Sometime Kin: Layers of Memory, Boundaries of Ethnography 9781789203400

Citation preview

Sometime Kin

Sometime Kin Layers of Memory, Boundaries of Ethnography

Sandra Wallman

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2020 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2020 Sandra Wallman All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wallman, Sandra, author. Title: Sometime kin : layers of memory, boundaries of ethnography / Sandra Wallman. Description: New York : Berghahn, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019034512 (print) | LCCN 2019034513 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789203394 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789203400 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology--Italy--Bellino. | Participant observation. | Ethnology--Fieldwork. | Bellino (Italy)--Social life and customs. Classification: LCC DG975.B385 W35 2020 (print) | LCC DG975.B385 (ebook) | DDC 945/.13--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034512 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034513 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78920-339-4 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-340-0 ebook





For my children, Efua, Simon, Maia and Julian – as they were and as they are – and for W. of course.

 Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements xi Introduction Chapter 1. Perspectives

1 11

Chapter 2. Setting

19

Chapter 4. Population

61

Chapter 3. Boundaries Chapter 5. Children Chapter 6. School

Chapter 7. Money and Property Chapter 8. Work

Chapter 9. Animals Chapter 10. Marie

Chapter 11. Caterina

39 71 81 85 93

103

110 119

Chapter 12. Margherita

129

Chapter 14. Twenty-Five Years On

152

Chapter 13. Martin

140

Ethnographer’s Epilogue

156

Cast of Characters

160

Glossary of Terms and Expressions

162

Bibliography

168

Index

171

 Illustrations Figures   0.1 Bellino – Celle village.   0.2 Our family complete.

  0.3 ‘The arrival of four children’.

xii

2 5

  2.1 Maps of the valleys Varaita, Maira and Grana, with Bellino situated.

20

  2.3 Ancient arch and murals.

22

  2.2 Village oven and the back of the baker’s house.   2.4 Flat stone support structure.

  2.5 Stone plaque on a wall near the Church.   2.6 Our house, rented from Battista.   3.1 Simon with ‘the little nun’.

  3.2 Giaco Trous, with wife Maddelena and son Antonio.   3.3 Margherita takes a break with W.   4.1 Effects of out-migration.

  5.1 Games day: village children lined up to bash the piñata.   5.2 Efua.

  5.3 Simon.   5.4 Maia.

  5.5 Julian.

  6.1 Handwritten extract from Renato’s school essay.   8.1 The Annual Cycle of Work.

  8.2 Her husband is injured so Felicina drives the tractor.   8.3 Carrying a fàscio of hay from high field to low barn.

21

23

26 31

49

52 53

67 72 74 75 76 77

82

94 95

97

Illustrations • ix

  8.4 Saints’ Day, San Spirito parish (Celle).

101

12.1 Margherita poses outside her house.

128

  9.1 Cows in passeggiata to regain their strength after winter. 13.1 Martin’s daughter Caterina with the mule ready for the climb.

108

146

Tables   4.1 Demographically significant periods of the twentieth century. 63   4.2 Deaths of Bellinesi men during World War II.   4.3 Place and date of birth of ‘Don Ruffa’s nuns’.

64

65

 Acknowledgements This book is built on the patient hospitality of the Bellinesi and the forbearance of my family. I apologise to anyone who feels themselves misrepresented in it; my hope is that my version of each person’s story comes close to what they meant. I thank all of them for the experience described in these pages. Sometime Kin would not have happened without the encouragement of readers and staff at Berghahn, and the help received from Ralfos Bakolas and Tomoko Hayakawa at various points during the preparation of the manuscript.

Figure 0.1  Bellino – Celle village. Photograph by the author.

 Introduction This book is based on fieldwork which took place many years ago. Its focus is Bellino – Blins in the local dialect – set at the top of the Vale Varaita in the Italian Alps above Cuneo. Bellino is a localised political unit, called a comune in Italian. My account1 covers a specific period in its long history. Some features of it are common across the Alps, but each comune has its unique character – or is assigned that character by the interests and emphases of the person writing the story.2 Hence this account of Bellino reflects my own history and is coloured by other things happening in my life at the time. There are two essential stages in the ethnographic process. First, in the field, we ‘write down’ what we have seen and heard and felt in some form of journal. Since this usually happens at the end of a long day we are in effect ‘writing down’ what we remember of the day’s events. Second, usually back at base, we ‘write up’ those journal notes to challenge or to fit the framework of a particular theory or research question. This it is the harder part; it involves comparing and combining our findings with other people’s ‘written up’ accounts. Most often it is only the second stage exercise which is published; field notes may be archived and made available to selected future researchers, but they are seldom put on public view.3 Here, however, because my aim is to unpack the layers that make up ethnography I have included first stage field notes in this published account, neat, to provide background and context for the (second stage) analysis. I use two devices to help the separate layers of ethnography leak into each other. One is that, wherever possible, the data are reported as they were given to me by individual informants; the reality of – say – cows is different for each of them and more faithfully represented by their separate ‘cow stories’ (Non-English terms and colloquial phrases which appear in the text are translated in the Glossary at the back of the book.) The other device is more telling: the journal excerpts are selected from voluminous notebooks because they make most explicit reference to the presence and ethnographic significance of

2 • Sometime Kin

my four children, in the field with me throughout. They are crucial to the account since they gave me extra access to the practicalities of living and the nuances of affect in Bellino, and without them the significance of my gender would have been quite different:4 I would have been just another academic tourist from the lowlands, lacking crucial connective social tissue and quite without serietà – i.e. without the gravity demanded of a ‘proper’ woman. The connectedness of the two layers is underlined by pairing the ‘written up’ and ‘not-written-up’ parts in alternating sequence. Each segment of field notes relates to events or themes of the ‘written up’ chapter preceding it – thus, for example, the chapter called ‘Boundaries’ is followed by journal entries which relate, at least implicitly, to ‘inclusions and exclusions’; notes following the biographical case studies of Marie, Margherita, Caterina and Martin (Chapters 11-14) are the fieldworker’s not-written-up back story, describing occasions of my own and my children’s interaction with each of their households. The Blins study is the only one of many field projects in which my ‘family of procreation’ played a central and continuous part. It is also the only one to have languished unpublished for so long, even though the experience of it has stayed warm on the back burner of my mind over all the years: not only warm because glowing, but also warm like a splinter under the skin. When finally I came to writing it ‘up’, the ambiguity

Figure 0.2  Our family complete. Photograph by the author.

Introduction • 3

of the personal subtext stood out. At the same time the uniqueness of it had faded. On the evidence of solo fieldwork since, I see that the extra ambiguity of the Bellino experience was only that, extra. There is always a degree of it: the contradiction implied in the very notion of participant observation makes that plain. But looking back I remember that my awareness of ambiguity has varied with my closeness to the people under study – at its greatest when the research played out in multiplex relationships across the anthropologist-informant divide. As the context of ethnographic encounter grew deeper and more layered, so the ambiguity index mounted. In Bellino the family presence made the line between professional and personal identities extra fuzzy5 and its ambiguities extra sharp. How firm can the personal-professional boundary be when children insist on negotiating it? How uniplex are my relationships with women who feed and protect my children as they would their own? What context, whose context are we in when I react to my children spitting at each other? Or when the eldest is mocked at school for lack of Italian and someone’s father comes to weep with us when he hears about it? It all happened a long time ago. Now all the contexts are different. The children have become adults, some have children of their own. I am older, inevitably. Less obviously, so is social anthropology: its emphasis and assumptions now are not what they were then, and the anthropological writer – the writer as anthropologist6 – has more right, as well as more obligation, to spell out the ambiguities of the research enterprise. I do not for a moment claim that the presence/absence of family in the field is the difference that makes most difference to ethnography. I know that in Bellino the discomfiture of all of us was eased by the fact of my being ordinarily preoccupied with family livelihood, but I also know that no magical insight comes with mothering or the practice of housework in difficult conditions. I made three trips to Bellino between 1971 and 1974. They lasted ten weeks, six months and six weeks respectively, and were followed by a short visit twenty-five years later. It is important that the experience described and the detail reported pertain to that past. The present tense, where it occurs in the text, is an ethnographic present, although it is largely the actual present which colours my interpretation. This, I will argue, is part of the point. The first trip was to collaborate in a multi-disciplinary study of adaptation to Alpine conditions.7 My brief was to analyse the sociology of the marriage system. Biological anthropologists had proposed that the frequency of isonymy – i.e. of spouses with the same pre-marriage

4 • Sometime Kin

surname – was evidence of close kin endogamy and (so) of a genetically unsound mating strategy.8 Some among them felt this ‘explained’ the comune’s ‘inability’ to take up modern life. At the time this hypothesis was not unfashionable in biological and demographic discourse (scientists then spoke more glibly of the ‘backwardness’ of rural/ isolated/alien peoples than they do today) and I was glad of the chance to challenge it. The key turned out to be a second series of family names which, being unofficial and formally invisible, had been left out of account by the biologists. Analysis of this soprannóme system showed it to be a prior indicator of blood ties and, importantly, the normal basis on which assessments of marriageability in the community were made. Every Bellinese has one;9 marriage of people with the same soprannóme is avoided and extremely rare. It was soon clear that the frequency of isonymy occurred only in the official naming system and the inbreeding conclusion did not hold. On the second and third trips, I took these issues further and wider, beyond the biologists’ programme, looking for other ways to explain the curious resilience of Bellino in conditions which, even then, were rare in Europe. The question resonated with work I had previously done on ‘non-development’ in Lesotho, Southern Africa (‘How come a region, country or, as in this case, a particular Alpine comune, resists the pressures of modernisation?’);10 and with social boundary theory – then new, but still now useful to think with11 (‘What logic sustains the boundary between “us” and “them”?’ ‘What accounts for boundary shift?’). My hunch was that the unusual closed-ness and apparent backwardness of Bellino might better be explained along these lines. I have pursued that hunch in Chapter 3, detailing the soprannóme system as an element in Bellino’s curious boundary structure. Here its significance is in underlining the distance between the local community and the nation state – between official and unofficial norms. During the first visit of 1971 I went alone with the four children, then aged between two and six. Their father, ‘W’ in the text, stayed in Toronto to finish other work. Of that trip he remembers only four small backs retreating into an aeroplane, each with a stitched-on label to show name, flight numbers and destination address, ‘just in case’. In 1973 and again in 1974 he came with us, officially as a research entomologist. In decades of a dual career marriage, these trips are the only ones in which we achieved research projects in the same place at the same time. The effect was profound: his presence raised the family morale, its physical wellbeing and its status in the community at a stroke. As the children felt it and the Bellinesi saw it, we were now a proper family.

Introduction • 5

We never, of course, functioned as local families do, particularly in relation to the environment. The second trip was planned to extend into and through the winter of 1973/4, but it was not possible for us to organise living conditions essential to the survival of young children in the Alpine winter. We lacked the cows necessary to sustain heat in the house we lived in and could not reasonably expect to acquire them. Without cows of our own we could only survive as lodgers, and there was no local family with scope to absorb a surplus of six, however eager they were to take us in. So we retreated to a softer and warmer season in a solid Dutch house outside Utrecht, the six of us pursuing our various academic projects in relatively great luxury. The thrill of crisp sheets and shiny floors carried the children through the challenge of yet another foreign language. When spring came we went back up to Blins for a third period, shorter but more intense than the first two. I have often regretted that the exigencies of livelihood made it impossible for us to overwinter in Blins, but there is some profit in having been forced to learn what those exigencies are. Underlying it all is the difficulty of distinction between ‘age effect’ (I think differently because I am older) and ‘cohort effect’ (women who are now the age I was then construct their lives differently because the world has changed). The reader may be better placed than I am to see

Figure 0.3  ‘The arrival of four children’. Photograph by the author.

6 • Sometime Kin

which effect is in play when. However, one development, probably involving both, needs to be noted. When I originally came up with the title Sometime Kin, I was thinking of the centuries of recorded genealogy of Blins and of its two naming systems; of the fluidity of kin ties and obligations everywhere;12 and of the up and down migrations of Bellinesi to Turin and Perpignan. One generation on, its meaning for me has expanded. Now the ‘sometime kinship’ of the title refers also to the shifting roles and attachments of the family which I continue to call my own, and which I am glad to be able to acknowledge with this book.

 First Contact As the Bellinesi saw it, the most significant feature of the first research season was the sudden arrival of four children. People told each other how beautiful they were. They might be from the south, except that they speak only English. They run about a lot. ‘Con fòrza’. The person with them is less interesting; apparently the mother, but not so dark and speaks Italian. There is no father. Perhaps it is an asilo come up for the air? The priest learns that there is a father and that he is working away. Also that the children are not Catholic, poor creatures. The nuns are encouraged to enfold them and they convey the non-verbal externals very easily. The children learn that when they genuflect the nuns will smile and give them sweets. For the priest himself their mother’s education and her status with the Torino professori are more promising. He wants to establish a common ground for conversation but finds the lack of religion to be in the way… Not even a Protestant? Only half a Jew? … The problem is solved after a week or so when he learns that the children, all of whom are of mixed race and some of whom are foundlings, can be taken as evidence of a natural Christian spirit. He is sure that no one with such a commitment to children can be godless or frivolous. From this point, interaction with both men and women is easier, but it is still careful. There are few jokes, no banter, certainly no sexual allusions of any kind. Anyway ordinary interaction is impeded by hay-making on one side, domestic chores and food getting on the other. Publicly, everyone is in a hurry. The longest conversations are with other women in the wash house, shouted across the muddy clothes and the noise of the cold water that flows straight from the river and cannot be turned off. The weather is miserable. Once, that summer, it rained twelve days in a row. The clothes never dry and the beds are damp and sour. The children are either whining in our one-room house or lost. When they are found again they say they

Introduction • 7

have been visiting because the hay is wet and no one can work until it dries. There are no other children around: they are all ‘up’ with the cows and the grandparents so people smile at mine and give them sweets or bread and butter. [‘How else can they be made welcome, Signora? They do not understand what we say!’] When they are fetched from other people’s kitchens or escorted back to their own the adults thank each other warmly enough, but we never stay long in each other’s houses and rarely sit down to eat together. Each of us is pre-occupied with a separate livelihood. So much for the first season. Two years later, the most significant feature seems to be that it is the second season. [‘In spite of the difficulties you have brought the children back to us. Brava!’] It is also important that this time their father too has come. He is made welcome because he is connected to them: even his unfamiliar race is explained by the way the children look. His peculiar interest in insects is not, however. It is made acceptable only by the priest’s assurance that he too is of the professori and very educated. It is his profession to write about insects, that is why he must watch the flies where they breed, in the cow dung heaped by the side of the highway so that the lowland farmers who buy it for fertiliser can load it directly on to their trucks. The house of before is not available, having been twice flooded since we were there. Anyway this time it is March, snow is still hard on the ground, and no building which has not been lived in during the winter is habitable. We live for a month in a tourist apartment at the bottom of Bellino valley, in Casteldelfino, commuting up the long hill every day in a car hired in Turin for the purpose. There are a lot of empty houses in Celle, but no one seriously considers renting us one until someone in the lower parish, observing the fancy car and the tourist apartment, advertises a tiny two-room unit at an outrageously high monthly rent. The upper parish centring on Celle then claims us for its own. One of its residents is persuaded to offer the long-empty house which he and his brother inherited from their maternal aunt, and the rest, contrary to their usual practice, do nothing to block his decision to let in long-term outsiders on the basis of an annual rent little higher than his kin would pay to store furniture or hay in the building. We install a large oil-burning stove of the sort that only lowlanders are said to use and run it for a week before moving in. The house gets warm but the bread tastes of kerosene. Our landlord says that kind of heat is unhealthy. Like every other house in Blins, this one has two rooms – la camera and la cucina. Unlike some it has not been modernised at all. Non è aggiustata. The floor of one room is rough hardwood, the floor of the other is like the street. Both are sunless. The two sets of windows face in different directions, east and west, but both are less than three metres away from the grey

8 • Sometime Kin

stone wall of the building opposite. The roofs jut out over the street blocking the light as well as the weather. Those of the children who are old enough attend school and begin to smell of wood smoke and chocolate like their classmates. Still it is easier for them to make enemies than friends, and they learn their local idioms of conflict – stones and spit – before the local idioms of speech. The other children call them stupid for knowing none of Blins’ languages. When the eldest can bear that label no longer and demands a turn to read aloud in class as ordinary children do, they scream with laughter from the second sentence. The mockery makes a good story, and the local children take it home to their parents. Everybody reacts. Some shrug and make comments about the behaviour of the young: with these we are now united under the cross of parenthood. The father of one family is moved to tears because he can remember when he was made to go away to Yugoslavia in wartime and could understand nothing, and because the child tried so hard. He comes to say so, supporting us as though we had been bereaved, a close friend. If until this point time has been suspended, now it is enhanced: it is as though the sharing of this family crisis has the same force as many years of shared experience. This second season is longer, extending in both directions beyond the summer. It is physically no less hard than the first, but better organised, socially warmer. We interact with a few married couples as such, able even to exchange jokes about the married state without embarrassing any of us, and in family groups in which all the children present are dealt with collectively, like siblings. By the time summer comes we are allowed by some to work in the fields as their friends – something which they say educated cittadini, professori – urbanites and professors – cannot and may not do…

 Notes   1. Parts of this text and of the Epilogue are drawn directly from Wallman, ‘Boundaries of Memory and Anthropology’.  2. Most inspiring among many accounts are John Berger’s Pig Earth, which documents peasant life in France; and Marco Aime’s Il lato selvatico del tempo [The Wild Side of Time], based in a Bellino-like settlement in Val Grana, the valley parallel to Varaita.  3. Among iconic exceptions, consider Malinowski’s Diaries, but note that these were published after his death and without his permission.

Introduction • 9

 4. This is a useful demonstration of the fact that the effect of being a woman in the field varies with other-than-gender elements of research context. See Wallman, ‘Epistemologies of Sex’.  5. Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking.  6. As in Wulff, The Anthropologist as Writer.  7. The programme was convened by Brunetto Chiarelli of the Istituto di Antropologia, Universita di Torino. I am grateful for the opportunity provided by our collaboration, and to the Canada Council for financial support.  8. Lasker et al., ‘Degrees of Human Genetic Isolation’.  9. Wallman, ‘Preliminary notes on soprannóme in a part of Piedmont’. 10. Wallman, Take Out Hunger; and Wallman, ‘Conditions of non-Development’. 11. Wallman, ‘The Boundaries of “Race”’. 12. See further Wallman, ‘Kinship, a-Kinship, anti-Kinship’.

