He was a hearty fellow, twenty-two or-three years old, a good type of the Abruzzi peasant, plus the American expression.
“How long have you lived over there?”
“Since I was a leetle boy—eleven or twelve, I dunno.”
The doctor says that most of those who go out to America under the age of twenty take root in our country and stay there. Men of thirty only remain long enough to “make their pile,” coming back to Italy to grow old and spend it.
Roccaraso, September 28, 1898.
To Castel di Sangro this morning: a gay market-town set in a flowery meadow beside a small river widening below the bridge into a pond where the women were washing clothes. I thought I recognized a pink shirt being beaten between two stones as one of J.’s, which Elena ought to have herself washed. Her aunt lives here. Perhaps she is a washerwoman! We were puzzled by the name, Castel di Sangro,—the castelli are all hill towns,—till we learned that the inhabitants several hundred years ago deserted the original Castel di Sangro, perched on a hill even harder to climb than Roccaraso’s, and moved, bag and baggage, down to the plain and founded the present town. The fibre of the race had softened since the founders built that crumbling castello! We climbed to the top; the view was well worth the stiff walk. The old town is now a city of the dead. Long lines of black numbered crosses mark the graves. Where they stopped a wide, deep open trench began. An old fellow, a sort of rustic sacristan, who had come up to clean the church, was the only person in sight.
“What is that trench for?” we asked him.
“’Gnor, who can tell which of us it may serve as a bed? In summer we prepare for winter; when the earth is frozen hard we cannot break her crust to bury the dead.” He went back to the church and began to toll the bell.
Looking down, we saw a funeral procession like that in Siegfried climbing slowly up the narrow, steep mountain path. We went down by a steep track on the other side to avoid meeting it.
We lunched at the inn; J. ordered trout (the stream is alive with them), which were served pickled! Everything else was very good. It was a market day, and the town was full of people; one dealer wished to sell us a horse, another offered a cow with a crumpled horn. Everywhere the women were busy making conserva di pomodoro; outside the windows of nearly every house were wooden bowls full of mashed tomatoes evaporating in the sun. This conserve is the staple condiment of Italian cooking, as necessary as butter or Parmesan cheese. The tomatoes are reduced to a stiff red paste, which keeps indefinitely and is used to make tomato sauce, to dress risotto, spaghetti, carciofi, served in every conceivable way. Being so concentrated it makes a much richer sauce than you can get from canned tomatoes. When we got back to Roccaraso we found that Vittoria had begun to prepare our winter supply of conserva—it takes days to make it. This gives the house a pervasive fragrance of “golden apples” and produces a comfortable sense of household thrift.