“IT ALL HAPPENED HERE! Here, in Calabria!” the voice said, through a tinny amplifier. “Great explorations and medical advancements were accomplished by Calabrese ingenuity.”Giuseppe and I stood in front of a white storefront, to the side of a larger-than-life-size ceramic statue of a nineteenth-century peasant churning milk over a fire smoldering with olive branches. He wore a white cap and had a black mustache very similar to Giuseppe’s.
There were two entrances leading into the same building, but one sign for both: IL FARO—MOSTRA DEGLI ANTICHI MESTIERI DI CALABRIA (The Lighthouse—An Exhibit of Calabria’s Traditional Professions).
“Look how eyeglasses evolved from just a single curved piece of glass,” the voice intoned. “And with the help of scientific Calabrese research, doctors were able to graft skin from one part of the body to another.”
The voice emerged from the exhibition room. A man in his fifties wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie walked out, talking into a
microphone that was connected to a speaker strapped to his waist. A herd of grade-school children, mesmerized, pressed close behind him. His name was Benito Badolato.
“He’s from the Gimigliano area,” Giuseppe said proudly. “Remember the day you flew in? Remember the photos of the museum book? That’s him.”
Giuseppe described Badolato as being very smart, very creative, but a bit absentminded, “like a professor.” He had conceived of and put together this museum in 1909.
We walked into the museum hall, which was long and narrow with glass cases flanking a corridor that two people could barely fit through together. In each case a detailed diorama depicted lifestyles of nineteenth-century Calabrese workers. Each figure stood about five inches tall and was set against a background appropriate to his work. The scenes reminded me of the best model railroad sets. In one diorama, a gray-haired mustachioed man (who also happened to resemble Giuseppe) roasted chestnuts over an olive branch fire. Beside him, a dead chicken hung outside a chicken wire hutch. Miniature pots and pans decorated shelves. The terrain was rocky and dusty.
Another diorama depicted the three major phases of the wine-making process. The first scene showed a man mashing the grapes in a large chestnut barrel with his feet; the next showed another man pressing grapes with a manual winepress in a smaller wine barrel made of olive wood (similar to the one my grandfather used in Connecticut), and in the last diorama, my favorite, the vintner was sitting down, accordion at his side, drinking wine from a wicker-covered bottle. Every essential Calabrese occupation had been covered—the making of pottery, umbrellas, olive oil, and bread. There was even a scene of women washing clothes and getting water from the river.
Signore Badolato had cornered the kids in the small main room, where they could purchase postcards—Giuseppe’s, of course. He worked the cash register while continuing to speak over the loudspeaker at an auctioneer’s speed.
Signore Badolato noticed us and signaled to Giuseppe that he’d be with us momentarily. We poked our heads into the other room,
the museum of science and industry. A three-foot-long model of a locomotive filled the center display box. Each part of the engine—the headlights, the wheels, the insulator—had been identified by handwritten white labels. From each label sprouted a copper wire with a red arrow that pointed to the part in question.
Not all these displays claimed Calabrese invention, but one that did caught my eye. A man was sitting in a doctor’s office, probably in the early part of the last century The doctor was standing over him, directing the patient’s arm to the patient’s nose. When you looked closer, you could see that the patient’s arm was actually strapped to his head, and his biceps was indeed resting on his nose. Was this some sort of medieval torture? The display was labeled “The First Human Graft: The Invention of Plastic Surgery.” I immediately thought back to the noseless man in Gimigliano who wanted to trade his mule for my wife.
When a bus arrived to pick up the kids, Signore Badolato turned to us, obviously thrilled to see Giuseppe. He told me to make myself at home. He invited us to join the next group, which was starting anytime now … but on second thought, no, that would not do. We should come back some other time. Yes, perhaps this afternoon; no, maybe tomorrow or the next day. But we could visit his factory, just on the other side of town. The newer section. Oh, and I should make sure Giuseppe brought me to the gift shop, where his daughter, wife, and son worked.
We never did make it back for the tour.
About twenty minutes from Tropea is Capo Vaticano. There are at least twenty tourist villages, hotel complexes—all with tennis courts and pools—and a few water parks for kids around the Tropea region. Just ten years ago this small region of Vibo Valentia, the toe’s spur, formed its own province. And because of tourism and the region’s promotion of its agricultural industry, Vibo Valentia is now one of the wealthiest provinces. And within Vibo Valentia, Capo Vaticano is one of the most beautiful, and expensive, areas in Calabria.
If Vibo Valentia, the peninsula that juts out into the Tyrrhenian
Sea, is Calabria’s Amalfi coast, Tropea is Capo Vaticano’s Positano. Like a hat on an old man’s head, the village tops a rocky crag jutting into the ocean. Tropea is Calabria’s major tourist destination. It was founded sometime during the Roman Empire, but its streetscape is entirely Norman and Aragonese. With narrow streets winding between buildings of stone tufa, the entire city seems to have been constructed on a miniature scale. While walking through a maze of walls, you may suddenly stumble upon a hidden alcove where four or five tables have been set with red or blue checkerboard tablecloths, as I did.