 1 Perspectives The aim was to know how material and social resources were defined and managed to maintain the integrity and continuity of Bellino. In this case, among material resources on the land/labour/capital spectrum, fields, able-bodied household members, and a combination of buildings, animals and money were significant. Social – i.e. nonmaterial – resources are crucial to the organisation of this material base. Among them, in this and other cases, I have found time, information and identity to be a useful and comprehensive set. A resource on its own has limited value. Key to successful livelihood is the combination of material and social resources and the clever conversion of one into another: identity (as belonging) allows the ownership of fields and buildings; identity (as reputation) governs access to good grazing and house bargains, and to information about cattle prices or reliable workers. Time management governs the efficient use of labour and, as I explore below, time as past/present/future perspective impacts on identity as the sense of self. For analytic purposes each resource is a limited entity forming part of a localised ‘whole’ system. Depending on the configuration of these separate elements and the overlap of their boundaries, the resulting local system will be (relatively) open or closed.1 In my understanding of Bellino the close overlay of its material and social resources accounts for the strength of its external boundary and the unusual tenacity of the community. Because local resources function as a single system, each one is, potentially and at some remove, related to every other. These combinations and conversions are the stuff of social anthropology.

12 • Sometime Kin

As was normal in the discipline at the time, I set out to achieve a tidy and logical analysis abstracted from deep description of the ordinary life of Bellinesi. Thirty years on it is this level of the exercise – the understanding of ordinariness – which intrigues me. This book reflects the shift. Descriptive chapters sketch the local context and indicate the options and resources it offers, but essentially this is a chronicle of individual stories, ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’, and of the part which our interaction may have played in their unfolding. Its emphasis is on the experience of another people’s ordinary life, not on any academic insight I may have gained from it. It is not easy to access ordinariness. Ordinary life encompasses all the levels; the challenge is to convey something of the way that life looks to those who live it. No doubt a study plan requiring me to live the way ordinary Bellinesi do was implicated. So, therefore, was the more or less crude intrusion into their ordinary life that participant observation entails. The worst of it is that our best efforts, however sensitive or brutal, cannot guarantee the experience of ordinariness. Always the effects of time and of interaction get in the way. Time distorts in two ways. The first is that the time perspective of even the most empathetic participant observer is never ordinary – she can leave, she must leave eventually. She is temporary; her informants are permanent. The conditions of life endured or enjoyed in the field cannot have the same flavour for the visitor as for the hosts. They never matter in quite the same way. This distortion is especially confusing in the study of a relatively unexotic people whose language is shaped like one’s own, and whose actions and reactions strike one as sensible and appropriate: the feeling that one knows exactly how it is can be very strong. One may indeed know how it is, but only as a variation on the themes of one’s own life, not as the way it will be until death. The most ordinary characteristics of life in Blins – the sloping, back-breaking lands, the binding interdependence of people and cows, the frenzied months of hay-making, the ever-present kin-neighbours who forget nothing that has happened since any one of them was born, the chill stone houses and the splendid scenery – each has one meaning in contrast to the visitor’s own ordinary life and quite another when it always has been and always will be there. Here it is time as past-present-future which counts: in this sense time is a facet of identity. Temporal identity, like any other, changes with context, but difference in the dominant point of focus and the degree of shift separate the perspectives of visitor and host. The ethnographer in the field is present-focused; the field-worker identity may be temporary

Perspectives • 13

but it is necessarily dominant. Her concern with what happened before and what will happen after this ‘present’ are – should be? – eclipsed by it. By contrast, in ordinary life identity is trans-temporal.2 Bellinesi are attached to the past by environment and culture, to the present by the business of living, to the future by hopes and aspirations and fears. The ambiguities of my experience as mother-in-the-field are at least partly explained as confusions of time/identity perspectives. As a parent-in-the-field I could not help but identify with the future as well as the present of the children: my journals are peppered with anxieties about their wellbeing which come close to the ‘ordinary’ preoccupations of bellinesi families. This, arguably, was one among the advantages of the children’s presence. Time distorts ordinariness also because observation suspends it. The very act of noticing relationships and their effects deprives them of ordinariness. The observer-participant is most concerned with the regularities of life and tends conceptually to tidy it up as it proceeds. The practising-participant is more likely to worry about what might happen and what might happen next. He or she will be more concerned to predict and control the irregularities of fate than to ‘totalise’ in the way the analyst is expected to. Any account of ordinary life is to this extent off true. So, necessarily, is my interpretation of Blins. I can claim only to have tried to perceive alternatives as the Bellinesi do, and to identify options in organisation and behaviour which they recognise even if they do not choose them. Because I also want to understand what constrains the choices they do make, I probably pay more attention to the unintended consequences of strategies and decisions than they do themselves. I am conscious anyway that the very act of noticing relationships and their effects deprives them of the immediacy and the banality of ordinariness. Interaction between host and visitor is the second impediment. Ordinary life is distorted by it because human beings will never be the passive objects of study: the act of observation goes both ways. Inevitably the hosts observe the visitor and make their own calculations of status and intention. They may see themselves differently in the effort to appreciate what the visiting other sees, or by contrast to what she is or does. They must adjust their lives to her presence if only to be able to ignore it, but few people do that. More often they accommodate to the curiosity and the preoccupations of the visitor and eventually come to use her as a sounding board for their own. Provided that one way or another they relate to her, their ordinary lives will be affected by the encounter. This is the paradox: one cannot get close to the details of another life without becoming involved in it, and the involvement itself

14 • Sometime Kin

becomes part of the life that is to be observed. How chastening that a research method designed to let the observer into ordinary life is most successful when it distorts ordinariness! Anthropologists are generally aware of this paradox and its moral and epistemological implications, but in the classical mode – apart from those inevitably crude references to the sex, class, age and religious or political proclivity of the author occasionally inserted into the forewords or appendices of anthropological monographs – it was not customary to take it up in print. Post-classically, at the other extreme, there has been a tendency in some quarters to offer selfconfession as proof of methodological propriety and awareness. This clouds the issue still further by implying that only the anthropologist reacts in the field encounter, or at least that only her reactions affect the data collected or the conclusions drawn from them. While it is true that the ethnographer’s primary research tool is herself, and that her state of mind and spirit must be crucial to her perspective on what happens in the field, the dissection of antecedent states is seldom useful or interesting to the reader. Similarly, the dreadful excitement of arrival in what we casually call ‘another culture’ but is, after all, a new universe, and the exhilaration that comes with the first achievement of friendly communication with any of its inhabitants, are moments more appropriately celebrated in personal biography than in professional discourse – even though they are hallmarks of the anthropological experience. While I have no personal quarrel with the obligation to public reticence in matters of private anguish, the analytic importance of the encounter between the anthropologist-visitor and her informant-hosts is another matter entirely. Because it is a densely social interaction which combines the expectations and purposes of both parties in increasingly regular patterns, it must eventually evolve into something like an ‘ordinary’ social relationship. The processes by which the two parties adjust to each other’s presence may therefore be sources of insight into ordinary life that we cannot afford to ignore. I do not claim to have unravelled the mutual adjustment of ourselves and the Bellinesi in this account. I only know that it must have been happening throughout what was, in the lifetime of any of us, a very brief encounter. I have tried to represent it with the verbatim extracts from my field diaries. They document our early reactions to each other and signal what seem now to have been extra high or low points in the relationship. These segments are integral to the rest of the story yet distinct from it – as is signalled by the distinct typeface.3

Perspectives • 15

I am struck by the emphasis on my husband and children in both sources; their presence was as significant to the Bellinesi as it was to me. And, as I have said, it may be that the gap separating me from the ordinary lives of my subject-hosts was shrunk by my preoccupation with the ordinary business of family livelihood.

 False Starts 2 April. Up from Turin in the combi yesterday. Crammed with our lives and stuff. Mumps receded in all but Maia, who is only now swelling up. Out of synch. All very cheerful, noisy. Outdoing each other’s April Fool Jokes…When we got to the house of the priest, the contact to take us to ‘our’ house, he seemed surprised. Then embarrassed, apologetic. There is no house ready. Is this a local version of April Fool’s joke maybe? No, there is no house ready. Now latish, getting dark. One of his nuns gives all of us coffee, watery, in small tumblers first filled half way with sugar. Suggests adding grappa, at least red wine, against the cold. Declined for the children, who were appeased by the nun’s sweets, but W. and I eager. Priest came back after half hour all smiles. Has found a place for us. For as long as we need it. Until we get our house, he says… Didn’t look bad. Clean, and with probably fifteen beds, very narrow, some stacked, some set out. Apparently a kind of summer camp for city children. Not normally used this early in the year. But there are piles of blankets, neatly folded under a tarpaulin, smelling faintly of mothballs. Beaming now, he says this must be the only place around with enough beds and enough blankets for our bella famiglia. Also produces a small paraffin cooking thing, and a two-bar electric fire, one bar not working. Peccato. Thanked him anyway. Began in positive camping mode, everyone doing their [then] thing: W. not amused, not chatty, producing food from nothing; Efua trying to make the place ‘nice’; Simon leaping about, giggling and mocking: Maia curious, working out how the beds unfold; Julian like a limpet behind me, needing this or that. Me being jolly, pretending it’s what we meant… Even with outdoor clothes on the chill was awful; something about thick stone walls unheated through six months of winter. Put your clothes back on over your pyjamas [‘like Superman!’]. Don’t worry about washing. Yes, of course: tomorrow we’ll have lovely baths… We used all the blankets, six to a bed for each kid, two under, four over-and-around. The one electric bar brave but useless. Either it or light: both together fused everything. Me and W. in a two foot six cot, with overcoats and boots. Never done that before…

16 • Sometime Kin

This morning all miserable, of course. Finally warm, so no one will get out of bed. Roused only by the promise of hot breakfast in a warm, clean, shiny place, down the valley in Casteldelfino. Found bread, jam and caffelatte by the bus station. Not all that shiny. But the woman serving hugged each child and set about finding accommodation ‘for them’. Eventually sent us to Signore D. who is adjusting a palazzo of three apartments for the summer season. Maybe one is ready enough? Sweet old man, very thin and wiry, not smiling much. Yes, we can have it for a month. Heated. And furnished. And cheap! He must have seen we were desperate enough to pay whatever he asked – and then he asked a peppercorn. Never became sociable. Never said he regretted having us. But surely, on at least two occasions, he must have had qualms… First domestic crisis: less than a week into the month the four children, happy again, playing in the Master Bedroom, which has a small balcony and a spectacular view, revelling in the massive matrimoniale, inventing a secret society perhaps – some fantasy game that requires locking the heavy wood door with its heavy iron key. [W. and I apart: reading/writing/cooking/talking]. Comes the moment when the game palls and they need to disperse. [Simon wants to complain about Maia. Julian must have juice…] The key won’t turn for any of them. We shout suggestions across the heavy door and the crescendo of distress on the other side of it. Efua tries to be calm, but nothing works… Turn the key slowly towards the window. It doesn’t turn. Try away from the window. It won’t move. Take it out and see if you can slide it to us under the door. It’s stuck… Five or ten minutes [was it?] of this sort of exchange has two effects: the wailing goes diminuendo [apparently Maia has got into the bed and gone to sleep], and our frustration slides into anxiety. There’s nothing for it but for me to go downstairs and ask the landlord if he has another inside key. He doesn’t. But fa niènte, he knows a way to open the door and get the children out. Go back up to them; he will follow me immediately. I have barely passed on the reassurance when Signor D. arrives at the apartment door, struggling with the weight and length of a scaffolding board. He will make a bridge with it. From the railing of the balcony in the dining room, to the matching railing of the twin balcony outside the Master Bedroom. He will cross over, enter, and work the lock as necessary. No, the children will not cross back over his bridge: of course not. No, he will not allow W. to go in his place; W. does not have the habit of heights… But Signor D. does accept help manoeuvring the great plank into position. The three grown-ups push it out from the dining room end, trying to control its tendency to wave wildly over the drop as it extends towards the bedroom balcony. When the board is home and steady, Signor D. straddles it and propels himself carefully

Perspectives • 17

forward. We are mesmerised; he is impassive. Holding each side of the board, he rocks forward to shift his weight off his narrow bottom and onto his hands, then rocks back onto his bottom, now seated a few centimetres further out over the void… After an age suspended, he steps stiffly over the railing onto the other balcony and disappears into the bedroom. In moments the impossible door opens; Signor D. says perhaps he will take the key away downstairs, for safety’s sake. I want to cry with relief. The children fling themselves at us, as if they too had been brave, defied death. At least the trauma has made them solidary again. They chatter shrilly, correcting and embellishing each other’s versions of the excitement. Julian jumps on Maia, waking her up to tell her all about what she missed… Second domestic crisis: the floors are marble tiles; anything dropped on them breaks. Anything that looks posh or special we store away. Be thankful the glasses and plates are standard issue in the local market and easily replaced. The flat otherwise is rather full, newly furnished with sombre, rustic style reproduction pieces: the massive double bed; single beds with high wooden heads and feet; two chests of drawers with triptych mirrors over; a shiny wood dining table with six (‘like us!’) high-backed chairs; a heavy sideboard; a twometre tall dresser, its glass doors made discreet by hand painted grapevines, green and purple entwined across the bumpy panes… Easter is next week and occasions of every sort must be celebrated. How? Efua converts us all to the idea that our short-term apartment will be cosier, more festive – nicer – if it is decorated. Posters and paper chains. She enlists the others in a concentrated assembly line effort over two days. Posters with hopeful spring themes – flowers, lambs, eggs, bunnies – go up on accessible mirror and tile surfaces [‘Be careful not to scar the walls…’]; and a heap of paper chains mounts across two chairs. The third evening, flushed with their triumphs of planning and production, wanting to surprise us, the kids decide to festoon the dining-room by themselves, quickly, in the half hour before supper… The crash happened as the pasta went in. A stupendous noise shaking the saucepans and echoing up the valley. From the kitchen its components were distinct: wood crashing, glass shattering, children howling… None of them is bleeding – not even Efua, who had fallen on one knee, or Maia, hit on the shin by a chair. Among non-human casualties we find three chairs overturned and most of the tallboy facedown on the floor, green and purple shards oozing from under it. Righted, with some effort, its windows gape empty of glass and grapevine…

18 • Sometime Kin

It seems Efua, standing on a chair to sticky tape the end of the paper chain to its highest corner, dislodged its upper, glass-fronted half. By a miracle, she was positioned to the side of it, neither crushed nor cut as it fell. As she pulled away, her chair overturned on to Maia, whose task had been to hold it steady. Everyone is stunned: Efua and Maia staring at the tallboy; Julian with his jaw dropped and his arms full of coloured paper; Simon poised with a paste brush in his hand, attached to the accident by the other end of the paper chain… W. and I, in quick succession, are horrified by the mayhem; then relieved by the absence of serious injury; then horrified again by the damage done to Signor D.’s magnificent piece of furniture. Tended first to the kids – knees, shins and amours propres. They recovered for bed after cocoa, cookies and [overcooked] pasta. W. and I sleepless, debating two problems: how to get rid of the vicious mountain of now-swept-up broken glass; how to replace or pay for or make amends for the ruination… Surely the people downstairs had heard the crash? But the protective Signor D. hadn’t appeared. Perhaps they were out? Not after dark. Maybe loud television…? TV is never that loud… Next day W. packs the broken glass in his lumpy academic briefcase and drives it to the dump in Sampeyre. We buy putty, instruments, and glass panes of nearly the right texture. It took half a day to refurbish the tallboy – without grapevines of course. Perhaps for that it looked even finer than before. Who can say whether fixing it was the honourable solution? More crucially, who knows whether Signor D. ever noticed. He said nothing, revealed nothing – except that he seemed to smile at us more readily after the event. And when, later, after we’d moved out, we offered to pick stones off his sloping field [as must be done in later spring, before planting], he did let us help him…

 Notes  1. See Wallman, The Capability of Places.  2. Wallman, ‘Reflections on Temporariness’.  3. These excerpts are sometimes out of chronological sequence. They are chosen for their capacity to enrich the formal chapters and to fill out the story.

 2 Setting The western Alps run north-south to form a border between France and Italy – between Provence and Piedmont. Of the three Cuneo valleys descending eastward on the Italian side of the ridge, Varaita is the most northerly. It is about 50 kms long and enclosed at the top by the massive rocks of Monviso and Pelvo d’Elva. Along the valley there are thirteen municipal units (comuni) whose combined population hovers around 16,000. Bellino (Blins) sits at the upper and western end of Vale Varaita in the Piedmonte of northern Italy, and is its most remote point of year round settlement. It sits in a small tributary valley known as Varaita di Bellino, covering an area of 62.19 square kilometres. This is considerably larger than the 36.49 square kilometres (‘9,577.29 giornate’) reported a century ago; none of the available accounts explains this discrepancy.1 In any case Bellino is a very small part of the valley whole: during the period when Vale Varaita numbered 16,000, Bellino’s over-wintering population had stabilised at about 450 souls. The origin of the name is also uncertain. Scholars group round one of three versions: ‘Bellinus’ (i.e. buon pascoli – lit. ‘good pasture’), ‘Belins’ (the old French word for sheep), or simply ‘Bello’ (in reference to the scenery). It is normally referred to as ‘Blins’ in contexts where the dialect is spoken.2 The settlement is made up of nine small hamlets (frazioni) spread in a linear form along a two-mile stretch of the main river. Going up from the lowest (at about 1400 metres altitude) to the highest (1800 metres) they are Ribiera, Mas del Barnard, Chiesa, Fontanile, Balz, Pleyne (the municipal capital), Prafauchier, Celle and Chiazale. The river is audible in all of them all the time, even when hidden by trees or mist.

20 • Sometime Kin

It rains often: this is the rain shadow side of the Alps. The annual total averages close to a metre, concentrated in spring and autumn; there is little or no rain during the summer. The climate is continental with extreme temperatures: records for 1965 show the highest at 33C on 29 June, and the lowest at minus 15C on 19 February. Winters are plainly very cold, with occasional variations in degree serving only to alter the frequency of avalanche. At these altitudes a few hundred metres make an appreciable difference to temperature, levels of mist and hours of sunlight; the Bellinesi recognise climatic differences even between the upper and lower parishes. But the growing season throughout varies only with the vagaries of rain and is seldom more than two months long.

Figure 2.1  Maps of the valleys Varaita, Maira and Grana, with Bellino situated. Courtesy University of Turin.

Setting • 21

All but a handful of houses are ancient, solid, grey stone of drywall construction, with flat stones overlapping like fish scales to make the roofs. Some have free-standing arches over the lower entrance and vaulted ceilings in the cellar. Many are architecturally marvellous. Each comprises two rooms – a camera (roughly a bedroom) and a cucina (a kitchen which serves also as a sitting room), with a stalla for the animals and the winter nights below, a fienile for hay and a balcony for firewood above. Some have a cold water supply, most depend on the communal pumps. Water runs from them all the time, piped in a detour from the river, ice cold. There is no central heating, no sanitary plumbing – except in the house of the priest. Although the nine frazioni together make two parishes, each with a large church, this priest now covers both. He lives in Celle, in the upper, livelier parish of San Spirito, and has what is described as his own order of nuns (Chapter 4). Figure 2.2  Village oven and the back of the baker’s house. Photograph by the author.

22 • Sometime Kin

Figure 2.3  Ancient arch and murals. Photograph by the author.

