WHAT VITA LOVED MOST ABOUT FRANCESCO WERE HIS SAD eyes. Big brown eyes that sloped downward and made her want to take care of him and make him happy.
She had seen Francesco most days with her brother and had admired him from afar. He was short, but handsome, with coarse, strong workingman’s hands and a boldness to match Vita’s. He had served in the army, like all young men did these days, and she had seen him a few times in uniform, with his dark blue jacket and the matching dark hat with its single plume.
He cut quite a figure, but I imagine he wasn’t quite as smart as Vita was. Usually the men weren’t as smart or as strong as their wives in Bernalda, though they liked to think they were and sometimes beat their women, even in public, to convince them of it. But there was a sweetness beneath Francesco’s strength.
Nineteen-year-old Vita told him she loved him, with her own eyes, without having to actually say it. Francesco got the silent message and so proposed marriage, in front of Vita’s father Domenico, in front of her brother, in their small hovel of a house in the old part of town. Teresina was there as well. And they all consented. Maybe they even toasted the occasion with a glass of homemade wine.
Vita tried to hide her excitement from her parents. But when they weren’t looking, she stared hard at Francesco and wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him, and to have his babies. She smiled at him and flirted with her black olive eyes and called him by his nickname, Ciccio, like most of his friends did, but never even touched his arm or hand. It was forbidden.
On the Thursday before the ceremony, a member of Francesco’s side of the family came to inspect the linens and furniture that Vita’s parents had made and collected. Then it was paraded through the village, carried on each family member’s head. A celebration followed outside the house, a dance where all the young people came and flirted, one of the few occasions where they could.
Couples moved across the cobblestones to the music of the local band: the accordion, bagpipes, tambourine, and cupa cupa, a ceramic percussion instrument with sheepskin on top, and which made a noise when you moved a stick in and out of it. Cupa cupa, cupa cupa. (The word cupa meant dark, but it was a happy sound.)
The dances were like square dances, with partners changing it up and moving in circles, hand over hand over hand, spinning and laughing and touching, for once.
The night before the wedding, on Saturday, Vita wore a green skirt as part of her pacchiana outfit, a color meant to bring luck for the rest of the coming marriage.
Then on Sunday—the actual wedding day, November 20, 1870—Vita put on her white wedding dress, which her mother had finished sewing for her just that morning, a final stitch saved for right before the wedding, for good luck. Teresina helped Vita with her white veil, similar to the veils of the bridesmaids, her sisters, and friends. The matching veils were to confuse the evil spirits, so they wouldn’t put a curse on the bride.
Vita and Francesco, without touching or holding hands, walked to the church together, the one built centuries ago by Bernardino de Bernaudo. The bell in the tall ginger-colored tower rang out, signaling to the town that a wedding and mass were about to take place.
In the street on the way to the mother church, townspeople placed obstacles in Vita and Francesco’s way, a broom, a crying baby. It was an Italian tradition, to represent the challenges that lie ahead. Housework. The colicky kid.
Once they safely reached the church, they ascended the three worn stone steps and went inside. The interior of the church was simple and whitewashed, except for its exposed wooden roof beams. An old wooden statue of San Bernardino stood guarding one corner, and in another, a mural of St. John the Baptist looked over the baptismal font. A cemetery for children in Bernalda who died before the age of seven lay beneath this spot, underground.
Vita and Francesco approached the white marble eighteenth-century altar, one of three altars, this one decorated with a medieval mural of Jesus being crucified, with Mary Magdalene flanking the cross. Jesus had his eyes closed, his ribs showing, his golden halo faded over time. His mother looked on as he died his slow, painful death.
The small wedding crowd celebrated a long mass in Latin, at the center of which Vita and Francesco would say their vows. The priest, one of the few literate people in town, would read the vows line by line and they would repeat after him. With the Blessed Mother, Jesus, Rocco, Bernardino, and all the saints watching, Vita agreed to love and honor Francesco until she died. And he agreed to do the same.
Nella gioia e nel dolore (In joy and in pain)
Nella salute e nella malattia (In health and in sickness)
E di amarti e onorarti (And to love you and honor you)
Tutti i giorni della (all the days of)
Mia vita.
Francesco smiled and even laughed a little when he said those last words.
Mia vita. Mia Vita.
My life. My Vita. They were now one and the same.
And then, with his callused farmer’s hands, he touched his Vita for the first time, taking her tiny and strong weaver’s hands and placing a simple metal ring onto the third finger of her left hand. (The left hand, the cursed side, to ward off evil spirits. That finger was also connected to the vein that led to the heart.)
Francesco placed his rough palm onto her face and lifted her chin. Her skin was surprisingly soft, he thought. He gently tilted her face up toward his and kissed her thin lips for the first time. It was Vita’s first kiss ever, though Francesco had probably had some practice with the local puttane. It was a short kiss, but Vita would sink into it, as if drowning in the Ionian Sea, which she had only ever glimpsed from a distance but could smell on the windiest days, when the hot North African sirocco was especially strong.
The couple left the church after the ceremony and hopped over a long red ribbon that stretched a few inches off the ground. It symbolized their crossing over together into a new life. Then Vita threw sugared almond “confetti” onto the cobblestones, a Roman tradition that symbolized fertility in the marriage. The neighborhood kids, waiting for just this moment, dropped to their scabby knees and scarfed up the white candied nuts.
The relative with the largest house hosted a small party afterward, with lunch for the closest family members. Only the rich held a big banquet for friends and extended family.
Everyone sat at one long table and ate a special, long wedding pasta called macaroni a fierr—which means macaroni by iron, since the pasta dough was wrapped around an iron poker or metal knitting needle. When it was pulled off, the pasta looked like a long curl of dough-colored hair. Long pasta for a long life together. Served over the fierr was a tomato ragout with meat in it, cooked for several hours ahead of time by the women in the family. Your daughter’s wedding day was one of the only other times you ate meat.
Vita handed out more candied almonds for the children, an uneven number (since that was good luck). The band of local bagpipers and accordion players and cupa cupa players and a guy with a giant tambourine—so big it nearly blocked out the sun—played into the night. Vita danced, and danced and danced, spinning wildly and laughing. The guests then presented their gifts to the couple: simple offerings: liquor, sugar, a chicken, some eggs.
At the end of the night, Vita’s father placed a vase on the floor in front of the new, young couple, who had to stomp on it as hard as they could and break it to pieces. According to tradition, the shards would be counted and would stand for the number of years they would be happily married. But Francesco stomped so hard there were only crumbs and dust left. Everyone laughed at his passionate attack of the vase.
But the fact that there were no actual shards worried Vita. It was a bad sign.