NOW IT WAS TIME FOR MY REVENGE.
I headed back to Bernalda to find Miserabila and Leonardantonio, the two who had yelled at me on the street ten years earlier. I wanted to tell them the story they refused to share with me years ago, a story I was sure they knew all about. I had dreamed of this moment for years. It had helped propel me back across the ocean.
I bumped into Leonardantonio on Corso Italia and told him what I had found, the murder file involving Francesco Vena and Leonardantonio Gallitelli—his namesake. He flinched when I told him, but then tried to smile as if he were surprised and pleased. He had been right years ago. This was a Vena murder. Not a Gallitelli murder. He had known all along.
The feeling of revenge wasn’t as satisfying as I had thought it would be. Revenge never was.
I went around the corner and easily found Miserabila, who was sitting outside Maria Natale’s house on their small chairs near the corner of Via Cavour. Miserabila’s natural frown was turned down an extra notch when she saw me.
I told Maria—and, without acknowledging her, Miserabila—about what I had found, the file containing the murder, the other babies, the whole story. But Miserabila did not respond. Either she didn’t understand my bad Italian or she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of seeing her upset. But suddenly I was the one who was upset. Not by her reaction or lack of a reaction. But when I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sadness beneath the miserable frown that I had never noticed before. Maybe it had always been there.
This secret, not just the murder but the dishonor that came with Vita’s infidelity, had no doubt swirled around her family for decades and brought them disgrace here in Bernalda, had made their lives miserable. My branch of the family had escaped the dishonor. But she and her relatives had to live with this legacy every single day. Why was I throwing it in her face? I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that she shouldn’t be ashamed of Vita, that she had done nothing wrong. But I was afraid she would punch me.
Maria hugged me and congratulated me, and told me to return with my husband and family next time. She couldn’t wait to see them again.
Neither could I.
I dropped in on Leo and said goodbye and thanked him for picking me up at the station, for all the meals and drinks he’d bought me and for introducing me to Francesco, without whom I might never have found the murder. He gave me a long hug and said, “Next time, don’t stay in Pisticci. You stay at my beach house.”
I said goodbye to Francesco as well and thanked him for finding the listing for the criminal file in Matera. “I am eternally indebted to you,” I said. He smiled his embarrassed smile and looked down at his shoes. “Prego,” he repeated over and over. “Prego. Prego.” You’re welcome.
My trip was almost through, and more than anything—more than gratitude or happiness or the need for revenge—I was feeling overwhelming relief that no more bad luck had befallen me this last week. I would soon be reunited with my own family. My real family. The one that still lived and breathed thousands of miles from here. They seemed like a dream to me now.
The departure is nothing more than the beginning of the homecoming. It was yet another Italian proverb. So true, I thought. So true.
I was going home.
AND SO WAS VITA.
Sometime in 1883 she and her two young sons pulled up in front of 102 Via Eraclea in Bernalda, their mountain of belongings transported by a horse cart belonging to Grieco. The address was just one block away from Miserabila and the apartment where I had lived ten years before this trip.
Vita moved back from Pisticci a conquering hero, with beds for each of the boys and herself to sleep in, with armchairs and tables and shining pots and pans. She was no longer the lowest of the peasants, but now was somebody. The women still gossiped, but they made sure they did it quietly.
The house was bigger than that other house on Via Cavour, even bigger than the one in Pisticci. It was two houses joined, with a second-story window and two steps up, like in Pisticci. The place was on the very edge of town, with a view of the Basento Valley below. A home with a view. She would give birth to her two daughters here.
The street was named for Hercules—Eraclea—which was fitting. Hercules was a hero, but also a God, since he had been born from Zeus and a mortal woman. Like Beansie, he had been a twin, born from a separate sack, from two separate conceptions. And like Beansie, he was not suckled by his own mother, but by another woman.
Hera, Zeus’s wife, was tricked into breastfeeding him. Her super-goddess breast milk gave him his legendary strength. He is named after her. But Hercules pulled so hard when suckling that he hurt poor Hera, and when she pulled her nipple away, her breast milk sprayed into the sky and created the Milky Way. Hera later tried to kill Hercules by placing two snakes in his crib. But badass baby Hercules strangled them.
Hercules, part hero, part god, had a life of trial and pain. And I wondered if people in Bernalda knew the stories of the gods and heroes—the same ones that their streets were named after—and if they told them to their children, like I had told them to Dean. Vita probably had no idea that at the climax of Book XI of The Odyssey, Odysseus runs into Hercules in Hades. He’s the final ghost to speak to Odysseus in hell before he sails away, for home:
Are you too leading some wretched destiny
such as I too pursued when I went still in the sunlight?
For I was son of Kronian Zeus, But I had an endless
Spell of misery. . . .
I thought of Vita and her endless trials and miseria and that final Herculean task of traveling across the ocean, not unlike Odysseus. She would live on Via Eraclea for only a short time, until she would make that final, fateful jump across the Atlantic. Vita was our family heroine, life giver to us all. Like all immigrant families, her pain and vice paved the way for our comfort and virtue. But like most Americans, we had also inherited the restlessness and discontent that had propelled nations across the sea.
A few verses after meeting Hercules, Odysseus sets sail.
And quickly they went aboard the ship. . . .
And the swell of the current carried her down the Ocean river
With rowing at first, but after that on a fair wind following.