I TOOK THE WIDE, SHALLOW STONE STAIRS TWO AT A TIME, Giuseppe and Imma beside me, to the research room in Matera. The stuffy, warm air smelled of dust and ancient, crumbling paper, just as it had ten years ago.
The room contained long white-topped tables made of pressed wood, with a wall of windows that were never opened very wide, maybe to prevent the wind from blowing the papers around. Imma started to sneeze as soon as we walked in. “God bless you,” I said after the first few sneezes. But after four or five, I gave up. “I’m allergic to dust,” she whispered.
“Oh no,” I whispered back. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here then. I can look with Giuseppe.”
“No, no, no,” she said, waving me off. “If it’s the right murder, I want to be here. I don’t want to miss this.”
Two young Italian women searching for something together were the only ones here besides the middle-aged, bespectacled female clerk who approved all requests. She sat at a desk like a schoolteacher at the front of the room, vigilantly watching the visitors to make sure they didn’t do any damage to the antique files. She spent most of her time simply sitting there, staring into space, or glancing out the window. I wondered if it was against the rules for her to read a book or a newspaper or her iPhone. I would have been desperately bored. But she seemed content and perfectly happy.
Ten years ago, I had leafed through arrest report after arrest report here, through yellowed piles of court records and criminal files. Imma told me that they had every birth, death, and marriage record for all the towns in the province, which either was something new or something I hadn’t known before. Searching in Pisticci was easy, but Bernalda’s bureaucrats made it nearly impossible to find anything in the comune there. People in Bernalda had nicknamed the woman in charge of the archives there “the demon.” We could search here in Matera for everything we needed instead, even though it was forty-five minutes away.
Imma filled in a written request on a small slip of white paper to call up the case file for the listing Francesco had come across. File 644. She handed it to the clerk at the desk and a moment later another file clerk, a very efficient, serious man in dress pants and a collared shirt, came to collect the requests. Ten minutes passed in silence. Unless you whispered, it seemed wrong to talk inside the archives. The male clerk returned, rolling a squeaky metal cart into the room, breaking the hushed silence. The cart’s two shelves contained several stacks of files, not just for us but for the other women here.
With his strong arms, he lifted from the top shelf a giant bundle in blue cardboard that was more than a foot thick. It was our bundle. He placed it right in front of me on the long research table. Inside were seven different case files, all tied together with a thin ribbon of white cotton, as if it were a big, dusty gift from the gods. I untied the ribbon with trembling hands, fumbling with its tightly knotted cloth, and realized it may not have been opened in more than a century. I wondered if moths would fly out. Part of me wanted to get it open as quickly as possible. But part of me was worried I’d just be disappointed again.
Then I thought: it might actually be the right file.
I paused for a few seconds. Once opened, the contents—like in Pandora’s box—would come pouring out and would be impossible to push back in. I took a deep breath and turned back the blue cardboard.
Staring back at me from the top of the pile was a yellow page, with cracked and crumbling edges, issued from the Corte d’Assise, which was stamped at the top in bold black letters. The Italian Court of Assizes handled the most serious of crimes: murder, enslavement, terrorism, those offenses that could result in a sentence of twenty-four years or more.
Underneath were the names of the defendants.
Francesco Vena and Leonardantonio Gallitelli. Their names were written in elaborate, slanted cursive. It was one of seven files in the pile and the biggest in the bunch, as thick as an old New York City phone book, with more than six hundred yellowing, cracking pages inside. I carefully took it off the pile with both hands as if lifting a newborn baby and gently placed it on the table.
The court document was from 1873 and described a murder committed the year before. This was twenty years before Vita had left for America. I had always assumed the murder had happened right before Vita left in 1892, that she had run away to America because of it. The timing seemed off, but the ages of the men seemed right. Francesco Vena, age twenty-nine. And twenty-seven-year-old Leonardantonio Gallitelli, the same name as the man who had yelled at me ten years ago on the street with Miserabila to go back to America and leave the dead in peace. He was definitely a relative. He knew this murder story, whether it was mine or not. I knew all along that he knew something.
I read through that first page and saw that a third man was arrested along with Francesco and Leonardantonio, a man named Francesco Miraldi, age thirty-one.
With Imma looking over my shoulder, her hands on the back of my chair, and Giuseppe sitting beside me, I flipped through several pages of witness lists, jury records, and depositions, all written in fancy Italian calligraphy.
I leafed through a few more pages and found Francesco Vena’s deposition, in which he states his name, his father’s name, Donato, and his birthplace and residence, Bernalda. He states that he is a farmer, and gives his wife’s name.
Vita Gallitelli.
I stopped breathing. I blinked once. Twice.
I read it silently again, to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. And took a breath.
Vita Gallitelli.
Goose bumps crawled up my arms, forcing the hair to stand straight up.
I read once more, this time aloud, my voice high and trembling, slicing through the silence of the room, “Vita Gallitelli. It says his wife’s name is Vita Gallitelli.”
“Eccolo,” Imma said, towering behind me and nodding. Here it is.
“I told you that we would find it,” Giuseppe said, smiling widely and wiping the sweaty front of his face with the palm of his hand. I turned and hugged Imma and then him.
“But I didn’t believe you,” I said.
“I know you didn’t,” he said, nodding, his eyes closed. I put my hand to my forehead and stared at the document.
After ten years, here it was, my family murder, right in front of me. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. Not yet anyway.
Maybe it was a different Francesco Vena and Vita Gallitelli. They were fairly common names. I had to make sure they were the right ones.
Francesco goes on to say in his deposition that he is not guilty and that Leonardantonio is his brother-in-law. Next are Francesco’s and Leonardantonio’s birth certificates. I scanned Leonardantonio’s. His mother’s name was Teresina.
“He has the same mother as Vita!” I shouted, pointing at the birth certificate, which set him as four years older than Vita. Vita’s big brother.
Imma put in a request for the marriage certificates for that decade and moments later, she again had the one she had found yesterday for Francesco Vena, born November 8, 1844—same as on this birth certificate—and Vita Gallitelli, born August 22, 1851, same as on Vita’s birth certificate. Now there was no doubt this was it. This was the same Francesco.
And this was our Vita.
This was our murder.