Murder In Matera

by Helene Stapinski

  Like a Nativity scene, the animals were there for the birth of this little baby. Except there was no smiling baby Jesus, no figures frozen in pastoral poses, and no happy mother dressed in blue with outstretched arms.

  This was the real deal. Madonna and child, as it had transpired for millennia and no doubt would for centuries to come. Forever and ever, amen.

  All that pushing and all that pain. So much so that the animals finally left their cover under the bed and escaped out front, away from the thrashing and silent tears, the torn bedclothes and bloody rags. Teresina’s other children would clear out but would stay close to the house just in case their mother needed them or was near death and wanted to say a last goodbye, give them a final hug.

  The men—Teresina’s thirty-six-year-old husband, Domenico Gallitelli, his brothers, Grandpa Donato, and whoever else was alive at the time—sat out front and smoked and drank homemade wine and waited for that little girl to come out into the world, her wet, slippery head finally sliding out into the warm August air.

  Teresina, already crying from the pain, now shed happy tears at the sight of her. She marveled at the tiny head, with a thick shock of black hair, and a grimace that opened up into an operatic solo. Still dizzy from the pain, aching from past childbirths, the memory of some babies placed dead in her arms, or soon to die, Teresina smiled down at her newborn daughter. This one came out yelling. Fighting. Fists tight and as small as walnuts.

  A little girl so full of life that they called her just that: Vita.

  Vita!

  Her mother struggled up in bed and laughed at the sight of her, as the midwife wiped the baby clean. Teresina then took Vita in her unsteady arms and offered a weak smile to the local priest, who was called right away for the baptism, combined with last rites, since the rate of infant mortality was so high. This one won’t need last rites, her mother thought to herself. Not this one.

  Vita was a pure baby, but like all of us, was born with original sin, and so the priest placed some blessed oil on her red forehead and mumbled a few words in Latin—“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti”—and suddenly her soul was wiped clean like a blackboard and she was welcomed into the dirty old world. After a few more mumbles, and some more oil, she was protected from going to limbo in case she died anytime soon. Just like that, saved with a few simple words and a shiny smudge.

  You couldn’t take any chances. To make sure that no special curses were placed on her baby or on her mother’s milk, Teresina that week would put a talisman inside the baby’s crib—a cross, made of straw, blessed by that same priest before he left the house. There were just too many dangers out there and too many ways to die.

  You had to be strong just to survive the birth and the first few months of life in Bernalda. Because Bernalda was a terrible place to be born in 1851. Mothers sometimes smothered their infants to spare them the awful life that lay ahead: the constant hunger and malaria, the searing summer heat and the pebrina silkworm disease and the earthquakes. In fact, a big earthquake had destroyed the Basilicatan hill town of Melfi just a week before, killing a thousand people. Teresina no doubt had felt the tremors and thought her labor had come early.

  Most towns, like Melfi, were set up on tall hilltops to guard from pirates and malaria. But not Bernalda. People in Bernalda were called “green faces” because of their malarial symptoms, their monstrous pallor. In Teresina’s day, two million Italians were sickened by malaria each year, a good number of them from low-lying Bernalda. Those who survived were left blind, deformed, infertile, never really whole again.

  Vita was born in the last, dying days of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a decade before Italy’s unification. There was no Italy as we know it, but a complicated collection of independent kingdoms and duchies and states.

  Into this kingdom, this disenchanted hell of a kingdom, Vita Gallitelli would—like my own daughter—take her first baby steps.

  Chapter 5

  YOU HAVE THE FACE OF THE GALLITELLIS

  PROFESSOR ANGELO TATARANNO CUT WHAT THE ITALIANS called una bella figura. The first night we met he was dressed in linen slacks, a collarless button-down shirt, and very stylish bowling shoe–type sneakers. He was in his fifties and had hair the color of pepper, with some grains of salt tossed in near the temples, a long face, and a big forehead, with wavy lines across it like a thick strip of bacon, lines that betrayed years of concentration and study. His lips were pursed, as if he were thinking, and his narrow eyes, which always looked like he was focusing on a problem, were covered in rectangular, rimless glasses.

  I met Professor Tataranno the last week in August at Pitagorici, a restaurant named for the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. It had an outdoor café and two stucco-walled rooms, separated by an arched doorway, with a glowing, brick pizza oven at the back. It was one of dozens of restaurants and cafés to choose from in Bernalda. But it had the best pizza and was close to our apartment, so the family and I ate there most nights when I was too tired to cook.

  Pythagoras (a2 + b2 = c2) had lived in nearby Metapontum—not far from our favorite beach—and eventually died there around 500 BC. Every Italian schoolchild was reminded of him every time the multiplication table—tavola pitagorica—was mentioned. But around here, streets and restaurants were named after Pythagoras and his philosophy was held in high esteem. He was a Christ-like figure, five centuries before Christ, and a cult leader, back in the days when religious cults were a new sensation. He believed in reincarnation, vegetarianism (except for beans, which, for some strange reason, he hated and forbade his followers to eat), the therapeutic use of music, and in long communal dinners, where women were invited to the table.

