WINE FROM CALABRIA is only now flowing to the United States. And the rustic red wines from the vineyards of the Cirò area—Librandi, Duca San Felice, Ippolito—are making a name for themselves. From September to November workers pick the grapes and press them into high-test fruity nectar. Made from a combination of local Gaglioppo and Greco grapes blended with Trebbiano grapes from Tuscany, Cirò wines are hearty; at first sip you can almost taste the ancient grapevines rooted in the windbeaten Calabrese soil. Once those flavors settle, the taste of peaches and almonds soothes your tongue. The wines are more potent than most, containing about 14 or 15 percent alcohol.Like most Calabrese coastal towns, Cirò is really two towns: Cirò Superiore and Cirò Inferiore, as the old-timers call them, or simply Cirò and Cirò Marina. Giuseppe and I drove through Cirò Marina, where the buildings, all new, radiate not from a town center but from the bay. A small port town, Cirò Marina has worked to get on the tourist circuit, though like Crotone, it has attracted more drug traffickers than tourists. Many believe that the newly emigrated Albanians
are introducing drugs to the region. You can never tell if this is true or if Italian xenophobia is escalating with newer waves of extracomunitari, or non—European Union immigrants.
“A year ago a woman was kidnapped because her husband was a pentito,” Giuseppe said, using the word that means someone who has ratted on the mafia. “And no one has found her yet.”
From the coast we drove for a half hour up steep, winding roads to Cirò Superiore, leaving the coast and vineyards below us. Above us a fifteenth-century castle topped the village; as Giuseppe cut through the tight streets up to it, I saw that the village continued farther up, hidden from the ground below.
A few people strolled around the castle. Most of them were old men who stopped their stroll to gather in tiny piazzas or in crooks in the street, standing and smoking. Their hand gestures had slowed with age but were as emphatic as ever. They smiled at us as we walked by; we smiled back.
“Dove andate?” one of the men asked.
Giuseppe stopped. The men’s eyes lit up when we approached them. Not much happens here, and the chance to speak to strangers seemed to delight them.
Giuseppe said, “We’d like to visit the castle.”
As a group they looked at it and shrugged their shoulders. “It’s closed,” one said.
Now the youngest of the group, a man in his seventies, approached Giuseppe. His gray hair lay neatly on his head. “The castle is beautiful. It’s a shame you can’t see it now. Maybe we can get Salvatore to open it?” he said, suddenly turning to his friends. “He’s the custodian, but he might be down in Marina.”
Giuseppe introduced us—himself as a photographer and me as an American writer of Calabrese descent—and we joined them in their afternoon stroll.
“It was built in the sixteenth century and is still amazingly well preserved today,” said the man with gray hair. He pointed up at the castle, which I realized had once formed a side of the village; weeds sprouted through the mortar between the gray stones. All the houses
on that side had actually been built directly into the castle wall so that each house had only three sides with windows.
Giuseppe paused. “Are you sure that it’s the sixteenth century?” I had begun to realize that Giuseppe had a way of respectfully correcting historical inaccuracies. “Because if you look at the way the stone is lined …”
I felt a tug at my arm. The oldest of the men, a character in an Italian postwar film, was looking up at me. He was hunched over and wore a black jacket and gray sweater. A cap covered a seemingly full head of hair. He wove his arm through mine and nudged me to continue walking.
“Where in America are you from?”
“New York,” I told him.
“I have relatives in Toronto. Pino Garafolo, do you know him?” He looked at me, hoping for an affirmative answer. Gray bristle spotted his cheeks, a drop of his morning caffè stained the corner of his lip.
“No, that’s in Canada; it’s about a ten-hour drive.”
He stopped to absorb this information, then continued. “I also have a cousin—well, really it’s the husband of my wife’s cousin—in Niagara Falls. He went over in 1936.”
“That’s when my grandmother came over,” I said.
He patted me on the back. “The same year?” He thought to himself, perhaps hoping to make another connection. Perhaps his cousin had met my grandmother on the boat?
“What’s her name?”
“Critelli, Angela.” I, too, wanted to make the connection deeper, as unlikely as it was.
