In Love With Emilia Read online

  The southern skyline announces Emilia Romagna’s rich cousin, Tuscany, the knobby and pointed silhouette of trees like Tuscan war lords advancing. Tuscany calls you to her history, beauty, mystery, her tacky tourist booths and markets with plastic Madonnas, row upon row of little plaster leaning towers, wooden Pinocchio puppets, and selections of ceramic masks. Tuscany has Florence, Pisa, and Sienna with their tourists and hype, with skinny cypress trees marching on to the everlasting beat of the economic drum. With some reluctance, I have to admit to falling prey to the beautiful ceramic masks hanging in every market in this area. I love my collection, the color and facial expressions, the sparkling gaudiness entertain me often. My daughter equates my passion for these gems and my collection equivalent to collecting doilies or crocheted toilet-roll-covers!

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  Emilia Romagna and Tuscany have the same outer beauty of hills and mountains, rivers, of art and architecture, of history stretching back millennia. A genetic bond exists between these cousins, the same blood flows in their veins. The complete area is the birthplace of the Renaissance, a region whose cultural and historical significance has influenced the world, a region that has become a magnet and a Mecca for travelers who flock and gaze in awe at the spectacular architecture, art, and sculptures. These incredible creations were born in brilliant minds and crafted with hands whose talents we can barely comprehend. Here in northern Italy is a beauty and culture that influenced people for centuries past and will for centuries to come. Emilia, however, has a deeply ingrained feeling of sincerity and generosity, of understanding and compassion, rare in the bustling hype of commercialism, but all embracing in this gracious, beautiful part of Italy.

  Emilia, how gentle and soft you are. How delightful is your charm. Because Florence was not your child, you rest in the shadows of anonymity and therein lies your special beauty. The imposing castles, cool churches, crumbling frescos, the works of Boticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Corregio, Parmigianino, Giotto, all are here, but they grace the senses with something less ostentatious, perhaps with a desire to remain in the wings behind the flowing extravagance of the rich cousin across those hills. The tourists of Emilia seem less boisterous and rowdy, once they sink into the quiet peacefulness it overcomes them. It is almost impossible to overdose on the culture of Emilia, as it is to do so in Tuscany. Tuscany is a beautiful cousin but I always feel a little sad that many tourists target Tuscany without consideration for other regions in Northern Italy, thereby missing so much of the country’s richness and beauty.

  Emilia’s near perfection is marred somewhat by the autostrada, Italy’s super highway structure, roads like knives slicing through the country, the architecture of the huge bridges crossing bottomless canyons may easily vie with the Roman aqueducts. A tunnel vision of madness takes hold of the drivers as they enter the highway. Whatever their regional origin or roots, they appear to become a suicide squad, flying along at 150 kilometers per hour, the lives of all in their hands. If survival is granted that day, the autostrada will eject these lethal weapons and their occupants, where they will go to ground, to the country, the villages, the towns, and once again become human. On occasion it is impossible to avoid this insanity, these screaming, polluting slashes of madness. But beyond the turmoil, peace prevails in the hills and across the plains.

  Secondary or country roads offer a completely different perspective of this region, providing a journey into the heart of Emilia Romagna. Walk back into the 12th century, a time when pilgrims who journeyed from London and Canterbury on the via Francigena, on their way to Rome, and then onto the Holy Land, attempting to spread Christianity to the “wicked infidels”. Stroll through villages with shady, narrow, cobbled streets, winding between houses where doors open directly onto the cobbles, past churches and bars and cafes set round the piazzas. Venture down the alleyways and discover beautiful secluded gardens surrounded by ancient walls. It becomes easy to imagine Michelangelo wandering up the alley towards you. Enter the dark mystery of medieval times as you peer down tiny, dark alleys where it is so easy to conjure up images of dungeons and torture and misery. The next corner turned might reveal a bright sunny view past ruined walls, of a river snaking beneath an ancient bridge and out across the plain.