  Professor Tataranno, much like Pythagoras, had been a philosophy student when he was young and was now a revered teacher. A professor of literature at the local high school for many years, he was everyone’s favorite teacher in Bernalda—and everyone’s favorite storyteller.

  By the time we connected, he knew that I was the American in town searching for her nineteenth-century roots. My family and I were the only Americans, in fact. I should have gone looking for Professor Tataranno the first day I got there. But Tataranno came looking for me my last week there and found me over a plate of lightly fried calamari.

  He introduced himself when he approached my family’s table. By then I knew his reputation around town. He had written several history books on the region and was the premier expert on Bernalda. I was thrilled to meet him.

  “Piacere,” I said.

  “Hai la faccia di Gallitelli,” he said.

  You have the face of the Gallitellis.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “It’s true,” he said. “You look just like the niece of a famous Gallitelli who was killed.”

  “A murder?”

  “Yes,” Professor Tataranno said, shaking his head. “But it’s not your story. This is from 1923.” I could feel my Gallitelli face fall.

  “This man was killed for political reasons,” said the professor, taking a drag from his cigarette. “It was a day of terrible bloodshed. Three people were killed that same day, all by the Fascists. When you are done with your dinner, let’s take a walk. There’s a plaque dedicated to those murdered.” Professor Tataranno wasted no time. He was my kind of man.

  I paid the bill and gathered the family together for our evening passeggiata. I strapped Paulina into her stroller and my mother grabbed Dean’s hand. Tataranno, a chain smoker, lit another Benson & Hedges from the one burning down in his fingers.

  He puffed and talked, and talked and puffed, and I nodded and listened to his every word, breathing in his offhand history lessons as if they were secondhand smoke. A few blocks away, near the Paradiso butcher shop, was a beautiful old building, big and white, four stories high, which was tall for Bernalda. It had flowerpots outside and large green shutters, and on it a brass plaque, which I hadn’t noticed before. ECCIDIO FASCISTA, it said. Fascist slaughter. JANUARY 31, 1923. And the names of those slaugh
tered:

  Maria Distasi

  Pasquale Gallitelli

  Giuseppe Viggiano

  The first, Maria Distasi, had been inside nursing her baby that day when the Fascists began shooting in the street. A stray bullet entered her one-room house and killed her, baby still at her breast, Professor Tataranno colorfully recounted. The last victim, Giuseppe Viggiano, was the father of the mayor of Bernalda. “When he looked outside on his balcony, the Fascists just shot him,” Tataranno said. “For no good reason.” He turned his palms up, cigarette still in hand, and shrugged.

  Pasquale Gallitelli had been killed that day as well. His story was the worst of the three, really. “He was killed in an atrocious way,” Tataranno explained. He shook his head, and for a moment I thought maybe it was too atrocious to tell. But after another cigarette drag, he spilled it.

  Pasquale was chased down the street by the Fascists, then ran into a house to escape. He hid under the bed, but the Fascists found him and pulled him out. They beat him to death and then, just to be sure, shot him in the head. I had heard this story before. But Professor Tataranno knew the gruesome details.

  “What did he do to deserve that?” I asked.

  “The strange thing was that he wasn’t really a political guy,” he said. “Some say that maybe it was a private situation, a lover’s quarrel. That someone already had it in for him. And that the Fascists simply used political motives to kill him.” He shrugged again. “I haven’t really researched that one completely yet. But you do look like the man’s niece. You look exactly like her, in fact. I once saw a photo of her.”

  “I would love to see that photo,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Professor Tataranno began. “We—” He was suddenly cut off by Paulina, who let out a bloodcurdling screech from the stroller. Dean moaned, as if sympathizing with her.

  “My feet hurt,” complained Dean, a staunch opponent of the evening passeggiata.I stuck a pacifier into Paulina’s mouth.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I said, patting Dean’s big head. “We’ll go home soon. Just a little while longer.”

  Paulina spat the pacifier into her tiny lap in protest and let out another screech as if to say, “You’re full of it, Mommy. Quit dragging us around.” Paulina was an even-keeled kid but could have a mean temper when she wanted. She looked a lot like my aunt Victoria, one of the big troublemakers in our family. Aunt Victoria was beautiful but bad. She liked to “stir the pot,” as my mother would say. I jiggled the stroller to keep Paulina quiet and kept walking.

  WE HEADED BACK TO THE CENTER OF TOWN AND TOWARD THE COMUNE. Professor Tataranno took out his flip phone and dialed a number. And within minutes Professor Antonio Salfi was standing outside the Comune. Salfi was a thin old man with white stubble and a receding tangle of white hair on a small round head. He had dark bushy eyebrows, the thick glasses of those who do too much close reading, and a light in his eyes from the knowledge that those books had imparted. His pants were too long and sagged at his leather shoes and he wore a standard white button-down dress shirt, the left breast pocket filled with pens for easy access. Professor Salfi wasn’t quite as stylish as Professor Tataranno but was his comrade and fellow scholar. He was the local genealogist. I would come to think of him as the grandfather I wished I’d had, since mine had spent most of his time in prison.

  “Meet Professor Antonio Salfi,” Professor Tataranno said, proudly.

