Before Anno Domini 1000, the northern part of the low-lying basin was not covered by the waters of the lake, which in later years, during periodic inundations, lapped against the edges of the nearby towns. The lake later grew very large and brooding.
Until Anno Domini 1100, the conditions of life in the area must still have been good, if in a document from 1026 S. Stefano di Villora is referred to as the Pieve in loco Lignola prope plebem S. Stephani que dicitur Villula (1), doc. 114. It was certainly between 1050 and 1100 that the waters invaded the northern part of the plain and San Ginese began to decay, continually threatened by the flooding of the River Anser. The population was forced to abandon the places threatened by the waters and move to higher ground.
In a contract dated Anno Domini 1150, for the first time it is referred to no longer as a pieve but as Ecclesia de Villore – just a church.
The major church of Santo Stefano had lost its status. The waters had grown too close, the mosquitoes had bred in larger numbers and a significant part of the population had fled.
From another document that speaks of the 1680 pastoral visit by the bishop of Lucca to the ‘parish church of S. Stefano the protomartyr’, we are able to understand in what state of decay and abandonment the ancient church found itself, having lost its status as a major church some five hundred years earlier.
Reproduced here in full is the English translation of the aforementioned bishop’s original document written in Italian:
Having found the seal of the Altar Stone broken, and as well the stone itself from one end to the other, and having found that the altar was without any sacred furnishings at all, we declared the church suspended until such time as it is not equipped with a new altar stone with two candelabras, a cross, three tablecloths for the meals of the S. Convito e dell’ultimo Evangelio, an antependium and baldachin and all that is required, and until such time as it is restored to a state that is decent and appropriate for celebration; in the meantime such needs as there are for the mass shall be met at the nearest church; we allow time of two months for the above measures to be put in place under penalty of 25 scudi. In two months the cemetery shall be encircled by a hedge so that animals cannot enter there, and a cross is to be placed there under penalty of 6 scudi. In one month the internal part of the church is to be whitewashed and the roof is to be repaired where necessary, so that water cannot enter, under penalty of 4 scudi.
At the time of the pastoral visit of Bishop of Lucca Filippo Sardi in 1791 it is still a church, but on the subsequent visit in 1803, again by Filippo Sardi, Santo Stefano’s fate is sealed. His report reads as follows: ‘S. Stefano di Villora, previously under the patronage of the House of the Altogradi, having been declared an abandoned church, no longer exists.’
San Ginese lost its original major church, then its ordinary church, both in the hamlet of Villora. Now there is only the ordinary church at Castello, at the top of the hill.
San Ginese is so old and was once so grand that it is impossible to comprehend unless you stop and are silent, empty your mind of day-to-day affairs and allow the antiquity and the grandeur to surface, because if you were born there it is inside you somewhere.
The Moral of a Modest Tour of San Ginese
Having read the history, or the story – the word in Italian is the same – of San Ginese on the third night, over the next two weeks the Visitor would reflect deeply and at length on the meaning of what he has learned. Before leaving he might return to sit on the low wall in front of Paolo’s house, opposite the house where Giorgia the whore once lived.
If the Visitor were to look around, he would see that the courtyard is almost empty. Some people now say there is no-one left in the village, have said it in fact for many years, but what they mean is that none of the original inhabitants are left. The only people left are those who fall from the sky like raindrops, piovuti. The people from outside are filling the empty spaces.
Already an Albanian family of eight has arrived and is restoring the old house that once belonged to the village drunk. The Albanian family consists of two grandparents, two parents and four children.
The courtyard is almost empty because the inhabitants of the houses, who are all retired pensioners, prefer to stay inside. There are no children inside, however, except for the Albanian children. And no children outside, except, this afternoon, for a small Moroccan boy on a bicycle. So the courtyard is only almost empty.
