THE story of the
unmarried American woman and the Italian grandparents she never
knew and the home she has made for herself in this small mountain village
in
You might say it
is odd, to go off by yourself on the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and
Angela Paolantonio, a Los Angeles
photographers representative with a shock of black curls and a
tendency to worry about other peoples feelings first and her own later,
would agree. But she needed, in a very bad way, to get out of Dodge. She was
41, she hadnt
had a serious relationship in years and she had no desire to be what she
calls the spinster at the table. Although she had a fine arts degree and
considered herself an artist, shed never focused on her own work. She was
proud of her small stable of photographers and graphic artists, but the
business part was hardly creative, and a lot of being an agent is being mother,
shrink, confessor; shed be on the phone for
hours, going through
their divorces.
The visit to her
grandparents village, which has a population of about 6,000 and lies an
hour and a half east of Naples, was intended as a day trip, an add-on to
two weeks knocking around Italy, punctuated by a Thanksgiving dinner of a tuna
sandwich in Rome. She arrived in town not knowing if there were
even any family members left, stepping off a bus so early in the morning that
only the fruit vendor was on the street. Nor could she speak more than a few
words of Italian. But the ones she knew were the ones that mattered: "Paolantonio" and famiglia"
That was seven
years ago. Now, Ms. Paolantonio, who still lives and
works in
Walk down the
street with Ms. Paolantonio and you get the feeling
that not only is she known and liked, but that this entire town is reaching out
and putting its arms around her. "I really didnt
know I was searching for anything till I got here," Ms. Paolantonio says. "Then I realized what I was missing
and what it meant."
Calitri is a faded postcard of a
town; no movie house, no bookstore, weathered pastel stone buildings and the
ruins of a medieval castle clinging to the side of a mountain. It takes a series of
hairpin turns to reach and once there you can see the exposed interiors of
buildings that were destroyed in the terrible earthquake of 1980. Elderly
widows wear black and the agricultural tradition is strong. Ask Ms. Paolantonios cousin Giuseppina
Paolantonio, who appears to be in her late 70s,
how to make nocino, the walnut liqueur that is
popular here, and the recipe begins: "On June 24th, pick the
walnuts."
A pale yellow
chapel stands on a hill overlooking the town and Ms. Paolantonio,
who exults in the areas ancient culture, says that on Good Friday, villagers
carry a statue of Christ up the hill on their knees. Her middle-aged cousin
Vito Cestone will later correct her; they havent
done this for years, they werent even doing it
when he was a kid, hell say.
But a romantic is
a romantic and Ms. Paolantonio has always felt the
pull of the past, particularly to the story of the woman she was named for, her
fathers mother, AngelaMaria Cicoira,
whom she never knew. Both her grandmother and her grandfather, Nicola Paolantonio, grew up in Calitri, emigrating to
Ms. Paolantonio appears always to have had a desire for an
extended Italian family. "My first trip, to
She was never,
however, able to create a family of her own. She was romantically involved for several
years with a photographer - not a healthy relationship," is the
best she can say for it. And
The story of her
first day in Calitri is, even now, one that Ms. Paolantonio tells beat for beat: First shes taken to a
shop owner named Vito Cestone, whose mother is a Paolantonio, but who doubts they are related; then Vito
takes her to an elderly woman named Paolantonio who
greets her with excitement and brings out a family album, but turns out to be
the wrong Paolantonio; then Vito calls his mother who
says Angelas grandfather was her fathers brother. Its the
first time any of the Paolantonios who have emigrated to
Everybody
I meet immediately offers me coffee " Im thinking Im gonna die of coffee poisoning," Ms. Paolantonio
says. "Nobody speaks English. I speak very little Italian. Then I enter
this smoke-filled room, I get to Zio Franco, my
cousin, a very distinguished man with a mustache. He says, very slowly, in
English, Your grandfather was a very great man. I just collapsed
emotionally. After lunch, I go for a nap and I totally cried myself to sleep
because I am so overwhelmed."
