NIGHT FELL AND BERNALDA CAME ALIVE. IT WAS AS IF THE town were full of vampires, who only came out after dark. Mopeds, bicycles, and Vespas sped past, young women and men laughed and moved in unison like schools of fish down the street. The cafés were packed. Passeggiata was in full swing.
In the chic outdoor bar in front of Coppola’s hotel, handsome white-jacketed waiters took my order while I waited for Leo. The tall palm trees, nearly as high as the streetlights, cast shadows onto the Corso and the thick crowds promenading past. Leo was late.
I ordered a glass of the local Aglianico del Vulture, the rich red wine from grapes grown in the volcanic soil near Mount Vulture to the north. I took a sip and tried to look as laid-back as everyone else in town. But until Leo showed up, I couldn’t really relax.
Finally, more than a half hour late, he appeared with a friend beside him. I wanted to skip the formalities, forget the drinks, and just find out what Leo had learned from his mother. I had hoped he would bring her along with him tonight.
Instead he brought this tall, skinny, birdlike man around my age with thick glasses and a baseball cap covering a receding hairline. “This is Francesco,” said Leo. We shook hands and I smiled. But Francesco looked pained and uncomfortable. I abruptly turned to Leo and asked if he had spoken to his mother.
“Yes,” he said, sighing. “But my mother does not remember any of the details of the murder story.” I groaned but I wasn’t surprised. Just another dead end. I hadn’t really expected much. I decided then that if I did return to do more research, I would have no expectations, that I would try to be much more Zen than I had been last time around. I needed to try to calm down and not force the facts, but let them come to me—if they existed. Try to enjoy the scenery, the food, the wine, the company. I needed to be more patient. More Italian.
“I think my friend Francesco can help you,” Leo said. “He is a local lawyer and is doing his own family research right now.” Francesco smiled his difficult smile and looked embarrassed, or maybe angry, I couldn’t tell. Either way, he looked like he really didn’t want to be here. Leo explained that Francesco knew the workings of the local legal system and was a history buff. He didn’t know my story, but he might be able to help me find it.
Francesco didn’t speak any English but was married to a Croatian woman named Natasa, who spoke perfect English. After we finished our drinks, we walked over to their home, the big palazzo at the end of the Corso near the town’s St. Rocco statue, the one with the dog licking his master’s plague sores. The palazzo reminded me of that Sicilian mansion from The Godfather Part II, where Don Ciccio is gutted like a fish.
Past the mansion’s own grove of seven palm trees, Francesco shyly invited me and Leo inside to see the antique murals, ceiling frescoes, and wrought-iron balconies. I had passed this place dozens of times ten years ago and had often wondered who lived in it. That mystery was solved. Francesco and Natasa also owned a small hotel on the other side of town, named Giardino Giamperduto, a former cheese-making factory—a caseificio—which Francesco’s family had owned for decades.
After the house tour they took me on a tour of the hotel. The cheese factory was now a garden oasis inside a scrappy neighborhood, with 11 rooms, a swimming pool, a café, a giant chessboard, and a view of the Basento Valley farms, from which you could see olive groves and the old mule paths.
Francesco, who seemed to be warming up, explained to me himself that he was doing his own research into the Fascist history of his family. He suggested, in proper Italian, that I visit Potenza, the capital of the region, on my next trip. If there had been a murder trial, it probably would have taken place in Potenza, he explained. “In fact,” he said, “I will be in Potenza in a few weeks doing my own research. I would be happy to look for your murder when I am there.”
“That’s too much to ask,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll be back soon to do my own research and you can point me in the right direction.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” he said, bending his head and staring down at his running shoes.
I reached into my brown leather backpack, which I used as a purse, and took out my new beige leather wallet, which I had just bought during a shopping spree for family souvenirs. I thumbed around until I found my business card and handed it over to Francesco. “Well, here’s my email, just in case you do find anything,” I said. “Anything at all.”
I HEADED AROUND THE CORNER AND STOPPED IN AT THE OLD HOUSE on Via Cavour where I had lived years before, to say hello to Maria Natale and Maria Gallitelli, my old neighbors. Gallitelli was away for the weekend, but Maria Natale was home—as always—and greeted me warmly, as if I’d seen her just last week. She had a friend inside with her and insisted I come in and sit with them and “prendi un caffè.”
I went down the steps into her parlor, which was cluttered with knickknacks and old furniture. The place hadn’t changed and neither had Maria Natale. Her hair was still the color of ginger, though it no longer matched the mother church, which had undergone a cleaning and was now the color of sand. Maria was as lively and as talkative as always, the locket with her husband’s photo still pressed to her tanned chest.
When I turned to greet her friend, I realized with a start that it was Miserabila, the one who had screamed at me in the street. I took a breath and held it as if diving underwater, preparing myself for her attack. But Miserabila didn’t recognize me. I breathed out and tried to relax. Had I changed all that much in ten years? A little chubbier maybe, but I still had that same round faccia di Gallitelli. Maybe she was senile.
Miserabila looked the same, though, same nasty bulldog face, same balding head, same miserable frown.
Maria and I chatted, about my mother, about New York, about the kids, whose photos I showed her on my iPhone, Paulina with braces on her teeth but still a “bella bambina.”
“She’s a ballet dancer,” I told Maria, using my arms and doing a little step to make sure she understood me. “And an A student, just like her brother.” I showed her a picture of Dean, tall and lanky, under a thick head of dark hair and a pair of black-rimmed hipster glasses. Dondi all grown up.
“He plays bass guitar and is in a band, but he also loves history,” I said. Dean’s love of battles had evolved into an appreciation of world history.
I looked closely at his face and felt a stab of homesickness. “I wish I could have brought them with me,” I said, half-meaning it. “I don’t think they remember Bernalda. They were too little when we came last time.”
Maria shook her head and said, “I can’t believe how big they’ve gotten.” Some days, neither could I.
We talked about Maria Gallitelli across the way, who had given birth to a third son (poor Maria with all that laundry to hang), and about my possible return to do more research.
All the while, Miserabila looked on and tried to follow along with my broken Italian, and slowly, slowly, it began to dawn on her just who I was. With a sideways glance, I saw the gradual recognition and then outright disgust fill her face. I could hear the words echoing in her head, not just mine: “Go back to America and leave the dead in peace.” But she said nothing. She finally stood up and told Maria Natale she had to go.
Maria seemed puzzled, perhaps having forgotten the screaming rant on the street. Or maybe she was just being polite. But she said goodbye to Miserabila and ushered her outside. When Miserabila was halfway down the cobblestone street, I turned to Maria Natale, shook my head, and said, “I don’t think she likes me.”