Page 47
CHAPTER SEVEN
I am leaving for Potenza in the afternoon! I am nine years old. I have a new suit, of nice soft material, long trousers, a regular vest with pockets and a belted jacket. My shoes are of patent leather, buttoned on the side. My older brother gazes at me with admiration, but without envy. My mother has stuffed a valise with shirts, woolen underwear, hand knitted socks, biscuits, apples and dried figs. She cautions me to watch out for the carriages when crossing the streets in Potenza, as they go very fast. When I leave, she keeps a brave front and makes me feel that I am already a little man.
My father is filled with unconcealed pride. Together we start for the station. The express train is two hours late, but who cares! When it pulls into the station, I am almost terrified by its size and deafening noise.
We climb aboard the third class, with straight wooden benches which I find quite comfortable. We start with a violent jerk and, before I realize it, we are speeding across the valley and plunging into the darkness of the first tunnel. As we come into the light again, I see the first town on a peak. A scenery of more mountains and narrow gorges in unveiled before my startled eyes. Even the stifling smoke of the locomotive is like incense to my nostrils. Shocks and bumps are not sensed at all. I am now part of that wondrous, thunderous carrier of new life and civilization. The story of the magic carpet is a living reality.
After a ride of over an hour, we are at the end of our trip, the station of Potenza, with a covered platform and a large, well-lighted restaurant opening onto it. Outside the station the hack drivers make a terrific bedlam, bidding for the few passengers and cracking their whips with lightning agility.
We get into one of the cabs and, boy, how it flies! This is also my first buggy ride and I am breathless. The road is wide and smooth, bordered…
Page 48
…by luxuriant truck gardens, neatly terraced right up to the top of the ridge, over which sprawls lazily the town of Potenza.
We enter from the northern end, Porta Salsa, and cross the main avenue, Corso Pretorio, solidly paved with flagstones, flanked by stores with all sorts of attractive wares, behind large lighted windows. Carriages dodge each other; people move about without apparent concern. Buildings are two, three and four stories high, some with long balconies, all in nice symmetry and with imposing entrances.
We are at the other end of the town. It seems a little desolate. We stop at an arched doorway, go up one flight of stone steps and enter an apartment which is to be my abode for the next two years.
A slender old lady, dressed in black, greets us expansively. She is the widow of Diego Boccedi, a captain who fought with Garibaldi in the battles of the Italian Risorgimento. Being a former school teacher, the widow gives me assurance of her guidance and protection.
After a short stay, my father goes to a hotel for the night as he must return home on an early train. His last remark is: “Antoniuccio” (diminutive for Anthony) “I am sure you will pass the examination with high marks. Everyone in town will be waiting for that.” At the age of nine I am expected to uphold the prestige of family and town!
The next morning, my landlady takes me to the famous school building, Regio Convitto Salvator Rosa. It is a large structure facing a spacious cobblestone square. From a lofty archway we go up several wide steps into a walled courtyard. A few more wide steps and we are in a waiting room, from where a uniformed attendant leads us into the office of the president, a venerable gentleman with flowing side whiskers. He frown slightly at my age and size, but is most kindly in giving me preliminary instructions.
The examinations lasted a full week. A couple of days later, a bulletin with the names of the successful pupils and their respective marks, was posted in the foyer of the school, a little too high for me to read. When one of the older boys said that my name was not listed, I went into a fit of sobs and tears. There was loud laughing around me and I hard someone say that Campagna was second on the list, in the order of the examination rating. Reassured that it was true, I thanked the good…
Page 49
…Lord from the bottom of my heart and immediately dispatched a telegram to my parents. The first battle had been won!
My father came to see me early the following day, out of himself from joy. My boarding was arranged for the school year.
The boarding place accommodated six guests, of whom I was the youngest by several years, the next boys being twelve to fourteen years of age. The other two boarders were adults in civil service employment. We slept all in one room. The beds were lined four on one side and two on the other. At the far corner of the room was a large round table which served for dining and studying. At the foot of the respective bed, each of us had a trunk or wooden box, valises and other articles being shoved under the bed.
Our room was lighted by a casement window running to the floor and opening onto a little balcony, from which a view of the country could be enjoyed, although obstructed in part by a massive jail a few hundred feet across. Every morning and every evening the heavy window grilles of the jail were tested by hammer blows, to detect any possible dullness in the ringing. Each inspection lasted perhaps an hour.
The ground floor of the jail was surrounded by a narrow terrace, over which three armed soldiers paced up and down all day and all night, in four hour shifts. Through the night the sentries gave each other a loud drawling call, every fifteen minutes. This was the round of the calls: First: Alerta sentinella! (Sentry, alert!); second: alerta (alert); third: alerta io sono! (alert I am!)
After the first period of jitters, I became accustomed to the clanging inspections and the howling sentries.
For washing, we had two sets of jugs, portable basins and pails. The toilet facilities were furnished by a sunken stone privy, reached from a little open court, with no way of flushing it except by the emptying of our pails of dirty water and occasional rains.
*****
The first gymnasium class was composed of about fifty pupils. I was assigned a place far in the back; but, by raising my hand at every question, I earned my way to the front row. I got along well with the…
Page 50
…various teachers, except a grumpy, ruddy-faced priest who taught Latin. I reported my difficulties to my landlady who promptly went to register a vigorous protest with the school principal.
That made things worse. But, to my relief, the priest was stricken by apoplexy and everything went smoothly “ever after.”
Of course, the Boccedi residence had a dismal atmosphere, in addition to its physical drawbacks, but I never complained. The old lady wore a wig which she sometimes forgot to put on, exposing a repulsive yellow scalp. One of the daughters suffered from a suppurating condition of the parotid glands, requiring frequent incisions. Around her neck she wore heavy wads of cotton and bandages. The smell of carbolic acid was always in the air. The Boccedi son had a chronic eye disease that had burned his eyelids. During the second year I contracted the infection and, every night for months, I had to plaster my eyes with a sticky pomade, but I finally recovered.
To the tender-hearted who will probably shudder at the callousness of my parents in committing a child to such an unhealthy lodging, I must answer:
- Sanitation is relative to general circumstances. In that very period, I understand New York City had large sectors of five and six story tenements, with common privies in back-yards.
- I always made my parents believe that I was happy.
- My education was an expensive luxury, as indicated by the fact that I was the only one from my town receiving a secondary education. Tuition, books and all accessories had to be paid for; rents even then were steep in the larger towns of Italy, owing to the high birth rate and limited housing. Moreover, I had twelve years to go, with yearly increasing costs, and I knew that my father had to strive to see me through.
At any rate, if not happy, I was satisfied. My determination to learn and please my parents made any discomfort insignificant. Other boys enjoyed better things, but material differences never bothered me at any time.
Next: Chapter 8