  “Piacere,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Piacere,” he said, smiling a pained smile and putting his hand out. He was so old, it probably even hurt to shake hands.

  Tataranno brought Salfi up to date, in proper Italian, which I understood, then asked him whether he thought I had the faccia di Gallitelli. Salfi looked straight at me for a moment, then turned back to Tataranno and said I looked just like the photo of Pasquale Gallitelli’s niece.

  Professor Tataranno looked at me and raised his dark eyebrows, as if to say, “See? Didn’t I tell you?” By now Paulina had fallen asleep in the carriage and Dean was practically sleepwalking, so my mother went back to the apartment with them while I went to an outdoor café with my two new best friends.

  Professor Salfi ordered us a round of cedrata, a yellow-green fluorescent drink that looked a lot like antifreeze. Though it was past 10 P.M., the streets were still packed with families and small energetic children, the air warm and humid. The cedrata, Salfi insisted, would help me to cool down. Though I was skeptical, I took a sip. It was syrupy and sweet, with a strong citrus flavor that was cool and bracing.

  Between sips, I told them all I knew about Vita, that she had been a weaver. Professor Tataranno explained that most women in town were weavers and made their own clothes.

  I told them that her husband, Francesco, was not present for the boys’ births. That the birth certificates said he was “far from the town” at the time. But Professor Salfi said that was not so strange and that he was probably busy working on the farm, where men often stayed for weeks at a stretch.

  I said Vita had come to America with her two sons without Francesco. It was strange, they said, for a woman to travel alone. “Maybe Francesco stayed behind and took the blame for the murder,” suggested Tataranno.

  I repeated the family rumor that the murder had occurred during a card game. They raised their eyebrows simultaneously and blurted, “Passatella!”

  It was a very popular card game that was played in the 1800s, and as far back as Roman times really. Salfi was convinced that if the family crime happened over a card game, then this was the one.

  Passatella often ended in violence. Sometimes murder.

  “But it would be very unusual for a woman to be playing passatella, or any card game,” Tataranno said, taking a sip of his cedrata.

  I looked around at the other tables and noticed, not for the first time in Southern Italy, that I was the only woman among dozens of men at the bar.

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “You have a good point.” I waved my arm. “But you’ll notice I’m the only woman here now.” Tataranno and Salfi laughed, bowing their heads, embarrassed. “Maybe Vita worked in the tavern. . . .” I added.

  “Maybe,” said Professor Tataranno, his head still bowed. “But it is very unlikely. Here today, and even America years ago, they are both much different than Bernalda at the turn of the century.” Here the working men would gather at night at places called osterie (taverns) while the women were at home with the children. “The men would play cards by lamplight, and drink.”

  “And drink and drink,” Salfi said, draining the last of his cedrata.

  “Maybe Francesco had been playing and was insulted,” I theorized, “and Vita took revenge later. Or maybe a fight broke out that night and the women ran to stop their husbands from killing each other, and one thing led to another. . . .”

  They collectively stuck out their bottom lips and gave it some thought. It was not a crazy theory, really.

  “Maybe that’s what happened,” Salfi said with a shrug. “Who can say?”

  Passatella was sometimes called Padrone e Sotto and was based on the tortured relationship between the landowners—the padroni—and the worker—sotto, or underling. The relationship was basically a slave-landowner relationship, fraught with tension.

  Passatella was a little drama played out every night to help the braccianti—the day laborers—get out their frustrations with the class system without actually confronting the boss and hitting him in the head with a hoe. Rather than fight with the actual padroni, they fought with one another over a friendly—and sometimes not-so-friendly—game of cards.

  The game required more than four players and was incredibly complicated. The man with the most points is called the padrone. A person who wins again and again is called furbo—which means cunning. (Furbo meant so much more than that, though. It meant you were like a fox, able to get over on the person sitting next to you, not just in the card game, but in life. It meant making the best of a bad situation and turning things around to
your advantage.)

  The top two padroni of the evening are given control of the wine at the table, at which point the cards are cleared away and glasses are placed on the table, always a smaller number of glasses than there are players. The padrone drinks first and then decides who else may drink and in what order. This continues until the bottle is empty, at which point the cards are brought out again and another round is played, repeating the cycle until most people are plastered. Those who are not allowed to drink are called ulmo—foolish.

  The padrone explains why the drink is being withheld, insulting the ulmo with jokes and personal cracks that often hit too close to home: you’re too stupid to drink, or too crafty, too young, or too old, too hairy, or too bald, your teeth are too crooked or your head is too lumpy, your nose is too big, or your nose is too small, you’re too clumsy or too proper, too macho, or a cuckold.

  At any point, the game can end in a fight or a full-blown riot. And because of this, it was actually illegal to play passatella in Italy for many years.

  As Professors Tataranno and Salfi described the game, I just listened and nodded. They talked about the landowners in the region and their poor relationship with the workers. “Many of the properties in this area,” said Tataranno, “were owned by the Grieco family.”

  “Grieco?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  “My family always said there was a Grieco involved in our story,” I said. “Either the lawyer who helped Vita escape or maybe a lover.”

  “What do you mean a lover?” asked Tataranno.