When he asks, the Visitor would be told that the boy is called Isa, and that the name of the boy’s father is Giuseppe and his mother is called Maria. Isa, Giuseppe and Maria. Isa, Joseph and Mary. They are Moroccan, possibly, but then it is impossible to know as although they are referred to as Marocchini, all migrants from Africa are referred to as Marocchini, which literally means Moroccan. It is like the practice of calling anyone who has been to Australia an americano.
The Visitor leaves San Ginese and misses his flight to Melbourne after a fatal accident on the freeway to Rome airport holds up traffic for an hour. He is forced to book another flight for the evening. As he sits in the lounge of the Hilton Hotel at the airport awaiting his flight, he reflects on four memorable truths he discovered while sitting on Paolo’s wall, four truths that he is unable to convey elegantly in words.
The first truth: Villagers once gathered in the courtyard on long summer evenings to tell stories and laugh, tease the overly sensitive, argue and fight, fondle and pinch buttocks in the dark. During the day in the courtyard, men and women went about their agricultural business, cows harnessed to carts, corn spread out to dry in the sun. They swept, they shouted at neighbours a few doors away, they stopped to talk, they threw brooms at children, sat on a chair in the sun to rest, invited one another inside. In winter they gossiped by one another’s fireplaces with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. At any time of year, if visitors arrived at dinnertime, they were required to eat and drink. Everyone always saw everyone else coming and going, in and out of their houses. They heard doors opening, creaking, slamming, windows opening and shutting, raised voices and loud whispers. The next day they would interrogate one another about late-night arrivals and departures. Heads protruded from upstairs windows, faces appeared at windows and behind curtains. At night there was usually silence, faint yellow light seeping under front doors and through wooden shutters, past the edge of a curtain.
The second truth: A family of eight Albanians is renovating an old house in San Ginese. Three generations of Albanians are hammering, plastering, laying tiles, plumbing, sanding, polishing, rendering, painting a house in an ancient village in Tuscany.
The third truth: San Ginese died in Anno Domini 1100 and was born again. The church fell into disrepair, the people fled the waters of the swamp. Then the people returned and prospered for a while. San Ginese is like the lizard of Roman mythology, that dies in winter and is reborn in summer.
The fourth and most significant truth: There is a small Moroccan boy riding a bicycle in the empty courtyard. He rides around and around and around.
HUMAN SACRIFICE
’A Luciana
Tommaso G. was from a town called Morrone del Sannio in the province of Campobasso, which is in the Molise region. Morrone del Sannio borders on the municipality of Lupara, the name of which suggests a relationship with wolves and is also the Italian name given to a sawn-off shotgun, but neither of these facts is of any significance to this story. What is of some relevance is that in the Morrone del Sannio district an ancient tradition of human sacrifice to the gods was replaced a long time ago by the compulsory practice of youths, upon reaching the age of twenty years, abandoning their home and going in search of new lands. This is what Tommaso G. did.
He left Morrone del Sannio in 1957 and sailed to Port Kembla in Australia.
At the same time as Tommaso G. left Morrone del Sannio, Ugo departed from San Ginese on an icy January morning and, after passing through Melbourne and Mildura, where he stopped for the grape harvest, also arrived in Port Kembla.
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p; Port Kembla in those days was an important steel town, and the town’s big steel company gave work to twenty thousand men. It was said that at any single time three hundred workers were leaving and another three hundred were being employed to replace them. Ugo quickly found work.
On the first day, when he arrived in the steel town, he asked at a café for directions to the Italian boarding house and discovered it easily enough. There was a vacant room and he took it. Tommaso G. was already there, obsessively singing, humming and whistling a song in the Neapolitan dialect, which was unusual because he wasn’t Neapolitan. It was a sentimental song, popular in Italy at the time, although Ugo had never heard it in San Ginese, where he had not developed an interest in the wireless.
Ugo and Tommaso decided they would share shopping for groceries. Tommaso would cook and they would eat together. There were many times when Ugo was overwhelmed by sadness. He missed his wife and baby son, who were back in Villora, and he was grateful for Tommaso’s company and home cooking.