Setting • 23

Figure 2.4  Flat stone support structure. Photograph by the author.

24 • Sometime Kin

Celle is the biggest village in the upper parish. It has a school to grade six, age up to fourteen, not far from the church. In 1973 there were twenty pupils, two rooms, two teachers, no running water, no toilet: the ground is too stony to dig deep enough latrines. There is one summer-only hotel, the Piccolo Rifugio Alpino, always referred to as ‘da Marie’ (Marie’s place’; see Chapter 10). It is distinct because it is modern and because it is set apart, the only building on the lower side of the road at this point. Two other bars and a general shop function in Celle all year, but none has a sign to show where. The bakery has one to indicate a public telephone, not bread. In 1971 there were eight television sets, including those in public places. Few households are without a radio, but transistor noise is normal only in summer when the emigrants to France and the migrants down into Piedmont come back to take the ancestral air. There is more of everything in the summer: more noise, more traffic, more people. Celle’s winter population of 150 swells to 450 in high summer, all related, all Bellinesi. This means more garbage. All year round the community’s rubbish is thrown into designated parts of the tributary river beds. Before plastic, and as long as the population was down, the river system could cope with it. Now the swell of visitors and nonbiodegradeable jetsam overwhelm it every summer. Everyone knows the backlog will be high before the season is over. They also know there is nowhere else it can be dumped.3 Full-time residents talk warmly of the brightness and liveliness of summer, but they do not expect to enjoy it much. Lowland holiday periods coincide exactly with the time of peak work in the mountains. All summer the full-time Bellinesi race against the weather to cut, dry, bind, carry and store the hay on which their cows live through the winter. Cooking and washing, cleaning, hoeing and planting the fields, cutting and carrying wood are tasks which take as much time, energy and management, but nothing in Blins has as much significance as hay for cows, pasture for cows, exercise for cows, the insemination of cows… The sale of one veal calf from each cow each year is the central measure of personal and economic success. There are as few full-time cows as there are full-time people in Bellino and not all of them are economically useful; fewer still actually yield clear financial gain. But the Bellinesi are not wrong when they say they live on cows. Even those among them who no longer spend their winter nights in the stalla need at least one cow to survive. No house is habitable throughout the winter without a breathing animal below to keep the warmth. And cows give you something to do. People say in the old days they used to talk and dance and carve

Setting • 25

pieces of furniture so big they could never be taken out through the door… Now they say there is nothing to do in Bellino’s winter but feed and milk and clean the cows. Some go away to work. Out-migration is not new: their grandfathers did it whenever the harvest had been bad, or even just to buy salt. They had artisan skills then. Each village had its own specialism to sell to the cities in winter. Some men are still good on building sites, but not much building happens in winter. FIAT is the favourite employer, in spite of the strikes. One can work for FIAT and still make hay in its summer vacation time. And a young woman can always get a job as housemaid for the cittadini – literally ‘citizens’, urban dwellers, but normally also implying affluence and a degree of snobbery. Schoolgirls recognise that to work for them is to be ordered about, and that’s not good – but ‘city houses are beautiful’. For many reasons the written history of Bellino is a confusion of facts, dates and silences. It is accumulated from the writings of many separate people, each building on the work of the other. When the place is not mentioned it does not, historically speaking, exist: when an item of experience recounted by scholar/generation X is irrelevant in the context of scholar/generation Y, the item will be lost in a footnote or left out of the Y version altogether; scholarly recollection is no more reliable than individual memory. And while researching all the sources (which I have not done) might show up the elisions and so let me choose among them, still it would not fill those more-than-acentury-long gaps in which no one wrote the local narrative down. A stone monument near the church (Figure 2.5) demonstrates this. But the story, though patchy, goes back a long way. Traces of prehistoric settlement and lithic material in the nearby Val Stura make it likely that Val Varaita too was an ‘habitually frequented’ zone; and Bronze Age findings in the region imply the stable presence of people at these high altitudes for thousands of years. Furthermore, the earliest historical texts refer to relatively large numbers of people, divided into primitive tribes, but ‘sturdy and used to hardship’. From the sixth century bce there are signs of collisions and agreements between newcomers and Alpine residents. Whether these were relations of force or barter they imply efficient levels of social organisation on both sides. There is no material evidence of it: in this area there have been no findings of the tools, utensils, ceramics and metal which demonstrate the everyday life of ancient populations. But some see proof of continuity in ‘manners and activities’ now considered characteristic of the settlement. Historical reference distinguishes Bellinesi from their neighbours down the valley. As far back as Cicero’s Agrarians

26 • Sometime Kin

II,35, they are described as primitive with pleasant habits; healthy and sturdy; dedicated to agriculture and gaining their livelihood only by means of the hardest work. Also characteristic is the siting of dwellings, so well positioned against natural calamity that they must be based on investigation of thousands of avalanches; the extended network of roads and paths which has ‘always’ permitted the movement of animals and people; and the ‘economic equilibrium’. Even during the harshest winters – Figure 2.5  Stone plaque on a wall near the Church. Photograph by the author.

TRANSLATION 1334  In this year the Dauphin became Lord of the castles [known as] Chateau Dauphin and Bellino. 1343  31 October, at Avignon, Tomaso II, Marquis of Saluzzo, ceded Bellino and the surrounding area to the Dauphin Umberto II. 1347  25 September, at Grenoble, the Dauphin Umberto II made Bellino responsible for [its own] finances and for the protection of local custom and usage. 1713  22 August, Gio Battista Peirache and Antonio Roux, Procurators of Bellino, swore allegiance to Vittorio Amadeo II on the occasion of the Valleys passing from France to Savoy. 1734  11 January, Carlo Emmanuele III claimed Bellino (already freed under the previous Dauphin) and conferred the title of Count on [Bellinesi] Grimaldi and Alfazio Biaggo. 1861  The Reign of Italy is proclaimed. 1971  23 December, by national edict, the Mountain Community of Valle Varaita is officially constituted.

Setting • 27

and even now – self-sufficiency is achieved by the clever use of scarce resources and the cold is managed by close cohabitation between the people and their animals.4 The contradictions of Bellino have yet to be explained. In common with other alpine settlements its culture and the perceptions of its people have been altered by contact with ‘otherness’, with fellow workers at FIAT, with the attitudes of the city-based kin, and with images brought by even limited exposure to mass media. Unlike other settlements however, Bellino remained apart, holding its identity by a rare configuration of boundaries against the outside (Chapter 3). We should not glamorise its distinctiveness. Because of their reputation as survivors of harsh winters and their expertise on skis, local men were recruited into the Alpini regiment and sent to the steppes of Russia in the winter of 1941–1942. Of the twenty-six men of conscription age in Bellino at the time, only three survived the campaign. The comune which had held out against wars, disasters and out-migrations over the centuries began its demographic decline in World War II (Chapter 4). No doubt this disaster distorted the population trajectory after 1945, but striking change in the character and social life of Bellino in the short last quarter of the twentieth century implies other factors in play. In 1975 the comune still thrived in something close to its traditional form; by the end of the century only a handful of full-time residents remained – effectively, the community was ‘gone’. Changes and impositions of the world outside Bellino played their part in the exodus, especially where they affected the perceptions of the young. In 1975 their hopes for the future were unambitious, rarely rising above low status jobs based ‘away’. But while they aspired to urban consumption patterns and living conditions, their identities were rooted in Bellino, as close to their parents and friends as they had always been; future life should be the same but better (Chapter 6). But already in the 1970s parents worried about their children leaving, being tempted away by the possibility of education or money or a reliably warm house. The theme is regularly expressed in discussions of loss and loneliness, and it may explain the reluctance to rent or sell empty buildings to outsiders who will compete with the young for local resources and will surely corrupt their aspirations – if only by demonstration effect. Both concerns show in journal accounts of our search for somewhere to live.

28 • Sometime Kin

 Setting up House 21 April. In Casteldelfino until 4, looking for Benso the shoemaker who had tabs on a ‘fine house’ in Celle. Eventually came. Me and Maia went in his car, the rest with W. Stopped in Chiesa. Benso said he had an errand to run, but seemed to be oiling our way. They say there is accommodation in Chiesa if Celle fails. In Celle took an hour to find the designated house. Two rooms packed with incredible furniture: antique bed, chests, sideboards, spinning wheel… No water, no chimney, no open view. Much haggling between Benso and the man there, who turned out not to be the owner. Says we will clean it, adjust it for you. Benso keeps making eyes and signs re: the furniture and its value. Even asked the non-owner for a Mass bell that was sitting there. No clapper. The man refused. ‘E un ricòrdo…’ [a memento, a memory]. What about a loo? In the stall maybe? Discussion about price. Agreed that 100,000 p.a. was fair… but W. suddenly backs off because too much work and dirt, too enclosed… Retreated to Marie’s hotel. Friendly with us – but Marie suspicious of Benso. What’s in it for him? Her son says we should rent Margherita’s granja. Buy it even? Will go to the hotel for a meal tomorrow and talk more about it… Back to Chiesa. Same car logistics. Benso on home ground again has perked up. Husband of shop (Gallian) now affable. Aha! Two large rooms above a store available except for August. His brother has a place in Ribiera. Will go there tomorrow after Mass. All then into kitchen. V. warm and familiar. Old man up for Easter who has a house in Fontanile. Young boy present remembers our kids [from two years before]… They are pleased. Everything looks more feasible than Celle. On return Benso makes it possible for me to offer to pay for gas. 2000 lire. First figure 1000. (Therefore?) immediately buys a drink in the pub with the same money. Plays two records ‘for the children’. Crowded on Saturday night. Easter Sunday, 22 April. Cold. Some sun. Attended last part of Mass in Chiesa with Maia. Met Gallian who walked with us to the shop. His brother is away for the day at the other brother. So no key. But yes, the place is available. Maybe Monday morning…? Followed the priest to Celle where he says Mass at eleven after Chiesa at 10. Climbed to Margherita’s granja. Fine house, splendid view. Simon went down alone to make lunch with the hotel family. Today all friendly with no mention of Benso. All but Marielena sat to have coffee with us after lunch; she took the kids outside. Discussion

Setting • 29

of politics at level of getting people to work. E.g. builders from Turin. Only three summer months to build in. Only three days a week building because have to go home to their wives. But still, better than locals. They know their stuff. And they only expect three meals a day. The locals want five, all provided by whoever’s employing. They never produce, always discuss. House hunt again. Mathilde has one opposite because her aunt died. Marie’s son took me to Gallian Bernardo (diff. fam.) who owns a new apartment building. Talk through the window; reluctant to come to the door. Says his nipote [lit. nephew] may want it so won’t rent it out. This tallies with Marielena’s story that the nephew’s getting married… Then on to check first two houses in Prafauchier. Second already rented. First though plastered outside, fit only for hay. Woman w/o children in grey sweater who spoke to us on the first day confirms it. Back to the hotel. Iolanda and Marie washing up and talking. Her old mother now ‘Just comes along with us and sits by the fire’. They agree we should not ‘adjust’ another’s house for another. Try the baker’s house; the baker’s wife says it’s not adjusted and it’s full of hay and holes. She says try Marie’s cousin in Chiazale. Marie’s son, back in Mathilde’s house, says it doesn’t matter if we tell Mathilde that he told us about it: ‘We are out of the wind here’ (fuòri del vento…). A reference to their marginal position maybe. Easter Monday, 23 April. Snow and heavy mist. Children all frightful; W. has a heavy cold and no voice. To Chiesa soon after 9:30. Waited, welcomed by shopkeeper’s wife into the warm salon ‘because’ we met at Mass. Looked again at top floor. Unfinished loo but habitable. Pictures of an animal and of an ideal (?) modern farm on the wall. Also a hygiene notice against spitting (!) and (?) against using food contaminated by or not protected from flies. Both state law number something. Every possible mod. con. In the main room, machines everywhere, vehicle outside. Gallian returns from Mass with an enormous number of men and children and his brother. We all walk to Ribiera to see his brother’s house – he with two children and me with Maia and Efua. W. (ailing) in our car with the boys. A new house. Kitchen, two large bedrooms, one small room with no window. Furnished. No heat, but will provide stove. Not wood. Water not running ‘yet’. But there is a sink with a cold water tap. Turns out not available for August (visiting kin again). For these three months till then 60,000 lire – i.e. $100 plus a month!!! That’s his price in August (maybe not kin). That’s what it’s worth per month… (the shopkeeper’s wife earlier said she told him to give us a good price: Tutti dobbiamo vivere…). We can buy

30 • Sometime Kin

wood from his brother. He has only enough for his own use. Yet the balcony of the flat to be rented is piled high with firewood… I stuttered around. Lucky the others understood nothing. I said very nice, very lovely and new, but more than we expected to pay… Their whole family, wife, kids, nephews etc. now standing about in the kitchen, watching us stolidly. Our kids stare back, standing tight together, waiting for me to fix it… After an awkward age I said we would think about it and let him know later in the day… Up to Celle. Visibility about fifteen feet. Bitter. Marie has the same cold as W. but she is ‘used to it’. Told her I was discouraged by Ribiera and thought maybe I should see Mathilde, and if not her place, then Battista (Roux)… She: How much did they say? Me: 60,000 lire. She cackled. ‘Ridiculous. O non vogliono affitare, o vi prendono per milords. That’s a Turin rent. Sono pazzi.’ Now past 11:30. Had caffé correcto. W. a St. Veran. Marie would take nothing. We discuss the possibilities of Battista’s house. I ask if there are Elsan type loos available. Yes. Chiarelli brought one from Milan for the schoolhouse. Took the chemical to Turin (‘To boil moles?’ says W. Laughter.) and gave the bucket type to the Sindaco. But you could use an ordinary bucket type and get somebody to empty it. You can’t dig drainage in the village. Rock. We decide to take the house. Eat pasta, wine, cheese, with me and the kids ‘helping’ in the kitchen. We grated parmesan for one party of four plus a dog, one party of two, later another party of four. After eating went to find Battista. Directed to the house of his cousin [five-sons-Levet’s wife]. All eating at table. Sent one of the sons with me to show his door. He too eating. I said we had decided to try out his place. He seemed pleased. I said sorry to interrupt. Perhaps when finished he would come to the hotel? Yes, if we could wait for him? Maybe an hour? Later his [older] brother Matteo comes. Dressed in suit, tie etc. Is Battista coming? No. Lo faccio io… Bought him coffee. Agreed 25,000 lire now, rest [75K] before the year’s end. He wrote one piece of paper, I wrote another. Agreed. Marie’s husband is pleased with both of us. He says the brothers are bravi ma sfortunati – ‘good people but unlucky’. They have houses and lands but poor health. Matteo is out of hospital for the Easter only [TB?]. We go with him to the house and decide where the water will go. They will bring it to our level and we can do what we like inside. There’s electric wire across the ceiling. Am confused when told the neighbours are sharing/tapping? our meter. But only temporary, while waiting for theirs. Request already made. Met two Genovèse with paintbrushes. One young, one mid-aged. Neighbours!!! [Never seen again.] Matteo will organise to do the ‘gross’ cleaning tomorrow. We will come on Wednesday…

Setting • 31

Figure 2.6  Our house, rented from Battista. Photograph by the author.

32 • Sometime Kin

Finally leaving we run into the priest – very affable, young, with few teeth, most of tin – with an older nun and told him we had the house… First priority is to keep warm, he says. The rest can be arranged. ‘I managed last winter this way’. Wednesday, 25 April (Tuesday to Turin). Battista has done some cleaning. Taken out all the small valuables. Titu is our neighbour, but only keeps hay on the top level. He says below is not worth adjusting. His brother has rented the rest of the house to ‘someone’, he doesn’t know who. Turns out to be the Genovesi who share our light bill… Thursday, 26 April. Warmer with sun. In Celle Caterina says she has a bed spring we may borrow. Same size as one her two sons sleep in together. Then down to Sampeyre for beds, chairs, tables etc. Calculated and ordered four single springs, four single mattresses, one double mattress. Altogether 128,000 lire. (Actually 130,000 but w. 2000 ‘discount’.) Back depressed to Celle (so) to Marie for grappa. Said we had been down shopping for beds. Very expensive. Was there some chance she might sell us some she no longer uses. Yes, she says, I could. Come in the afternoon and we will look together. First she said come on Sunday. I said fine, but if it’s feasible I should stop the new ones coming. So she advanced it. In the top of the house of two years ago the storage area is full of skis, wood, toboggans. Beds on the ceiling. W. wrestled to get them down, Marie and I received them. Then W. went outside and we all combined to pass them to him. The bigger kids very serious about helping; Julian fed up with being told he was in the way. Marie had already been up but couldn’t manage on her own. Kept saying how sorry she was that W. got dirty, how hard it was. Five mattresses given. My needle and thread and the children’s plastic bits and pieces still there from last time. Happy to find them. No one has been in. Battista has swept our new house out. Kitchen turns out to have a stone floor. Coming down again spoke to Caterina. She’s carrying a huge bucket of dirty water. Jeans already washed in it; now the rags. Never waste anything. Her mother says it was she who told the shoemaker of Battista’s house. Caterina herself knew of it, but assumed it was too small, too grim. Others have said the same. Maybe diffidence more than reluctance stops them suggesting things to rent. They offer again to lend two bed springs since they are not using them. ‘We are here’ she says. Caterina doesn’t see how I can do the house AND children AND the studies… I tell her everyone helps – the husband, the children – and that we live una vita semplice. Hah! Marie has made coffee and milk and cookies for all of us ‘after this hard work, of the children too’. Marie’s mother says what (my)

Setting • 33

children have already learnt [How?] – viz: ‘If you are not offended, my daughter would like you to have these plates and things. They’re a bit chipped so cannot be given to clients anymore. And the beds too. When you are finished, throw them away…’ I thank her. Say she is very kind (she is). She says ‘per cento peccati, this is only a small favour’. She knows I’ll pay it back somehow… ‘You can’t spend that kind of money on things you won’t use much. I know if I went to Canada, I’d want people to help in this way’. Friday, 27 April. Back down to Sampeyre shop to say no to single beds after all. OK because different personnel? Son and mother instead of daughter and father? Paid for double mattress which they will deliver Saturday; coming to Chiazale anyway. Someone adjusting there, they say. [Who?] [Richard the builder also in the shop. His father has had a haemorrhage in the head.] W. wanted to order chairs there but I said No: after all these prestations to help us out, seems too much to buy new chairs. Did fancy some pillows, but 5000 lire each so no deal… Back to Celle. Stove electrician due. Came and placed stove after much debate and eventual moving of furniture. Very affable. Called Tonio Estienne (no relation to Blins Estiennes says Marie). Owns electric shop run by his wife. Then we needed a hole punched in the chimney so went in search of a builder. First tried Richard in Celle. Not home, so then tried Gallian Matteo who arrived and cheerfully made the hole. Told me that he himself bought the house [that he is adjusting] from ‘the American’ (a Genovèse who has been to America) and has been working on it all winter. The hole finished and floor swept he had a look round. He said no one had lived there since he married. That’s 12 years ago. The electrician tries to pay him for the job (negotiating in dialect). Gallian says no. The electrician insists and hands him 1000 lire. Gallian says 600 at most. The electrician insists. Gallian keeps the 1000. A very jovial transaction. (The 1000 lire added to our bill afterwards.) I asked if he (Gallian) could do the sink. Yes. But he understands that Battista has already talked to Richard about it and it isn’t good to devide divide up a task… The electrician accepts a pastis at the hotel with W. Has no change for what we owe him so suggests we pay in the shop later. Very friendly with the hotel. Probably does their jobs too. Chatting with Ghiaudo, Caterina’s father, while we wait for Efua this evening. He says Battista inherited the house from Marc Bernardo who ‘left his life with the Partisans in Yugoslavia’. The man had a fiancée who survived him by only two years. Builder Gallian, on the other hand, says he (Battista) got it from his godmother. Another old chap says he got it from his aunt (???) – also that they have two