A menu was posted on the wall in Italian, though a German translation had been handwritten next to it. Palm trees grew on one side of a tufa wall; grapevines covered the intimate sitting area behind which was the kitchen.
The sun warmed me. At last it was spring in Calabria. One alley connected to another, which then opened onto a tiny square that in turn led to a garden. Giuseppe and I finally came out at a moderate-size piazza dotted with white plastic tables and multicolored umbrellas. It was midday, and only a few tables were taken. Not yet hungry, we continued our stroll.
We followed the main road from the piazza down a slope until it ended at a waist-high wall. A long and fairly wide beach of light-brown sand, the color of all the buildings of Tropea, stretched to the water, which was so clear and blue that you could see a boat’s shadow on the white ocean floor. There was a hotel at one end of the beach; inside, I could see a tropical piazza, with palm trees and wood chairs and fences. Beyond, wooden piers reached out into the sea, mooring private yachts and ferries that went regularly to Sicily and Stromboli, as well as to the rest of the Aeolian Islands.
A rock island stood to the left of Tropea; on its top rested the medieval sanctuary called the Chiesa di Santa Maria dell’Isola. At one time it was a convent that could be reached by a footbridge from where we were standing. The bridge had eroded and crumbled over the centuries until it was finally torn down, and the convent was relocated. I took one last look down at the water. A man in a
boat rowed around the rocky crag and entered a cave just big enough for the boat. A couple on horses cantered down the beach.
South of Tropea the miles of secluded tourist villages are broken only by an isolated acre or two of summer camping parks, a haven for German tourists. Roads snake around the province, offering quiet access to private residences, all of which are hidden by wild foliage, stone walls, and gates. The weeds at the sides of the road are not trimmed; nothing’s manicured. But tucked inside those overgrown trees and bushes are some of the most expensive houses in Calabria. Here doctors and lawyers from the north keep houses to which they sometimes retire in the summertime or on long holiday weekends. At those times military guards will patrol the neighborhoods, and helicopters hover, protecting Italy’s politicians from assassins and kidnappers.
The area is known for its fields of cipolle. We drove through the onion fields with the windows down, breathing in the sweet aroma, which smelled like freshly cut parsley and scallions. The bright green fields expanded for miles, ending suddenly at the edge of a cliff.
We followed a dirt road through brush and bushes until it widened into a parking lot. We left the car, opened a wooden gate, and walked up a trail of stone steps to a wood frame building. Below, a cement pathway wound through a garden of meticulously arranged flowers, sloping down to offer a view of the distant sea. As I looked out to the horizon, where the garden ledge ended and the sea began, I was struck by the glorious melding of deep green grass and bright blue sea.
A young blond woman walked out of the garden.
“That’s the garden restaurant,” Giuseppe said. “I’ve been here; they serve a wonderful gelato.”
A teenage girl walked out of the restaurant. She, too, had long, straight, shiny blond hair.
I motioned to Giuseppe and gestured an inquisitive “Who is she?”
“German,” he said. “Germans come out here and fall in love with the sun. Some stay the summer; some decide to stay forever. They marry local Italians and have children.”
Giuseppe called to the older woman. “Mi scusa, signorina. What month do you open?”
The woman answered in perfect Italian, “Beginning of June.” She smiled, then walked away.
Giuseppe turned to me and said, “I think she’s Italian. But she looks German.”
I could see how Germans, or anyone from northern Europe, would fall in love with this place and decide to live here. And as the European community gradually meshed, I could imagine Germans beginning to move down and open up businesses, such as garden restaurants.
“In any case, we’ll have to wait for our gelato,” Giuseppe said.
The port village of Nicotera Marina lies on the south side of the Vibo Valentia spur, fronting the beach road and extending back in a grid of one- and two-story buildings about eight or ten blocks square. The wide main road was dusted with so much beach sand that I could barely tell it was paved. The grid formation is unusual in Italian villages, as are the detached buildings, with porticoes or balconies that shaded parts of the sidewalk. I turned around and faced the range of hills that climbed just behind the city. I felt as if I were on the set of a western movie, someplace in Colorado. Barely a soul strolled the street; it was almost a ghost town. Nicotera Marina came alive only in the summer.
Giuseppe had a distinct sweet tooth—for gelato. It led us, like a bloodhound’s nose, down the street, to a gelateria by the sea. With the lights out—as in most Italian establishments during the day—I couldn’t tell that there was life behind the glass, which reflected only the undulating waves of the ocean. Inside, though, we were greeted by the proprietor, an older man with a healthy paunch, and sparkling glass and metal counters. Giuseppe ordered a tropical orange, banana, and coconut cone, I ordered a pistachio-hazelnut combination,
which the owner stuffed between two pieces of sweet, doughy bread: an Italian ice-cream sandwich.