No, he didn’t know it. “Well, they left the same year.” He looked at me as if he were at a loss, then directed me farther up the narrow alley. Pigeons huddled above us in the crevice formed by the houses and the castle wall, the only refuge from the wind.
For the past two hours, since my caffè at the roadside stand, I had been needing to find a bathroom, and as we spiraled up the alley, I saw a three-walled metal urinal stand of a type, once ubiquitous, that
has been disappearing throughout Italy since the Second World War. The metal wall of what’s gruffly called a pisciatioio starts at knee level and reaches to just above the shoulders. A simple hole marks the bottom. I motioned for my companion to excuse me, and when the old man saw what I intended to do, he furrowed his eyebrows. “No, no. I’ll take you someplace proper.”
Was it because I was a guest, or did people simply not use them anymore? In any case, we walked into a building that had no sign—a store once—and stepped into a wide, long room. To my amazement, Roman spears, helmets, shields, and armor lined one wall. A teenage boy emerged from the back room. His hair was slick, obviously gelled, and was sticking up in a style that many Italian boys and teens were wearing at the time. He was also the first Italian I saw with a pierced lower lip.
“What is it?” the teenager said.
“Is the maestro here?” the old man asked.
“Yes, he just went around the corner.”
“This is a journalist from New York. He needs to use your bathroom.”
“It’s not working here. And I think the café is closed now.”
I turned to the old man. “Don’t worry. I can just step outside. It’s not a big deal …”
“No, no, no. We’ll go someplace else,” the old man insisted.
At this point the Roman costumes caught my attention. I could tell that each shield had been hand-molded, hand-painted, but out of what I didn’t know. There were gold shields and helmets—some spiked, some with thick-bristled plumes—silver swords, shiny red capes.
A large man walked in. His meaty frame filled the doorway. He was about six feet two and had a full graying beard with curly white-and-black hair that fell halfway below his ears. He looked like Zeus to me. He wore a denim shirt and jeans, and a cigarette dangled from his mouth.
“Maestro, buongiorno,” my companion greeted him. “This is Signore Rotella; he is a writer visiting from New York. He is writing a book about Calabria, and he needs to use a bathroom.”
Zeus smiled knowingly, shook my hand, and introduced himself as Francesco Florielli. “I’m sorry, the toilet here doesn’t work. But I can show you where—”
I stopped him. All I needed now was the entire village trying to find me a proper bathroom. I turned back to the costumes.
“It’s for the Easter procession,” Francesco offered. Ten armor breastplates rested on the backs of wooden chairs, which had been lined up against the wall. Dark gray shields with gold centers had been perfectly set on a long wood table.
“Are you the artist?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you from here?”
“I’m originally from Crotone, but I moved here to construct these costumes.”
“You made all these?” I asked. “How?”
He offered me a cigarette, which I declined, and led me to the pile of weapons. He held a shield, which was about two feet in diameter, then carried it over to a large garbage can and turned it over. That was it! The rings at the bottom of the garbage can matched the rings of the shield. But by heating the plastic, Francesco had pressed and molded an ornate pattern within those rings. Now he lugged the garbage can over to one of the chest plates and placed the plate along the side of it. From this flat, ribbed surface, Francesco had beautifully formed the breastplate on the armor as well as a ribbed stomach.
Now he reached for a sturdy silver helmet with a red plume sticking out the top and directed me to a worktable. He showed me how he had rounded the bottom of the bucket to make the helmet, gluing a broom brush on top for a plume. Once it was molded and cemented together and painted gold, it looked like it could have served in war, not just as decoration.
He stood proudly, smiling at the simplicity of it all, of knowing how to make something beautiful out of something ordinary. This is the art of Calabrese beauty.
“Cirò used to have this procession every year, but then they stopped. Maybe it was because everyone started moving to the shore … But now I have made costumes for fifteen soldiers. And that does not include the costumes I’ve made for the disciples and mourners—for Pontius Pilate—and the cross for Jesus.”
Giuseppe came in with his gray-haired friend and without a break in conversation, said, “I’m sorry, Marco, but if we’re going to try to make it to Cerchiara, we’ll have to start going.”
“Aah, Cerchiara,” the older men said almost in unison.
“Bellissima,” my companion added.
On the way to the car I ran for the metal wall.