  A church is nearby, where it has stood for ten centuries. A church with priceless artifacts created hundreds of years earlier. The doors are always unlocked, the trust of these small communities is placed in our hands with no thought that anyone might be dishonest enough to steal. The aroma of flowers and incense permeates the church; sometimes the choir will be practicing and the beautiful strains of a hymn will echo throughout the dark cavernous depths of the building. Leaving the church, you may come upon a road leading to a ruined castle, walls now crumbled, ivy holding together what remains. Inside the ruins, nothing but a blanket of weeds and brambles covers the traces of a whole way of life of people long gone. Behind the castle, a vineyard and an old house reveal themselves. The family is sitting under the trees, drinking their wine. Remnants of those bygone times linger, as in a chain there is always one more link, the little old lady seated on an ancient wooden chair outside the door of her house, the bent and weathered old man making his way slowly across the cobbles to the piazza. Locked in the moment within the ancient minds of the locals are memories dimmed with age. Only a little prompting, a turn of the mental key, and the stories begin, recalled with clarity almost too remarkable to believe. More often than not these stories revolve around two world wars. It is difficult for baby boomers to grasp the full horror of those events, but in the telling the images are not hard to picture. This part of Italy was antifascist and had a strong partisan spirit. Men disappeared never to be seen again, villagers were taken to the piazza and stood against the church walls where they were shot. The old people never forget.

  The smaller the village the fewer young people live there. There is no infusion of fresh new knowledge, of young ideas. The old people here have little stimulation and tend to dwell on the past.

  CHAPTER II

  1996

  In was in 1996 that we made plans to spend three weeks in Rovinaglia, a group of four villages, Brattesani, Giacopazzi, Casa di Grossi, and Costa Dazi, the village where my husband, Luigi, was born. The trip was prompted by his mother’s desire for Luigi to have her house after she died. Her name was Angelina, but we had come to know her as Nona since we produced grandchildren for her. Less than pleasant relationships were brewing among the family. He was keen to be there when decisions were made about Nona’s property, and mostly to ensure his ownership of the house.

  On our way, amid feelings of excitement and apprehension, we began the twenty-four hour marathon journey from British Columbia in western Canada to Rovinaglia, the tiny group of houses clinging to the windy hillsides that would connect with my heart so deeply. We flew from Vancouver to Amsterdam with what felt like an interminable holdover in the then very smoky Schipol airport. Used to a much cleaner environment in Canada where smoking in most public areas is now forbidden, the atmosphere was thick and disgusting. We were released from this muck as we boarded our flight to Milan. Picking up the rental car we found our way out of the noise and confusion of the airport and to the onramp of the autostrada. Finding a hotel en-route was a passing thought as our second wind kicked in and we flew along the highway. Rovinaglia was so close now! Exiting the highway and threading our way along country roads we pulled into the farmyard by Luigi’s sister’s house. It was late at night and not a light was to be seen as we stumbled through the village, black as pitch, there were no signs of life. Nothing! Not even a cat! Shutters were closed tightly, doors locked. Oh well, we are hardy Canadians, we will find our way.

  We would be staying in Nona’s old house, No. 17, Rovinaglia. Meri, Luigi’s sister, had explained where the key was. Luigi dug it out, safely wrapped in cobwebs, from behind the old barn door, his hair newly anointed with gray dusty strands of web. As I stepped inside the hou
se, the floor felt different under my feet from our visit years ago when we brought the kids to see their Italian grandma, Nona. Unable to see, feeling round the walls for light switches without success, we fumbled our way through to the bedroom via head banging doorframes built for midgets. Attacked by shin-hacking steel corners we fell onto the old bed. Creaking and groaning, it swallowed us both into the middle of the old mattress. We were overcome by the sharp smell of mothball camphor that some kind soul, probably Meri, had spread generously among the hard, scratchy linen sheets and slept like logs.

  At seven o’clock we were awakened from our comas by the church bells. They went on and on! Finally they stopped. We dozed only to be awakened once more by bells, clanging like cannons through our thumping heads. Admitting defeat, I crawled out into a world of woodworm, mouse nests, spider’s webs and lizards and scorpions. Picking my way through this livestock and across the centuries-old chestnut floor, I opened the fragile old windows. Pushing open the creaking wooden shutters, I discovered that the “cannon bells” were attached to five beautiful jersey cows, munching and chomping their way through the field. Beyond these lovely creatures lay the fields, trees, hillsides and beauty of Emilia Romagna bathed in the early sun.