34 • Sometime Kin

beds unused which we can borrow for the children. They have four altogether and put two in the warm room in winter. Now they are a back-up, sitting in the house in Prafauchier. At the hotel they are all working like fiends for tomorrow’s wedding. Saturday, 28 April. Rain, mist this morning. Snow in the afternoon. Builder Richard is at the house putting in a pipe and tap. Soon he will set the sink. Quite warm inside. Several children hanging about. Giacomino Levet (Ghiaudo); Tino and Benjamino Levet (Estienne?). One looking for his father who wasn’t there. Battista came. Pipe for the tap runs across the basement stalla and up through the floor. Where’s the drain? That’s what I wondered, says the builder. There is no drain. Punch a hole in the wall and out? No, because water will build up in the road. Mind you, says Battista, I don’t mind (‘per conto mio…’). Where is the drain? The other side of the building. Battista doesn’t have a drain at his house. A lavandina [wash basin] yes. But drains are not possible. Follows a long debate between Battista and the builder, with me looking concerned. It seems the water has to go into the drain on the far side. Make another tap, says the builder, in the other room. I say that seems extravagant. OK, then maybe a tube along the wall into the bedroom, along that wall and out of the house… Yes, yes. Not too expensive. But we need permission to use that drain. Whose is it? Three people paid for it: Levet Giuseppe [Marie’s husband], our Margherita, and Peyrache Matteo. We’ll need to compensate them. You ask, says Battista. I ask him Why not you? Well, I refused to go in with them at the time. Never thought I’d use this house. I didn’t even do it where I live. The builder agrees – the others must be asked, and I should ask them. I went to look for Levet but was put off by the wedding in his hotel. Came back told Battista and Richard that I would ask them all tomorrow. Now only Tino [number four of five-sons-Levet] is left helping. Very serious. Nice. Julian threw dirty straw on him earlier. I gave J. hell, but Tino said: ‘non mi a fatto niènte’. Even showed me how the door locks, turning the key backwards. W. called him signor. I asked ‘are you Signore?’ ‘No, sono bambino’. Said without shyness and not smiling. I met Levet Giuseppe himself on the way down. Very urban and dapper and friendly. Said I was looking for him; to connect the drain. Of course. I asked him to come and tell the builder… Which builder? Ah. Quello… Not quite approving. Somehow on the outside, that one. Even said he knew nothing of where or what size the drain because he was fuòri – away in Casteldelfino or further – when they installed it… Finally all agreed. Monday or Tuesday Richard will put the drainpipe across the house and through the wall into the street. When the

Setting • 35

ground melts a bit he’ll dig to join it to the main drain. [The teacher from Cuneo refused a part in the drain. When I asked what he did instead, Levet Giuseppe said he hurls his waste water into the street. Then said quickly that it is not comodo to do that – not for you, not for the place. Seemed afraid I would follow suit.] What relation is Battista to those other Levets? He called the child his nipote. The builder says it’s his cousin. The child’s mother is Battista’s cousin I think: he corrected the child’s manners when I offered him chocolate. Battista’s house used to belong to Antonia Roux who married Marc Bernardo and became Antonia Marc. This was Battista’s aunt on his mother’s side. She used to spend the winters in the stall, going up and down without going outside. Never went out all winter. Very convenient. Sunday, 29 April. Went to the hotel at eleven and asked if we could have lunch. Yes. Anytime. Lots of food left from the wedding yesterday. Then to ask Caterina if it was convenient to pick up the bedsprings today. She in kitchen surrounded by dirty dishes, clothes as usual. Clearly exhausted. She’s going to Sampeyre tomorrow so it’s not possible then, but now Giacomino will come with us with the key, to see if we want the beds at all. During the conversation a man came into the kitchen, sodden drunk, making overtures to me. I shook his hand [1st principle, don’t offend any local person], but following Caterina’s lead, paid him no further heed [2nd principle, respect the sensitivities of your informant]. Two teenage girls came in as we went out, both local and very smiley. Giacomino then takes us to the beds. He larks about, walking deliberately in puddles, an urchin Pied Piper with our kids copying behind him. Only one spring is usable: he, Efua and I are carrying it back when we meet Caterina on the bridge. She has come to help. She and Efua on one end, me and Giacomino on the other. Efua thinks little G. should be more respectful. At noon tried to buy more whitewash from the tabacchina. Also there: the man from the wash house in Prafauchier, another not known, a third buying, called Miserio. I pretended to be ignorant of soprannómi so the Prafauchier man explained the system (Chapter 3). He had been in our house helping the stove man. Says it’s cold underfoot [!!]. Found no bianco. The tabacchina confirms she has none. Luckily Marie was prepared to sell me some out of her hotel vat. She weighed it on a scale like the one hanging in Battista’s house. Only slightly more expensive than the shop price. 1000 lire. She already owed me 500. Now I owe her 500. Comfortable? Benso is a bore. Parked outside his shop while looking for more bianco to buy in Casteldelfino. I made the mistake of asking him

36 • Sometime Kin

about pieces of board for the children’s beds. Oh yes, he could put them together. The stuff is made in his home town, in Mondovi. He knows how the bunks should be done. By the way, do we want to buy a car for 150,000 lire? No. Of course not. Oh well, in the summer he will give us his when not on duty… Don’t trust anyone, he says. They are all out for your money. How much did you pay for the mattress? Thirty- something. Robbery, he says. Come across the street and I’ll show you cheap ones… The man of the shop wrestled down a single so thin it was folded in half. 12,500 lire. Right, says Benso. Now you want two, later two more… No. Thank you… The proprietor says when he was a child they slept very well on straw palliasses… Bought whitewash and a measure. No hammer available to suit W. Escaped and drove home discouraged and tired. Am into pit one maybe. Called on Signor D. in the ground floor flat. His grown-up son and daughter, on a Sunday visit, watching ‘Elizabeth R.’ dubbed into Italian. Huge TV screen. The room dark. Yes, we will move our stuff tomorrow. Appreciate the suggestion that we bring ourselves back for baths tomorrow. Out altogether 8 am Tuesday. He then gave me a snort of homemade schnapps, Genepy. Excellent. We toasted our families. Considering everything, the man’s a hero. Monday, 30 April. Bright morning. Clouds. Went first thing to Chianale (Chapter 3) to buy the bunk wood. Such an ugly town. Some traditional houses mixed in with dreadful modern. Valley wide and rather bleak, but tourists even today. Nice lumber yard however. Platforms and struts 6,800 lire. Friendly man. Curious but fair. Same pieces in Sampeyre would cost 15,000. Up in Blins by afternoon. Buying nails from the tabacchina I was chatty about the bunk construction. She asked how long we would stay. I was vague, sort of lied, said I wanted this time to know how it is here – cognoscere la vita familiare di Bellino. She seemed pleased. Borrowed a saw from the hotel. Returning it this evening, found old mother Estienne looking very vague by the fire, Marielena preparing supper for five (the family minus papa). Tomorrow is another national holiday, so today is a ‘bridge’ and they have stayed ‘up’ [instead of retreating to Turin as usual at this time of year]. Tuesday, 1 May. Shifted definitively from Signor D. this morning. Paying the bill had another Genepy and a conversation about adoption. Asked if all the children were mine– but may have been a question about numbers of marriages or such. He has advised some friends to take a very young baby. But there must be a great need for homes for older ones? Seemed not the point. Parents are entitled to children, not vice versa. Today in Bellino is ‘the Blessing of the Machines’ and later, ‘the Blessing of the House’. Asked the nun who greeted me at the machine blessing

Setting • 37

if we could borrow some blankets from our first night refuge, but she said they have none – those in the colony where we stayed, are not theirs at all. So went to ask from the hotel. Marie and Iolanda working despite the hooting and shrilling and jollity outside their door, but broke off to go to our last time house and pass blankets to me and Efua through the window. I fear I’ve overdone it at last: Marie said don’t get them dirty because it makes work when I get them back. But still prepared to gossip: the house opposite to the left has broken the rules by putting shutters on the window at attic level. Maybe the comment about clean blankets was sisterly meant. Despite the holiday, builder Richard was working on the road drain this morning and again after lunch. It runs through the house, as they said it would. He never has the right tools, always leaves them behind, but he did make the fireplace work by putting in a piece of metal pipe which he fetched from Chiazale. By six-ish everything finished, roughly. Mathilde came in, Battista a bit later with Richard – seems Battista had been helping with the drain, maybe bartering some of Richard’s work on the house. We all had a first shot of Grand Marnier to celebrate. Titu, next door for his hay, joined us. He admires the stove. How much? We should get one, he says, for the winter. Now they use wood. Heat the house for only two or three hours in the evening. Depend on the cattle underneath. A bind. No thanks, he won’t have a drink now. When he came from work he had a piece of bread and two glasses of wine and he has supper about 8:30. First the animals, then me, he says. Has one child; the first died a week before birth. When he leaves the rest of us talk sadly about children. The bunks were heavy work but a triumph in the end. Two double size ‘shelves’, each two metres by two, one at normal bed height [for Maia and Julian], one at top bunk height [for Simon and Efua]. The mattresses borrowed from Marie sit comfortably on top, two or three feet of space between. A buffer zone. The platforms almost fill up la camera, but it looks cosy and the kids are thrilled. W. and I sleep on Caterina’s spring, inserted into Battista’s massive wood bed frame, with the one bought mattress on top. We are installed in la cucina – along with the kitchen table, the cooking device, the basic sink, and the now famous oil heater. Warm at least. We have constructed an ‘el-San’ loo in the space at the top of the cellar stairs which descend to the black hole of the stall without cows. The ancient door closing off the stairs allows privacy, in case anyone should feel the need for it…



38 • Sometime Kin

Notes  1. Casalis is the main source of these historical references.  2. In this book I use Bellino and Blins randomly or as quoted.  3. See Baker, ‘Aspetti ecologici dell’accumulo dei rifuiti in un villagio alpino’.  4. The most quoted source of background information on Val Varaita is the book La Castellata, first printed in 1891 and reprinted in 1974. Its author, Don Claudio Allais (1838–1913), priest to the Pontechianale parish of San Pietro, devoted his retirement to assembling the valley’s history. Archives at Grenoble were central to his project.

 3 Boundaries The River Varaita rises on the Italian side of the western Alps which divide France from Italy (see Figure 2.1). It has two sources which join at a fork some few miles from the top of the valley. Above the confluence, the streams form two shorter valleys separated from one another by a ridge of mountains. They are named for the comuni Bellino and Chianale which are mutually accessible only via Casteldelfino at the apex of the ‘V’ formed by the two valleys. Casteldelfino is several hundred metres lower than either of its upper neighbours. It is the site of a national hydro-electric plant, has a fair variety of shops, a permanent City Hall and a market once a week. All its buildings are modern or modernised. Given their settings, any difference between Casteldelfino and the comuni above it is not unexpected; it is the contrast in degree of ‘development’ between Bellino and Chianale that is problematic.1 Chianale has for some years been a modern alpine resort. The traditional dry-wall stone houses are outnumbered by holiday villas and concrete apartment buildings. There are bars, restaurants and hotel pensioni, some with neon name-signs, most with painted billboards advertising the rustic and therefore recuperative properties of particular alpine liquóri. Commercially owned and operated ski lifts serve those who wish to enjoy the view from the top or the smooth ski runs to the bottom. There is a regular stream of vehicular traffic, heavy with skiers in the winter and with trippers escaping the humid lowlands in the summer. A public parking lot concentrates the visiting cars along the lakeside.

40 • Sometime Kin

Chianale is a bustling populous village with all the evidence of good but not luxurious touristic enterprise. Only in this discussion is it important that little of this enterprise involves the original members of the old comune: the majority have dispersed to the lowlands, less than half a dozen households persist in the old lifestyle and only a handful are in fulltime residence. There is no school; the three remaining children go to school in Castledelfino. There is no priest; the incumbents of Bellino and Castledelfino hear confessions and say Mass in Chianale only in the tourist seasons. Bellino by contrast has lost so little of its traditional appearance that it is designated a settlement of historical significance. Its over-wintering population has dropped by nearly half since the end of World War II but was, in the 1970s, stable at about 450 – enough to sustain two tworoom primary schools and a full-time priest. There is an accretion of people during the French and Italian summer vacation periods, but only a tiny minority of summer visitors are outsiders. The condition of many houses is original – most winter residents are dependent for warmth on the presence of cows in their basement stalls. Economic activity centres around these few cows and the sale of calves is the primary source of income. Two essentials distinguish Bellino from Chianale and, by extension, from generally expected trends: one is that it shows so few signs of socio-economic change; the other that its identity as a community is relatively intact. If these elements are considered as parts of a single resource system the cost of one can be measured against the gain of another – as, for example, the cost of not renting unused pasture to eager lowlanders is ‘covered’ by the benefits of local control over land. In this model the relative non-development of Bellino is ‘explained’ by the possibility that the preservation of boundary is given priority over material improvement.2

Social-Boundary Systems A social boundary is symbolic, although it may of course be symbolised by real things. It is responsive to changes in the relationship between its two sides, just as a balloon responds to changes in the relative pressure of air inside and outside itself. This elastic analogy allows recognition that the size, quality and significance of a social boundary will vary both with situation and through time, but neglects the possibility that items, influences – even people – may pass across it without a breach, for which purpose we may do better to visualise a tea-bag than

Boundaries • 41

a balloon. The permeability of Bellino’s boundary is underscored by the fact of its persistence in the face of chronic, and ultimately acute, population decline. If Bellino is examined in this frame, shifts in its ‘edge’ show up as contextual changes in the criteria of bellinese-ness, and the persistence of its identity is explained as a product of the management of those criteria as system-preserving resources. In the idiom of communication, so many criteria for inclusion within a system act as multiple ‘messages’ defining it. If one message goes astray, an alternative takes over; if one level of boundary is threatened or breached, the system compensates on another level. It is the redundancy of boundary messages in the Bellino case which explains its curious resilience. The ‘messages’ are described here in turn.

Territory A narrow, tarred highway connects the nine Bellino hamlets to each other and to the lower valley. The road is often blocked or broken by landslides in winter and peters out not far above the uppermost hamlet. A trek over mountain footpaths in the same westerly direction brings one into France. This road was begun during World War II and finished only in 1948. Until that time Bellinesi could only go east ‘into Italy’ down a track described as being wide enough for one mule. Marie still remembers treading awkwardly into the snow-prints of the person in front to avoid falling or missing the path altogether (Chapter 11). But while Bellino is less isolated than before, its topographic separateness is unaltered. It is narrowly bounded to the north and south by the walls of the valley, to the west by the still higher mountains of the French border, and down the valley to the east by a bottleneck of mountains. From the Blins perspective it is not the top of a continuous chute running down the valley but a boxed-in section whose edge marks a significant change in the form and use of the vernacular dialect.

Language Many alpine settlements along the French-Italian border were distinct political units as late as 1713 and there are still independence movements in favour of separateness. More recently the border between France and Italy has shifted in the resolution of wars or

42 • Sometime Kin

disputes and the nationality of alpine settlements has changed to suit. The latest change in the legal status of Bellino occurred in 1918 when it transferred from France to Italy. Bellinesi above a certain age were schooled in French, those below in Italian. Following national unification only Italian was allowed in the army and it was forbidden to teach a dialect in school. But before school a child knows neither French nor Italian; adults speak both at some level but they are second and secondary languages in every case. Communication between Bellinesi of all ages happens in the dialect. Such extensive use is now rare. European language scholars report that Provençal dialects are now spoken in Italy only by the very old and very young; that they are used by people who learnt them as children and by small children who spend their time with old people; that once they go to school children ‘lose’ the vernacular and communicate in Italian or one of its variants. This is not true of Bellinesi. They are unusual also in limiting use of piemontes’, the provincial Italian dialect. Piemontes’ is not only different from the dialect, it is also very different from Italian. While Bellinesi will speak Italian when they must, most only speak piemontes’ in connection with the sale of cows and calves, or when working on building sites away from home. The merchants who come to Bellino to appraise and to buy are always from lowland Piedmont. For these purposes they are on Bellino territory, but in a Piemontese context in which piemontes’ is appropriate.

Names As described in Chapter 1, Bellino has two naming systems. Nomi are used in transactions with the official world outside – government censes, church records, birth, marriage and death certificates – and they are used in extra-bellinesi contexts in which Italian (or French) is spoken and by stranger-outsiders on business in Bellino itself. There are twelve of these nomi, each over-arching a sub-set of soprannómi which are used in the dialect for reference and address. Seventy-eight of them are readily cited and around fifty are still present; those no longer in use pertain to families who have left the area. Soprannómi are rendered in English as nicknames, but unlike nicknames they refer neither to personal attributes nor to past events; they do not distinguish or censure individuals or indicate any special occasion or intimacy. They are inherited, usually from the father through an unspecified number of generations, and are used in all

Boundaries • 43

community contexts and by everybody.3 While soprannómi occur elsewhere, there is no other record of such continuous and systematic use.4 They are marked by italics in this text. Etymologically the soprannómi are largely Provençal, referring to an occupation, animal or place, but sometimes having no meaning at all. The nomi are not related and are etymologically (new) French. This also distinguishes them from their local Italian equivalents – Martin, not Martini; Richard, not Riccardi, etc. They are further distinct in form and by distribution from French surnames in the lower valley and in adjacent valleys. These distinctions are rooted in the history of Bellino, and we cannot assume that they were or are deliberately maintained for boundary purposes. Nonetheless, the two naming systems, each peculiar to Bellino and distinct from the other, provide markers of contrast between inside and outside systems, inside and outside contexts – ‘us’ and ‘them’. The significance of this boundary-marking function is underlined by the observation that the soprannómi are no longer ‘necessary’ in the way that they once were. While the origin of the system is neither remembered nor recorded, its usage is clearly based in property relations. A person’s soprannóme has always been inherited from the father, as is his/her nome. But in the event of uxorilocal marriage the soprannóme is taken from the mother’s residence. This happened with the marriage of Caterina (Chapter 12). In such a case the child carries its father’s nome and its mother’s soprannóme and the source of its residential property is plain. Speculation suggests another function, but one which is impossible to substantiate: the soprannómi system may have served to reconcile Roman Catholic prohibitions against cousin marriage with the traditional endogamous preference of the Bellinesi. While in Bellino the marriage of people with the same nome provokes no comment and is not uncommon, the union of two with the same soprannóme is perceived quite differently. When local marital arrangements were made without legal interference from outside, this local view would have increased the number of local marriage options, only forbidding in-marriage with partners of the same soprannóme. But now that the Bellinesi are, in these matters, governed by outsiders, their perception of marriageability may actually rule out options available to them as Catholics under Italian law: an Italian Catholic may obtain dispensation to marry any second or third cousin, whatever the congruence of surnames; a Bellinese Catholic would not apply for dispensation to marry a cousin of the same soprannóme.

