The Pillars of Hercules

Now, twelve years later, the old woman was almost certainly dead, but that compelling description roused me. What about the rest of them? What of the village itself which is such a strong presence in Carlo Levi’s book? There were other details that I wondered about, too. For example, there was a fascinating description in the book of a church at the nearby village of Sant’Arcangelo which contained the actual horns of a dragon. People went to look at the horns. The dragon had terrorized the whole region: “it devoured the peasants, it carried off their daughters, filled the land with its pestiferous breath, and destroyed the crops.” The strongest lord of the region, Prince Colonna of Stigliano, had the encouragement of the Virgin Mary (“Take heart, Prince Colonna!” the Virgin said). He slew the dragon, and cut off its head and built the church to enshrine the dragon’s horns.

From Metaponto I could easily reach Sant’Arcangelo and see the dragon’s horns. It was only about fifteen miles to Aliano. And I was lucky to have chosen to get off at Metaponto, because in the summer it welcomed tourists, and although the summer was far off, there were facilities here that did not exist in the places I had come through.

By the time I had found a car to rent, the day was almost gone.

“You can see the ruins,” Mr. Gravino said.

“I want to drive to Aliano.”

“It’s a very small place,” he said. “You might be disappointed.”

“If it is very small I will be very happy,” I said.

I spent the night in Metaponto and early the next morning drove up the flat valley to Pisticci and Stigliano (where the dragon-slayer had lived) and beyond. It was a sunny day, and there were green fields beside the shrunken river, and yet the sense of remoteness here was powerful, not merely because the region was so rural and empty, but more because of the condition of the houses, which looked very poor and neglected. A branch line train had once run through here but it was gone and the stations were ruined. Many houses were in a state of disrepair, many had been abandoned. It was that look of old Ireland you see in book plates that show the effects of the potato famine—collapsed roofs, dead animals, weedy fields. This was also a region that many people had migrated from and no one else had moved in to reoccupy. It was both the prettiest and certainly the poorest area I had seen so far in the Mediterranean.

It was also a land almost without signposts, and the signs that existed were unhelpful, directing me to the road for the distant cities of Potenza and Salerno.

I saw three men on an embankment and when I slowed down I saw that they carried long worn poles. They were goatherds, two old men and a young man in his twenties. Their goats were grazing in the meadow just below the road.

“I am looking for Aliano.”

“Up there.”

They indicated a cluster of old buildings on a crest of a steep dry hill.

Then I asked them about their goats—was there enough grazing here?—just small talk, because I wanted to hear their voices, I wanted to study their faces. They were as Levi described the peasants hereabouts—short, dark, with round heads, large eyes, thin lips. “Their archaic faces do not stem from the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, Normans, or any of the other invaders who have passed through their land, but recall the most Italic types.” He goes on: “They have led exactly the same life since the beginning of time, and History has swept over them without effect.”

Aliano exactly crowned the hill. I had not expected it to be so high up, but of course the height of a village here did not indicate its importance. The poorer and weaker peasants put their villages in these almost inaccessible places. All around it was dry light-brown soil, and some olive trees with grayish leaves and gnarled trunks, and tussocky grass.

A narrow winding road led to the summit and, climbing it, I could see that the village was not at the top of the hill, but rather spread on the ridge between two steep ravines.

Ahead, an old woman laden with two pails, a shovel, and a bag of freshly picked spinach was laboring up the road. She wore a kerchief on her head, and a black skirt, and an apron—the uniform of the peasant in the deep south of rural Italy. I slowed down and saw that she was perspiring, gasping from the effort of carrying all that paraphernalia.

“Please, I am looking for the house of Dr. Levi.”

“It is on the other side of the village.”

“Far?”

“Yes. Very far.”

“Do you want a ride?”

“No,” she said, not out of pride or obstinacy, I guessed, but because of the impropriety of it. She was a poor old woman carrying more than she could manage, but still it was wrong for her to ride with a strange man. Levi had something to say about that too. As a young unmarried man he had to be careful not to cause a scandal by appearing to compromise the virtue of an Aliano woman. That meant he could never be alone with any woman.