Thursday, August 25, 2022

My Great Grandfather, the "Macaroni Boy"

 The morning after she arrives, Leah wakes up confused. She can hear a cuckoo bird, singing over and over again. Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo. When has she ever heard a cuckoo bird before? She never even knew they existed, apart from wooden birds on Swiss clocks.

She lays there staring into the sky. The sun isn't up yet, because the sky is grey blue. She picks up her cell phone. It's 6:25 in the morning. For her, it's 12:25. She yawns. And then it hits her. She's here in Volpaia, and she has a job to do. 


Inhaling, she sits up. Swings her legs out of the bed. The innkeeper had told her that she was free to come to the kitchen for "un cafe" after 6 a.m. So she dresses and heads to the kitchen, where she finds Giovanni, the innkeeper, sitting on a stool at a metal counter, listening to opera.

Buongiorno, she says, and he returns the greeting. He gets up from the stool and picks up the metal coffee pot -- Noni's got the same one at home-- and he pours her a cup of thick dark coffee. She needs sugar and milk and he provides both.

"Grazie," she says, and she's about to leave the kitchen balancing the full cup on a saucer when Giovanni speaks.

"And what will your day be like today, Miss Galietti?"

Leah stops. Blinks. Thinks hard. How is she supposed to answer that question? Truthfully? She figures, what the hell, she may as well tell him why she's here.

"Well, Giovanni, I once had family in this village," she begins. "And my grandmother back in Massachusetts is very anxious for me to find out more about them."

"Ah, I see," he says, nodding up and down. "Do you have any clues where to begin?" 

"Well," she says, setting the coffee on the counter. "I do...and I don't." 

Giovanni responded swiftly.

"How ambitious a project that will be," he said. He smiled at her. "Perhaps I might be of help to you?"

Leah's heart started beating faster. "Oh, would you?" she asked. "That would be so wonderful, because I truly don't know where to begin."

He smiled. "I would be more than happy to talk to you about your family history project," he said. In Italian, we would call it 'uno progetto genealogico.' In a few minutes I will have to get breakfast for the guests, but afterward, when everyone disappears at 10 a.m. I will sit down with you to talk about your family."

Leah feels like a wind has come up and she's been lifted three feet off the floor. "I am so grateful," she said.

As she carried her coffee back to her room, Leah told herself she couldn't possibly have gotten more lucky.

*****

At breakfast, she sat at a table with a family from California. A mother and father, and one young girl about nine years old. They had been in northern Italy for two weeks and were now headed to Rome. They exchanged pleasant conversation, and Leah even volunteered why she had come here to Volpaia.

"My ancestors are from this village," she said, "and my grandmother has asked me to do some research on one ancestor in particular, her father, my great grandfather."

"Oh how exciting," said the woman, whose name was Donna. Trim, with her blonde hair in a ponytail, she was wearing a tennis outfit, which was strange, because there were no tennis courts at the inn.

"Yes, it is exciting, but also a little intimidating, as I don't speak Italian." But Leah was feeling so much more positive about things, as Giovanni's enthusiasm earlier in the morning had given her reason to think she might be able to go forward.

She sat down with him a little past ten.

"Va bene," he began. "Tell me about your ancestors. What are their names?"

Leah inhaled. "So my great grandfather was Pasquale Orzo, and his mother's name was Philomena Scrivano."


Right away, Giovanni's thick black eyebrows -- threaded in grey -- rose in surprise. 

"I have heard that name, Scrivano," he said. "The family has figured very prominently in Volpaia's history. As for the Orzo name, I have only heard the story of the "macaroni boy," or in Italian, "Il ragazzo maccheroni." But honestly, I never thought that such a child actually existed! Always before this I thought it was just a story. And now isn't it curious," he said, rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger, "that mother and son had different surnames!"

Leah inhaled. She might as well lay it all out on the table. "Yes, well, you see, Giovanni, according to my grandmother, her father, my great grandfather, was illegitimate," Leah said. She paused. "And the way the story goes, he was given the last name Orzo by some official in the village.  He was raised by another woman, whose name was Annunziata Sessa. Later when he emigrated to the United States, he made the trip with a young man named Salvatore Sessa, so we can assume that he was raised by that family.

Giovanni is shaking his head. "I see. That makes sense. It would explain where the story of the "macaroni" child came from. And when was he born?"

"I believe he was born in 1873," Leah replied.

He studied her for a moment. "Well, so, all I can tell you about your great grandfather is that his name became a source of laughter and also how do you say it, a warning in our village.  When children -- how do you say it? When they misbehaved, parents would say, 'you don't want to end up like the macaroni child, do you?' Because we knew that he was sent away from the village for misbehaving. Or at least that's what we thought."

Leah is stunned. Her poor great grandfather! What a terrible burden to lay on a child, a child who was innocent of any wrongdoing! She is at a loss for words. But after a moment, she speaks.

"I am just heartbroken hearing this story, Giovanni," she says. Thinking about him as a little boy, she actually feels tears rising up behind her eyes. "But I have a question: Do you know if there are members of the Scrivano family still living in Volpaia?"

Giovanni nods his head. "Yes and no. There are two brothers who maintain the family's villa up in the mountains above the town. But they are very wealthy and they do not live here year-round."

"Where do they live?"

Giovanni smiled. "I am not certain, but I have heard tell that they have a home on the island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, and another villa in the south of Italy on the coast near Bari."

"Wow," Leah says. "How lovely it is to have money!"

Giovanni laughed. "Si, si, how true, it's true no matter what language you speak!"

By the time Leah left the kitchen, it was almost noon. She had been taking notes the whole time Giovanni was speaking, and now she was going out on the front lawn of  the inn with her laptop to transcribe her notes.

As she walked to her room, she realized that she had forgotten to ask Giovanni an important question. She knew that the name Scrivano translated into the English word "scribe." She wanted to ask if Philomena's family had acted as scribes sometime during history. Also, she failed to ask another important question: how did the Scrivano family make so much money?