They did not have a tablecloth to spread out over their small kitchen table, so Ugo laid out old newspapers instead. He set the table while Tommaso prepared the evening meal.
Tommaso’s specialty was a spicy and aromatic tomato sughetto, which he stirred into a large pot of drained spaghetti that rested on a newspaper tablecloth in the kitchen of the Italian boarding house in the town of Port Kembla, in the state of New South Wales, in Australia, in 1957.
…
You have to believe – better still, imagine – that Tommaso is singing now as he cooks the evening meal. He is cooking and singing at the same time. Or, as has just been explained, is humming or whistling the song, in the kitchen of the Italian boarding house in the town of Port Kembla, in the state of New South Wales, in Australia, in 1957.
The song he sings is ‘’A Luciana’.
The song he sings is about a young woman from the Santa Lucia district of Naples. She wears a red shawl and a comb in her hair. It is interesting that in the song she remains nameless and is simply referred to as ‘the woman from Santa Lucia’. Men lose their minds whenever she passes by. But this young woman is determined to safeguard her honour and is very difficult to approach. Besides, her father and brother keep a watchful eye on her, and her uncle is a local organised-crime chieftain and is also very protective. Despite all these obstacles there is a young man who desires her. He describes his condition as one of being cooked slowly. When he sees her strolling by it is enough to make him suffer the tortures of hell for a week. And all he wants, or so he says, is to remove her hair comb and let her hair fall down over the shawl and around her shoulders. Or so he says. So Tommaso is cooking the evening meal and himself is being cooked slowly. And he’s singing the refrain ‘lo scialle russo e pettinesse’.
Tommaso sings in the bath and in the kitchen and Ugo listens, and sixty years later as he dozes in his son’s lounge-room in north-east Victoria, enjoying the sun that streams in through the French windows, he remembers only the words of the refrain: ‘lo scialle russo e pettinesse’, the red shawl and the hair comb.
…
While Ugo was missing his baby boy and wife Morena (who is now buried in the cemetery of a small town in north-east Victoria), Tommaso, who had some money saved, was dealing with the Australian authorities so he could bring his betrothed Luciana to Australia. Not only is her name Luciana but her name also describes a woman from the Santa Lucia district of Naples.
Tommaso probably saved Ugo’s life during those few months they were together. Not only did he cheer Ugo up but he also fed him spaghetti with a rich, nutritious sauce at a time when Ugo was emotionally exhausted and had lost his appetite. The shift work didn’t suit Ugo and he always lamented, to his sons and to anyone who would listen, the difficult time he had in that period of his life. Shift work ruins the digestive system, causing stomach pain, fainting, high fever and death.
Ugo, who had never been out of San Ginese and was naïve and trusting, struck up a friendship with a Calabrian that Tommaso didn’t like. Tommaso warned Ugo about this Calabrian. Ugo, not having had time to go to the bank, was carrying on him four hundred Australian pounds that he had earned picking grapes. Tommaso agreed to hold the money in safekeeping so that if the Calabrian looked among Ugo’s belongings he would not find it there.
Returning home after the night shift one morning, Ugo found that the hinges on his suitcase had been forced. Other boarding-house residents had also had their belongings searched, and some had had money and precious items stolen. The Calabrian had vanished.
Tommaso, who had hidden the money safely, handed it back to Ugo.
…
One Sunday Tommaso and Ugo were relaxing with their boarding-house friends, kicking a round ball up and down the street, when Tommaso fell and dislocated his shoulder. He was in great pain but refused to see a doctor. He wanted to pretend that he had hurt himself at work to get some sick pay.
