The Girls of Piazza D'Amore (8 page)

My mother often spoke of how, before the war and before they were married, my father used to gather his musician friends and serenade her under her balcony. The makeshift band played the same favourite song,
Scrivimi,
night after night, until one night my grandfather, tired of hearing it, threw a pail of hot dishwater out the window and scurried them off.

My mother's father, Gabriele Mancuso, born in the nineteenth century, even before Italy was unified, lost his first wife and then remarried at sixty years of age with a twenty-two year-old widow, and fathered my mother and three other children with her. In spite of this healthy reproductive activity for a man his age, he was a very stern disciplinarian. My mother never complained about the strict moral rules to which she had been subjected as a young woman. In fact she derived a certain sense of security from the old traditions, since they had done her no harm. She had all she wanted out of life – the man she loved, a home in Piazza Don Carlo, and then two beautiful children. But the war spoiled it all. It first took the men away from their families, then caused the devastation that forced the men to wander in all corners of the country begging for work.

It didn't seem to have registered in my mother's consciousness that the state of the economy in southern Italy before the war had been just as dire. She spoke of life before the war with longing. The village was full of young people serenading each other; the young men put on mystery plays during the major religious holidays; a musical band played outdoor concerts regularly; and fairs during the major religious holidays attracted people from all around the area. Walking down alleys in the summer evenings one could hear the laughter of women sitting on doorsteps in groups, and the men who paraded back and forth playing tricks on each other to entertain the women.

Her own family had always been well provided for. Her youthful mother, Stella, was a force of nature, looking after a horde of stepchildren, some older than she, running a bakery, and supervising work in their extensive farmlands while raising her own young brood. My mother's distinguished father sat behind the grocery store counter all day and played court to his friends. He also worked as a tailor, specializing in sewing the heavy pleated skirts and vests used by women for their costumes, a trade practiced by very few tailors in the village. The tradition of the
pacchiana
costume died with them, and so did the pre-war bucolic existence in the village.

I had only heard the broader lines of my mother's particular family history, just as one of the many odd phenomena of life in an insular village at the turn of the century. With my new focus on writing, I now marvel at the many potential love stories to be harvested from those ancient village tales.

One such tale starts like an eighteenth century melodrama, with an abandoned baby, Luigi Anastasia, born in 1897. His father, like many men in the village, had gone to Argentina to work, but unlike the others who returned after amassing a bundle of money, he neither returned nor made any contact with his young wife and baby boy. The wife, out of resentment, desperation and dire straits, took off to Egypt to work as a nursemaid. She couldn't bring the baby with her, so she left him in the care of her mother's elderly cousin. A year, two years passed, and Luigi's mother didn't find her way home. Call it negligence, lack of resources, or just plain egotism – nobody pinned a reason for her extreme forgetfulness – but she never returned for him, and neither did his father. The cousin died. Her husband, also getting on in years, was half blind and couldn't care for the young child indefinitely. A neigbour, Teresa, had married a well-to-do young tailor, landowner and merchant, Gabriele. Teresa had one child after another, six in all, and baby Luigi slipped into her household as one of her own. He lived with her family until his eighteenth birthday, when he became engaged to Caterina. His future brothers-in-law had all emigrated to America, and they encouraged the young man to join them there to work on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Luigi had never known hard manual labour. He had taken up the trade of stone mason, but never worked at anything more strenuous than small repair jobs around town – fountains, terraces, cemetery crypts. He couldn't get used to the slave-like conditions in New York's Lower East Side, where the immigrant men lived. Years later, he would say, “They called us dagos and frisked us if we wanted to go in a movie theatre or a bar. But that was before Mussolini came and made the world respect us.”

He left New York City for a while to go searching for lighter work at upstate New York farms. He travelled to Canada for a short stint and lived in Montreal. The stories he brought back with him about Canada were all about frozen ears and noses; those about New York and the Bronx included brawls with Blacks the size of giants and dumb American men in baggy pants and their half-naked women. They were always stories about a living hell made bearable only by the knowledge that he would eventually return to the
paese
.

