THERE’S A MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE,” GIUSEPPE SAID, LOOKING over at me. He had just gotten a text from Imma, who was in the Matera archives with Francesco, the lawyer. Giuseppe had arrived to pick me up in the morning for our day of interviews and research.
“I’ll tell Imma we’ll meet her in Matera this afternoon,” I said, taking out my phone, while Giuseppe put the Lancia in gear. I wanted to drive straight to Matera to see what Imma had found, but Giuseppe and I had to make another stop before that. We had to take a ride to the nearby town of Valsinni to visit a mutual friend named Carla, the woman who had introduced us over the Internet. I hated making social calls, but Italy was all about the social calls. Without them I would never meet the people I needed to meet, or find the information I wanted. I needed to be patient, more Italian. I had to keep reminding myself.
Carla, an Italian American woman from New Jersey, happened to have arrived here in Basilicata from America the same week as I had to visit her sick and dying ninety-four-year-old mother.
When she was young, Carla’s father had moved to America to make money for the family. Carla was sent there to live with him in the 1970s because of her headstrong, independent ways. She gladly left and permanently settled in New Jersey, where I had met her about ten years ago at the Italian cultural center that she ran. But now she was back, at her mother’s deathbed.
Carla was older than we were, and out of respect we agreed to meet her to thank her for introducing us—but mostly to provide her some relief from her deathwatch. As soon as Carla’s sister arrived to take over deathbed duty, the three of us headed out to see the town.
Carla spoke in well-enunciated accented English, slowly drawing out every vowel and sound with perfectly lipsticked lips, with her hands folded in front of her as if she were an opera singer. She was well put together at all times, her highlighted, well-coiffed hair just so, her faux pearl necklace matching her outfit. Like a determined, highly organized tour guide, she led us up the mountain of Valsinni to its most treasured building.
At the top was a rocky medieval castle, where a poet named Isabella di Morra had once lived. We climbed up and up until we were greeted by a large man named Rosario, who was the actual tour guide, and whose job it was to meet infrequent tourists here whenever they might show up. Rosario sported a day’s worth of dark stubble and looked like he had just woken up from some long slumber, surprised by the visitors who had suddenly arrived at his bear cave.
His large eyes, with long eyelashes, shot open beneath his thick glasses. He launched quickly and effortlessly into his story of Isabella di Morra with such force and affection that you could tell he had been silently, patiently waiting for days, maybe even weeks, to share his information with someone. He confessed that he was deeply in love with Isabella, or at least her legend. And like Isabella before him, Rosario was a sort of prisoner of this castle.
Rosario explained that Isabella di Morra was Italy’s first feminist, one of its most famous writers of all time, a fifteenth-century poetess and scholar whose father had taught her to read Dante and Plutarch by the time she was six. Unfortunately, she had a bunch of ignorant, awful brothers who—as the Italians liked to say—had pinecones for brains (“avere le pigne in testa”). They resented all the time their father spent with Isabella. When he wasn’t listening, they used to tell Isabella she was worthless, less than stone. “With stone,” they said, “you can at least build something. With a woman, you can do nothing.”
When her father was exiled by Basilicata’s Aragonese rulers to Paris, she was left sad and lonely in her beautiful prison with the lush countryside and, on the clearest days, the Ionian Sea to gaze upon. On a really clear day you could even see Pisticci. Rosario recited Isabella’s description from memory.
From a high mountaintop, where one can see
The waves, I, your sad daughter Isabella,
Gaze out for sight of any polished ship
Coming to bring me news of you, my father.
But my adverse and cruel destiny
Permits no solace for my aching heart,
But, enemy to any thought of pity,
Turns all my firmest hopes into laments.
For I see neither oar cutting the sea,
Nor any sail that billows in the wind,
So solitary is this dismal shore. . . .
Carla was riveted by Rosario’s words even though she had already been to this castle many times and knew the story by heart. With unusual emotion in her own voice, she translated Rosario’s words for me because he was talking so quickly.
When she was twenty-five years old, Isabella befriended a neighbor, the wife of a local Spanish baron. Eventually Isabella met the baron and fell in love. Isabella and the baron began exchanging love letters and poems. The relationship was never consummated, not even with a kiss.
Three of Isabella’s brothers found her love letters and became enraged. One night they climbed the castle stairs to her room and stabbed her repeatedly in the heart, then hurled her body over the castle wall. I thought of Sabrina, Giuseppe’s sister, and looked over at him to see if Isabella’s killing dredged up his own memories. But he seemed all right, caught up in yet another Italian murder story, one of the country’s most notorious.
An Italian family had recently bought this castle for a real bargain—for five thousand euro—and were excavating to find not only the original medieval rooms but Isabella’s bones. It seemed everyone was looking for bones of the past. They hadn’t turned up yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Rosario said that on the windiest days, the ghost of Isabella—his love—passes through the castle. Because she was a ghost, she was now free to roam wherever she pleased. Into the mountains, down to the sea. But most days, he felt her here, inside this castle.
I thought how tragic Rosario was, almost as tragic a character as Isabella. What was it like to be in love with someone who had been dead for five centuries? To be so obsessed with the dead? Why were Italians so consumed with murder stories and death? Maybe because there was just so much death and suffering years ago, they had been forced to build a culture around it.
And then it hit me that I wasn’t all that different than the Italians, or Rosario. I thought about my being here and my own obsession with Vita. Wasn’t that just as obsessive, chasing the ghost of Vita for the past ten years? I was also obsessed with the dead.
When Rosario was done telling us about Isabella, I felt bad leaving him here all alone. There were no other tourists and probably wouldn’t be until July. But at least he had the ghost of Isabella to keep him company.
ON OUR DRIVE HOME, WE PASSED A SIGN THAT SAID “COLOBRARO.” Giuseppe told me to never say the name out loud because it was the most cursed town in Italy. “Even just saying the name can bring terrible luck,” he told me. “And your luck has been bad enough.” Giuseppe smiled when he said it, and was laughing, but I could tell he was kind of serious. He said that when men passed that town, they scratched their private parts to guard against the curse.
The town’s name came from a Latin word that meant serpent—coluber (visions of Adam and Eve again). But it wasn’t clear what came first, the town’s name or the curse. It’s said to have originated many years ago after the villagers killed a woman they believed to be a strega—or a witch. Before she died, she put a curse on the town. More recently, a lawyer trying a case there announced in court, “If I’m lying, may this chandelier come down.” The chandelier fell. Since then, the curse is believed to have become even stronger.
According to legend, babies there are often born with two hearts. Landslides and car accidents are all too common. But every summer, the town holds a festival celebrating the curse and the sorcery attached to it. Tourists have been pouring in, despite the possibility of bad luck and having a chandelier fall on their heads. Policemen there won’t even give tickets to cars speeding through the town for fear they will be cursed.
Giuseppe, knowing this, drove as quickly as he could and headed toward Matera. As soon as we reached our exit, he received a text from Imma. He pulled over to read it. He smiled his bright white movie star smile.
“Francesco found some crime listing involving both a Gallitelli and a Vena man,” he said, excitedly. He read on and frowned. “But the archives are closing early today. They didn’t have time to dig out the actual file. We’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
I stuck out my bottom lip and shrugged, Italian-style. I knew it had to be a false alarm. I had only been here for a few days. And with our rotten luck, there was no way this was the murder.