Italian Tales: Stories of the Mezzogiorno

By Linda Cardillo

Family honor, jealousy, curses and retribution. From mountain villages in the Mezzogiorno to immigrant neighborhoods in America, healers, matriarchs and defiant daughters endure the somber shadows of resentment and suspicion to shape their own victories. Giulia Fiorillo, the youngest daughter in a prominent family in her village, learns from both her mother and her grandmother the divergent ways in which a woman can triumph in a challenging world. In another village, Fiammetta Navarra holds onto a treasure filled with bitter memories and transforms it into a life-changing gift.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bellastoria Press
• Release date: Dec 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959102267

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ISBN: 978-1959102267

Italian Tales: Stories of the Mezzogiorno

Copyright © 2021, 2023 by Linda Cardillo

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Bellastoria Press, P.O. Box 60341, Longmeadow, MA 01106.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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L’Ete by James Tissot

A work in the public domain

BELLASTORIA PRESS

P.O. Box 60341

Longmeadow, Massachusetts 01116

To my grandmother and my great-grandmother,

the women who came before me

and absorbed the sunlight and shadows of the Mezzogiorno

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Table of Contents

Victory Parade

Buon Natale

Caterina’s Birthright

Fiammetta’s Earrings

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Victory Parade

It was April when Stephano Bosca, the regional giudice di pace from Avellino, arrived in my village and sat in the main hall of the palazzo communale to hear local cases as he did every spring. For Venticano, it was the time of year when the accumulated resentments of the winter—barely contained in stifling, overcrowded kitchens and the hazy corners of Auteri’s bar—spilled out in the makeshift courtroom of the palazzo and, ultimately, onto the piazza.

Everyone knew that Elvira Tucci had given birth to a baby boy in February. She had taken no pains to disguise her belly or hide in her mother’s hovel as her condition became more apparent. Instead, she had displayed herself in much the same way she had done before she became pregnant. Even with the extra weight in her last few months, she still turned the heads of the men as she ambled past them clustered outside of Auteri’s, or raised the eyebrows of the housewives as Aniello, the butcher’s apprentice, slipped an extra pork loin in her package. She had money enough to pay for the meat, money that the housewives suspected was coming from someone’s husband.

After the baby was born, Elvira dressed herself in black and her son in white and brought him to the church on the first Sunday after Easter to be baptized.

Don’t visit the sins of his parents on this innocent, she told the old priest, who poured the water and gave the boy his first name while the donnas of the village pretended to click their rosary beads. The following week, when she carried the child into the palazzo communale on the first morning of Bosca’s arrival, it was the baby’s last name that she was seeking.

It did not take long for the clerk who was recording the petitions to send a messenger to my father’s house. However, Papa had already departed for his daily journey to Napoli.

It was Mama who saw Guillermo Nardozzi through the muffled light of her parlor curtains, who saw the purple-red seal of the court on the papers in his hand, and who moved swiftly and decisively to intercept my Zia Pasqualina and answer the door before Guillermo had even lifted the knocker.

She impassively signed the multiple receipts that Guillermo held crumpled in his arthritic left hand and slipped the summons into the pocket of her dress. Without lifting her eyes to acknowledge them, she knew that her neighbors had not let the messenger’s arrival pass unnoticed. As quickly as she had greeted Guillermo, my mother dismissed him, closed the door, and retreated to her bedroom.

Once behind its locked door, my mother withdrew the summons from her pocket and sliced through the seal with