“I USED TO BE AN ELECTRICIAN,” Giuseppe said, as if he hadn’t thought about that time in his life in a while. “I almost went to Africa.”Leaving Cirò on our way to Corigliano Calabro, we drove beneath Montedison’s high-tension wires, which electrify all of Calabria and Sicily.
This was the second day of our trip along the north Ionian coast, and it was the first time that Giuseppe had offered me something about himself. He had, for the most part, taken on the responsibility of professional tour guide, showing me the Calabria he knew.
“It was the late 1950s,” Giuseppe began, “and I needed work.”
He had a friend who, along with many others, had been hired by an Italian company that was laying electrical wire in East Africa. The pay was quadruple what anyone in postwar Calabria could make. Giuseppe took the train up to Naples, where he signed a contract that would bind him to Somalia for two years.
Later that same day, his father called to tell him that a friend of his working in Africa had just died of malaria. Giuseppe had no choice—the contract was signed—so the next day he lined up to
board the ship for Naples. He walked up to the window and handed his contract to a man checking papers. The man hammered the paper with a rubber stamp. As Giuseppe was about to walk away, he saw that the stamp had missed the paper. It was invalid. He took it as a sign. With a quick catlike swipe, he reached his hand under the window and grabbed the papers; he ran and didn’t stop until he was back in Calabria.
“So I came back to my job as an electrician. Then after a while I moved to Catanzaro, where I first repaired typewriters … which then turned into a sales job.”
“My father used to be an electrician, too,” I said.
“Really? Marco, tell me, what does your father do now?” Giuseppe had probably wanted to know but thought it rude to ask. I was happy he had.
“La sua passione è la sculture,” I said. “But his work is sales.”
“Ah.” Giuseppe nodded. “And, Marco, what does he sell?”
“X-ray equipment. Not for medical use, but for industry—mostly large X-ray machines to detect flaws in things like plane fuselages, helicopter blades, engines.”
“I like your father,” Giuseppe said, not needing a response. “He’s simpatico.”
Giuseppe looked out the window and pointed to another Norman remnant, a wall. Trees burst out of the wall, so strong and healthy that the wall seemed to have been built around them.
“Fig trees, Marco,” Giuseppe pointed out. Then he faced me squarely. His thick black mustache spread as he grinned. “I still remember your father eating all those figs when you two came here the first time.”
“Yeah, and I never knew how much he liked them until then.”
“Marco, do you remember that night in the fields?” Giuseppe asked, and I told him of course I did; it was a night I’ll never forget.
On that first-year anniversary trip, when Martha and I had visited Calabria, Giuseppe spoke of my father’s love of figs and recalled the look on my face when I bit into my first Calabrese fico nero. Then, while Martha had waited in the car with his son Domenico, Giuseppe led me to his family’s fields. We traipsed through the rows
of olive trees and ducked below grapevines, then paused to rest on a small, dusty hill within arm’s reach of wild fichi d’india, prickly pears. There Giuseppe grew ruminative, speaking of his three sons and recalling that just a generation ago Italians had large families.
“But now no one has money to raise children,” he said. “The children stay at home and live with their parents.”
Walking again, we came across a stand of fig trees—his father’s fig trees, Giuseppe said. “Bello,” Giuseppe whispered; the fruit was ripe. With the lightest touch you clench the plump fruit between your thumb and two fingers and pull. If it comes off easily, it’s yours; if it doesn’t, then it’s simply not ready to be plucked. We gathered a couple of dozen and filled up a sack, which quickly became permeated with the red juice of the figs. We cleaned rows of trees of ripe fruit.
With the bread-making lesson, the view of Gimigliano, and even that fig-picking raid, Giuseppe was showing me life’s basic necessities.
Whenever I visited Calabria, I brought the obvious gifts, things that I thought everyone could use: fancy soaps, fluffy towels, toys, hats, and T-shirts with “New York” or “Florida” written somewhere on them. They all were items that I’d picked up on my way out of the States. Giuseppe, for his part, would present me—even before the double-cheek kiss—with, say, a jar of roasted chestnuts soaking in sugar water. It was something I’d never eaten before. I still remember the distinct taste of the soft, wet, sugary nut. I brought my relatives what I thought they needed; they gave gifts that they couldn’t live without. While I had shopped for the towels and Yankees hats, Giuseppe had picked and jarred the chestnuts himself. His gift was always the air, the views, or the food on which Calabresi exist.
When we filled up the sack with figs, Giuseppe hurried me back to the car. That evening, after we had stuffed ourselves with a king’s banquet of Elena’s cooking, he pulled me aside to the living room. He brought out the sack and carefully opened it. He reached his hand in and pulled out a fig that showed the telltale sign of ripeness, a swelled crack that was just ready to burst. I followed, and soon we made our way through the sack, reaching and eating, praising the
quality of the full and juicy figs. Giuseppe half smiled, then grinned wide enough to show a silver eyetooth. Finally he erupted in laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You like these figs?”
“They’re delicious.”
“They’re not mine … or my father’s.”
