“FEEL,” GIUSEPPE SAID as he plunged one hand into a pool of water. He had brought me to the Grotta delle Ninfe, or Cave of the Nymphs, one of a series of caves from which warm sulfuric water flows. It’s believed that the Sybarites luxuriated in these warm baths.I dipped my right hand into the light blue, seemingly bottomless water. It was perhaps eighty degrees, the warmest spot I’d felt in this chilly April. The smell of salt and sulfur expanded my nostrils, and the steamy heat opened my pores. My muscles felt as if they were sliding from my bones. My footsteps echoed above the constant sound of water falling.
The cave vault is over sixty feet high; stalactites taper to the ground as stalagmites reach up toward them. A narrow waterfall empties in the cave, behind which a sickle-shaped entrance offers an opening just large enough for a person to walk through. Now the proprietors have channeled the water to two large outdoor pools and two underground steam rooms. The baths have been converted to an inexpensive spa, where people can ease their muscles in the pool, cover themselves with mud, and lounge beneath rows of grapevines
as they look out at the dark green olive and fig trees that color the sandy brown hills.
Giuseppe had insisted we stop off here on the way to the Santuario di Santa Maria delle Armi at the top of Sellaro, the saddle in the mountains. A newly built two-story house, white with a sloping terra-cotta roof, served as a lodge and restaurant; Giuseppe knocked on the door, and a small woman answered.
“Are you serving lunch today, or are you closed for the season?” Giuseppe asked.
“I’m cooking now,” the woman said. “Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
The aroma of fresh-baked bread, sweet and warm, wafted through the doorway I must have taken in an obviously deep breath, because the woman pointed at me and snickered to Giuseppe. “Ha sentito l’odore di pane”—he smells the bread.
“Oh, he knows how to cook Calabrese bread. I showed him last week,” Giuseppe replied proudly.
In no time the woman, who, in her flower-print apron and short wavy hair, could have been any Italian nonna, had set a table for the two of us next to a window that overlooked the valley. Two more people had appeared—a caretaker and a manager, evidently—but Giuseppe and I were the only ones eating.
The woman brought out penne glistening with olive oil and garlic. She set down a tin bowl of thinly chopped green chili peppers, which we crumbled over the maccheroni with our fingers. (I made the mistake of scratching my face sometime afterward, and the burn continued throughout the meal.) Next came an eggplant parmigiana, much lighter than what’s served in the United States. The eggplant was thinly sliced and very lightly breaded. Tomato sauce gave the eggplant moisture, as did the cheese, just enough to add sharpness, that topped the creation. The flavors combined and melted even before the first bite.
A middle-aged man came to the table, bringing out a plate of pitta, a thicker version of middle Eastern pita that had been filled with a mixture of minced meat—pig fat and gristle—and baked with a coating of olive oil. Next came the pizze alle contadine: one
pizza was served with chopped tomatoes on top, the other with erbi di campo misti, mixed field greens, a blend of fresh oregano and fennel tossed with olive oil.
Just as I finished my glass of spicy red wine, the man brought out caffè with Calabrese cookies, oval-shaped and the consistency of biscuits with a trace of sugar and a hint of anise. As we ate, we looked out the windows, enjoying the silence. White clouds passed above us, their lumpiness seeming to mirror the rocky land below.
All the while the middle-aged man sat a few tables away from us, impatiently turning the pages of a newspaper. When Giuseppe was finished eating, he addressed the man, who introduced himself as the proprietor, and they were off and running.
The Calabresi are wonderful at small talk. The weather, food, tourists, summer, postcards: only then was it time for business. While Giuseppe went to his car to get his briefcase, the man unloaded brochures on me describing his spa. He handed me one nicely colored book, bound with a thick cover. I flipped through the pages. The photos had a 1960s color-enhanced quality.
