EVERYONE IN TOWN KNEW THAT IMMA’S PARENTS, MIMMO and Virginia, were wonderful cooks. Mimmo had a large, round belly, a drooping mustache, and the typical big, brown downturned eyes of Basilicata. Virginia was fit and pretty, with a slight overbite and dark circles under her eyes, probably from all the housework and cooking. With their six-hectare farm in San Basilio, near Giuseppe, they grew many of their own ingredients, putting to shame many of the chefs at the local resorts and fine restaurants. They grew parsley, plums, olives, grain, figs, artichokes, and citrus.
My last night in town, they cooked a farewell dinner for me and invited Giuseppe and his wife, Emanuela, as well as Professor Tataranno and his wife, Carmelina. Imma’s father, Mimmo—short for Domenico—was from Pisticci originally, but had settled in Bernalda because his wife, Virginia, was Bernaldese. Here a man usually settled in the hometown of his wife, since the wife’s family provided help in raising the children.
Their house was in the newer, more modern quarter of Bernalda. It was three stories high with comfortably plush furniture and a fireplace, over which hung a hundred-year-old copper bed warmer, a scardalet, belonging to Mimmo’s grandfather from Pisticci. During World War II, the family had had to hide it, since the government was confiscating all copper for the war effort.
Imma was Mimmo and Virginia’s only child, and they had poured all their knowledge and every ounce of love and wisdom into her, including their love of food. It was as if Imma’s family, and all of the families in Bernalda, were making up for all those meals that their ancestors had never eaten. They had gone hungry for centuries without access to their own land, which was divvied up among the ruling class—the 1.4 percent of the population.
But now things were different. On Christmas Eve, for instance, typical Lucani didn’t just have the Feast of the Seven Fishes, like most Italians did. They had thirteen different kinds of fish. Food was abundant, and so they partook, happily, though not greedily, sharing it with whoever showed up on their doorstep.
I was lucky to be standing there.
MIMMO AND VIRGINIA SERVED THEIR OWN YOUNG, FRESH ASPARAGUS and pickled artichokes, which were from the first harvest—spolverata—so they were especially tender. I had no idea that fruit trees and vegetables had several flowerings and that the first was usually the best.
They made three kinds of focaccia (one with green onion, another with peppers, and one with tomatoes), an arugula salad with sliced veal and a tangy balsamic dressing, delicately fried zucchini and grilled eggplant, alongside cappacuolo slices laid out like a deck of cards, and six kinds of cheese (ricotta salata, scamorza, provolone, soft, sweet ricotta, salty burrata, and strong, sharp caciocavallo, aged two years). To accompany the cheese was fig jam, which Virginia had made from her own figs. Virginia served a green salad with a magical dressing that she claimed was simply vinegar and oil but couldn’t have been just that, sausages that Imma had stuffed herself, and hearty, thick Pisticci bread to swipe our plates when we were done. The bread from Pisticci was better than Bernalda bread, made with a special, natural yeast and baked in a tall oven.
Many of the delicacies were served on beige pottery painted with tiny blue flowers, each like a child’s version of a daisy, made of six indigo dots. It was the typical pottery of Basilicata. I had a platter just like it back at home, which I had somehow carried back on the plane with me after my first trip.
Lemon sorbet made by Virginia with lemons from the farm was rich and tangy and served in our prosecco glasses, with some prosecco poured on top. When it was all over, I had a small glass of acidic grappa with Mimmo, to destroy the contents of my stomach.
I toasted everyone during dinner and thanked them for their help and patience with my bad Italian and endless questions. I thanked Giuseppe’s wife for lending me her husband, and Imma’s parents for letting me spend so much time with their only daughter. And I hugged Professor Tataranno and thanked him for all his knowledge and wisdom.
I raised my glass once more. “To Vita,” I said. And they all repeated, “To Vita,” our crystal glasses cutting through the warm June air.
For dessert, Virginia made a gorgeous dome-shaped cake soaked in orange juice and covered in cream, paper-thin orange slices, and dark chocolate leaves.
We ate dried figs—ficchi isechi—which Virginia had made by picking the figs fresh last September, cutting them and placing them in the sun and covering them with a veil to keep the flies away. When they were ready, she would place an oven-baked almond inside each—like a pit—and then put the whole thing back in the oven. Giuseppe said they were so good “they make the angels cry.”
The meal ended with giant fresh figs the size of baseballs, lovely fat apricots from Giuseppe’s harvest, and finally perastre—the same kind of pears Francesco had stolen more than a century ago.
I STAYED AT IMMA’S HOUSE THAT NIGHT NOT ONLY BECAUSE I WAS too full to move, but because the two of us were leaving early the next morning on a train for Naples for the last of our research. Imma’s mother had offered to drive us to the station, and I didn’t want her to have to go all the way to Pisticci to fetch me in the morning. And besides, I didn’t want to spend one more night alone with that empty crib, even if it was covered with a sheet.
We left for Naples right after sunrise, with a big paper bag filled with leftover focaccia and panini made from the cappacuolo and scamorza from last night’s table, two giant bottles of water, and a half dozen of those sweet, small pears. Imma rolled her eyes when her mother handed her the heavy bag. “She thinks we’re going to Madagascar,” Imma joked. Our train ride was only three hours.
We traveled on the same train line that Vita and her children would have taken. The line from Naples to Potenza was laid down in 1882, and ten years later, just in time for Vita’s voyage, the tracks from Metaponto to Potenza were complete.
When Vita left for America in 1892, Francesco was buried in the local cemetery and was no longer a threat. But Basilicata still was. By the time Vita left, the entire country was in the grips of a great depression.
That year, a quarter million Italians emigrated. And it wasn’t even the peak. In 1913, nearly 900,000 left their homeland, each one with a story as sad and as incredible as my great-great-grandmother’s.