sign. No one had even asked us if we had
been vaxed.
Fashionably arrived at Tre Rose on the cusp of the evening’s activity (at least we thought so), we enjoyed a fabulous meal. For her starter, Mare chose freshly sliced bresaola drizzled with virgin oil and a squirt of lemon juice generously showered with shavings of grana padano and leafy rocket (derived from the Italian word ruchetta). She loves fries and her order of their hand-cut slender fingers beat everything she’d eaten over our two year absence.
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| Maria Elena's to Die for Ricotta Pera |
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| Always Tempting Paolo's Arribbiata |
plenty of vino. Forget about that old September Song about May to December. Parroting that old ballad, it was a long, long time from November ‘19 till June ‘22. Hopefully this had been worth its 53 years in the making.
Ever so gradually, little things might emerge to
slowly replace familiar sounds from the States. At a pizzeria, for instance, hearing the
substitution of words like take-away for our ubiquitous take-out
would be a start. Nods of recognition along
with those many greetings from all those we’d pass, so foreign in the States
where eye contact is ill-advised, might serve as a salve. We’d so missed those hello smiles, far more
than upturned chins when passing, when people took time to stop, hug, and talk
with us. Little examples like these would
represent a climate shift from the impersonal to a far more preferable way of
life. There were a number of seismic
shifts. Rosa, for example, had retired
when her husband had passed. My
celibrated “singing barber,” had also
retired (click to see the clip - that’s me under the shaving cream trying to
capture what was happening). Yet another
friend, always well-dressed Peppe, a former railroad conductor, had also suddenly
died. On a lighter note, at the town’s
main traffic intersection, a double traffic circle had been installed. On my first try, I felt like I was in a
pinball machine maneuvering around the bumpers.
Only later after studying the circulation pattern did I realize how
badly I’d messed up. A
quick look and some bad math had put me between them, though no one
seemed to mind. It explains why I always
flew with a navigation team.
There was an additional tremor of surprise a few nights later when we visited Double Jacks, a Bavarian style pub and restaurant in Calitri. The long and short of it, it had changed entirely in both its operators and with it its fare. With a new guard having taken over, it marked the end of an era. While Bruno still owned it, its day to day operations had moved to a young husband and wife team. We especially missed visiting with Bruno’s parents, Giuseppe and Santina. Invariably, each night, they had been there. Their humble presence was felt by all, including us. It was with them, following a meal, that we’d often share many a limoncello long into the evening. Like lowering a commander’s flag, even Bruno’s signature beer collection was gone. A piece of community fabric had been torn, traditions in the form of familiar ways, familiar faces, altered. A few days later I made some inquiries and found their home with the help of a woman who walked beside our car as I followed. A day later when I returned, Santina answered the door. The grapevine had
Now new forces were at play at Double Jack. Chef Giovanni Tobio commanded the kitchen while his wife, Maria Angela, was in control out front. During that surprising return evening, we found it very busy. A party celebrating the end of the school year filled a nearby banquet length table. We reacquainted with some of the attendees. Young children milled and at times ran about. It was easy to pick out the owner’s young daughter, Maddalena. When she dashed by our table on into the kitchen only to quickly emerge with a pizza cutting wheel, we realized many such excursions lay ahead for her.
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| New Double Jack Menu - Now Plasticized in Creeping American Style |
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| Mare's Tagliata Already into Just a Little |
Change is normally a gradual creep. We expected some, but in just a few days to
learn of years of change, this we hadn’t anticipated. The changes we’d noticed, and undoubtedly will
continue to experience, could actually be categorized as normal. What proved abnormal was that during our long
absence, they had accumulated and hit us, smack, all at once. The normality of a steady drip had grown to
an all at once torrent. But does an overdose
of reality matter? I guess that depends.
A few nights back, we sat upstairs on our terrace. Technically, we were above “a room without a roof” as Pharrell Williams put it in his song, Happy, Happy. We were sitting beneath a sky blotted with stars, looking off toward the east. Across a valley off into neighboring Basilicata, a spur of the Apennines rises to a series of villages. They appear connected, left to right, by an invisible road hidden by the night. Visually, these villages appear linked by a string of streetlights stretching from one community off to the next. From this main line, an offshoot string of lights, to quote Williams again, on “a street without a name”, continually blink on and off for a considerable distance. Evidently due to some problem, it can be hypnotic as it pulses, on then off, to a steady electrical rhythm. Whether it works or doesn’t, the point is, it’s there; you can depend on it off on the horizon, flashing as it likely did last month, last week, again tonight. It is like the clock in the Borgo, easily visible, that stopped working to record the moment of the great 1980 earthquake. What if this unintentional memorial was repaired? And while those lights are
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| Calitri at Twilight (Photo credit to Guiseppe Del Vais) |
Finally, once again, we find ourselves back in
the bosom of Italy, adjusting. We will
be here for a while; I wonder if noticeable change will have played a hand by
the time we return to the States? How
about gas once again at $3.00 a gallon! Ah,
but maybe I should save that for therapy, if not the musings of another story.
From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo
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