  Looking eastward, the hills still lay in shadows, silhouettes against the marvelous pale lemon sky, the brilliance of the sun about to explode above hilltops. Fingers of lemon light streaked the ridges caught by the escaping rays. Rich slashes of dark green carved down to the valley bottom where the Tarodine River wends its way, fed by streams tumbling from the hills to the Taro which in turn joins other rivers as they feed the mighty River Po. Italy’s longest river, the Po, rises in the Alps from a spring on the slopes of Mt. Monviso, which straddles the French/Italian border. The Po nourishes the fertile plains of Northern Italy from the country’s western border with France to the East Coast where it says goodbye to Emilia and embraces the Adriatic with the arms of its huge delta. Gazing out beyond the panes of glass as brittle as winter’s first ice on puddles, looking across the valley, I could hardly even hope that this little house might one day be ours.

  Visible to the southwest, rising like a golden sentinel in the early sun, was the campanile of the church watching over her charges. The roofs across the valley, some barely visible, still in shadow, were gradually turning to burnt orange as their terra cotta tiles were licked by the sun. I could see the village of Valdena in the valley bottom sliced in half by the road to Tuscany. Life already hurtling through and up and around and up, disappearing into the hillsides and on over the Bratello Pass constructed in Roman times as a major route of communication to central Italy, to the Ligurian coast, and east to the Adriatic. Cars now ascended this pass, the Roman Legions but dust beneath their wheels. These villages are only a tiny part of Emilia Romagna, snuggling on the valley sides where grasslands alternate with forests of oak and chestnut.

  Rovinaglia’s church, San Pietro, extended and repaired several times in more recent history, was built in the late 16th century on the remains of a chapel burned down by brigands in 1564 during an attack on the hermit who lived there. The villagers hunted down the bandits and one by one they were caught and hanged. In 1580, the church was rebuilt, and it was remodeled several times during the centuries to follow. An inscription on one of the bells indicates the Bell Tower was built in 1895. When Nona was a little girl, she, and all the school children had to carry one rock from the quarry each day after school to help in the rebuilding of the ruined walls. Giulio, Meri’s husband was a bell-ringer in the days when the church had four bells. Now there are only three bells remaining (the priest having sold one) and with modern electronics, the bells are controlled by the priest’s computer. He visits the three churches in the area alternately on Sundays to administer mass, having programmed the computer to ring the bells accordingly.

  At one time this was a bustling little community, every field producing to sustain life and to provide income, every meadow hosting cows whose milk is the prized ingredient in the world famous parmesan cheese. Chickens ranging everywhere, scratching in the barn yards, rooting through the roses. The schoolhouse filled with children, the osteria cool and dark, a noisy smoky place where the old men sat drinking wine and solving the problems of their insular world. Sixty or seventy families once lived here. Now just a few permanent residents remain, the hardy souls born and bred to die here.

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  To claim Luigi’s heritage we had to decide how to proceed without offending family members, treading on no toes. Being usurpers, those long absent visitors from Canada, I was apprehensive about how we would be received. What rights did we have? We had not scratched a living out of the land, we had not worn our fingers and bodies to the bone, slaving to maintain the livestock, the farm. Our only contribution had been financial aid for Nona. Perhaps her bequest of No. 17, Rovinaglia to Luigi showed her gratitude, but I could not shake the feeling of appearing like grabbing foreigners, fighting for the spoils.

  When Luigi’s father, Lorenzo, died in 1974, the legacy of his father’s house in San Vincenzo, a village below Rovinaglia on the hillside, was a problem more than anything else. Living and settled in Canada, as a young man raising a family, Luigi really had no desire at that time to renew ties with the old country. His nephew, Stefano, (Meri and Giulio’s second son)had recently married. Living with his new wife Anna in the same house as Meri was difficult at times. The solution was simple, give them Lorenzo’s old house. They could leave the cloying paranoia of Rovinaglia and set up home in the happier environment of San Vincenzo.

  Older and wiser now, Luigi can see the merits of having a little place in Italy. This time he wanted his little bit of Rovinaglia, and when I opened those creaking old shutters, I wanted it also.

