A Rebel In Love. Cristiano Parafioriti
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the mountainside and, after a quick meal, I fell asleep, this time more peacefully, lulled by the air of that pale spring not yet in bloom, in Galati Mamertino, Sicily.
LONELY SOULS
At five o'clock in the afternoon, my mother took a chance and offered me an inviting hot coffee. She knew I longed to see the square and my old friends from the village after so many months spent more than 1,700 kilometres away. I am forty years old, twenty of which have been spent in the North, half a life that seems like a whole one, actually.
The caffeine immediately kicked in. At six o'clock I took the road to the square. Walking through my old neighbourhood, I had the bittersweet feeling of flipping through an album of memories, I felt my chest tighten around my heart. It's all in the past now. There, of Via Pilieri, only the stones of the houses remain standing, while here, at the bottom of my heart, lie the much heavier rocks of memory.
Calogero Bau was the first villager I met. I couldn’t refuse to drink a coffee with him at the Bar Ciccio. He told me about his children, especially Ilenia, the eldest, who had told him over the phone that she was very excited about reading my stories. Then he began to talk to me about his work at the records office and how, over time, he had become fascinated by reading about old birth and death certificates, some particular registry events, surnames that have now disappeared, or rather, as he called them, old stuff.
I would never have imagined that Calogero Bau could somehow arouse such curiosity in me. He was a good man, no doubt about it, humble and friendly, but he certainly never looked like someone who could discuss such specific and particular topics with me. But he managed to intrigue me incredibly. I even took the trouble of breathing the passive smoke of his umpteenth cigarette and, outside the bar, we went for a walk in Piazza San Giacomo. For a moment I caught a glimpse of my father sitting at the Circolo dei Maestri Artigiani, reading the Gazzetta del Sud. It was in that brief moment that I felt truly at home. Calogero Bau spoke to me again about the records. Actually, he couldn't tell me much more, but it didn't spoil my burning and inquisitive desire to check the papers he had told me about. At dusk, I picked up my father from his last evening chores, and together we made our way home. As soon as we were out of the door, however, thanks to the clear sky, I was assailed by an uncontrollable desire to go towards the Mount of Rafa.
From there, the view is unparalleled at any time of day, but the Rafa evening is pure poetry! At sunset, the sun gives way to the moon and the stars, and yet, before it dies, it manages to ignite the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Aeolian Islands looming in the distance. The islands seem on the verge of being swallowed up by the waters, but they never drown. They remain in constant balance, as if protected by a celestial pact that has placed them there forever. Well, I know what the truth is: those islands are us, exiled children of this land, now detached from it. So close to our hearts but so far away from our bodies that we can only touch each other every now and then. One day it happened that we, the exiles, were cut off from our roots, because of the unfair fate that has condemned this land and its children for at least two centuries now.
A dark will, entirely devoted to evil, that turns us into islands of exiles. In the North, in Germany, in the USA, in Australia. Small, large islands of children stolen from their mother island.
An archipelago of lonely souls.
TRUTHS
I am sure that one day I will discover the hidden reason why the same brand of coffee, drunk in the South, shoots into your body a dose of caffeine that seems three times stronger than in Lombardy. Maybe it's the water, the air, or some strange mental conception, but the effect of a sip is like that of a bucket of ice-cold water suddenly thrown in your face.
Calogero Bau was on time. After the usual coffee and cigarette, we walked towards the records office. During the short walk, the now crumbling silhouette of the church of Trungali appeared in the distance, bringing back the nightmare of the previous day. It had all felt so real that I shuddered with fear at the mere memory.
The record offices were housed in a cold and damp basement; I didn't think much has changed since the last time. The sun never shines, and it's practically on the outskirts of town. I don't envy the people who work there any more than I did back then.
At least, waiting for me now was Bastiano Montagna, who, besides being a dear old friend of mine, I discovered was also an employee of that office.
We greeted each other affectionately, he already knew I was coming, and after a few chats about the good old days, he led me to the room where they kept the papers dating back to the 19 century. There I found birth and death certificates, marriage registers, various other loose documents, and many loose packages. Strictly speaking, the official registers were almost all in folio forms, a typical format for that era. They were in binders with ties on each side of the folder, and the year marking each record was on the front, written with a blue pencil.
I sat down and started flipping through the acts and documents. Almost all of them had a pre-printed form, and the blanks were filled in by hand.
I picked a year at random, 1856. The cursive handwriting appeared to be graceful, and I realised at once that the person who had filled in these registry documents had learned calligraphy at school, a luxury for moneybags at the time. In fact, from the signatures on the acts, I learned the mayor of the time was also a civil registrar and had drawn up the registers.
I was already aware that, at that time, my Galati was only “Galati” without the appellation “Mamertino” which had been added in 19121, but I didn't know it belonged to the district of Patti. Not bad. However, I stumbled across some pleasant facts.
I discovered that the town encompassed part of the current neighbourhoods; some surnames were not yet common while others had been lost over time. I read about the existence of a particularly prolific textile industry, so much so that many women under the entry “employment” were in fact “spinners”.
Along with the regular registers, some years had an extraordinary part called dei proietti attached. I didn't even know what the word proietti meant.
From a quick search on my phone, I discovered that proietti were simply foundlings, babies abandoned at birth for various reasons: poverty, misery, or, alas, just because they were unwanted. To provide a solution to this phenomenon in a dignified and Christian manner, the council of Galati employed a certain Anna Guarnera as “midwife and devout caretaker of the rejected babies”.
In the Panetteria neighbourhood there was a foundling wheel for the unwanted babies and a warning bell.2 When the bell rang, Anna Guarnera, the devout receiver, was awakened and alerted of an abandoned baby. She would rush to pick them up, look after them until morning, and then go to the Town Hall. Here, along with the mayor and a few witnesses, the child's health was briefly checked and, finally, officially registered. On the same day, the priest of the Mother church, at the first mass, gave the baptism, choosing a name decided on by those present – unless the baby was with a card suggesting a specific name.
The register of foundlings, therefore, listed every newborn found alive or, unfortunately, dead. Most of the records were filled in by hand in the same graceful cursive,3 making some parts hard to read but still clear.
Giacomo Maggiore, Salvatore Mundi, Giulia Condelli, Caterina Fragale, Anna Santalucia, were only some of the invented names given to foundlings at the time of registration, for lack of any other information.
I left the record office at about 11.45 a.m. The registers contained the same information, except for the names and little else. After all, I thought they were just registers of births and deaths, not very different from today's ones.
Back home, I found the table set. The cold had made me burn a lot of calories and, even before the whole family had arrived, I greedily devoured countless hot and crispy cro-quettes and thistle fritters, whose delicious smell I still remember.
After lunch, exhaustion set in, but I didn't have time to doze