44 • Sometime Kin

Population This is explored at length in Chapter 5; a few points from it bring population into the boundary discussion. According to the government census, the population of Bellino was 700 in 1951 and 450 in 1971. But these figures underestimate the size of the community since the population boundary is systematically elastic. The number called ‘us’ is swollen by the summer holiday visits of Bellinesi based in France or working in the lowlands. In Celle in 1973 the population was three times as big in August as it was in May. The identities of dialect, the naming system and real or putative kin ties are activated in such a way that the summer residents are identified as Bellinesi and so, unlike unrelated tourists, are no threat to community integrity.

Economy The economic resources of Bellino are more extensive than the size or lifestyle of its resident population suggest. Bellinesi own thousands of acres of land, but much of it is unused. This happens for a number of reasons. First, their agricultural holdings are divided and subdivided by the rules of equivalent inheritance so that many fields measure well under an acre – some being no larger than a good-sized kitchen table, too small for rational farming. Second, it is difficult to farm lands which are high above the valley floor. The slope becomes back-breaking and harvesting the hay problematic. Those who are committed to staying try to accumulate low-lying fields so that they may abandon their higher, steeper lands. The effect is that large areas up the slopes are either uncultivated or uncut. As people leave there is less competition for the more level lands: the ones who remain benefit – some quite explicitly – from the departure of those who go. Third, the high pastures owned by the comune, said (by their elders) to be too remote for the peri-urban tastes of the younger cowherds, are in fact too vast for the present meagre holding of cattle. While Bellino could rent its spare grassland to farmers from the lowlands, it has steadfastly refused to repeal an ancient local law which prohibits the use of high pasture before the end of July each year: lowland husbandmen seek to escape the heat before the beginning of June. If this law made sense when the population was full and grass scarce, it does not now; the grass remains ungrazed and unharvested. Chianale, by contrast, reaps enormous monetary advantage from its high pasture but retains none for its own use.

Boundaries • 45

In economists’ terms, Bellino has a surplus of land – land not used by its owners, exchanged for other goods or converted into money. This is not to say that Bellinesi are not using it economically. They normally grow enough potatoes, barley and rye for their own needs, and cut enough grass and reap enough hay to feed their small numbers of cattle. They consistently maintain that they cannot increase their meagre holdings, that they have not the hay to feed more cows, that they cannot cut and carry more hay than they do. On one level this is entirely true. The annual agricultural work must be carried out in a two-month growing period which is all that nature allows. Much of the ground is frozen until the beginning of July; in July and August outside work is feasible (when it is not raining!)5 but by September the mist rises so early in the day that it is perpetually chill and damp. Those who have not harvested by this time have little chance of doing so efficiently. So the annual cycle comprises two months of frenzied work to produce enough hay to feed a handful of cows throughout the eight months of winter during which nothing grows and the cows are confined to the basement stall under each house (Figure 8.1). Both the Italian industrial holidays and the French annual vacation fall during this summer season, and the domestic labour force is at its optimum. But while the local definition of a well-off family as one with many hands to work in the summer and few mouths to feed in the winter fits these holiday schedules, few households achieve the ideal balance.

Way of Life Hard as work is, the number of cows, the amount of hay, the acreage of cultivated land and the available work force fit each other perfectly well. If you were to ask a Bellinese why he did not keep more cows and so produce more calves and make more money, he would say: ‘I have not enough hay. I cannot keep more cows because I have not the hay to feed them’. If you were then to suggest that he might buy hay from the lowlanders who can reap two or three harvests of it instead of just one, he would say: ‘I have no money’. And if you were then so bold as to ask why he did not rent or sell a house or some ground or something else that he did not use in order to buy the hay that would allow him to increase production and lead a better life, he would likely avert his face and say simply: ‘I cannot do that’; or ‘We have never done that’; or perhaps ‘That would be too much loss: those unused houses and abandoned fields are mine and they will belong to my children’.

46 • Sometime Kin

Anthropologists are taught to expect responses like these, and a functionalist explanation of the management of economic resources in Bellino might well stop there. But since Bellinesi also talk of improving their lot and complain of the lack of modern comfort, even of the lack of progress and development, we must take their inconsistency seriously and go further.6 Like most of us the Bellinesi want both things-asthey-might-be and things-as-they-have-always-been.7 They want an improved living standard, less work, certainly less back-breaking work, more comfort, less isolation. They want all the good things associated with cities and modernisation which they know of or have experienced. They also want to live and work as they have always done, in the way which defines them and distinguishes them from others. To be distinct is not always advantageous. The things which identify a person as belonging to the mountains may constitute a liability outside the context of Bellino. In the city, mountain-dwellers have always been denigrated. They are mocked as scarpe grosse (big shoes); their accents are funny; they do not speak Italian as well as they should; they are perceived as lumpen, rural. Now that economic conditions are generally tighter, it is likely that they suffer the shortage of urban accommodation and the uncertainty of work more acutely than the city-bred.8 While the young bloods of Bellino still migrate to work in Turin, few now expect it to be more than financially expedient, and that only in the short run. The bright lights of the city no longer have the appeal they once had: the city is not what it was and even the young know of its hazards. Members of the school-leaving class, asked to write short essays on what they would do or be as adults, pitched their extra-Bellino aspirations low and saw their out-migration as temporary (Chapter 7). One must go down and make a bit of cash, but no one would stay there. Not now. Not from here… The objective is to make enough money to live a little better, but without altering the way we live by doing so. Despite a steady incursion of items and influences, the boundary persists. It is as if social and economic resources were invested in its maintenance, as if other priorities must be denied insofar as they threaten it. Why the boundary should have this quality is more difficult to say. It may be that the Bellinese recognise that the conditions of progress are unattainable and so choose to do something else – or do nothing.9 Or that they have reached a compromise point – so far we have gained, any further we will lose. Life, certainly, is better than it was: the population is down and farming is easier; there is a road and access to the outside if one wants it; the children can read (and if they learn too much they will leave us!); there are television sets about, tools and a car or two… Bellino as a community had no contact with modernism

Boundaries • 47

and the outside until the late 1940s. It came upon the mainstream of development when it was already murky, and the backlash of progress, whether in Chianale or Turin, was plain to see. Bellino’s boundedness is not about material options tout court; in this respect it matches – matched – Chianale. The contrast between the two comuni lies in the way in which those material resources are perceived and organised.

 Inclusions and Exclusions 27 April. Second day of school for Efua and Simon. Maia still visibly mump-y and doesn’t want to go anyway. [Julian too young; at home with W.] Went into classroom with Efua. She was miserable last night. School too hard. Italian awful. Wants to go back to Miss Laws in Toronto. Said she pretended to be pleased because no one should know how hard it is… Two girls sweeping outside. Teacher Mathilda wonders how E. must feel: so much is not communicated. Me: Is the class too advanced? No. E. is tall enough (!) and intelligent. Will get her some books. ‘Pippi Longstocking’ in Italian! Efua is very pleased. Then into Simon’s classroom where I asked Mathilda if our kids could spend their recess together. She said usually the two classes break one after the other, but she’ll arrange it for today. Later, at the tabacchina with Julian and Maia, we encounter wife of Titu and a tall blond/red man not like a local at all. As we entered, the tabacchina said something to T’s wife who then went and closed the door leading to living quarters. (Against the children, the cats or me…?) The man with five sons comes in. Very chatty. Says children from outside are ahead of those here. But his have learned to say ‘tank-you’. What does it mean?… He spent his first five years in France and spoke French. After one month here his French was gone. Children learn easily, forget easily… The tabacchina goes upstairs to find a whisk broom. I buy it, although had asked for a nylon one. She says she only has those in summer for the forestièri, for the kin up on vacation or – looking hard at me – for strangers with no local kin connections. 28 April. Snow. More mist this afternoon and evening. Snow like in the things you shake. Stayed down in Casteldelfino with Maia and Julian so that W. could do the gross cleaning – and missed the wedding which happened in Celle. Not only the reception: all the school children – including Efua and Simon – formed a body to cheer as the party came out of the church. Under a green canopy and with sawdust spread around so that visitors could stand despite the mud. The groom is from Casteldelfino, the bride from Chiazale. Both live

48 • Sometime Kin

in Turin – she only in the winter. At the wedding party this afternoon they expect ‘only fifty’ guests because ‘it’s very select’… Everyone well dressed. Men in dark blue with boutonnieres. One woman in a trouser suit, one in a mini. Most cars from Cuneo area, a couple from Turin, one from Genoa. One guest had a flat tyre. Marie’s son out in the weather holding an umbrella to help. One man reeling drunk, climbed into a small FIAT with a small child, setting off down the valley. Another rushed after him and handed over an accordion. It was the youngster who courts Marielena of the hotel. Ghiaudo says: When one is born there is rejoicing. When one marries, life begins. And life is short… ‘Anyway there wouldn’t be room in our place for a wedding that size’. All about rivalry between them and the hotel. Could be general – or only over us…? 29 April. Titu and wife outside the wedding yesterday. He greeted, she turned away. She it was who closed the door against us for the tabacchina. Went to the hotel at 11 and asked if we could have lunch. Of course. Lots of food left from yesterday. In the end 62 guests, plus the 12 giovanotti of the village who did the decorations, songs, music etc. Traditional style. Marie said You could have come in. I said I didn’t want to intrude. Nonsense, you don’t intrude on us. Anyway they wouldn’t have noticed. And if they had they wouldn’t have minded… Francesco and Iolanda are courting. They’ve been to Chianale for a small outing. Iolanda is worried that Francesco is six years younger, that he is devoutly religious, that she would have to live in a flat one floor above his mother… They met at Lourdes in September. Lots in common. ‘Maybe I’m just afraid of marriage’. At yesterday’s wedding party there was a woman ten years older than her husband and quite happy… Francesco wants to adopt lots of children. That too used to make her afraid but now she has seen ours and knows that things may work out… 30 April. Caterina says we should do our shopping in the big markets, like she does. In Casteldelfino there is only one of each merchant, no competition, and they put the prices up if you are not ‘of them’ – i.e. even for her. A child’s bed is 2000 lire more than in Saluzzo. She sees herself ‘out’ like me. Does that mean I’m in? 1 May. Today is ‘the Blessing of the Machines’. Tractors, cars, bicycles. Mathilde put her books in the car in case it would help her exams. The priest told one child he should be sure to have good bike brakes anyway. Four tractors, about fifteen cars, mostly small FIATs, and maybe 10–12 Lambrettas. Priest working with one small altar boy. About fifty people from all the frazioni.

Boundaries • 49

Figure 3.1  Simon with ‘the little nun’. Photograph by the author.

50 • Sometime Kin

In the early afternoon a knock at the door. The priest, very smiley, with two girls from Efua’s class, blessing the houses now. Can he bless ours? He doesn’t know if we are Catholic, how we feel… We said he’s welcome. The small girl with leaflets gave me one so I could follow the prayer. I asked if I could fetch the children – meaning I don’t want them to miss the ritual; he said no need to bother, they were blessed at the road – with the machines! No one crossed themselves. The priest read both lesson and response, both parts alone… About languages: builder Richard said today that he speaks French more readily than Italian. He spent two years in France. Studied Italian at school, but speaks the dialect. So you know three languages? No, two: the dialect does not count. And he can make himself understood in piemontese. Has piemontes’ friends down the valley. Giu’. Mathilde, listening, says she does not speak it (P.) at all. Later Marie, in a sisterly exchange about female complaints, affirms that she always uses the dialect to talk to Bellinesi but in Turin some refuse to answer to it. Those who go to France do use it when they come here, but larded with expressions like c’est-à-dire. In Casteldelfino some can speak it, but many more are too snooty. They want us to know that we don’t belong, she says; that we are outside… That same evening Efua arrives sobbing at the house. Battistino the baker’s son is drowning kittens in the river. He has them in a sack, throwing stones to make it sink, laughing. Simon and Maia are still there; Simon is ‘fighting’, trying to get them from him. I go with the desperate Efua to the river, past the bakery where there are four adults talking at the gate – the baker plus Mathilde’s parents and one other. All three kids very upset, only Efua hysterical. Awful. I tell them all to come back home with me. Passing the bakery, the little group is very curious, though no one speaks. I say the children have never before seen small cats killed. Mathilde’s mother says that’s why they are sad. We have a conversation, the children close, glued to me. The baker’s wife appears, she and the baker are amused, maybe embarrassed. The baker becomes very jovial. Says there are two more kittens; they only killed two. I ask if the children can please see the living ones. The baker brings them from the stalla. Small, rodent-y, screaming. Eight days old, he says. The mother hasn’t enough milk for all four. He lets the kids hold the kittens, which makes them nearly happy, but is still clowning around. He rushes a kitten at his wife and Sig’na Deferre. They both run away, screaming shrilly as American women are supposed to when they see a mouse… Probably it’s the manner of the baker’s boy that incensed our kids. He is 15-16, big, seems doltish. The same one that threw their ball

Boundaries • 51

down the valley a couple of days ago. Very different from Marielena’s friends. Marielena came to see the bunks this afternoon. She says Simon isn’t speaking to her (and he isn’t) because she caught him smoking and shouted at him. Yes, all the small boys smoke – butts, or cigarettes they get from the older ones. Simon, when she has left, cries and cries – whether because he did it, or because he was found out, I don’t know. We tell him we are not angry, but he ab-so-lute-ly does not smoke. We tell each other that at least he’s making friends… Tonight I remember that soon after we came, over supper, discussing how strange it all is, the kids were asking what they should do, how they should behave. Blithely, the eager anthropologist, I told them that as a rule of thumb they should do what everybody else does. When in Rome, and all that. Poor Simon. No wonder he attacked the baker’s boy. May 4. Spent yesterday and the night before in Turin, to return the car, get the typewriter – which wasn’t ready – and the mail – which was held up by strikes. Stayed over because the last bus back was 4.10 and didn’t reach the Institute till after 1 o’clock. And because the kids were clamouring. Hotel with two rooms, six beds, private hot bath, less than 8000 lire for all of us. Bliss. We all wallowed in it. Came back on the bus, which took an age. Maia feeling sick all the way. In Casteldelfino, Mathilde, seeing a friend off, says she would have given us a lift up but we have too many packages… Taxi-man Cantarello, hovering from the time the bus arrived, drove us up for 1000 lire. Efua and Maia both depressed at bedtime. Contrast with the city maybe. Efua because school here is ‘a waste of time’; she’s afraid she’ll forget everything she knew when we arrived. She can’t even read properly anymore. When she took her turn in class, everyone laughed at her and said stupida… Maia for her part is sad because the house is so horrible, the floor is like a pavement, it’s cold when you get up, it’s dark all the time… Wondered [again !] whether it’s right to drag them through all this – and for what? On top of everything I seem to have cystitis. Maybe some kind of divine punishment. And Simon was up in the night again, cold… This morning pale sun, and we all perk up a bit. Even daylight is cheering. I went alone to the hotel to ask Marie about the local remedy for cystitis, hoping for a herbal brew, but she gave me the name of some patent medicine. All women are afflicted occasionally, she says. She came up to the house during supper with a remnant sulphalaimide tablet. To be inserted, not eaten… Interim. 2:30pm. The children digging outside in the back street. Giaco Trous and his wife watching. I lean out of the window (as far as the bars will allow) and explain that the kids want to make a garden, essere contadini. Giaco Trous says the ground is too hard here in

52 • Sometime Kin

the street, that we need to rent an allotment. Four or five square metres for 150 lire. I ask who might have a piece now. No idea… At this moment Margherita comes out of her stalla and joins in; looking quite proprietary about us. She will lend us a piece of hers… Efua and I walk with her to the Chiazale crossroads where there is a large patchwork of what look like victory gardens. Margherita marks the centre of the plot for us with a branch we broke on the way. She is going tomorrow to take up stones – otherwise no one will cut hay when the grass grows long. Cows become ill if you feed them un-dry hay, she says. 9pm. Raining very hard and pitch dark. Left W. and the kids at home and continued in pursuit of succour for the bladder. Awful cystitis. Needs must. Light outside the bakery and outside Caterina, but the hotel all dark. Light in Matteo Gallian’s house but no one visible. At Deferre’s Mathilde and parents and Martin (Soudalo) having supper. Will I join in? No thanks. Have already eaten. You eat very early? Because of the children; when we eat with them it is early. Mathilde gives me a St Varan, very pleased that I’ve come to visit. Some discussion about everybody’s children, are they alright, and animals that are common around here. Oreste, signor Deferre, is a cacciatore. Also drives the bus into Sampeyre with the (big) school children. He will get my medicine ‘eagerly’, he says. I ask if he can collect it, or

Figure 3.2  Giaco Trous, with wife Maddelena and son Antonio. Photograph by the author.

Boundaries • 53

should I drive down with him and fetch it myself? Either way, he says. (Good to know it’s possible to go down and back in a day.) Note: as soon as they asked me to sit down I felt constrained to say I had come to ask him a favour. Was worried that it would appear I pretended to come to chat, then sprung it on them. Turns out to be more my worry than theirs…

Figure 3.3  Margherita takes a break with W. Photograph by the author.