In the afternoon,
Ms. Paolantonio meets her great-aunt Concetta who
knew her grandmother when they were both young women, and lives in what had
been her grandmothers childhood home. Zia Concetta, as she comes to call
her, would eventually be able to tell Ms. Paolantonio
about AngelaMaria; it is a tragic story, involving a
child who died on a visit to Calitri and another who
died in
SEVEN years
later, Ms. Paolantonio spends two to three months a
year in Calitri and is trying to figure out a way
that she can live here full time before she retires. No small part of this is
her boyfriend, Giuseppe Zarrilli. He is 35, 13 years
younger than she, and works the family farm. Ms. Paolantonio,
who says she is a person who has to have big fireworks, has been seeing him for
four years. At dinner, the skin under his fingernails will be dark, and Ms. Paolantonio will later explain this is not dirt, its
from crushing the grapes for wine.
The
difference between him and Mr. Los Angeles photographer?
Huge,"
Ms. Paolantonio says. "You feel like you are
completely supported without a word; that his manliness is holding me up. I say
to my friends, this guy is the real deal, not like a guy from
It is not,
however, an untroubled relationship. Ms. Paolantonio
is aware of the cultural difference, aware that Mr. Zarrilli
probably wants children, and at her age that could be a problem. They have
broken up a few times; when Ms. Paolantonio came to Calitri during the Christmas holidays last year, Mr. Zarrilli did not invite
her to his home. It was painful, but Christmas in this culture is for family,
Ms. Paolantonio says. This is an assessment her
friend Enza Cubelli, who
lives in Calitri, will later dispute - the man
is just a blockhead, she says.
Ms. Paolantonio knew, from the first time she visited Calitri, that
she wanted to own a house here. But she wanted one with a family connection. A
year and a half ago, after the death of Zia Concetta, she was offered her
grandmothers childhood home, a tiny two bedroom perhaps 250 square feet,
on Via Fontana, in one of the oldest parts of town.
The cost of the
property, which included a grotto just down the street the same size as the
house, was 18,000 euros, or about $23,000. Ms. Paolantonio,
a freelancer, could not simply write a check. But she was not about to let a
piece of her heritage get away from her. She scraped together a down payment.
And when she returned to
A woman in
black appears at the window at the foot of my bed," Ms. Paolantonio says. "At first I dont know who it
is, but I know she is definitely not American. I was overwhelmed by a feeling
of love, like the unconditional love of a parent or a grandparent. I was
speechless. Then she was gone. I have a feeling it was either my grandmother or
Concetta."
Maybe it was just
her unconscious, just a dream, Ms. Paolantonio is
told.
It could be
the unconscious, if you wanted to get scientific," Ms. Paolantonio
says. "It could be myself saying to myself, wow, this is the end of the
story, this is what all of this meant, the quest was about my grandmother -
maybe not in the beginning, but slowly, this was the journey of me trying to
find this woman who was completely forgotten, locked inside my fathers
heart."
Ms. Paolantonio does not know how old her house is. The date
1900 and the initials "V. C." are carved into the stone archway over
the heavy chestnut door, but she believes that was simply the time her
great-grandfather Vincenzo Cicoira put in the new
door. The walls of the house are a foot thick. The front room, which serves as
kitchen and living room, has a Formica-topped table, a few chairs and a
cupboard containing a copy of AngelaMarias
American citizenship papers.
The bedroom has a
balcony, from which Ms. Paolantonio can see a circle
of land her grandmothers family once cultivated. She believes from a
conversation with Zia Concetta that her grandmothers ashes may have been
scattered there, though her great-aunt spoke in a dialect she could not fully
understand.
Ms. Paolantonio is asked about her Calitri
family. It is interesting the way they have embraced her, she is told.
I think
sometimes they see things in me I dont maybe see myself," she says.
"This older woman who is trying to be independent, but is a little lonely
and is involved with a man and maybe it will work out and maybe it wont.
But whatever it is, they support me."
She still lives
in
In
She hopes to
expand her home in Calitri by buying the house next
door. She has noticed, here in Calitri, that she is
finally doing her own work. Shes written a memoir
of her Calitri journey that she hopes to publish;
shes taking pictures. The grotto, she thinks, will make a very nice art studio.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/garden/22italy.html?pagewanted=1&8dpc