  My memories of our first visit years ago with the kids were very vivid and I recall poking around in a room at the end of Nona’s house, looking at old furniture and clothes hanging on nails, boxes full of ancient linen, and old photographs. I was amazed to find an earth wall behind an old curtain hanging on a sagging wire. The ceilings were black with grime, an accumulation of soot and smoke from fires lit thousands of times over the years since Grandpa Luigi had built the little house. The kitchen floor was also earth, compacted by years of treading feet. A single naked twenty-five watt bulb hung on a wriggley old wire from a beam and did little to brighten the gloom. The kitchen was the only warm room in the house. The wood stove also designed for cooking, standing in the middle, allowed space to do not much more than sit on the old bench or on one of the two chairs at the little wooden table. Set in the rock wall was a china cabinet fronted by two old, painted and peeling glass windows that must have been from another old house. They protected mementos and years of memories of an old lady. Faded brown photographs posed so perfectly by serious family members attired in their best Sunday dress. Colored pictures, hand tinted, of Madonnas from different feasts, and churches. An array of aperitifglasses, not one matching, little espresso cups, and a bright red plastic holder for a glass, standing empty, and totally incongruous among its companions like a rooster strutting among his dowdy hens. There were two chipped and cracked small plates set upright against the gaudy backdrop. Madonnas smiling peacefully, cradling their own baby Jesuses. A display of memories of Nona’s life set against a background of brittle, crinkled kitchen paper of several different designs and colors, rusty nails holding it to the rocks and mortar behind. The three rooms she used at that time were the kitchen, with access through a small barn-style door to a bedroom about the same size as the kitchen. Beyond the bedroom and through an opening in the meter thick wall was a smaller room containing a rusty old Victorian bed and a steamer trunk. The bedroom was filled almost to bursting with a monstrous old bed with wooden head and foot boards and a sagging old spring and mattress. There was no bathroom. A little outhouse stood beneath a drooping old lean-to. We drew water from the village tap, washed the kids in the old tin bath, and experienced life in
the raw.

  While we were there, Nona insisted that we use her bed and that we put the kids in the small room. Our insistence that she use her own bed only served to strengthen her resolve not to. She spent fourteen nights on the old wooden pew-like bench in the kitchen, a fixture of every older cottage and even some newer homes. She spread a few thin old pillows to cushion her rheumatic joints against the old chestnut wood, two relics together.

  I remember how the dreary atmosphere in the kitchen urged me into the fresh, bright outdoors. I remember walking round the end of the house and noticing the climbing pink rose snaking its way up the rock wall beside the old cantina. On the eastern side of the house facing the valley was a wonderful hedge of aromatic Syringa and two beautiful fig trees from which, years later, I would be able to pick white and black figs. Oh so good. Back up behind the house ran a bumpy cobbled and weedy lane, where one might almost reach up and touch the eaves.

  The dry rock construction of the cottage was wonderful. I was amazed at the precision with which the rocks were placed, so perfectly at right angles with each other, the corner stones just immense. Over the door opening from the kitchen into the back lane was a rock engraved with the year 1883 and the name of Nona’s father, Luigi Dora. Natural slabs of flat rock, pianelli di sasso, gathered from the banks of the river and the hillsides, formed the roof, the successive layers secured only by their weight. Rising from the roof was an old slate chimney, a small square tower with openings on each side and a flat top-slate.

  All these years later, the rocks are covered with ugly gray cement stucco. The wonderful rock over the old door is also covered. There is now, however, a lovely terra cotta roof. The new chimney stands gaily on guard with a jaunty little domed hat decorated with a terracotta pompom. A new and fresh interior, a tiled kitchen floor, and a bathroom with the biggest bath I had ever seen greeted us. Some of the old things remained. The old beds, table and chairs, the kitchen sink and the china cabinet hosting a few of the old mementos, now accompanied by colored photographs of grandchildren and more religious paraphernalia. The red plastic mug holder still stands cheekily among its ancient mates. Above the new steel kitchen door with the barred window hangs Jesus on his cross, a little plastic dead man overseeing all who enter this house.