54 • Sometime Kin

Mathilde’s mum says out-marriage began with cars. Chaps [ragazzi] could come from ‘below’, see a girl and take her off. Before they wouldn’t even have made acquaintance… She herself is a rare one whose man came from below, married in and stayed. He even speaks Piemontes’ at home. Wonder what they make of the spinster-ish role of their teacher daughter. 5 May. After lunch W. trying to extend the possibility of light, blows a fuse. (A literal fuse!) We need the landlord; I search for Battista. Efua and I go to his alleyway and call. Nothing but a dog barking. Go to the top and speak briefly with an old man about the fullness of river torrents these days. Battista appears. He will give us the key to the room with the electricity metre and come for it if he wants it. He did not hear us call: his dog barked when she saw us through the window. The dog has the skin torn on her back. Battista does not ask us in. Brings out a charming puppy that Efua wants, palpably. I say if he has no home for it we are very willing… It’s not available: she had ten and he put away nine so that she would have enough milk. I didn’t translate the putting away bit. Conversation slides into how much he likes children. When one is alone one wants to be visited. The children of five-sons-Levet whose mother’s soprannóme is Estienne [like Battista’s] come often. Last night there were eight children here. Like an asilo. His face lights up with the idea. Still glowing he says: When they wanted a bicycle, I got them one [each?]. Now they want a watch. I tell them to try to do well at school and I will get them one. Had a puppy like this last year and the people brought me some good wine and a loaf to compensate for the trouble I had, and the pleasure they had with visiting the puppy. This afternoon I took ours to Deferre to see the animals. The stalla vaulted as usual, and with a cement trench a foot deep, 15 inches wide the whole length, just behind the cows’ tails – a fine dung trough. Five cows, two calves, countless chickens and guinea pigs in the stalla. One calf two months, one three months old; both will be sold in a month or two. Sig’na Deferre makes a fire in the wood stove in the morning and a gruel for them. Some people eat guinea pigs, but she finds them too small and the skinning is a bother. They are good in a stalla [for what?] but there are too many… Later, their kitchen is again full, this time of men playing cards, obsessively, but with no money involved. Mathilde says Simon came back and watched the game for a while. He verifies this later, with some Simonesque embroidery. Sunday, 6 May. One set of church bells at 10am, another at 10:25, another at 11. Margherita passes with another old woman. She greets me very warmly and says they are going to Mass; why not come

Boundaries • 55

along?… W. now up and the children quite awful so I go. The men outside, the women and small boys inside. I sit at the back in what seems to be a neutral area. One man there too; other men upstairs and on the stairs. This time only the women take communion. When it’s over, people leave chaotically, men and women mixed, not like Easter in Chiesa. Lots of greeting. Ma Deferre holds me warmly by the arms and says: Brava, you went to Mass. Me: I’m not a Catholic, but I rather like the service. She: Good, we have done our duty… Walk to our house with Margherita. She refuses coffee, but admires our ‘adjustments’. [Hotel] Marielena was the only female in church with her head uncovered. Didn’t take communion; seems she came to accompany her old grandmother. The kids brought her to the house at 1:45. They had invited her to lunch, but she’d eaten already. Holding two packets of cigarettes bought for her brother. She took a coffee to please Efua, who bustled around, shining with pleasure because we had a guest. Monday, 7 May. Went out about 3pm aiming for Deferre’s rabbits with our vegetable leaves and a list of the local fauna. Efua playing with the two sixteen year old girls, our immediate neighbours, one Felice Martin’s daughter, the other of Giaco Trous, goes to round up the others. Caterina [of the bar] emerges while I’m waiting and exchanges pleasantries. We buy a drink from her: we haven’t been customers since the hotel family came back. She is extra tired today. Her mother has gone to the baeta and she is left to cope with the animals. We all troop into the stalla. Surreal, incredibly hot, ripe with animals and their excrement, and with grandfather Ghiaudo resting on a winter bed in the corner. By contrast, conditions at Deferre’s are almost elegant. We stayed only briefly, the children driven out by stench and heat ahead of me. Continue towards Deferre. No one home anywhere. Luisa, teacher Angela’s child, beckons to Maia from her window. One room, TV, table, wood stove, sink, gas cooker, double bed, two chairs (a third went to the school for Efua). Another daughter, 14, is at school in Cuneo, staying with a cousin; and her husband works for the electricity board somewhere else. But only this year. She is just qualified so has little choice about where she works. Only mountain places available, and this the nearest. Most have no schools because they have no children… Her isolation is incredible. She has been here all winter with Luisa, going home Saturday after school, back Monday am. The TV is her company. And with news four times a day, ‘I really know what’s happening’. The rest of the house is ‘adjusted’ for the summer villageanti, but empty and even more desolate than ours. No one likes it. Last year three teachers left.

56 • Sometime Kin

Tuesday, 8 May. Bright and clear, cold wind. Margherita came about 11am, asking if the children had been fighting yesterday. There was discussion at the bakery about them showing their bellies when they fight. I’ve no idea what she means. She demonstrates on Julian. Seems when the fists are raised, a too short shirt rises also – and this is interpreted as an aggressive signal… It’s good to see her laugh. Wednesday, 9 May. At the tabacchina with Julian. She asks: Is he one that Avete preso, o e’ suo ? Both: yes, we did adopt him, and yes, he is ours. Certo, she says. She thought we had taken them temporarily and were paid to foster. The tabacchina says there are three adoptees in the comune. One is now the mother of nine. Very successful. Married here. Very good woman. The second is the ‘Arab’ Marie talked about. The third I gather is another female, but no more detail… After lunch made the children stay in and rest. They shrilled about – but W. and I slept anyway. Woke at 2 and let them go out. Towards 3 walked with Efua to find Battista re a hole for the loo. No sign, although his dog was there, and Lorenzo Gallian, very old and frail, lying on two or three coats in the sun next to the house. He struggled to get up so I sat quickly on the ground. He said I shouldn’t; it was still damp. But we sat peacefully together. Told Efua she could sit too, or leave if she wanted. She sat quietly admiring the spectacular view for a while, then excused herself and went off. They are learning… After a while I borrow a spade from him (neither of us can think of the word in Italian) and move towards our garden plot. Margherita is there with a load of dung. She shows us how to dig a trench with the hoe, fill it with dung and shovel over. The children quarrel over use of hoes, Lorenzo’s shovel etc. I leave to ask the neighbouring field whether it is too early to plant lettuce and carrots. No: can plant anything now except basil – maybe leave the onions for a week. Two women and assorted children on the field. I offer to help shift their wheelbarrow. Giovanni, aged eight, pulls on the string at the front of it. They are moving a slice of earth, 2–2.5 feet wide and 4–6 inches deep, from the bottom of the field, back up to the top. On the way home met Giaco Trous’ daughter going to collect dandelions for salad. Efua goes too – to get some and to learn what it is. The rest of us take our green leftovers to Deferre’s rabbits and chat a bit in the kitchen. I ask to buy a St Veran. Mathilde refuses the money: I was going to offer, she says. Later in the evening two small boys bring us a sugar box containing six eggs – ‘for the help of this afternoon’.

Boundaries • 57

Thursday, 10 May. Weather bright to start, with some sun, but mist about. Children awake and boys up even before the alarm. I decided not to push the school question, but Maia and Simon ready and willing at nine-ish. Efua happy to stay at home with Julian, ‘pottering and talking English’. Nice day all round. Friday, 11 May. Close to noon the priest at our door, without cassock, in a blue sweater and black trousers (handsome but for his teeth). No sunglasses this time. Someone has phoned for a Pasqualina Mariotta. We don’t know who that is, he says, and wondered if you might have another name… 5pm. went to Caterina to buy a bottle of Genepin. She had to look for it and offered me a coffee. She, her mother, me – Efua and Julian too. Efua took the bottle home. 1600 lire. It should cost more, but going cheap to publicise a local product. Saturday, 12 May. Mathilde’s birthday. We are invited by at five o’clock. Found the children playing at Prafauchier bridge with four others – Renato, Guido, Guido’s sister Anna Marie, and a boy I don’t know. Go to the tabacchina to buy Mathilde’s cake. Mariotta says she has already bought two. Quite a party laid on: Martin G., the Charlie Chaplin man, and Marc Cristoforo [Moto] – who doesn’t eat cake because it hurts his teeth… They all speak affectionately of the children. Martin, the father of Efua’s school friend Adriana, says he gave his daughter hell when she described how the children had mocked Efua last week [when she insisted on taking her turn at reading in class]. He told Adriana he would beat her if he heard that she had taken part. Imagine how it would feel to be in a foreign place – America, Africa – not to know the language and to hear people laugh… He spoke with such passion that I was near tears [again] at the thought of poor E. I wonder how many other parents reacted this way. Certainly the story must have got back. The main culprit apparently was Renato, who is now Efua’s good friend. So it goes. Sunday, 13 May. 11am Mass with Efua and Maia. A dozen city dwellers there today. They stand out very clearly, marked by demeanour as well as clothes. Church as usual all but full, but a different population. It is Mother’s Day. The kids found 500 lire (mine I think), bought a cake and my best chocolate bar, and sang a jolly good fellow. They are amazing. Efua and Maia went to Margherita with a large slice and strict instructions to accept nothing from her. They came back defeated – with four eggs and some sweets. Took half the cake to the hotel family. Same failure: please will we come back at 3 o’clock and share a pasta with them. Of course. Certo.

58 • Sometime Kin

In the interim, we couldn’t find Efua. Panic averted when a woman going to the church with Caterina reported seeing her driving ‘down’ with Felicina and Luigi, the tabacchina’s daughter and sonin-law, so non c’è pericolo. They visited the bakery and the hotel in Casteldelfino. Coming back they picked up Guido’s mother and father, carrying parcels. If there’s no lift, they must walk both ways. This evening Perin Angela came. Said she was visiting. But turned out that someone had taken the key from her door. She did not suspect our kids, but had checked every other family with children… She says parents offered their children sweets in exchange for the key, but they didn’t have the key, even though they wanted the sweets. She hopes we’re not offended that she asks here too… Seems we’ve arrived! Monday, 14 May. At the wash house, Titu’s wife chatted very pleasantly for more than an hour while we washed our bundles of clothes. I was there from 10-11:30; she arrived fairly shortly before and left about 11:15. She washed meticulously, with a cloth covered bucket of hot water and some soap powder to assist. Tuesday, 15 May. News. Gallian Giovanni, the builder’s nine-year old son, offered Simon 200 lire – even 300 – for his [toy] tractor. Simon refused – with hesitation… Gallian Marco, aged five, stepped in the river in his sock ‘by mistake’ and was carried home on the back of Efua’s friend Renato to get his feet dried… Luisa, the teacher’s child and Rita, builder Richard’s daughter, come calling for Maia at the house. Shouting shrilly for her. The teacher said yesterday that Luisa never asks to go out so doesn’t do anything… And I nearly forgot, says Maia: Titu has sheep. Friday, 18 May. Raining all day. Efua invited Maddalena (of Giaco Trous) to tea because she’s had tea there. Costanza (Felice’s daughter) came too. They say they do nothing in particular – help the mothers cook, read novels, knit, watch TV in the evening with Costanza’a aunt, the tabacchina, who is Maddalena’s kin also, a second cousin. They go to bed at 11 or 12pm. Efua tells me afterwards that Maddalena, who is sixteen, shares a bed with her brother who is 20. Another bed in the room is for the parents. Saturday, 19 May. Heavy mist, rain still. La Festa degli Alberi, scheduled for yesterday, rescheduled for today because of rain. Same weather today however, so it is moved indoors, to the Sala del Pàrroco. 36 children. Classes from Chiesa walk part way in the rain, are driven the rest by the Guàrdia Forestale. The mayor provides buns, salami, wine, sweets, orangeade. Celle classes 1–3 do a recitation about trees, one line per person. Simon and Maia too, prompted from behind by Giovanni and Giacomo:

Boundaries • 59

Maia: ‘Accolgono nei loro rami, nidi per gli uccellini’. [In their branches they welcome the nests of little birds]. Simon: ‘Producono frutti nutrienti e saporiti’. [They produce nourishing and tasty fruit]. We are very proud. Giacomo then manfully recites ‘Albero, amico mio’; Luisa sings a song in a loud brave voice, nice on the low notes, about trees in the city ‘because that’s where she comes from’ (poor desperate tree, poor desperate people theme). Now Angela is the one who is proud. Alfredo (much an only child, spotlessly clean), and Maria with the smile and the rotten teeth, each do a poem. The Chiesa lot role play to explain why it is a festa at all. Others act the voices of trees – don’t do this or that because it harms me… All quite instructive. As the performance finishes, the mayor goes for the goodies, and the priest plays pop music on his tape recorder. A few feet start tapping, but soon stop. Everyone tries to sit unmoving for ten minutes or so. Then the teachers disappear, called out to do something to the bread and salami which takes another five minutes. By the time food comes the 36 children are restive. The priest, showing great presence of mind, channels their eruption into wrestling matches, Celle v. Chiesa. By a miracle no one gets hurt. At 11:30 it’s declared a draw and school is over. It’s still pouring with rain, so the seedlings blessed for the occasion will have to be planted some other time… Grown-ups now surge to the front for food and wine. … Simon, undressing for bed, looks dreamily at the mud round his ankles and says, aloud to himself: ‘My feet are incredible’… Efua says Giaco Trous’ house has no running water; they go to the pump. Monday, 21 May. Caterina went to Turin on business. Will stay overnight with her brother-in-law. Husband Gian’Toni [Loupo] says he must make supper for his children because now he is mother as well as father. I said [this being the period of W.’s trip to Canada] that I, invéce, must be father as well as mother. Then we are equal, he says. The baker’s wife, hoeing below the road, watched as I saw off the Torinesi [who brought our post]. She teased me: You had clients today; wait till I tell your husband… (chopping motion with her hand). I dissimulate, and she says (twice) that she’s joking because we are friends. Otherwise we shouldn’t joke about these things: non si deva scherzare. Good feeling, as the torinesi moved off, to be seen as more in than out.



60 • Sometime Kin

Notes  1. This ‘problem’ is also noted by Italian historians. See Doro, ‘Antica civilta di un remoto angolo alpino’.  2. Wallman, Perceptions of Development.  3. Wallman, ‘Preliminary Notes on soprannómi in a Part of Piedmont’.  4. I am indebted to Dr G.I. Clivio for these socio-linguistic observations.  5. Bellino suffers a rain shadow effect: several times during the summer of 1973 work was stopped by rain for more than a week at a time.  6. Gellner, ‘Concepts and Society’.  7. Marris, Loss and Change.  8. Davis, ‘Town and Country’.  9. Cf. Wallman, ‘Conditions of Non-Development: the Case of Lesotho’.

 4 Population There are three categories of Bellinesi, each with its own rhythm: the all-year-round residents numbered in government censes; those who migrate to places of work in Turin and return home for weekends and holidays according to the demands of their employment; and the summer-only residents – people of Bellino birth or parentage who have moved into French towns on the other side of the mountain ridge. Manosque and Aix-en-Provence are popular settlements for them; it is no coincidence that the vernacular dialect in these places in Provençal. These sometime-Bellinesi routinely spend the holiday month of August in the ancestral home, swelling the population. In Celle, in 1973, the population was three times bigger in August than in May and all but the hotel guests had soprannómi, used the dialect and were called ‘us’. Under fascist law1 in the 1920s and 1930s temporary migration was prohibited; anyone who left had no choice but to stay away. This put a stop to the adaptive flow of people up and down from places like Bellino and must have lowered their numbers. In any case it used to be that all movement out was movement into France and frequently involved a permanent shift of main residence. Now temporary migration into lowland Piedmont has become the pattern. The opening of the road contributed to the change: it is now easier to go down to the industrial lowlands than over the Alps into France. It also counts that younger Bellinesi tend to be more proficient in Italian than in French. The pattern of these movements may be new, but fluctuation of numbers is not. Two centuries ago the Blins population was counted at 1086; in the government census of 1971 it was 450. The recent decline

62 • Sometime Kin

is dramatic, but numbers have been this low before and revived. The last figure is similar to one recorded in 1339, when 160 ‘hearths’ (families?) were resident. The flux has not been uniformly downward. Moreover, size does not decide viability. Just as in the current global debate there is concern for the balance between men and women, old and young, economically active and retired, so the Blins totals over a thirty-year period imply different reproductive and economic outcomes when they are broken down by sex and age. The ratios for 1971 show more residents of eighty than of thirty years of age and no girl babies at all. Among causes of change the mortality rate is important. Records of this measure are not available for Blins but those for Casteldelfino, its near neighbour, are an indication of death rates in the upper valley. The records show them declining by one-quarter each decade in the period 1861–1960. Even the absolute loss of two-fifths of its residents over the same period does not alter the significance of these relative gains. The distribution of age, sex and reproductive categories in these death rates has also changed since the nineteenth century. Two hundred and more years ago deaths are said to have occurred ‘at random’ across all age groups; now people are living longer and more people die old than young. Most impressive are the mortality data for infants and children under five. For Casteldelfino in 1900 the number of deaths in this age group is recorded as 111; by about 1975 it had dropped to five. The overall population was smaller, but the gain is still phenomenal. Similar changes are visible in Blins. In the course of the last century mortality rates for children and other-than-old adults decreased and the decline in the birth rate has been even more pronounced. Again, these facts have less to do with a smaller resident population than with changes in its composition. The steady out-migration of young people in search of employment probably started the decline and specific population effects of World War II may have sealed it. But to speak of decline at all implies comparison with a previously higher point. In this case the apogee was passed when Blins lost its capability as an autonomous reproductive unit. Since the best guess of experts is that a sustainable marriage isolate needs a minimum pool of something between 900 and 2000 people,2 population decline might have begun here as much as two hundred years ago, the last time records show the requisite number in residence. In any case those early figures have to be cautiously interpreted. No one knows quite how they were collected or how far they match the reality of the time.