The next morning Ugo, with great difficulty, helped Tommaso get dressed. The pain from his shoulder had grown worse. They nevertheless both went to work. The men had been working in a pit, cleaning out moulds, which was risky work, and Ugo agreed to help Tommaso with his plan. When Tommaso gave the signal, Ugo cried out and the supervisor came running to where Tommaso was writhing on the ground, clutching his shoulder, as if he had fallen from the walkway to the pit.
They brought a stretcher and took him to the hospital. The plan succeeded and he was given paid leave for two months, plus some compensation.
After that he could only cook with his left hand as he had to wear a plaster cast that encased most of the right side of his upper body, yet the food he prepared was as delicious as ever.
Ugo left Port Kembla not long after and went to Red Cliffs, a town near Mildura in Victoria, to pick more grapes. Many years later he visited Tommaso once in Melbourne, but then they lost touch.
…
As for the young Luciana, Tommaso’s betrothed, whom he was sponsoring to come to Australia: one week before she was due to leave for Australia she died of a heart attack. This was unexpected and rare in one so young.
The gods had betrayed Tommaso G. and had reinstated without warning the tradition of the human sacrifice of a young person. This was despite the fact that Tommaso G. had fulfilled his part of the bargain by leaving in search of new lands. If he thought that would spare him the suffering of a human sacrifice, he was clearly mistaken.
And Moses Spoke to God
He was a shy man called Moses with thick, sharp eyebrows and a son who was sick and an attractive wife who was boisterous and colourful and a daughter who resembled her mother. That the mother was the way she was, was God’s mercy to help her live with the boy’s sickness. God had no mercy on Moses.
They visited friends and took the boy with them, and their hosts gave them biscuits and coffee and grappa, and someone always said the boy should have a glass because it would be good for him. They talked about the towns in the north where they, where they all, came from and about the other people from there who had also moved here. The talk was always about what people were doing here, their houses, their work, whether they made good money, who was getting married, whose children were doing what. Then it would turn to what people were doing over there, their houses, their work, whether they made good money, who was getting married, whose children were doing what. I was from San Ginese, a small village in Tuscany, but I loved hearing the place names of the northern towns: Danta, Santo Stefano, Calalzo, Pieve, Padola, Dosoledo, Campolongo, Costalta, Auronzo. In those days they were all haunted by the places where they’d been born, all those people, young and magnificent men and women who had come here on ships. They believed they would find success, and they did, the way anyone who has food and shelter is successful.
Moses, a quiet, serious man who repaired roofs and gutters, had been here twenty years with his wife, who was a dressmaker and worked in a small room at the rear of the family home in Caulfield. The demand for her work was so great that
she was obliged to stop cooking for the family. Moses, the lively daughter and the pale boy managed to prepare small meals at which she sometimes joined them. She was the wife but behaved as she would have liked her husband to. A secret battle had started the moment they met, testing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. She had won, not because Moses was not strong but because he just wanted to work and care for his family and watch them be happy. The rest he left up to her. He also found it hard to become involved in daily affairs – conversations, discussions, decisions – because he was by nature a gentle, passive man, and hard of hearing. His big eyebrows would lift and he would squint and tilt his head and stare at you, as if by concentrating harder he could retrieve the words that had come out of your mouth and floated past him without going in. It was just easier to step back and have his wife manage their life. He was in his element on a roof, alone with his memories of the mountains and thoughts of his sick boy, for whom he would pray as he went about his work.
I remember the boy standing with his back to the gas heater in our front room and gasping gently for air, mouth almost shut and nostrils a little flared, his chest working, trying to hide it and joining in the conversation the little that he could. Moses, who was born a little tired, and was weary before his time, recognised himself in his son, and for this reason loved him more.
We had never understood how sick the boy was, so although we knew he had been admitted to hospital again, it was a shock when the news came that he had died over there. His mother was never happy and the family had gone back with faith in the national healthcare system at home and in the clean air the boy would breathe in the snow-covered Alps. ‘If you don’t like it here, you can always go back,’ the Australians said.
The Fireflies of Autumn Page 18
