THE TWO-CAR DIESEL TRAIN slowed going into the Gimigliano station. In the parking lot, I saw Giuseppe’s car, but no sign of Giuseppe. When the train stopped, we stepped onto the platform and, once again, looked up at Gimigliano Superiore to see the pale yellow houses with red terra-cotta roofs, just as we remembered them. Then we turned to the station to see Giuseppe poking his head out of the stationmaster’s office, his head cocked to the side in his characteristic understated way, his arms open as if to say, “Ah, you’ve finally arrived.”The sun was bright, and the air dry and crisp. After an exchange of kisses and hugs, Giuseppe drove us up to his house, where Elena greeted us with more kisses and hugs. The house was filled with the warm, welcoming aroma of tomato sauce and maccheroni.
Alessio ran past everyone and grabbed my arm. “Marco, Marco,” he called, “come look at my new computer game.”
“Alessio,” Elena said, not really scolding, “say hello to Martha and to Marco’s parents.”
“Ciao, ciao, ciao,” Alessio said, barely pausing to extend his hand. “Marco, tutto okay Let’s go see my game now”
Elena brought out meats and cheeses and eggplant that Giuseppe had pickled. We all sat down, and my father and Giuseppe began a conversation in dialect. I managed to discern that they were talking about me. Giuseppe paused for a moment to note, “In Italian, they say figlio; in dialect, we say higliu, like your father.” My father had been referring to “his son.”
I marveled at the ease with which my father communicated with Giuseppe and remembered with chagrin the embarrassment I’d felt when he spoke dialect in the north and was misunderstood or treated like just another poor southerner.
Elena brought to the table a large dish of lasagna. Giuseppe poured everyone wine. My father and I drank two glasses for every one of Giuseppe’s. Elena brought out dishes of vegetables and more wine for my father and me. A couple of hours passed in talk of food and the growing seasons, punctuated by Giuseppe’s narrative of our trips together.
Then Giuseppe stood and announced that it was time for limoncello. He brought out the liter bottle of smooth yellow liqueur, which had begun to frost at the bottom. My mother and father oohed with pleasure. Giuseppe opened the bottle and fished out the bits of lemon peel that floated to the top.
“Marco and I made this,” he said. “It took a lot longer than usual because your son is slow at peeling the lemons.” He described the process, then went on to explain how the procession to Madonna di Porto would play out the next day.
“You will see nothing but people,” he said.
“How many people can there be?” my mother asked.
Giuseppe paused. “Usually, on average, twenty thousand.”
I tried to picture that many people in the streets of Gimigliano but gave up when I realized that it was more than could fit in Madison Square Garden.
Elena began clearing the dishes, and my mom jumped up to help. I heard them at the sink, Elena speaking slow Italian to my
mother, my mother responding in her native French at the same pace. At one point, my mother called me over to help translate something for her. “Mark, please tell her that I would love the recipe for the lasagna.”
As I translated, Elena’s face became red, and she seemed to stifle a giggle. Finally she burst out laughing. “Marco, I don’t think your mother needs it; she already has one.”
I was nonplussed.
Elena laughed again, then said, pointing to her breasts, “Marco, you keep asking for a nipple, not a ricetta, a recipe.” While my father was speaking perfect dialect, I was tripping over my Italian.
After the meal we stopped off at my aunt Angela and uncle Mimmo’s house to see Luisa, Sabrina, Tommaso, and Masino, whom we were supposed to accompany to the festivities in Superiore. But when we arrived, they had just been told that Mimmo’s brother was in the hospital. They offered us biscotti and coffee, and we tried to console them. Then we saw them off to Catanzaro to the hospital and stopped in on Zia Caterina, who served us more biscotti and gelato and told us a story about the expensive haircut my father got in Naples when he first visited Italy. Apparently, just off the boat and not quite used to the lire, he paid three times the going rate. But the funniest story was about how my father came to Italy thinking he spoke Italian and was amazed when no one north of Naples understood him!
We kissed Caterina goodbye and went up to Gimigliano Superiore for the beginning of the festival. Martha and I peeked inside the Chiesa di San Salvatore. The festa was one of the few times when men participated in the work of the church. Men, and only men, were meticulously placing lilies around the feet of the statues at the base of the painting of the Madonna.
Then we joined the flow of villagers in the evening’s passeggiata. In the piazza, tech crews set up the stage where folk music would be
played the next night, followed by a rock band. The techies all wore black T-shirts.
Martha stopped and pulled at my arm. “Mark, look over there.” A teenage boy was wearing a tan T-shirt that read “Critelli’s Auto Body, Danbury, Conn.”
We sat on the church steps and watched everyone walk past. Elena waved to us from the store, and Giuseppe stood outside smiling and greeting people as they walked by, shaking hands with the older men, and pulling down the caps of the children who passed. I felt at home.
From the far end of the passeggiata, a sound I remembered only from the movies—the bright notes of clarinets and booming brass behind them—echoed between the stone buildings, becoming louder as it approached. Giacomino stopped right in front of me and opened his arms. Vincenzo appeared next, along with Francesca and a few others. My friends from Gimigliano were welcoming me back to the village.
The band approached around a corner. They stopped in front of the church, and all of Gimigliano Superiore seemed to be gathered around them. They were wearing caps and navy blue uniforms, the pockets of their jackets trimmed with dull yellow piping and gold buttons. Mimmo Morante, the high school music instructor who frequented Maria’s bar, led the band, playing one of eight clarinets, followed by three trombones, one of them Tonino Ventura, whom I’d met the first day on the plane to Calabria; there were two French horn players, including Stefano, the high school student who wanted to live in Toronto; six trumpet players; two saxophones; and two sousaphones. Keeping the slow, mournful pace were the four percussion instruments—a bass drum, two snares, and a crashing cymbal. On each of the two sousaphones, black letters encircled the curve of the bell, forming the words “Gimigliano, Italy.” The minor notes hit me in the heart, and the clarinet wails reminded me of The Godfather. Mimmo Morante noticed us sitting on the steps, and with a nod and a widening of his eyes, he seemed to say hello.
The band took a break, and Mimmo came up the steps to greet us. Martha asked why it said “Italy” and not “Italia” on the sousaphones.
Mimmo explained that the band sometimes traveled to Toronto to play for the festival of the Madonna di Porto there. He showed Martha the music, four-by-six-inch sheets attached to the instruments themselves, handwritten by a sheet music company down the Ionian coast in Soverato. Stefano came up, as did Tonino. He introduced us to his wife, who invited us over for dinner.
Mimmo went back to the head of the band, and the group fell into formation. The sky darkened to a deep blue as the sun dropped below the distant mountains. Tall arches of tightly wound bright yellow and red lights had been hung especially for the festival. They lighted the piazza and spidered out, leading through alleys, along roads, and down the mountain path to Gimigliano Inferiore.