Population • 63

And although the population would certainly have been less mobile, more isolated and easier to count then than it is now, it too would have had characteristic fluidities. Just as nowadays the population boundary is elastic and the numbers vary when self-definition is taken into account, so – probably – was the case in the past. Along with the fact that official censes cannot represent the community as ordinary people experience it, so dividing time into chunks bears no necessary relation to the way they remember it. More significant to the population and so to its social demography are the swings between periods of consolidation and growth on the one hand, dispersal and death on the other. The sequence makes a tidy table (Table 4.1). Behind the tidiness, the four periods in which numbers held steady have different causes and effects, as do the periods of decline; losses and gains are not judged as uniformly good or bad by local people. A steady state in which they felt solid and prosperous, as in the period up to 1914, is not the same as one brought on by decline of the manufacturing sector and of job opportunities in the lowlands. Among the down times, the two world war periods had different demographics: women died of influenza in 1915, so that whatever the numbers lost at war, the sex ratio was less skewed by losses in World War I than in World War II. World War II stands out as a crucial demographic watershed – both as the destroyer of young men and as the killer of the husbands they should have been and the children they might have had. The hard fact is that thirty-five Blins men went to the war, and six of them – onesixth of the male cohort aged 18 to 30 – came back. A monument to those ‘fallen’ in World War II shows how many died where, and the circumstances of their death (Table 4.2). Table 4.1  Demographically significant periods of the twentieth century. Dates

Events

Effects

Numbers

1900

consolidation

no change

Steady

1914

war, flu epidemic

dispersal, death

Down

1920

state fascism

no ebb-and-flow

Down

1940

war, Alpini

29 young men killed

Down

1945–1955

labour demand

circular movement

Steady

1956–1960

economic downturn

no formal employment Steady

1960–1963

boom

7 men leave for Turin

Down

1973

oil crisis, stagflation

economy frozen

Steady

64 • Sometime Kin

Table 4.2  Deaths of Bellinesi men during World War II. 22

dispersi in Russia [in action, and of cold]

3

in Germany [died in prison camps]

1

in Yugoslavia [killed in action]

1

in Sicily [bombing raid of carabinieri]

1

in Africa [ship sunk on the way to Africa]

1

in Turin [in hospital of stress and injuries of war]

The most ironic loss is of those who died in German prison camps. After Italy surrendered in 1943 her nationals, once Germany’s allies, could be taken prisoner as Germany’s enemies – a shift of formal identity like those that Bellino had experienced in the past. The loss most talked about is of the twenty-two who died in Russia. They had been drafted into the Alpini Regiment, as crack skiers accustomed to snow and bitter winters – just the men needed to represent Italy on the steppes. Here the reputation of Bellinesi as hardy, skilful and stubborn led to their being sent to meet dangers which they might have avoided with a different reputation. The weather was not much harsher than they knew at home, but the regiment was sent to the front without the preparation, support or supplies they needed against the desperate Russians. (Martin says: ‘In Montenegro, 34 years ago, with Claudio, Matteo Ghiaudo and one other from Balz… I was so hungry I cried from it – I was only 20 years old – and Claudio shared his bread’.) Three of the six who survived the war returned to Celle, the others to frazioni lower down. Only one of the six is a veteran of the Russian fiasco, which makes him the sole survivor of twenty-two men. By all accounts, not least those of the man himself, the Alpini experience had been especially dreadful. After the war, six young women were able to marry in Blins as everyone wanted, but the rest of the cohort had no endogamous option: there were simply not enough eligible local men alive. The possibility of marrying further afield was ruled out, not only because exogamy goes against custom, but also because Blins was not the only small community with a drastically high sex ratio in this age group: the war had taken the same narrowcast toll across the Alps. Bellino’s ‘solution’, however, does seem to have been unique. Within four years of the end of the war, the then priest, Don Ruffa, used his energies and connections to establish a local order of nuns. Of the eighteen women recruited to it, fifteen were born between 1914 and 1932, so would have been between 17 and 35 when the order was set up. The other three had been widowed in the war and were

Population • 65

childless or had no child present to look after them. Table 4.3 shows also that only three of the group were not native to Bellino.3 Inevitably there are other stories – alternative or additional explanations of such a large cohort ‘choosing’ not to marry. Religious vocation is surely one of them, but even that may be a product of circumstance. In any case celibacy – not being married, not having children, being alone – seems always to have been common in communities of this kind. Classically this is explained as an effect of ancient property rights ceding everything to the eldest son,4 but this is no longer the case: equal division is now the law. Each family’s history contributes to the collective outcome. Along with the personal tragedies that it caused, the war led to Blins losing its reproductive capacity. Whatever the details of each case, and of the coincidence of numbers and ages in these two lost cohorts, male and female, there is no doubt that the comune’s demographic decline was pushed to drastic levels by World War II. People had left before, Table 4.3  Place and date of birth of ‘Don Ruffa’s nuns’. Name

Place of Birth

Date of Birth

Arnaud, Caterina

Blins

19. VI. 1905

Arnaud, Antonia

Blins

27. X. 1928

Bernardi, A. Maria

Sampeyre

17. V. 1931

Brun, Maria

Blins

25. XII. 1919

Dao Castes, Angelina

Elva

14. IX. 1921

Gallian, Marianna

Blins

9. III. 1896

Levet, Antonia

Blins

21. III. 1914

Marc, Maria

Blins

24. XII. 1910

Marc, M. Maddalena

Blins

29. V. 1924

Marc, Cateriana

Blins

28. III. 1920

Martin, Margherita

Blins

11. VII. 1926

Richard, Maria

Blins

21. XI. 1932

Richard, Rosa

Blins

21. VI. 1925

Richard, Antonetta

Blins

14. X. 1932

Richard, Maddalena

Blins

7. XI. 1929

Richard, Maria

Blins

15. III. 1925

Seymand, Caterina

Blins

30. VIII. 1926

Spagnolo, Marianna

Sampeyre

5. II. 1929

66 • Sometime Kin

but not always permanently, and reductions in infant mortality had done something to compensate for the outflow. Now the numbers ‘suddenly’ lost led to more leaving – some because they felt their life chances had been narrowed by an immediate drop in the quality of community in Blins, others because options for livelihood looked better elsewhere, all of them because life would never be the same again.5 There is always a variety of reasons for leaving, and at least as many affecting how the migrant feels about the move.6 Equally, the balance of gains and losses experienced by the people who opt to stay is always unsteady.7 It is a question of balancing hands to work against mouths to feed. On the plus side, fewer people now depend on the local agricultural resources, and less land – certainly less ‘difficult’ land – needs to be farmed. The highest and least accessible fields tend to be closed, replaced for those who stay by better lands rented from those who leave: a card goes up in the square describing the size and situation of what is available and inviting the highest bidder to come forward. The process is not always amicable: people may bid for a particular field only to make sure a rival pays dear for it. Nevertheless, out-migration, combined with the gruesome losses of war, has caused the population to go down to a point where life in Blins is easier in some respects. Agriculture has become less arduous and more productive, even without significant improvements in farming practice or technology. Similarly, there is an ambiguity of outcome in social and political matters: when those who want to leave have left, not only do resources go further, but also the ‘interested’ rise to the surface. Contestants in comune elections are less likely to be ranked by disparities of economic status and education than by commitment to staying in Blins and to its survival. The change undermines old privileges, but an elite defined by these latter measures will be more conservative than progressive. The logic of this process is shown in Figure 4.1. When agriculture is the central issue, however, the downside of migration is very plain. At peak points in the production cycle there is a significant shortage of manpower. Those returning on vacation who happen to be present when numbers are needed may be reluctant to work on their parents’ lands and will only work for others if offered a wage matching industrial rates in Turin – a level not feasible in Bellino. From a community perspective, depopulation makes for less pressure on the land and easier farming, but also creates a shortage of labour and less capability to cope with the larger areas available. This is dilemma enough. But when migration processes are viewed at the level of households and expressed in family relationships, out-

Population • 67

migration creates a more painful double bind. At this level, economic balance is only achieved with enough household members to cover the various chores and enough resources to sustain that number. Each system is adaptable to a point, but too much pressure or too sudden a shock will push it out of equilibrium.8 The keys to preventing this are simple enough, but each option must be juggled with other needs; ordinary people do not have the luxury of dealing with only one priority at a time.9 The first option: the children of the household leave school at fifteen, stay in the local primary until that time, never go to school down the valley and beyond. The second option: a large household allows at least one of its more competent members to go out and earn the cash necessary to sustain those who are too young, old, infirm, educated or ambitious to labour. The third option: when one productive member is lost to the household, another comes back from ‘away’ to replace them.10 Children become the crux – how many, how bright, how ambitious. As the birth rate drops, more families have too few children to fulfil the needs of the household system, and although Blins is unusual in the vitality of its community, there is some doubt about how long there will be enough children to justify two primary schools. Some of the present cohort do feel tied to the place – the boys more than the girls: local girls are attracted by the comforts and commodities associated with city life and certainly no outside woman would want to move in. So a boy who might wish to stay will have no one to marry.11 But the difference between those who are attached and those

Figure 4.1  Effects of out-migration. Figure created by the author.

68 • Sometime Kin

who are not is in the number of years they expect to be away. Some who plan to go temporarily get stuck. Boys anyway dream of working in a factory, girls of being housemaids. For the majority, these are the upper limits of ambition. The six fifteen-year olds forming what may turn out to be the last full cohort of school leavers in Celle write about their separate futures in these terms (Chapter 6). Even in the most menial jobs in Turin young people can earn amounts which are unimaginable in the Blins economy. But even with the best of intentions, very little of it comes back. When children visit they may bring meat, but they go back with eggs, potatoes, barley. It is true that some bring a little money into Bellino, but the city costs a lot and there is rarely a surplus. Life away is known to be hard – nevertheless every sixteen-year old thinks about leaving. The parents’ perspective is different, but still ambivalent. Of course they want the best for their children, and in terms of money, the best is ‘away’. But there are other considerations. Most simply, migration breaks up the family. Parents know the child will not return satisfied with conditions in Blins. Gian’Toni says the best he can hope for his children is that they leave here – because winters are so hard, because there is no money, because they will not find someone to marry – even though it will clutch his vitals to see them go; it does already when they speak of it. He knows children often stay away until the parents are dead; that even if years from now his children return to claim their share of the lands, maybe to adjust the house to use for a week every August, still their father will have finished his life alone.

 Other Explanations Celibacy is a harsh lot in this environment: our landlord Battista, who has never been married, projects loneliness despite his attachment to the children of his younger kin. Oreste’s wife blames the habit of endogamy in a community where everyone is related: first cousin marriage is not allowed by the Pope, second cousin marriage is not desirable ‘because the children are never quite right’. If there’s no one to marry you leave or stay celibate. Martin’s unmarried son claims it is Don Ruffa’s fault: he made the women nuns and left the men no one to marry. But the usual story is ‘we needed the nunnery because those women could not find husbands’. And besides, Don Ruffa wanted lots of nuns to look after the old and inherit their houses for ‘the church’… Iolanda says the first house in Chiazale

Population • 69

was one such. Don Ruffa inherited it then sold it back to the family. Oreste says he wouldn’t mind if it was openly done but it’s not; it’s crooked and secret. [He waves his hand flat, back and forth, to show dodginess.] His father-in-law used to stay alone in the family house; they nearly lost it to Don Ruffa but ‘saved it’ by moving back in with the old man. Marie considers another possibility. She says that some don’t marry because they are ‘not marriageable’. They have ‘imperfections’ of body or mind which might be passed on. It is no secret that TB runs in Battista’s line [his brother has been treated for it] and the Richard family story is common knowledge: three of the five Richards in the Order are full sisters: Maria, Maddalena and Antoinetta. Born in 1925, 1929 and 1932, they are among the might-have-been wives of men lost in World War II. But people remember also that their mother died at the age of 42, ‘of deforming arthritis’ – a disease they know to be disabling and expect will be inherited. Stigmatised in this way, the sisters might have been disadvantaged to the point of being unmarriageable even in optimal demographic conditions. The poignancy of their family narrative does not finish with this. Filled out, it shows the connectedness of the various depopulation processes. There were originally five siblings. Of the women’s two brothers, one was ‘left’ in Russia, the other works in Turin. Their father, in 1974 an old man living alone in fraziòne Chiesa, does not expect his remaining son to marry in Bellino and knows that lowland women will not come to set up home in the mountains. Wealth or property enticements might help, but he has few of these. Here the story expands again, this time to take in the economic implications of nun-hood in general, and of Don Ruffa’s order in particular. Catholic nuns’ vows include a commitment to poverty. Women entering the church may bring their personal wealth with them, to further its work, or as an indirect contribution to personal maintenance costs. Such contributions should not be used for any individual’s direct benefit – neither their own nor anyone else’s – but it is said that Don Ruffa ‘made’ the nuns abandon their parents to work for him; that he keeps the proceeds of their work for himself; that he lives in a modernised and fine house built on those proceeds; that now he will not let them leave property to their fratelli because he regards the order he created as his own… Whether or not it was designed to be self-serving, the effects of Don Ruffa’s special order include the certainty that Richard père will not see grandchildren.



70 • Sometime Kin

Notes  1. Promulgated in 1923.  2. Fox, Kinship and Marriage.  3. The outside origins of two of them show in their ‘foreign’ surnames; the third has an ‘official’ name which is locally present in its French form, but apparently no soprannóme. Blins’ language duality shows in the way the French form of official family name is used with the Italian form of given names. Note too that soprannómi do not show in church records.  4. See Bourdieu, ‘Celibat et conditions paysannes’.  5. Wallman, Contemporary Futures.  6. Wallman, ‘When is Home in Town a Good Move?’.  7. Wallman, ‘Introduction’, in Perceptions of Development.  8. Cf. Barnett and Blaikie, AIDS in Africa.  9. Wallman, ‘Ordinary Women and Shapes of Knowledge’. 10. Marie (Chapter 11) started college but left and came back to Blins when her grandfather died. 11. The latest twelve brides from Chiesa, the lower parish, married men from outside Bellino.

 5 Children The Mayor says this is the last cohort of children: in a few years Bellino will be gone. The last twelve women to marry from Chiesa married out. Even those who marry paesani move to the city and come only in summer and from time to time. Last San Spirito festa there was no one to play the harmonium, no one who could play it. The priest says Chianale is finished as a community even if the population has grown. Outsiders came in and made all the profit. Why don’t they do something here? Maybe the government would set up impianti?… Maybe the government would, he says, but the people are too timid to ask. (The vet said the same thing about his cow plan.) The priest goes down to help with confessions: last month no one came! He says confession is by law only necessary once a year but this is silly: if it nourishes it must be necessary more often. Blins population is not sinful at all, just apathetic. They go to Mass as routine; they don’t think of its meaning… Marie says parents don’t usually assist a child to migrate because it is a breaking of the family. They know the child will not return satisfied. Girls who go into service as housemaids can earn a lot of money: 100,000 – even 120,000 a month. But it’s hard work, even if the people are just. It’s ‘Si Signora, si Signora’ from early morning until ten at night. Sometimes one longs to say ‘No Signora, certainly not!’ So in summer it’s good to come back home with fine clothes which others will envy, and perhaps help a bit with the farming. When children come up they may bring meat from the town. They will certainly go back with eggs, potatoes, barley. Sometimes they may contribute a little money… After the parents’ death each child, migrant or not,

72 • Sometime Kin

inherits his or her share, and they hang on to it. But some come for no more than the August holiday week. They make a gabinetto in the stalla; some even talk of making a bath! Like cittadini… As an afterthought Marie says: ‘Maybe these days the young people are turning a bit towards the country. Man needs nature and he needs silence: FIAT doesn’t offer these. And there are things to tie them to the place. The boys more than the girls because the girls are attracted by comfort and commodities… So some boys who might wish to stay here have no one to marry – local girls have gone and outside women will not move into these conditions… In Bellino life is interesting for children, but young adults grow restless.’

Figure 5.1  Games day: village children lined up to bash the piñata. Photograph by the author.

Children • 73

 The Last Cohort? The wife of Jeannot [five-sons-Levet] has no daughters. She is convinced that girls are more judicious, useful, even-tempered – less dirty and less fighty than boys. You can’t leave a young child with a boy because he will lose his temper and leave it. Not like a girl… Conversation in the hotel about the fear of too few children. What about adoption as a way of bringing more children in? Marie says somewhere in Celle there is a young man, now aged about 20: you will see him around eventually. A couple here had been long married without children. Don Ruffa went with them as referee. Perhaps he should not have. They were given to adopt a pretty and vivacious baby – some kind of mixed race: light-skinned but with thick curly hair and the face of a Moor. No sooner was the child adopted than the woman became pregnant and had a girl. You’ll see her wearing glasses round about. The boy they have treated shabbily. Always resented him: if it were not for him the girl could have had such and so. He remains charming, always smiling. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me if he came back [from military service] and killed one of them… He is obviously of a passionate nature… 22 May. Both boys are calmer today. They’ve spent much of it alone with me. Nice. They need attention and are not getting enough of it, specially with W. away. Maia is strong-on-the-ego and rather disobedient but no worries there. Except she has a cough. All that TB around is not a good thought. The absence of W. is a good opener for conversation about family obligations. A propos, this afternoon Efua and Simon [probably Efua] decided to go and sleep on the mountain. She packed rucksacks with bread and flashlights, sweets for Simon and clean underwear for them both. I thought they would change their minds more readily if I let them go. But Margherita was angry with me. She sent her nephew up for them. He came back without them and agreed we should leave them to come down alone. Hence I waited in Margherita’s house. About 8:45 they came down from the first rock ‘because it was raining’… We were pleased with each other when we finally got together. The only downside was discovered when they first came down. Looking for me at our house they found the door open and that a dog [probably?] had come in and eaten bread, sausage, cheese and leftover spaghetti sauce. But the excitement made up for it and their trip was considered a success all round. They had saved face by making their own decision to come down ‘because of rain’…

74 • Sometime Kin

Figure 5.2  Efua. Photograph by the author.

Children • 75

Figure 5.3  Simon. Photograph by the author.

76 • Sometime Kin

Figure 5.4  Maia. Photograph by the author.

Children • 77

Figure 5.5  Julian. Photograph by the author.

78 • Sometime Kin

Meantime Maia and Julian spent the evening at Oreste’s to watch the milking. Maia says Oreste’s wife has backache. 23 May. Beautiful weather this morning. Warm enough to take off a layer of clothes! The children are all dead asleep. Am happy to let them miss the first half of school. Later turns out W.’s knife was lost in the excursion yesterday. Sent Efua and Simon off to find it after breakfast. Julian went with them; Maia stayed around. I went to find them about 10. All three were watching a woman washing clothes in the river. Later saw the school children walking towards Chiazale… Rounded ours up and walked to catch up with the group. Efua went ahead. When we reached the plain of St Anna found her upset about a bee in her nose … But it turned into good romping and playing. Efua is constantly asked to do cartwheels and is always happy to show off. As the star at St Anna her mood was restored. Gymnastics are easy for her but seem impossible to local kids, no matter how hard they try. In fact they all seem very heavy, wooden even. The boys are more willing to try. Strong, clearly, with stamina probably, but noticeably less mobile/flexible than elsewhere. The girls, even the one with jeans, are mostly immobile. They run a bit, shoving each other or pushing at the boys, but don’t jump or race or attempt cartwheels. Efua will be eight this month and this evening is worried there’s no chance of a ‘proper’ party. But she says she’d like to spend the winter here. So you like it after all? Well no, but I’d be able to boast about it afterwards… Seven meters of snow! Imagine! 24 May. Simon saw and showed me some pups drowned and battered under the Prafauchier bridge. He says it’s not fair: they should give them to other people if they don’t want them. Efua says she knows when I am tired because my hair hangs down and I sniff all the time. Maia bathing in the blue tub says ‘What’s the matter with me? The water’s not dirty…!’ Julian says we should go to Margherita’s house. Why? Because she is sad. Why is she sad? Because she doesn’t have any children… 25 May. Efua came back from the door of the school too ‘scared’ to go in. Must try to arrange for her to go back into Matilda’s class. 28 May. Margherita says she would like to have had one child, one like Maia, cosi piacènte. This evening Efua asked Maia if she really likes Margherita or just carries on like that because of the food. Maia thinks a bit and says Yes. I really like the way she looks…

Children • 79

29 May. Raining at first. Simon claimed a sore throat and stayed home. Maia went to school but left for a drink of water and disappeared for half an hour. Found in Oreste’s stalla. By after lunch I could not tolerate the children at all. Bitched at them for far too long. Slept half an hour. Rain stopped so went with them all for a walk towards Chiazale. The gardens were full of people planting and tending. Cheerful again. Later Efua and Maia went for a ride on the scooter of Antonio [of Giaco Trous]. Up to his granja. They have the impression that he has no girlfriend here and nothing to do so he just wanders about… Mathilda, in some kind of chat with Efua, says she wears a shift-vest or pyjamas or nightie in bed. She says women mostly sleep in a cotton shift with a sweater over and then a sotto veste to the knees – the same length as the shift. Men sleep in a shirt and longjohns [mutande lunghe]. Matilda tells me aside that she doesn’t believe there’s any nudity, not even in marriage. And children are seldom naked because without clothes prendono male. Margherita said the same when she saw ours bathing naked in the blue tub. Obviously, they all say, our children are stronger… 30 May. Maddalena [of Giaco Trous] visits her very frail grandmother every day. Today she said she’ll go briefly, cinque minuti, before she comes back to make lunch and she invited Efua to go with her. E. says the stalla is bigger than Margherita’s. There are three cows, three calves, a small round table with a flowered cloth. Even a window. There’s an old woman, very ill, in the winter bed and a younger woman sitting by the bed darning a sock. Maddalena told her there must always be someone with her grandmother and she likes doing it. 1 June. 3pm. There was no one else at Caterina’s bar when I arrived with Simon and Julian. Caterina herself had been sleeping. But soon came Felice with his son Bartolomeo and his nephew, the boy with glasses. S and J join in a game with them which Felice says he has seen nowhere else. He says it was invented by four cows… Rules are no one speaks but can use signals [of what?], banging the table, making sweeping-taking-rejecting gestures. Quite incomprehensible to me but the boys loved it, Julian crowing, banging the table and waving his arms, Simon determined to win but not sure how. At some point he got fed up and left the scene. Julian followed, apparently ‘looked after’ by the boy with glasses. At 6:30, after some absence looking for them, I came back to find Titu and Battista outside our open door. Titu his usual wily self. ‘I was trying to stop Battista from robbing the place’ he said. I said you’re welcome: there are no treasures here. Per carità, says Titu. I’m only

80 • Sometime Kin

joking. We might have nicked the odd banana but the rest is safe enough. They sit and drink a bit of our wine. Relaxed. Titu asks me all my names, avoiding saying Signora in reference. Progress.