Much to the chagrin of his more industrious brothers-in-law, he returned to the village as empty-handed as he had left. He found his surrogate mother Teresa dead of typhus, a disease that took many lives in those days. Within the year, his surrogate father Gabriele, already sixty years of age, arranged a marriage for himself with a young widow, Stella, whose husband had died in the war. Luigi and Caterina were married on the same day and at the same mass as Gabriele and Stella.

A year later Luigi had a son, Giuseppe, named after the husband of his mother's cousin who had taken him in as a baby. Not to be outdone, six months later, Gabriele had a daughter and named her Teresa after his first wife. Giuseppe became a mason like his father, learned to play the trumpet, and played in the village band and, as an eighteen year old, started serenading Teresa, right under the balcony of the house where his father had been raised. Giuseppe and Teresa were my father and mother. My mother was the only first-born daughter in town named not after her paternal grandmother, but after her husband's grandmother by adoption. They were not related by blood, but as my mother would put it, they were linked forever by destiny.

My father left Italy reluctantly and with a sense of failure at not being able to make it in his own country. My mother, on the other hand, who never craved the excitement of travel, was happy to emigrate, just so the family could live together in one place. She looked forward to getting a job outside the home. “At least a woman can help the family and not be dependent on her husband,” she'd say. She was especially anxious to escape the constant prying of nosy neighbours and the spiteful games some of them played.

Part III

In the summer of 1956, the “voices” around the village were all about Totu and Lucia. At Giovanna's shop, at
U Grancu
's house, the big question was whether or not the two would find a way of getting back together again.

When Totu came home for a few days at Easter and visited
U Grancu
's house, he walked right past Lucia's window without looking up. She steamed with anger knowing he was across the way and had made no attempt to see her.

“It's as if I never existed,” she complained to her friends at the seamstress's shop. “After all those years, the least I deserve is an explanation.”

At the bar, Totu had been heard saying, “War criminals were brought to justice in Nuremberg, but Mario Abiusi and the Fascist thugs of our village are still free. Shame on our political system!”

Lucia spoke more and more about her prospective
fiancé and his impending trip to Mulirena, which would make their engagement official.

He had written to her that he had acquired large plots of land in Montreal that he expected to develop into rows and rows of houses built just like those in the song
Casetta in Canada
everyone around the village was singing.

To Lucia's boasts, Totu responded, “For gain and profit, men sell their souls; women their bodies.”

In preparation for being called to Montreal, Tina had a new suit and coat sewn with some money Father had sent her. Mother worried that if Father kept lending money to anyone who needed it, he would never be able to send for us. But in the spring, Father wrote that he had resumed working regularly, and that the proceedings to sponsor Tina were moving ahead quickly. By the beginning of May, Tina went to Rome for her visa and, soon after, left for Montreal.

“It won't be long before Lucia joins Tina in Montreal. What future would she have here, after the way Totu treated her?” the women of Piazza Don Carlo said.

In June, at the end of the school year, Totu came back from Rome again, and a few days later, at the bar, he and his uncle argued in the presence of many of their friends.

“You're a big disappointment!” Don Cesare burst out. “After all I've done for you! My father was exiled and had his whiskers pulled off, one hair at a time, because he wouldn't belong to any political party, and you – my nephew – a Communist! What a slap in the face!”

“It's the only party that cares for workers,” Totu replied.

“It's people like me who create jobs that help people. I put bread on their tables, while you and your Communist friends just talk,” Don Cesare said.

“
Bread maybe, while you eat capicollo and prosciutto,” Totu responded.

“What an ingrate! You're studying this nonsense on my back, instead of becoming an accountant or a lawyer and earning a decent living. What are you going to do with a degree in
Lettere
here?”

“I'm going to be a writer,” Totu said loudly, making sure that everyone in the bar heard him.

“Another deluded fool with dreams of glory!” Don Cesare laughed. He threw some money on the table and left.

As the summer proceeded, Lucia and her brother Alfonso were heard arguing continually over Pasquale, who did not keep his promise about coming to Mulirena, but just wrote that he had had an unusually busy period at work. He had started selling the plots of land and had a quota to reach before the end of summer. The marriage plans would have to change; they would have to marry by proxy, like many others had done before them.

“
I'm not like many others,” Lucia complained. “I'm not a peasant who has to marry at any cost.”