The sun had finally warmed away the chill that had filled the first part of my stay in Calabria. We drove the car two blocks toward the sea and two blocks across and parked in front of a tabaccheria. A dark young man was standing outside, reading a paper in the sun. His black hair fell in waves across his forehead, illuminating cold blue eyes. He had a small nose, and his hands were wide and thick and looked as if they were made for manual labor. But this was Francesco Lococo, a tabaccheria proprietor.
Inside, Giuseppe had laid out his portfolio of postcards. Francesco quickly picked out the ones that interested him and walked around the counter to address me.
“It must be boring here,” he said. “Nothing like America.”
“Yes, but it’s the weather, the scenery, the slow pace that I’m interested in,” I said. I meant it, but it had become my pat response, which relieved me of the chore of describing my life in New York and set people at ease.
“We have nothing but sand and ocean,” he said.
“We have nothing but people and buildings and cars and terrible smells.”
“It must be beautiful.”
We exchanged impressions of our own countries—characteristics that seemed boring to us but exotic to each other. Francesco paused to look out at the ocean. “We do have Greek ruins here. Greek ruins everywhere. But there’s no money to excavate. We just build on top of them.”
I doubted that there were ruins here, but he assured me that the entire area had been mined for granite in ancient times.
He brought out a magazine on boat racing and flipped to an article written by Giuseppe Chiaravalloti, president of Calabria. The article praised Calabria’s wine-making industry; its arid mountain ranges, its coastline; its sun-dried tomatoes, capers, figs, and oranges. By the end of the article I realized that he had written a treatise comparing the virtues of Calabria with those of California. It made sense. After all, Calabria, while no Rome, had even provided
the setting for a few of Piero Pasolini’s films as well as for several spaghetti westerns. I wondered why the Calabresi who came to the United States hadn’t settled farther west.
“So do you think that Calabria is on its way up?” I asked Francesco.
He thought for a moment, then grinned a grin that was neither proud nor apologetic, but somewhere in between. “Calabria is tranquil,” he said. “It grows, but it grows slowly, quietly. It doesn’t have the bang that Sicily, for instance, has.”
Of course Sicily itself had only recently shaken off its mafia taint and begun to enjoy the fruits of tourism. I wonder if this was his way of not jinxing Calabria’s progress—like Giuseppe’s habit of answering only “Not bad” when asked how he is.
Just then Francesco’s wife drove up with their two kids and spoke to him in an urgent tone. “I’m so sorry,” Francesco said to us, moving for the door. “Come back, we’ll continue business.”
When he was gone, I said to Giuseppe, “He likes to talk about his village.”
“Yes, of course,” Giuseppe said. “He prefers talking to paying.”
We went home by way of Vibo Valentia, the provincial capital of the newly formed region of the same name. We were discussing corruption, and Giuseppe was explaining that allotments the government had handed out to contractors to build factories or shopping centers “don’t always go where they need to.” Often the contractors would lay the foundation, build a frame, then take off with the rest of the money.
“In Italy, the state helps the thieves.” Giuseppe sighed. “Those who are clever get away with it.”
Giuseppe’s cell phone rang. He talked in a low, almost defeated voice, then hung up. “Problems, always problems,” he said. “I have to go to Apulia tomorrow to see a client who claims his shipment of postcards was not what he had ordered.”
We stopped at an intersection just outside Vibo Valentia. On the other side of the road stood half-constructed buildings that illustrated
what Giuseppe had been telling me. Roofless concrete shells stood among pits of excavated land and piles of debris that no one had had the money to clear.
Two Moroccan boys came to our windows selling individual packets of tissues for a thousand lire, about fifty cents. Giuseppe ignored them and looked at me. “Has anyone given you money today?”
“No,” I said, not understanding his point.
“Me neither,” he said, then looked out at the boys. “But they want money.”
“But, Giuseppe, they’re poor,” I said. “They don’t have anything else.”
“The government lets them get away with it because they are poor.” Giuseppe vented. “They show the same leniency toward the Gypsies, who steal and rob. The Africans and Gypsies get shorter sentences for the same crimes that Italians commit, because the government believes that poor people don’t know any better.” He finished with a grumbling aaaah of exasperation at his own situation and the situation around him.
The road narrowed as we entered the old city, traffic slowing as the buildings crowded up on the sidewalks. Pedestrians overflowed onto the streets. The sun was setting, and the lights were coming on in the cell phone stores, shoe shops, record stores, pizzerias, and flashy boutiques.
From here the road cut a straight path through the city center, where it dipped slightly, then shot directly up to a partially restored fourteenth-century Angevin castle that was lit from below If I looked straight ahead, I could be on any Manhattan avenue. The moment I looked to either side, the city fell to fields of wheat. On the outskirts of town, I knew, lay the ruins of a Greek Acropolis, as well as the remains of a Doric temple.
“So day after tomorrow, Marco, what do you say about going to Apulia?” Giuseppe asked, a sly smile spreading across his face.
“I wish I could,” I said to Giuseppe. “But I really should get to Reggio before I leave for home.” I told him I’d call him when I got back.
Giuseppe nodded, but his smile slipped away.