ACQUAVERDE 14

ACQUAVERDE 14

La storia che volevo raccontarti

DI  SALVATORE GIUSEPPE POMARA

ILRACCONTO DELLA DOMENICA

 

«La band all’angolo della strada e O sole mio con strumenti jazz e musicisti di colore; nel caso non l’avessi capito sei arrivato a New Orleans» disse Pepo a se stesso. Si era fatto lasciare poco prima dal tassì e andava a piedi. «Non c’è problema, so come arrivarci» aveva ringraziato Carol che si era offerta di passarlo a prendere in albergo. Alcuni dei parenti lo aspettavano davanti alla porta del ristorante. La band lo seguì fin dentro. Si alzarono tutti in piedi. «Welcome!» risuonò forte. Più calorosa di così l’accoglienza non poteva essere. Fra Carol e Lorraine, figlie di Paolo e Nicola  Ginestra, fu là che lo invitarono a sedersi. I tavoli disposti a rettangolo occupavano l’intera sala. Il ristorante era tutto per i Ginestra. «Welcome in New Orleans, Pepo, welcome home!» «Benvenuto a casa». Pepo aveva gli occhi umidi. «Un giorno» dicevo a mio nonno, Lorenzo Ginestra, «andrò a conoscere i nostri parenti di New Orleans, ci ho messo tempo ma alla fine eccomi qua». «La gioia che proviamo è pari al piacere di averti con noi a New Orleans» rispose Carol. «Attorno a questi tavoli ci sono più di cinquanta persone, nelle cui vene scorre il sangue dei Ginestra. E’ un momento che Nicola, Paolo e Lorenzo hanno sicuramente sognato e che noi questa sera realizziamo. La famiglia è al completo. E ora basta se no mi metto a piangere».  «Salute!» concluse, alzando il calice. Erano tutti in piedi e si brindava con vino siciliano. Era stato curato tutto nei minimi particolari: le pietanze, le bevande e perfino la musica, come quelle tarantelle siciliane che la jazz band strimpellava assieme a Volare e ad Arrivederci Roma. «Lorenzo Ginestra era mio nonno» esordì Pepo. «Paolo, suo fratello, mio padre» gli fece eco Carol. «E Nicola, il fratello maggiore, il mio» aggiunse Lorraine. «Papà ci parlava spesso del fratello che viveva in Italia e dell’altro, morto a New Orleans ancora giovane. Successe mentre erano in campagna. “Nicò, Nicò…” era la voce del fratello, corse. Paolo si stringeva il petto con la mano. “Non respiro…non respiro” si lamentava, “ho come una balata sul petto…il braccio…il braccio sinistro…” Un paio di minuti e non c’era più». «E mio nonno» commentò Pepo, «pensava che Paolo avesse smesso di scrivere perché si fosse dimenticato di lui». «Lascio passare un po’ di tempo e comunico a Lorenzo la morte di nostro fratello» si era detto Nicola. Aspettò un mese, poi un altro e un altro ancora. Alla fine, la notizia non gliela diede più. Ritenne in questo modo di evitargli il dolore per la morte del fratello». «I believe to be one of your relatives», credo di essere un tuo parente, aveva detto a Carol Ginestra Velaska, la cugina dall’altro capo del telefono, a New Orleans. Furono le parole con le quali qualche settimana prima Pepo aveva preso contatto col suo passato e con i Ginestra di New Orleans, discendenti dei fratelli del nonno. Negli anni trascorsi le ricerche dei parenti americani non erano state fruttuose, ma questa volta avevano dato esito positivo, perciò Pepo era partito alla volta di New Orleans. Aveva una fotografia del nonno in tasca e si apprestava a fare il suo stesso viaggio. Man mano che il minuscolo aereo sullo schermo di fronte accorciava la distanza dalla destinazione finale, l’eccitazione aumentava. Poi l’hostess invitò i passeggeri ad allacciare le cinture. Una decina di minuti dopo, Pepo, con la valigia in mano, si avviava verso l’uscita. Non ci mise molto a identificare Carol e gli altri parenti che erano lì ad aspettarlo e non ci fu neanche bisogno di presentazioni. Del gruppo facevano parte americani d’origine italiana, ebraica e portoghese nelle cui vene scorreva anche il sangue dei Ginestra. Quell’incontro, se ce ne fosse stato bisogno, servì a rinsaldare i legami di sangue e d’affetto che si erano conservati per oltre un secolo. L’accoglienza fu calorosa, tipicamente siciliana, nonostante fossero tutti americani di seconda, terza e quarta generazione. Per Pepo fu un ritorno all’infanzia e all’America del nonno, arrivato a New Orleans quasi un secolo prima. Lorenzo aveva abbracciato i fratelli e Pepo i loro discendenti, e fu come se si fossero conosciuti da sempre. La famiglia Ginestra scomparsa quasi del tutto da Vallerosa si era invece ampliata in America. Il legame che aveva unito i padri era stato trasmesso ai figli e ai figli dei loro figli che s’incontravano per la