“Whose are they?” I asked.
“Who knows, but when the owner wakes up tomorrow morning, he’s going to scream.”
This must be a pastime here, I thought. I recalled my father telling me how he had raided farmers’ fig trees and peas—all out of boredom. I couldn’t help noting the similarities between my father and Giuseppe. It was almost as if my father had taken me to Calabria, then handed me off to someone he knew could explain it to me better than he could himself.
I reached for another fig, which squished between my fingers.
Giuseppe sighed with pleasure. “There’s nothing tastier than stolen figs.”
Fig trees grow almost everywhere in Calabria. They grow along hills, on mountains, in valleys; they even squeeze their way through the stone walls of former palazzi. Their roots seek out any pockets of water. Figs are there for the picking. It doesn’t take a Calabrese rhyme to explain what everyone already knows: “’A fica è ’na cucca, che l’acchiappa si l’ammucca” (or, in Italian, “Il fico è un frutto molto buono ed ognuno vuole mangiarlo”): the fig is a delicious fruit, and everyone wants to eat it.
The Greeks introduced the fruit to Italy, having brought it over from Asia Minor. Several varieties now cover the land. Calabria is the second-largest grower of figs in Italy, after Campania, accounting for 25 percent of Italy’s production.
Almost all fig trees descend from the caprifig tree. For the most part, the caprifigs are inedible, but they have a greater purpose: they grow simply to help pollinate trees that produce edible figs. In order to grow fruit, many varieties of fig trees need the caprifig tree close by, for it houses a tiny female wasp that pollinates the other fig trees
with the seeds of the caprifig. The problem for the wasp is getting to the pollen. The flower of the fig is buried deep within the fruit. As with Calabria herself, the beauty isn’t always apparent on the surface.
Norman Douglas was amazed at the many varieties of figs; he counted at least eight types each of neri and bianchi figs. (Italians distinguish the color of figs as they do with grapes, as black and white: black figs are actually red, and white figs are green.) The Romans, who cultivated fig trees that didn’t need the fig wasp, could select from a couple dozen types of fig. Of the figs grown nowadays, there are Pecoraro, Pizzolungo, Torchiaro, and Fraccazzano nero, as well as Melanzana verde, Melanzana nera, and Melanzana corta. But the most common fig is the Dottato.
An Italian proverb says, “’A fica l’ha benaditta a’ madonna.” The fig is indeed blessed by the Madonna, for fig trees produce two harvests—one in early summer, the other in September. There is even a fig tree that bears fruit in December; its figs are known as fichi Natalini.
For the most part, the early summer figs are meant to be eaten fresh, right away; they rot quickly. The ones that grow in August and September are best for dry preserving; these can also be frozen, shipped elsewhere, then thawed upon arrival.
In Calabria, figs end the meal. They can be eaten fresh, dried, or preserved in rum syrup. They can be cut open, stuffed with almonds or almond paste, then baked. They can also be baked with walnuts, then dipped in chocolate. When they are served as an appetizer, they are sometimes wrapped in prosciutto for a perfect blend of sweet and salty.
In his classic book The Food of Italy, the great culinary writer Waverley Root remarks that not all of Italy cherishes figs. He points out the problem one may encounter when asking for a fig in Milan. Apparently, in 1162 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa fought back a revolt during which his wife was led out of the city on the back of a mule. He made the men an offer: if they did not want to be hanged, they would have to present the executioner with a fig. Rumor has it that upon realizing how the figs would be procured, a few chose to be hanged. Those who chose to live followed the instructions:
they were to extract a fig from the anus of the same mule they had led the empress out on—but with their teeth. They were to present it to the executioner, saying, “Ecco il fico,” then return it to the mule in the same manner from which it was taken. According to Root, this is the origin of a now-famous Italian gesture. By making a fist and sticking your thumb between your index and middle fingers, you are “making the fig.”
In Italian, by changing just one letter, the word “fig” becomes sexual.
On our anniversary trip to Italy, my wife, Martha, and I visited friends in Perugia, where at a dinner party Martha described her fig-eating experience in Calabria, saying fica instead of fico: “Never had I eaten a fig so red, so plump, so juicy.” The dinner guests began to squirm in pleasurable embarrassment. Our hostess, an Italian raised in South Africa, turned to Martha and said in English, “My dear, you’ve just been saying, over and over, the word ‘cunt.’”
In Calabria everyone knows the seasons of the fig. Alivu rùosso e fichi pittirilli—When the olives ripen, the figs are still young. My grandparents knew it, and my father, even after decades of living without the yearly consumption of the fruit, knew it.
Calabria is the second-largest producer of figs, but as with much of her produce, she sees very little monetary return for its export. Unlike the truffles of the north, which are sniffed out by dogs and pigs, the figs in Calabria are ubiquitous, taken for granted, and little premium is placed on them.
Giuseppe may have taken some fruit from a neighbor’s tree, but he knows that in a couple of months, when the trees produce their fruit in September, he may wake up to find that his own trees have been picked clean.