IT WAS AN EARLY FRIDAY MORNING, and I struggled to keep pace with Masino as we trotted through Gimigliano getting signatures from villagers for the upcoming national elections. Everyone knew Masino, and Masino talked to everyone he knew He talked as quickly as he walked, sputtering out the beginnings of sentences and then breaking off to turn to me smiling and say, “Marco, Marco, Marco.”Masino, my cousin Sabrina’s husband, worked for the commune of Gimigliano in the official records department, which consisted solely of his boss and him.
Voting turnout is high in Italy, although just as in the States, no one believes his or her vote really matters. Still, Masino needed signatures verifying that each house’s occupants were alive and therefore eligible to vote. He would knock on a door trying to locate a given person, but that person never seemed to answer. Instead, a next-door neighbor—always a woman—would poke her head out of the window and say something like “She’s shopping” or “She’s at her mother-in-law’s” or “I think she and her husband are still in Torino.” It seemed as if no one we wanted was answering the door,
but the neighbors always did. On the rare occasion that we did get the intended registered voter, the person would whine, “Masino, do I really have to sign? This is silly.”
“Yes. It’s the law,” Masino would respond with official neutrality “And the sooner you sign, the more quickly you can go back to cooking and I can go home.”
We stopped off for an espresso corretto. No sooner had the old man served the coffee than we were back out the door making our way down Masino’s list.
“I think it’s great that you want to be an Italian citizen,” Masino said. Earlier we had spoken with his boss about my ongoing attempts to get Italian citizenship. “Yes, fantastic. This way”—he patted my back—“you will then be Italian.”
I knew that for me to be considered an Italian citizen, my father would have to be considered an Italian citizen. Even though my father had been born in the States, I only had to prove that he had been born before one of his parents had given up his or her Italian citizenship to become American. Easy. I knew that my grandfather had served in World War I on the side of the Americans—and paid for the privilege of citizenship with bullets in his stomach and leg on French soil—but my grandmother, who had lived in Danbury, Connecticut, for more than sixty years, had never learned English and had never given up her Italian citizenship.
On my first visit to Calabria, my cousin Luisa had dug up my grandparents’ birth and marriage certificates. I assembled them, along with the birth certificates of my father and me, into a beautifully organized portfolio with Italian and English translations and took it to the Italian consulate in New York. My counselor there, a young woman, seemed to be impressed with my presentation. As she turned the pages, she hummed a positive “Mmhhm, mmhhm, good, good … oh, wait.”
“Wait, what, wait?” I stuttered.
“You are tracing your lineage through your grandmother,” she said.
“Yes, my grandmother, that’s it. She never gave up her Italian citizenship; she was loyal to her mother country”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t trace your lineage through a woman who was born before 1936,” she said, closing my folder.
“But why not?”
“Women were not Italian citizens before then.”
My grandmother, who had held Calabria closer to her heart than almost anything in the world, was not even considered a citizen by a country whose men petitioned their prayers through the mother of all mothers? The consulate officer must have seen the disappointment in my face. “What about your grandfather?”
“No, he became a U.S. citizen.”
“Hmm, but when?”
“Right after World War One.”
“Let me tell you something. You know, records were not so good then, and if your grandfather was a typical southern Italian, he was probably skeptical about any government and was loath to leave a paper trail. He probably got his citizenship in a name different from his birth name.”
I didn’t quite follow.
She explained further. “All you need from the Justice Department is a letter saying that they have no record of this man—under this name—as being a citizen of the U.S. And there you have it.”
It was kind of like stealing figs: if you didn’t have any on hand, you found another way to get them. You could also look at it this way: the Italian government had stolen my grandmother’s citizenship from her; I would look for what I needed on the branches of another tree.
On the way to Sabrina’s and his house, Masino and I stopped off at the village’s bocce court. Bocce, developed in ancient Rome, is a cross between horseshoes and shuffleboard and is played throughout Italy The bocce court in Gimigliano stands above the main road that connects Inferiore with Superiore, a single court surrounded by a chain-link fence. You enter through a wood hut that serves as a clubhouse, where an older man and young boy were just preparing
to play. Each had his own bocce set in a hard case, the balls shiny silver and carved with circles and spirals in various patterns.
“Marco, this is another Rotella, Filippo,” Masino said.
“That’s my grandfather’s name,” I said as I introduced myself to the older man.
He examined me and said nothing. He offered his huge hand.
“Maybe you two are relatives,” Masino said.
“Do you play bocce?” Filippo asked.
“I’ve never played,” I answered.
He looked at me skeptically, then placed a ball in my hand. It was heavier than it appeared.
“We’ll form teams,” Masino said. “You and Filippo, me and the kid.”
“But I’ve never played,” I protested.
Masino walked over to the club hut and dug into a cooler. He pulled out three bottles of Czech beer and gave one to each of the adults.