Giuseppe interrupted his own demonstration to explain to the proprietor that so much more could be done with the grounds. He recommended adding a bar by the pool, offering cool almond and fruit drinks. And landscaping, yes, landscaping.
The clouds hung low; their fluffy white color turned gray with black crevices. We passed through the village of Cerchiara di Calabria, which caps one of the foothills of Mount Sellaro. At the hill’s pinnacle, we stopped in front of what had been the village’s Norman castle. Earthquakes have leveled all but the very base of the castle. We continued up, to the next level of foothills. The buildings immediately dropped off; there were no stray structures, no fences, just the road, which the mountain had been reclaiming by tumbling rock down the side and sprouting weeds through cracks in the pavement.
As the car hugged the north side of the mountain, Giuseppe stopped. Below us, lush green grass spread across the valley. Nearby
gaped the Bifurto Abyss, which, at two thousand feet down, is one of the deepest in all of Italy Green grass grew around rocks like gums to teeth. A road wound through the valley and dead-ended yards before a rock formation.
“Beyond that mountain is Basilicata,” Giuseppe said. “You can’t get there from here.”
We continued up toward the sanctuary. Giuseppe continually downshifted to gain speed; I looked off to the side and felt myself scooting closer to the inside of my seat. We had just topped the mountain, and when the road sloped downward, I realized that we were in the saddle. A dense pine forest with patches of sheep pastures surrounded us, but there was no sign of sheep, just stretches of twisted wood-slatted fences. It was only four in the afternoon, but it felt like dusk. The clouds emitted a sprinkle of rain.
Out of the bushes five or six dogs lined the road and snarled. A large sheepdog that looked part wolf led the pack. Her teats were swollen and hung almost to the ground. The other dogs were smaller and of an indescribable breed. One barely looked like a dog at all. We slowed down, and the dogs headed for the car.
One of the smaller dogs lunged at Giuseppe, smacking its nose against the door. As I turned to look out my side of the car, the she-dog leaped at me, grazing her teeth and nails against the window. I jumped back, brushing against Giuseppe, and saw a long string of slobber against the glass.
Giuseppe laughed, then inched down his window and barked back at the dogs.
The other dogs rushed the car, barking frantically. We got up to 25 kmh, but they kept up. One dog clung to the tail pipe, its back legs swinging out from under it. Giuseppe downshifted and punched the gas. I turned back. The dogs gathered in the center of the road behind us, barking.
Ten minutes later we rounded a corner and found ourselves at the Santuario di Santa Maria delle Armi. We faced the side of the tallest horn of the saddle, a crested rock formation out of which a long six-story stone building protruded. There wasn’t a single car, not a voice, no one. The chestnut door had been set open, as if in
expectation of us. We entered a long, narrow hallway with deep-inset windows overlooking the flat coastal land below
At the end of the hall, two thick wood doors had been left ajar. Inside was the chapel with four rows of pews and a crucifix that, as in many Calabrese churches, took a back seat to a painting of the Virgin Mary. The altar wall, on which the painting hung, was rough with irregular cracks and protrusions; the altar itself had been carved into the mountain.
A second, even smaller chapel opened to the side. Here, I knew, was where the Archiropita, a work of art that was created by divine hands, was kept. Giuseppe and I squeezed in, having no choice but to lower ourselves to the kneeler. Someone had been praying here and placed a black-and-white photo of a woman at eye level; another photo of a young boy had been placed next to that of the woman.
Just above our heads, inside a silver tabernacle, two angels appeared to be holding a ten-inch silver plate. As I drew my head closer, I saw that it was actually a stone that bore an image.
“This is the Archiropita,” Giuseppe said.
Only when you kneel does she appear. The image was of the Virgin Mary, formed by what looked to be a rainbow streak left by running water. Legend says a shepherd came across this stone with the visage of Mary in 1450. The sanctuary was constructed at the site a century later.