Alfonso warned her: “You can't break your word with the family. If you do, you're finished. No one will want to touch you here in Mulirena.”

Pasquale's family came to visit every Sunday, and Comare Rosaria complained to my mother that she had to force Lucia to be civil with them. Alfonso discussed new business opportunities with Pasquale through his brothers. Pasquale insisted that a fortune could be made importing Italian food products, especially the locally produced ones, such as olive oil, cheeses, and salami.

“American food is garbage,” he quoted Pasquale.

Don Cesare laughed when he heard about their plans. He kept on buying up the lands that others abandoned, and produced and bottled olive oil, which he then sold to dealers in the cities. “
Io faccio l'America qui
,” he said. He'd make his fortune in Mulirena. A few weeks later he put a banner in front of his mansion,
Evviva l'Italia; Abbasso l'invidia! –
Long live Italy; Down with envy!

Towards the end of the summer, Totu spent more and more time at his friend's courtyard, which overlooked Lucia's window, while Lucia spent her afternoons on her balcony, embroidering her trousseau.

Alfonso travelled in the surrounding areas with a new scooter that Pasquale had paid for. When in the village, he kept a close eye on Totu's comings and goings.

Aurora's husband was still doing his military service, but he was on leave frequently. When Aurora became pregnant, tongues started wagging about the possible identity of the father.

“It's not fair,” Giovanna said. “Why don't they leave the poor girl alone? One wrong deed seals a woman's reputation for good here….” She waved her long seamstress's shears. “I'd like to cut their tongues off.”

Aurora didn't let the gossip bother her. She stopped going to the seamstress's shop to avoid seeing Lucia, and bought ready-made clothes in Catanzaro instead. On more than one of her excursions, it was Totu who drove her to the city in his uncle's car.

“So you can't deny it now. It's all true what they've said,” Lucia wrote in a note that I delivered to Totu. He scribbled back: “What right do you have to question my every movement when you've chosen to sell yourself to a man you don't even know?”

When Lucia received this response, she opened her back window and the whole neighbourhood heard her scream at Aurora who was shelling peas behind Rachele's house, “
Puttana, e figlia de puttana
.
”

“Why don't you take your anger out on someone else?” Giovanna yelled at Lucia the following day.

“Who am I going to take it out on?” she answered. “Who will listen to me?”

Giovanna and the other seamstresses agreed. “Aurora is not the problem. It's Totu who doesn't know what he wants.”

Meanwhile, Pasquale started proceedings for Lucia to go to Montreal.

One evening, at
U Grancu
's house, Totu, despondent, confessed to his friends that he'd been a fool to let Lucia slip through his fingers and that he'd do anything to keep Lucia from marrying a stranger.

“It's all talk,” Giovanna said.

I noticed Totu coming by Piazza Don Carlo more often, and I was as curious as everyone else.

I sat serenely on my doorstep, in my secluded square, copying poems on a small notepad. I wore a satiny red skirt with pink lace trim at the hem and a white cotton blouse with a Peter Pan collar. My thick, chin-length brown hair was kept neatly off my face with a large pink bow. The air was so still that I could hear, from her window, Lucia's needle pierce the linen fabric held taut in her round embroidering loop, and the buzzing of the flies that circled around us.

I hated those uneventful weekday afternoons after the midday meal, when shopkeepers closed up for the siesta. The slow pace of the village became even slower. Most men were away at work. The village was left with old people, women, children, and aimless young men. The women were not siesta takers. On one late summer afternoon, when the air was beginning to cool, my mother and Comare Rosaria left for the countryside, looking for twigs. This was a daily task for older women.
Though oil lamps had given way to naked light bulbs hanging from ceilings, the hearths for cooking and braziers for heating still had to be fuelled through the tireless energy of the women. I would normally have wanted to tag along to look for wild violets in the woods, but that day I chose to stay behind, in awe of my new clothes and pencils that had arrived from far away the day before. I sat on my doorstep, drawing violets on the cover of the notepad, wanting to make my own poetry book to keep as a souvenir.

