CERCANDO DI NOVI
July, 2015
Owen and I drive from Rome to Campagna, about three hours south, and are startled by the incredible mountains and winding roads.
We are to meet our AirB&B host Angela in Puglietta, which is an even smaller town above Campagna, but we stop in the town for lunch, so we park and find the center which luckily, I note, is where the municipal offices are located. I realize very quickly that NO ONE speaks English, and that we are, without a doubt, the only tourists in town, though it is larger than I expected. I thank heavens that I have spent the last few months practicing my Italian by Rosetta Stone.
Lunch is lovely, antipasto and first course only of pasta because we are so hot. Beer of course. And I manage to ask if I can plug in and charge my phone.
We drive up to Puglietta and since we can't seem to get any phone service, I ask the sullen teenagers sitting outside "Happy Club" on the main street if they would do me a favor and call our host. Within five minutes, Angela arrives and we follow her back five minutes up the road, then down a dirt road to a three story house overlooking the valley, greeted by two very friendly black labs.
It's still so hot, in the 90s, but I relax while Owen heads off to find the local hot springs. That evening we go back to Campagna for dinner, and thanks to the advice of Libby Lubin (italianjourneys.net), we ask the local pharmacist for a recommendation. Gerardo is so welcoming and friendly, so excited to hear why we have come there (he did mistake Owen for my husband which was hysterically funny to me, but not so much to Owen). He takes us to his friend's restaurant where we have an exquisite meal beginning with this antipasto:
Evening in Puglietta:
We decide the next morning that Owen will drop me in Campagna for the day while he drives to Naples (amazing). So at 9:00 am on Friday, I order my capuccino and croissant in the town center, gird my loins and enter the municipal offices to begin asking about Antonio Salvatore Di Novi.
I wait until the line of people seeking documents empties out (I think I will never stop sweating) and ask the skeptical bureaucrat behind the glass how I could find documents relating to births and deaths. Mr. Izzo Romano then asks what is the name I am researching, and when I show him "Antonio Di Novi" he breaks into a great smile and says "My grandmother was a Di Novi!" Suddenly we are off and running, and he asks me to wait while he telephones Don Carlo Magna to make an appointment for me this afternoon at 3:30. I have no idea who this will be, and I imagine something out of "The Godfather" where I will have to kiss his hand. I thank Izzo again for his help, and he promises to keep searching for records, and I am thrilled that, as I leave, he tells me I speak good Italian.
So. I have the rest of the day until I meet Owen. Originally I had told him to pick me up at 3:30 but I wander the rest of the municipal building, until I find another bored looking employee, smoking in a small office, but vaguely working on a computer. He allows me to email Owen to change the meeting time to 4:30.
Then I walk through town, winding my way up the cobblestone main street all the way to the top of Campagna, which takes about 45 minutes. I nod to all the puzzled older women, older men, kids on the street, pouring sweat all the way.
There are lovely doors on all the houses. Tiny plastic garbage bags are in front of all of them, one even hanging on a rope from the second level. I cannot believe when a garbage truck comes slowly through the incredibly narrow street picking these up, and I have to back into one of the doorways to let it by.
I take some tiny steps which go down to the river running through the whole center of Campagna. This is the best idea. It's cold.
I eat lunch again at the first restaurant quickly as I realize that things are going to totally close down in the town from about 2:00-4:00, which it does. Now the streets are deserted, completely, and I just need to wait for Don Carlo who is meeting me at the Chiesa di San Antonino Zappino at 3:30.
I sit and read "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
At 3:30 I am outside waiting, when I suddenly realize that I am in front of the Cathedral, not the church, so in a slight panic I run into a tiny shop to ask where the church is and the young man directs me further up the street, "just look for the statue of the man with his hand raised in blessing." Run there. No one. Go into the little cafe and ask the very nice woman for ANYTHING with ice, gulp down a bitter lemon, and turn to see Don Carlo, the priest.
He is such a sweet looking young priest, a little like Ben Affleck but my height, just in a black shirt with a collar. He takes me through the little church, dropping to his knees in front of the altar for the Virgin, and then back into his office at the rear of the church. We sit in front of his desk, almost knee to knee, with me mopping my face with the small Italian paper napkin and him smelling very strong -- not badly, just strongly -- of sweat. I describe to him why I have come, for the family Di Novi, and he asks if this is emotional for me. It is. He is excited and almost giggly to tell me that he has helped a few people trace records, but never before has the book just fallen open to the correct page!
Don Carlo pulls out book after book as we try and look for more information. What I want to find is the record of other births to Vito and Theresa but it is impossible, not exactly knowing the dates. I know that Antonio was born in 1884 so we try and read through all the handwritten script listing baptisms by first names (!). At one point Don Carlo goes into the church to talk to some other people, and tells me I can just keep looking through the books, and I am terrified that my sweaty hands will smear the pages, so I am being incredibly careful.
When he comes back, we do manage to find two deaths, which by extrapolation we realize are siblings of Vito Di Novi: Maria Concepta, died 1926 at the age of 77 (so born 1849), and Angela Raffaelo, died 1908 at the age of 65.
But I am late to meet Owen, so I thank Don Carlo and he gives me his email address, telling me that I can write to him in English and ask for whatever else we would like to try and find. Gmail, unbelievable. I ask if I can take his picture, but he declines. I think he is probably quite humble.
Owen finds me in the town center, happily drinking a "caffe freddo" and we decide to go back, rest, and come back into Campagna that night for another dinner. I have noticed a restaurant which looked interesting, and when we ask Gerardo that night about it, he says it's good but the owner is crazy. We can't wait for this. The owner turns out to be very pleasant, but he is married to a Russian woman who is doing the cooking so perhaps that makes him eccentric in Campagna. Antipasto, then pasta faggiol' which we devour. Then ravioli and we're stuffed.
That evening, we go back to the town. Owen and I go to the church in the center, which has a museum and a "cimitero" though Gerardo thinks it might not be open. It turns out that there happens to be a young man there, a volunteer from the local "fraternita" and he takes us down into the crypt beneath the church to show us the strangest sight. There are rows of cement seats, with holes that look like primitive toilets, and he explains from from 1500-1850 these were used when people died. They sat the dead bodies, tied so they wouldn't fall over and waited until the fluids all drained out. Then the bones were separated, and we can see through metal gratings the skulls, the thigh bones, all different bones sorted in different piles. I am sure that somewhere in there, there must be Di Novis.
Campagna, as it turns out, is bustling in the evening. Streets are jammed, though not with tourists, just locals I suppose from this town or outlying areas, eating, talking, drinking coffee, wine. This is a great place, much more modern than I expected, because in some ways I was thinking about the town as it probably was in 1894! (A poster in one restaurant):
The next morning, we begin our trip down further south in Italy, to Briatico, to Sicily, and finally over to Malta.
This has been one of the best vacations for me. Exciting, satisfying, quite affecting, because now this is my family too.
