Bella Ciao
Sunday May 24, 2009
“Radicondoli is like an island—to arrive here you must cross the sea,” my friend, Giovanna, once told me, quoting a poet friend. I knew immediately what her friend meant. Not only is the Tuscan countryside that surrounds this medieval village a sea of green farmland and woods, but the journey there is dreamlike, an enchanted road switching back on itself too many times to count, the turns mesmerizing and exacting. You must concentrate even as you lose track of where you are. The village appears at times, floating high on a hilltop, through openings in the trees, then vanishes again. We have driven there countless times since buying our house in 2001, but we never can keep track of the turns, or where we are.
Once we arrive, we enter a place between the worlds, where dreaming and waking are the same. Anything can happen.
On our last trip, we experienced an old world Primo di Maggio celebration. The first of May is the official beginning of the growing season as well as Labor Day in Italy. Everyone takes the day off. Women cook for days ahead, preparing tortes and biscotti and other confections as well as savory treats such as crostini and tripe. They set out thermoses of coffee and jugs of homemade wine and vin santo. The Radicondoli Filharmonica, a group of about fifteen of men and boys of assorted ages playing horns, woodwinds and percussion, practice for months to perfect their repertoire.
Even so, the sound teetered someplace between joyous cacaphony and haphazard perfection as they struck up at 7:00 AM and marched down Via Gazzei, the main street. They meandered through the village streets, and a growing procession of villagers followed—some with tape recorders and cameras, most carrying booklets of lyrics to the music, singing along and stopping to eat and drink at tables of food set out by the residents. The mood was exuberant even before the first cups of vin santo were drunk. Around 9:30, the now sizable mob of revelers stopped into La Pergola, the local pizzeria, to gobble up plates of tripe in tomato sauce that was so delicious, I almost forgot what I was eating.
After an hour of dissembled chiacchierare (I spirited off to Bar Nazionale with friends for caffe and gossip; children wearing their finest clothes posed for pictures and old people propped up their feet to recover before the next phase), the procession moved to the cemetery. They laid red carnations on the graves of war veterans and swept off the stones of departed loved ones while children frolicked and the anziani talked about old times, commingling tears with laughter and merriment. My friend Irma told me that she visits her husband Sergio’s grave daily, and showed me her mother’s well-tended stone, and also that of a local hero who is said to have personally captured Mussolini. As we talked in the glorious morning sun, I began to feel the presence of the departed villagers gathering with us to share in this town-wide love and joy fest. The band played until noon, then broke for the afternoon riposo and resumed at 4:00, leading the villagers out to the park on the edge of the village for a big town-wide picnic.
After dinner, the musicians dauntlessly struck up once more, playing several numbers in the park and finally marching back into the central piazza at 9:00 in the evening. When I finally wandered home, the last notes of Sventolerai Lassu (Oh Fly Up, a song about the Italian liberation) were still pulsing through the night sky.
It was an amazing event—completely non-commercial, everyone in the village involved, cooking, eating, singing and playing music. When we went to bed that night, several new songs were permanently embedded in our minds and yet another beautiful dreamscape recorded in our memories for the weeks and years to come. It was the last day of our trip.
We drove back across the sea the next morning, hours before the sun rose, on our way to Rome and our flight home. The joyous music of the first of May celebration stayed with me all the way home to San Diego. Even now I can still hear strains of “Bella Ciao” piping up was I drop off into sleep in my Coronado bedroom:
“Questa mattina mi sono alzato
o bella ciao bella ciao bella
ciao ciao ciao…”
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