“Forty years ago two men stole this stone from its frame of angels,” Giuseppe said. “But something must have happened that made them unload it; they must have felt like they were being chased. Because two days later, as the sun was setting, a woman saw a ray of light shoot up from the ocean. She called the police, who waded into the water and found the stone at the bottom. The image had reflected the descending sun’s rays.”
We followed a stairway that led up behind the sanctuary and came out onto a patch of green grass almost at roof level. A dog was chained to a fence. A hundred feet in front of us stood a small two-story stone house. The door opened, and a middle-aged man walked out. “Buongiorno,” he said, extending a hand.
The man wore a brown snap-brim cap and blue knit sweater. As
he got nearer, the first thing I noticed were his eyes: the left was sharp and gray; on the right, a translucent film had begun to envelop the bottom half, covering the iris almost entirely. It was a sign of cataracts. I had often noticed cataracts or missing teeth or other ailments in people his age, who grew up in a time when good doctors weren’t available in Calabria—and when Calabresi distrusted doctors anyway.
He offered the first words to Giuseppe, speaking in Italian rather than dialect. As Giuseppe spoke, the man offered a respectful glance in my direction and a nod. I nodded back and wiped away the raindrops that had been slowly wetting my face.
Finally, after explaining where he was from, Giuseppe introduced me and my book. “You see, he is a second-generation Italian, and he has family still here. He says everyone in the U.S. knows about Tuscany and Rome and even Sicily, but no one, no one, knows about Calabria.”
The man turned to me and said in a measured British accent, “That is a wonderful idea.” He shook my hand. As my hand was enveloped within his larger, rougher one, I felt that he had a finger or two missing. “Calabria, indeed, is an amazing region. We have cliffs that fall deep into two seas; we have Greek history, Saracen history, and our own Bruttian ancestry.”
I complimented his English in Italian.
“Please, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak English. I love the language. You see, for thirty years I lived in London as a railroad worker. I worked on the tracks. But I missed my country so much that I decided to move back to my village, Cerchiara, and take care of the sanctuary grounds here with my wife.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About twenty years now”
I imagined that only an Italian who has lived abroad, one who has already separated himself from his family, could live in near isolation, away from the village, away from the piazza and main corso.
He introduced himself as Ciccio Pistacchi.
“Can I invite you two for dinner?” he asked, returning to Italian.
Giuseppe looked at me, then turned to Ciccio. “I’m sorry but we can’t. We have to make it back to Gimigliano tonight.”
“A caffè before you leave, then?”
“Thank you, but perhaps another time,” Giuseppe said, although I wanted to stay to talk to this Ciccio.
“Do return, it’s magical here.”
We said our goodbyes.
“Alas, I will have to wait another five years to speak English again.”
“Five years?”
“Yes, it seems that only every five years does an English speaker make his way up here.”
“Tourists?”
“Sometimes, though rarely. Often it’s relatives from this area who have lived in England or America who come back, come back to the sanctuary.”
The drizzle turned to thicker raindrops.
“Maybe the same dogs that attacked our car will be waiting,” I said, jokingly.
“What dogs?” Ciccio asked, looking as if he’d never seen or heard them.
“Large sheepdogs, wild,” Giuseppe said. “They literally attacked the car.”
“Are you sure they were dogs? They looked like dogs?”
We both nodded.
“There are many wolves here, and boars … mean, wild boars. The wolves wouldn’t attack the car, but the boars might.”
We descended the mountain, and at the exact same place the dogs lay in wait. The large bitch led two others out onto the road. Giuseppe accelerated. The dogs charged and ran after the car. We flew by so quickly that I barely caught a glimpse of the other dogs darting out of the bushes. I turned around to see four more squat dark brown animals leaping out onto the road. They looked like dogs, but then again, I wasn’t sure. Here in the middle of nowhere Calabria, a man speaks perfect English, and dogs that don’t look like dogs attack passing cars.
Miles out, the sun shot through the clouds and sparkled on the waves of the Ionian Sea.