Lucia was also home. Young women of the village helped with the house-cleaning, cooking and sewing, but the hard work was relegated to older women. I was left with her, but chose to sit on my doorstep. Totu had started coming this way again almost every day. He was home for the summer from Rome, where he had finished his first year of university. He pinched my cheek as he passed by me, said, “
Ciao,
Caterina,” and let out a short whistle. Lucia opened her shutters and peeked out. Totu fixed his gaze on the window and found his customary spot under the door of
U Grancu
's house. He came when her parents and brother were not home.

Totu asked, “Any news?”

“Nothing yet,” answered Lucia. “Why should you care?”

“Maybe we're better off throwing ourselves off the bridge and into the ravine.”

“What should I do?” she replied. “I have a family and two brothers on my back. You tell me what to do.”

“This place has become a prison.”

“Tell me when, and we'll run away,” she said.

“I can't wait to get out of here.”

They were waiting for a letter. In a village in which practically every family had someone living far away, the sight of Martino, the mailman, was awaited with great anticipation. He delivered mail twice a day: in the early morning and in the late afternoon. The previous day, he had brought my family a notice for a package – a package from America. Mother had an old aunt who had immigrated to Brooklyn in the 1930s. After the war, she sent packages of used clothing: garish satin party dresses, oversized men's underwear. Years later, we would laugh at the thought of those ugly American clothes. But, at the time, we considered ourselves to be the best-dressed kids in the village – and the only ones to wear pajamas. These packages always brought a surprise. We never knew what we would find: a piece of America to discover.

The day before, in the folds of a red satin skirt, a set of colouring pencils and a notepad fell out. The elation I'd felt at such an unexpected gift still had me floating in the clouds. Meanwhile the two lovers, and the rest of the village, were waiting in suspended animation for something from the postman.

The most anticipated piece of mail was a large envelope from Rome –
l'Atto di Richiamo,
which we called
a chiamata
. The official request to report to Rome to obtain a visa came after a family member had been approved as a sponsor. For many, receiving this letter was comparable to winning a lottery. The fortunes of the whole family were expected to change. We received ours at the end of June, and Zio Pietro had already made the arrangements for us to go to Rome in early September.

Little by little, activity was resuming around the square, and Totu thought it wise to leave. Mother and Comare Rosaria, carrying loads of dried wood on their heads and talking in low voices, made their way toward the house. They carried the wood with straight backs, walking in the slow, resigned gait of the older women in their layers upon layers of heavy clothing.

“What can I say, Comare Teresa?” Comare Rosaria said. “The world is made like this, and there is nothing we can do to change it. We all want the best for our children. Whatever is meant to be, will be.”

“We can't change fate. God will provide.”

As she passed by me, Comare Rosaria said, “Did Martino pass yet?”

“No, he hasn't passed yet.”

The women unloaded their bundles, and Mother offered me a little bouquet of wild violets.

Martino finally arrived with nothing for my family.
The smile on his face as he walked toward Comare
Rosaria told us he might have something special for her. She opened the large brown envelope, and shouted in excitement, “
A chiamata! A chiamata! Lucia!
”

News of this latest call soon travelled down the narrow street to the central piazza, where most of the men sipped coffee at the bar or played billiards. The sun turned the sky into a mellow burnt orange. Totu came up the street toward Lucia's house. This time he didn't stop to pinch my cheeks. He let out a short whistle, then a second and then a third, but Lucia's window remained shut. As he passed by me, slouching, I saw his watery eyes. He made me think of a wounded puppy.

My brother Luigi was back from the tailor's shop where he spent every afternoon. Mother called us in for supper. The first church bell had rung, telling people to get ready for the evening benediction and rosary. A second bell would advise us to leave the house. The third bell would announce that the evening service had begun.

At the end of the summer, to make up for their earlier arguments, and to outdo Alfonso's scooter, Don Cesare bought Totu a brand new Fiat Topolino. My mother's cousins, Tommaso and Santo, home from Rome, took to driving with Totu to the beach at Catanzaro Lido. To distract him, they said. Luigi begged to be brought along with them, but Mother was afraid that the older boys wouldn't watch over him properly. On one excursion, she relented and allowed Luigi to go along with the three young men. I watched enviously as she packed a picnic lunch for the boys, lecturing Luigi not to go swimming unless held by the hand, warning him not to trust the sea water, that it could pull you in the minute you got your feet wet.