prima volta a New Orleans, dopo cento anni. Al termine di quella serata, unica e indimenticabile, Carol venne fuori con un regalo per Pepo: una sorpresa straordinaria e inaspettata, che da sola valeva a giustificare quel suo viaggio a New Orleans. Poco prima aveva fatto cenno al marito. Aron si era portato in fondo alla sala ed era tornato con un oggetto, avvolto in carta colorata che raffigurava in sovra impressione New Orleans. Pepo trattenne il fiato quando la cugina, slegato il nastro e tolto l’involucro, mostrò il quadro. Non era un paesaggio, come aveva sospettato, ma il ritratto di un giovane sui trent’anni. «È tuo nonno» disse Carol, abbracciandolo. «Ho atteso che arrivasse qualcuno dalla Sicilia per darglielo». «Mio nonno?» fece Pepo. «Tutto potevo immaginare, tranne che avrei trovato un suo ritratto a New Orleans. I capelli con la riga, il naso, la fronte e gli occhi di mio padre! L’ho conosciuto da vecchio, ma è quello della pittura da giovane. Un metro e novanta, tanto era alto; ed era dotato di una forza non comune che conservò fino a tarda età. Gli anziani del paese ricordavano la competizione, nella quale riuscì a sbaragliare tutti, sollevando da terra una bisaccia di ceci di oltre cento chili. Io mi resi conto della sua vigoria, la volta che con una stretta alla gola bloccò la giumenta che stava per scaraventarmi a terra. “Sei già mezzo uomo” disse, “e non puoi farti fregare da un cavallo”. Evidentemente scherzava, ma io diventai rosso dalla vergogna. Alla fine mi poggiò la mano sulla testa e mi scombinò i capelli: la carezza di sempre. Avevo undici anni e il nonno più di ottanta».  Per tanti anni, il quadro era rimasto appeso a una delle pareti della casa di Nicola. A chi gli chiedeva chi fosse il giovane del ritratto, lui immancabilmente rispondeva: «E’ me frati», senza specificare se si trattasse di Paolo o di Lorenzo. «Sicuramente è il ritratto di mio padre» disse Carol, alla vista del quadro, anni dopo la morte di Nicola, suo zio. Lo appese a una delle pareti della stanza da letto e là rimase fino al giorno in cui lo staccò dal muro per darlo a Pepo. Fu Lory, figlia di Nicola, che viveva in California a chiarire l’enigma. «È zio Lorenzo» disse alla cugina che le mostrava il quadro, «il più piccolo dei fratelli Ginestra, un ritratto cui mio padre teneva moltissimo». «Non è mio padre» rispose, «è mio zio, suo fratello, lo guarderò con lo stesso affetto, come ho fatto finora». Carol non aveva conosciuto né il padre né lo zio, ma lasciò il quadro dove si trovava. Quel ritratto fu una delle tante sorprese del viaggio di Pepo a New Orleans, come quella di ritrovare un secolo dopo la casa dove era vissuto il nonno, tale e quale lui gliel’aveva descritta. Era stata la prima abitazione di Nicola e Paolo Ginestra, una casa di legno e muratura costruita un anno dopo il loro arrivo in quel posto. C’erano ancora gli attrezzi di lavoro usati dai tre fratelli per coltivare il loro pezzo di terra americana e c’erano tanti altri segni del loro passaggio in quei luoghi che diventarono per Lorenzo, costretto a tornare a Vallerosa, quelli della memoria. «Questo è Jack, Pepo, un tuo paesano» disse Aron Velaska, marito di Carol, nel presentare al cugino Jack Prestia. «Mio padre era di Vallerosa, io sono nato in America» si affrettò a precisare Jack. «Vedo che parli l’italiano» si congratulò Pepo. «Taliano? Il siciliano!  Nu poco di parole. Mio zio Frank, Cicciu, mi parlava sempri talianu. “Così quando visiti l’Italia e vai a Vallerosa, la gente ti capisce” mi diceva. Mio padre non l’ho conosciuto, è morto che io avevo tre anni: una disgrazia». «Come hai detto che ti chiami?». «Jack Prestia, Giacomo, come mio nonno Iapicu, bonarma. A Vallerosa, di Prestia non c’è più nessuno. L’ultimo fu mio zio Antony, morto quando aveva ventidue anni a causa della spagnola, l’influenza che ammazzò più cristiani della Grande guerra». «Prestia, Prestia» Pepo cercava di spremere quel nome dalla memoria. «Forse hai sentito parlare di ‘« ‘Ntoni “u voi”, Ntoni “u voi”» hai detto?». «Yes the cow, come si dice “u voi” in italiano?». «Il bue». «La ‘nciuria, the surname…». «Il soprannome».  «Si… glielo misero per la sua forza» raccontava mio zio. Un flash e un ritorno al passato, al nonno e alle tante storie che gli passavano davanti agli occhi, sequenze di un film che si chiamava infanzia. Fino a quel momento Ntoni “u voi” era stato soltanto un fantasma perso nella memoria, un eroe al contrario come tanti ce n’erano stati a Vallerosa. A un tratto finiva d’essere il personaggio di un racconto e diventava il parente di qualcuno in carne e ossa, che mai Pepo avrebbe pensato d’incontrare a New Orleans. Aron aveva parlato a Jack del cugino che arrivava da Vallerosa e lui, desideroso di avere quante più notizie possibili sul paese dove era nato il padre, fece a Pepo mille domande. Il suo era un tentativo di raffronto fra il paese del quale gli parlava lo zio e quello della realtà. Jack sapeva perfettamente da che parte stava la montagna e la campagna che apparteneva un tempo alla sua famiglia, così come conosceva esattamente in quale strada si trovava la casa del padre, la chiesa, la piazza con la fontana e perfino l’antica prigione della quale in paese s’ignorava perfino l’esistenza. Se mai un giorno avesse messo piede a Vallerosa, avrebbe avuto la sensazione netta di esserci già stato. Di Ntoni, fratello più piccolo del padre, Jack sapeva quello che gli aveva raccontato lo zio e Pepo in quell’occasione si guardò bene dal fare cenno alla sua tragica fine.

"The band on the street corner and O sole mio, played with jazz instruments by musicians of color, just in case you had not yet realized that you've arrived in New Orleans," Pepo said to himself. The taxi had dropped him one road before his destination, and now he was on foot. "No problem, I know how to get there," he'd replied to one of his relatives, who had offered to pick him up at the hotel. The restaurant was located in the French Quarter. Some of his relatives were waiting for him in the street. The band followed him even inside the restaurant. They all stood. Nobody missed the welcoming banquet. About sixty people, making up the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the Ginestra brothers, sat around the tables. It was a family reunion just like the old days. "Welcome!" rang out all around. He could not have expected a warmer welcome. Pepo, their cousin, was invited to sit between Carol and Lorraine, the daughters of Paolo and Nicola Ginestra. The tables, arranged in rectangles, occupied the whole room; the entire restaurant was for the Ginestra family. "Welcome to New Orleans, Pepo, welcome home!" "Welcome home!"   Pepo's eyes were moist.  “‘One day,' I'd said to my grandfather Lorenzo, 'I'm going to meet our relatives in New Orleans.' It took some time but I'm finally here." "Our joy is equal to the pleasure we feel to have you with us in New Orleans," Carol replied, "This is a moment that Nicola, Paolo, and Lorenzo would have surely dreamed of — and this evening, we've realized it." "Cheers!" Carol said, raising her glass. They were all standing, and in their glasses was Sicilian wine. Everything had been planned down to the last detail that evening — the food, the drinks, and even the music: the jazz band strummed the Sicilian tarantella along with Arrivederci, Roma, and Volare. "My grandfather was Lorenzo Ginestra" began Pepo. "Paolo, his brother, was my father," continued Carol. "And Nicola, the elder brother, was mine," said Lorraine. "Papà, as he wanted us to call him, often spoke of the brother who lived in Italy, and of the other who had died in New Orleans while still young. It happened while they were in the country. 'Nico, Nico,' he'd called ... my father ran ... to find Paolo clutching his chest with his hand ... 'I can’t breathe, can’t breathe ... I feel a crushing sensation in my chest ... my arm ... my arm ...' A couple of minutes later, Uncle Paolo had already died." "And my grandfather," said Pepo, "was convinced that Paolo had just forgotten about him." "I'll tell Lorenzo about the death of our brother in some time," Nicola had thought. He waited a month, then another, and another. In the end, he didn’t give the news to him at all. He had thought that he could save Lorenzo the sorrow of his brother's death that way. With the demise of Nicola and Paolo — the only ones who'd known how to read and write in Italian — the contact between the American and the Italian branches of the Ginestra family had ended. And now, almost a century had passed before their descendants had gotten the opportunity to meet.   The occasion had been triggered by Pepo Ginestra's trip to New Orleans.  "I believe I am one of your relatives," he'd said to Carol Ginestra Velaska, his cousin who was in New Orleans on the other side of the telephone. With these words, Pepo had gotten in touch with his past and with the Ginestras from New Orleans, the descendants of his grandfather’s brothers. In the past, his search for his American relatives had not been fruitful. But it had been successful this time, and so he'd left for New Orleans. He had his grandfather’s picture in his pocket and he was about to trace his steps. As the small plane on the screen in front of him lessened the distance to his final destination, his excitement grew. Then the stewardess asked the passengers to fasten their seat belts. Ten minutes later, Pepo was heading towards the exit with his suitcase in his hand. It did not take him long to recognize Carol and the other relatives who were waiting for him, and he did not need introductions. In the group, there were Americans of Italian, Jewish, and Portuguese origin, all in whose veins ran the Ginestra blood. Even though it wouldn’t have been necessary, that meeting served to strengthen the bonds of blood and affection that had bound them for more than a century. The welcome was warm, as only Sicilians can be; because their way of life was still Sicilian, even if their names had very little in common with the original ones. For Pepo, it was like going back to his childhood and to the America of his grandfather, who had arrived in New Orleans exactly a century before. Lorenzo had hugged his brothers then, and Pepo hugged their descendants now. It was like they had known each other forever. The Ginestra family had almost completely disappeared in Vallerosa, and had become extremely large in America. The love that had joined the fathers had been passed on to their children, who, now, met for the first time in New Orleans a hundred years later. Nicola had died at the age of 85 years. He had been filmed at a family reunion. He was sitting under an enormous American walnut tree, one of the hundreds he and his brother had planted. It was the last time all the Ginestras of New Orleans had gotten together on their farm. One of the boys who'd been present at the party lost his life in one of the battles in the Pacific a few years later; another drowned in the Mississippi during a sailing incident. The others, with the exception of Nicola’s older children, had all left the farm to go and live in the city. At the end of that evening — that unique and unforgettable reunion — Carol came out with a gift for Pepo: an extraordinary and unexpected surprise that could, on its own, justify his trip to New Orleans. It was a frame wrapped in colorful paper that was overprinted with a picture of New Orleans. Pepo held his breath as Carol untied the knots and removed the tape carefully, trying to protect the casing: It was a picture. Two things struck Pepo. One was that it was not a landscape, as he had thought at first, and the other was the fact that he was not the only one surprised by the contents — and that meant his cousin had not mentioned it to anyone.  It was an oval painting, beautifully framed, that portrayed a thirty-year-old man. "It's your grandfather," Carol said, hugging Pepo. "I've been waiting for someone to come from Sicily to give it to them." "My grandfather!" exclaimed Pepo, who was so surprised that he could not believe his eyes, turning the portrait in his hands. "I'd never imagined that I might find a portrait of my grandfather in New Orleans. In Vallerosa, when they spoke of portraits, they always thought of important people: aristocrats or priests. He was neither an aristocrat nor a priest; he was only a farmer. The last thing I would expect to find is his portrait in New Orleans. He was exactly as he is in the painting: fair complexion, rust-colored hair, blue eyes…"  Pepo kept staring at the figure and he words flooded out of him. He gave vent to all his feelings, almost as if he had waited a century to get them out. "The hair parted on the right, the nose, the forehead, and the eyes: all of them are those of my father, his son," continued Pepo. "He was an imposing figure, and he was equipped with a force that he kept even when he was old." "He was the strongest boy in Vallerosa," the elders of the town said; they were recalling a competition between the neighboring towns where he'd managed to lift a bag of almost a hundred kilograms of wheat off the ground. Pepo realized it was true when, one time, he stopped a rearing horse by catching it in a stranglehold, thereby preventing it from throwing his grandson of its back. "You are not a baby anymore," he said, "and you can’t be defeated by a horse." "He was joking, but I did not understand that and turned red with shame. In the end, he put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair. I was eleven at the time and grandfather was more than eighty." For many years, the painting remained hanging from one of the walls of Nicola's house. When anyone asked him who the young man in the portrait was, he invariably replied: "He's my brother," without specifying whether he was Paolo or Lorenzo. "Surely it’s the portrait of my father," said Carol at the sight of the picture, years after the death of Nicola, her uncle. She hung it in her bedroom, and there it had remained until she'd removed it from the wall to give to Pepo.  