Masino tossed the small rubber ball, the pallino, that serves as a marker. The goal of the game is to get your bocce ball closest to the pallino. I was the first to bowl. I had watched the game a couple of times and thought the trick was to toss it with my palm down, giving it a spin backward so it wouldn’t roll too far. The ball hit where I had intended, but with too much force, and it rolled out of bounds.
“Ahhh,” Filippo cried. “What was that?”
I tried again. This time the ball fell shorter and rolled to a point that I would have considered quite close to the pallino.
“No, no, no,” Filippo said.
Masino took a turn, each bowl getting close to the pallino. Then Filippo went. He bowled and struck out Masino’s ball, allowing his to land a few inches closer. The boy bowled, and his ball landed just a scratch closer yet.
“Aim here,” Filippo said, pointing with his foot. I tried again.
The boy looked on quietly, but Masino hooted me on. “Come on, Rotella, come on.”
I had noticed that the other three bowled underhanded, so I decided to try it that way. This time my ball came closer than Filippo’s but not as close as the boy’s. I thought it was my best bowl yet.
“No, no, no,” Filippo raged. “You’re changing your style! Overhanded, underhanded, overhanded—which one is it? Decide.”
I knew that Italians were passionate about bocce—arguing and yelling were a major part of the game—but I couldn’t believe that Filippo, knowing this was my first time playing, wouldn’t take it easy on me. I went back to my original style of pitching, but my nerves were shattered. My bowl went wild, and this time even Masino responded with a pitiful “Boh.”
“Drink another beer,” Filippo said. “It might help your game.” And that was the last thing he said to me for the rest of the game.
As we put the balls away, Masino came up to me and patted me on the back. “Okay, bocce’s not your game,” he said. “But tomorrow we’ll go to see Catanzaro play football. You’ll be able to watch.”
I extended my hand to Filippo and thanked him for allowing me to play.
He put out a limp hand, shrugged, and said, “I don’t think we’re related.”
That night at dinner I discovered that my cousin Sabrina was the gourmet cook of the family She served a feast that consisted of shells filled with ground pork and tomatoes, a lasagne with pesto and bechamel (to which Masino added his mother’s homemade piccante), a tart filled with ground pork and covered with bread crumbs, a pizza rustica stuffed with prosciutto and mozzarella, and soppressata in a heavy tomato sauce.
Several of their friends from the Pasquetta in the Sila had joined us, and everyone was conversing in dialect. At one point Tommaso—we both were well on our way to getting drunk—turned to me and said, “When you and Martha get pregnant, you should come to Italy so the baby will be born Calabrese.”
It was then that I realized that citizenship was only a formality. I
would never be Calabrese in their eyes. The Calabresi are born on Calabrese soil.
Early the next day Masino and I drove to Catanzaro for one of the soccer team’s final games of the season. I couldn’t believe that the graffiti-covered, unfinished concrete walls, not much taller than a house, were actually the stadium. Somehow I had expected a miniature version of the Meadowlands. The poor standing of the team obviously dictated that little money went to them. In Italy soccer is a business, and only the best teams attract the wealthy sponsors who can pay for good players and fancy stadiums.
We passed through low arches with the hundreds of other fans, bundled in heavy jackets against the wind and rain. The field, surprisingly well manicured, was a couple of stories below. The stadium had been dug into the side of a mountain; the other side, beyond the away team stands, was the edge of the cliff. Looking down into the arena, I felt as if I were attending a gladiatorial contest in a minor village’s coliseum. One section of the stands was sheltered and had wooden seats. The rest of the seats were formed of concrete, and in the middle of the curved section of concrete mass two or three large pine trees had grown. The fans surrounded this display of Calabrese earthiness with a swirl of bright red and yellow flags and jerseys. This section is called the curva, where the dedicated and truly rowdy fans gather.
The visiting team, from Gela, a port village in Sicily, was greeted with boos. Catanzaro came on the field, and immediately the fans, or tifosi, began a rally of cheers, songs, and chants that continued throughout the game.
Catanzaro scored within the first few minutes. The war cries revved up a notch. A leader banged a large drum out in front of the fans, and they pulsed and hopped to every beat. The stadium shook.
At halftime, Catanzaro was leading, 2 to 1, and I decided to walk around. There were no T-shirt vendors, no long lines for beer and hot dogs just a few carts that served hot espresso in shot-size plastic
cups with lids. The stadium was filled almost entirely with men and boys. I counted seven teenage girls around us in the lowest-priced seats and five older women sitting with their husbands in the sheltered section.
Catanzaro scored a final goal in injury time. This win meant that Catanzaro would have a chance to advance from Serie C-2 to Serie C-1 for the first time in more than two decades. One of the players pulled off his shorts and threw them into the stands. The fans rushed the field.
“Marco, Marco, Marco!” Masino cried. “It looks like football is your game!”