It was Lorry, one of Nicola’s daughters who lived in California, who had cleared up the mystery. "This is uncle Lorenzo," she'd told her cousin, who was showing her the picture, "the youngest of the three brothers; it was a portrait my father cared for a lot". "He's not my father," she'd answered, "but his brother, and my uncle, I will look upon him with the same affection as before." Carol had not known her father or her uncle, but she left the picture where it was.  That picture was one of the surprises of Pepo’s trip to New Orleans; just like the surprise of finding out, a century later, that the house where his grandfather had lived was exactly as he had described it. It had been Nicola and Paolo's first house: a wood and masonry house built a year after their arrival in that place. The working tools that had been used by the three brothers to cultivate their piece of American land were still there, and there were many other signs of their presence as well. In New Orleans, besides his relatives, Pepo also met many descendants of the first immigrants from his town, who had arrived in America between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. One of these descendants was Jack Prestia, who had been living in New Orleans for many years. Betty, his wife, had convinced him to leave New York and go to the South as soon as they got married; it was where she had been born. He worked in one of the naval yards of the city with Aron Velaska, an engineer of Polish origin who had married Carol Ginestra.  It was Aron who introduced him to the cousin who had arrived from Vallerosa. Jack, wanting to know as much as possible about the town where his father had been born and had wanted to visit before dying, asked Pepo a lot of questions. His father had died when he had been four years old, and it was his uncle who'd told him about Vallerosa. He was trying to compare the town he had in his mind — which his uncle had always talked to him about — with its reality. Pepo noticed that Jack knew the exact configuration of the streets and about the most important places in Vallerosa, and this pleasantly surprised him. He knew where the mountain was; where his father’s house was; where the piazza with the fountain and the church were; and he even knew the location of the old jail when nobody in the town actually remembered its existence. If Jack had gone to Vallerosa one day, he would have felt like he had already been there. "This is Jack," said Aron Velaska, in presenting Jack Prestia to his cousin. "My father was from Vallerosa, but I was born in America," he said quickly. "Do you speak Italian?”  "Italian? Sicilian! Just a few words." "What’s your name?" "Jack Prestia, but as far as I know, there is no one by that name in Vallerosa. The last one there with that name was my uncle Antony, who was twenty-two when he died, which, according to what my uncle told me, was due to the Spanish flu that killed more people than the Great War. "Pepo was trying to squeeze out that name from his memory. "Maybe you've heard of Ntoni u voi?" "Ntoni u voi?" "Yes, the ox, u voi, as they say in Sicily. They gave him this nickname due to his strength, my Uncle Frank told me.”  In a flash, Pepo had returned to his past, to his grandfather Lorenzo and the many stories he had heard, and he watched as those moments passed before his eyes: sequences of a movie called his childhood. Until that time, Ntoni u voi, the ox, was only a ghost lost in his memory; a hero to the contrary, as many had been in Vallerosa. Suddenly, someone who had once been a character in a story had now become someone’s flesh and blood relative. Someone Pepo would never have thought he would meet in New Orleans. Regarding his father's youngest brother's death though, Jack only knew what his uncle Frank had told him, and Pepo was careful not to mention anything about his uncle’s tragic end. .