 6 School Schooling too costs money. Accounts of how much seem to vary. Transport with Oreste each morning and evening down and up to the middle school (media) in Sampeyre costs 60,000 lire per pupil per year (some say 80,000); 10,000 is paid by the school board, the government or the comune if you can get it organised. Support for college is even less likely. Five-sons-Levet is afraid to send the first because then he must send all five. So none will go. Romano this year has finished the media with very high marks and wants to study; but college pensione costs 20,000 a month, 200,000 a year, and he can’t manage it. (Less than a calf…?) He may send Romano to his own mother in Turin. At the FIAT school they pay apprentices 10,000 a month which leaves only 10,000 to pay (to his mother?). That’s not so bad. ‘Don’t send anyone to Cuneo’, says Ma Deferre: their Dario goes there and it costs them half a million a year. But money is not the only deterrent – mothers fear that if the child goes away, even to school in Sampeyre, they won’t want to come back. Teacher Angela (who comes from the lowlands) says the loss of labour is not significant because the child is only away in the morning: locals don’t seem to agree. Clearly it’s not just about labour. Many high schools in the Cuneo valleys are already closed for want of children. Most here will not continue to the media; if they aren’t sure, they won’t even take the exam. They stay repeating class five until school leaving age. It seems that school is sidelined and, according to Matilda, parents are mostly apathetic. Only teachers like Angela who are newly qualified and have no pull get sent to these remote mountain places and they are reluctant to stay. And Matilda says school children are supposed

82 • Sometime Kin

to have a medical exam twice a year: there has been no sign of it here in the last two years (because there’s no doctor in the Casteldelfino comune?). She says one child is obviously myopic and having trouble keeping up. She told the parents but they did nothing about it. ‘It’s not about the expense; they just don’t want the bother…’. She doesn’t think much of Bellinesi.

 Punishment At school Matilda pulls the ears of children who will not learn [say mine]. Simon’s friend Tino is always in trouble. He can hardly read and can’t do the necessary arithmetic. He ‘gets hell’ [!] because Matilda can see when his homework has been done by his mother. Whenever she screams at him he stands with his head down but he doesn’t cry. Simon cried for him yesterday. He says he hates Matilda.

Futures The teacher wrote: ‘SCHOOL IS CLOSING: WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?’ Six essays follow, the first with an extract in the writer’s hand. RENATO MARTIN: ‘In a few days the schools close. I will regret leaving because along with school I must leave my friends and my dear teacher who has worked so hard for me. I am sorry if sometimes my disattention made her suffer. As soon as school is finished I must take the cows to pasture; Sundays I come down for Holy Mass and sometimes stay a while to play with friends. I’ll stay at the first level baeta through June and July, then go to another, much higher, where I’ll stay till the end of September. I’ll come down to the winter house hoping to return to my friends and my dear teacher at school, where we’ll take up study after months away. When I grow up I would like to work in the city, but it should be in a place my parents could be with me. It would be terrible to leave them alone. I want to work in the city because here we have no amenities; in winter we are shut in by snow and no doctor will come if someone is ill.’ Figure 6.1  Handwritten extract from Renato’s school essay. Photograph by the author.

School • 83

RITA ARNAUD: ‘After a long winter spent with our dear teacher who cares for us and taught us many things, finally school is closing. With good Standard 4 marks I hope next year to attend Standard 5 in Sampeyre. This summer I will take the cows to pasture and help my family bring in hay; sometimes I’ll play with my friends in the fresh air. In the summer many people come to visit our mountains and to breathe the pure air of Bellino. There is a lot of work. Now that I am bigger I will help my parents with it. When I finish secondary school I will find domestic work with a family in the city, returning in the summer to help my parents with the hard work.’ M. LUISA BRUN: ‘I am 14 years old and in the fifth class. At this age I’m no longer obliged to stay in school but I still have no precise idea of my future – whether I will stay here with my parents and villagemates, or will go to work as a domestic in the city. There I would avoid the dangers of winter. I’d like to come back in the summer to help my parents make hay and to breathe a bit of fresh pure air. In this place the winter is too long and the cows yield very little. And there is the danger that a calf will die and one earns nothing. Peasants’ work is exhausting and troublesome and it pays little. To earn more when I grow up, I will look for domestic work in the city.’ ENRICO LEVET: ‘I intend to go to the Media but first there is summer. I will spend it at pasture. Alone it is boring, but if there are other kids around we play together. After a couple of months the cows go up [to the high baeta] and people gather to harvest the hay and carry it down. Later the cows come back to the low pasture. When school begins again I must go to the Media. After that I will go [away] to work, then get married, come back here and dedicate myself to work with my parents. When they get too old I will continue without them. I like the work of pasture and the fields: it is heavy but not too boring.’ ALFREDO PEYRACHE: ‘After school, if it goes well, I will go to the Media. These years have been happy and I hope my future will be the same. These years have been like a lamp for me. I haven’t yet decided what work I will do after secondary school. Now I am thinking of this summer and the work of pasture with the cows. A month from now I will take them above Chiazale, and in August we will climb higher to find fresh grass. I will spend the vacation working. When I am married I’d like to live in the city, working in a factory and earning more money to maintain the family.’ RITA RICHARD: ‘Soon the school door will close. A bolt will hold it closed for three long months. The mountains call a sweet invitation: Come! Come! The years pass, the seasons turn like children playing roundabout. At the beginning of each summer we leave school free, another grade past. We return to our favourite games – racing in the

84 • Sometime Kin

fields, jumping over ditches, playing hide-and-seek, climbing trees – and at the baeta we will enjoy the austere mountains where the last fields of alpine flowers touch the first ice, shining in the August sun. I hope that the teachers will think I’m good enough to pass the fifth class so that next year I’ll go to the Media. These days elementary school is not enough. After schooling I’d like to study to be a teacher, living in the city with my parents.’



 7 Money and Property Pensions There are old age pensions for everyone at 65. It used to be 5000 lire a month, now it’s 25,000, collected from the post office at Pleyne every two months. Before pensions it was hard: Margherita’s mother had three children and a bad leg and ‘she died like that, with nothing’. You get the same pension for invalidità at any age if you can prove it. The baker’s wife says it would better to have the pension before one is an invalid… ‘We strive for it while still working’. Most often invalidità is given for TB, injury or accidents but it’s not easy to prove: Caterina’s husband Gian’Toni was hit by a drunk driver last year and now has one leg three centimetres too short: ‘Still the bastards won’t give me the pension’. The shopkeeper in Prafauchier says you can buy a diagnosis for it from the doctor but she won’t stoop to it: ‘Anyway it’s too expensive…’. Old Ghiaudo and his wife together get 55,000 a month; his for old age and hers for invalidità – although she’s the hardest working person in Celle… He says one can do alright with that, that there is talk of pensions at 35 for men, heads of families, who will undertake to stay in the mountains, but it’s only talk… If you want to put up an agricultural building and can find half the cost, the government will give you the rest. If you can’t manage your half, they will lend it to you to be paid back over thirty years. They say the best of all is a FIAT pension. The mayor’s father worked there for thirty-three years and eight months, twenty-four years on the assembly line, ‘in linea’ – in three of which he wore a

86 • Sometime Kin

rubber apron and boots to protect against the wet. After thirty years they gave him a watch.

Extras Oreste gets 1,500,000 lire for providing a school bus service to and from Sampeyre through autumn and winter, half from the parents, the other half from the comune. The parents’ amount has to be divided amongst the families with children going to middle school; there are ten of these, at the moment, so this amounts to 75,000 lire each. This has happened only in the last three years. Before that they used to board in Sampeyre. ‘Oreste e molto in gamba’ (clever), says his good friend Martin. He has this income from the bus, and his bar – his wife’s bar. It does well because the wife attracts those who want to drink.

Borrowing Matilda says the bank readily lends money at 4–6 per cent and everyone (?) has a bank account, but a lot of private lending goes on. Still some prefer to borrow from locals. And some of the lenders are ‘usurers’; they take terrible advantage of a person in need, even 10 per cent! But Martin says interest paid to buy a tractor is officially only 2 per cent over five years and even with ‘extras’ hardly amounts to 3 per cent. But he says it’s a lot of bother. Local money circulates in small amounts: Gian’Toni took a ride down to Casteldelfino in Matilda’s car. How much? She says 400 lire but he gives her 500 and tells her to be nice to his son…

Insurance Five-sons-Levet pays 50,000 lire a year to insure a family of seven. It’s a good deal, he says. The premium costs are covered by what you’d pay for a few days in hospital. Martin pays 100,000 a year which has covered two years in hospital for his son with ‘a lung thing’ and, for his daughter, treatments for pleurisy, eye infection and an operation to remove an internal cyst which alone cost half a million. On paper, insurance would provide a doctor to pay a home visit up here but it would cost a lot and they would ‘try not to’. Only the

Money and Property • 87

strong survived in the past. Anyone living to twenty would be robust forever. Many died at birth, women in childbirth. Now the doctors pull even the weak ones through. Margherita has a bleaker view: it costs more to get a doctor up here than to go to hospital: ‘Anyway they won’t risk coming – no lights, no people: if you’re sick in the winter you must die in the house unattended…’. There are different insurance plans for rural, urban and FIAT workers. Below age fourteen and above sixty-five you pay only sickness insurance; in between you must contribute for your old age. Babies can be born in hospital with nothing to be paid on top, and rural insurance gives women five months’ maternity leave with 1000 lire a day to compensate for loss of labour – except that labour bought in now costs 1000 lire an hour!

Taxes The tax is highest on mountain pàscolo (pasture), higher than on fields or houses even though much of it is unused. Gian’Toni calls it unjust. He pays 500 lire a year for one useless field, and would give it away if he could, back to the ‘so-and-so government’. Land around the village belongs to the proximate houses, each owner paying ‘something’. There’s no tax on an empty, ‘unadjusted’ building, some if it’s inhabited or noticeably used, more if it’s both inhabited and fixed up – in which case the annual tax amounts to roughly the sale price of a cow. Buildings do occasionally change hands. There’s a large house across the road from the hotel which recently sold for something between 5 and 7.5 million lire – depending on who is reporting the price and for what purpose. It was bought by a Celle resident for his children. Where did he get so much money? Marie says he borrowed it from ‘all over the place’. The reality is that Bellinesi are all at some remove related to many of their neighbours and there is little space between them. In some contexts kinship unites, in others it divides.1 Tension over material resources runs high. If two men wanted your help, one family, one not, would you necessarily choose the kinsman? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’! Why is that? Because we are rivals over property… There are many stories detailing disputes among even close kin. One woman told me hers when I met her in the lower field on the way back from Martins’ (see Anna’s Story, below).

88 • Sometime Kin

Property Warm, dry, comfortable houses are hard to achieve but some do manage it. Renato’s family house has a fine stall, clean and warm, with six cows, four calves – three bought, one born at home, two baby sheep – each a twin with its sibling up on the mountain with its mother. (He visits those sheep once or twice a week.) Upstairs is very well-adjusted, with tiled floors everywhere. It is divided into several separate rooms to make it easier to keep warm. There is a large TV. Renato and his brother will not continue school. He is thirteen, marking time in class IV till he is old enough to leave; his brother Gian’Battista, at nineteen, is ‘just fooling around’: so much for prosperity. What do those who leave do with their lands? Some sell: there is a recent law, which says no land can be sold without first asking those with adjoining plots whether they want it at the same price. Local purchase is rare, maybe because there are three payments to be made ‘on top’ – the lawyer, the surveyor and the cadaster. In fact, these charges amount to less than inheritance tax so it’s better for someone to buy before the death of the owner. In any case, a buyer will never tell the government the right price: if you bought for six million lire, say four… Most often people who leave rent their fields to the highest bidder: lower fields are more costly because they are easier to work. A card goes up in the square saying such a field is available. Sometimes the parties bidding for it don’t actually want the land but want to make sure that a rival pays dear. At one time people moving out to France could ask huge rents. ‘They had palazzi in France but still they asked huge money’. Now that the population is smaller prices have stabilised. There’s no need to marry for land anymore. Once only the eldest was constrained to marry in; others were not concerned with land inheritance. When equal division became law, every sibling would try to consolidate his or her piece by marrying the closest possible kin with the closest possible lands, but ‘marriages of property’ are no longer the norm. The case of Martin’s new son-in-law whose paternal house is next door would appear to be an exception, but Martin denies it. He was surprised by the question: the character of the son-in-law’s family and the fact that the boy himself is bravo are more significant. ‘Look how good’, he says. ‘My daughter is not made to work in the fields and has gained twelve kilos in less than three months’ marriage…’. There are formal rules for distributing inheritance: half is distributed among sons and the other half amongst all children, including the sons. Property outcomes are not always amicable given the difficulty of

Money and Property • 89

assessing relative values. The tabacchina suggests just putting a money value on each piece and dividing it accordingly, but she seems also to feel that need should be taken into account. In her place they pool their resources. Daughter Felicina and son-in-law Luigi deal with the animals and the lands, she does the shop. They share tasks and income. With her husband’s family property, it was easy. He was one of just two brothers and they simply divided everything in half. As his only child, Felicina was entitled to inherit the tobacco/salt licence, but as she was a minor at the time, her mother took it over, like a regent. When her grandparents died (sixteen years after their son), their property was divided between the two brothers’ families but not the licence itself. So the shop stayed where it was. The vet is at odds with the provincial architect who says the Blins heritage must be preserved, that the only way is to keep out tourism – and this means persuading the bellinesi that they are better off as they are. The architect has been an advocate of Blins’ present status as an Historic Monument. This means that any change to the outside of the comune’s ancient stone houses is forbidden and – as the locals tell it – they are not allowed to improve their living conditions. The Regional Authority made this law to keep Bellino unchanged. Caterina says ‘Yes, the houses are centuries old and some are beautiful, but if the government wants us to stay here they should let us adjust them. Even to build in the traditional stone is impossible: you must stay five metres from any boundary and nobody’s holdings are big enough for that. The rule used to be a metre and a half! Those who make these laws don’t live here. They live in modern apartment blocks, palazzi, in the city. The representative for the mountains comes from below Saluzzo. What does he know?’ And yet there is resistance to the possibility of improvement. Consider ‘The Roof Lecture’ following ‘Anna’s Story’ below.

 Anna’s Story ‘My marriage is nothing. My husband curses, swears, kicks … I don’t mind hard work; I know he can’t do it; but without respect it’s like slavery. A servant gets wages and a wife has respect. I get neither so I must be a slave. Through all this our three children always loved each other and sided with me against their father. Now they are grown and married. Only one here. He has three children, the other

90 • Sometime Kin

son has a wife but no children, and my daughter has a husband and one prissy kid that I can see is spoilt already… [The son in residence] spent ten years in the house by the tabacchina, then decided to buy that large house down by the road. We couldn’t lend or give him any of the money for it because this wouldn’t have been fair to the others. He had to borrow all over the place, anywhere but from us, his parents – although we could have helped: we have a fair amount put away. When he moved out of the smaller house his brother, who comes only briefly in the summer, said it was now his turn to have it for ten years. I try always to avoid invìdia, to be giudiziòsa. This is how parents ought to be, how mine were. My mother, still alive after my father’s death, divided her property. We were nine children, eight at the division and an extra person to represent the ninth. She made nine lots; each of us drew one. There wasn’t a single cross word. I tried the same. I said I would fix up the empty house for the villageatura of my son and daughter and they could share the use of it each summer. I spent 175,000 lire; my husband berates me for it and the brother and sister have quarrelled. The girl said OK, you are the eldest, you should have the house the first year. But he had wanted it for ten years and suggested paying rent to us, his parents, so that he could be the padrone. I said they could rent it to forestièri and share the money but renting it to one of them cuts out the other. There were many phone calls. In one of them he said she could have it first because her holidays were coming up sooner. So she moved in and spent most of a fortnight cleaning and whitewashing and shining – gave herself a bronchitis doing it. Then comes he brother and says okay he will have his fortnight now [20 days in fact] since his holidays have begun. This is my crisis. My daughter told him he should have helped with the cleaning if he wanted this year; that they had agreed one year at a time. She is right; it is only fair. But what will I do if [that son] comes and asks me for the key? How can I be fair and still be a loving mother? I have no more will to work. The more I gain, the more trouble it makes.’ She turned away, taking an immaculate white handkerchief from the pocket of her tidy frock to blow her nose. But the story wasn’t finished: ‘When [the Blins based son] left home ten years ago we gave him a cow. It was worth 150,000 lire at the time. The others had nothing to start them off and it would have helped them if they had. So to balance the accounts, trying for equality, I gave each of the other

Money and Property • 91

two that amount this year. Trouble is a cow would now cost more like half a million – the meanest calf is 150K. They haven’t said anything about it, but how is that equal? Yes, it is true that the son here is the only one in a position to help me with the work, but it seems to me wrong, perilous even, to give him any more than the others get. Over the years we have bought him various bits of farm machinery. He is supposed to be working them off: every time Matteo does something for me the value of his labour should come off the debt of the machines. But we haven’t yet begun to tally it up exactly. Maybe we never will. You could say these are gifts: the hay cutter, the power saw, the winch… But the advantage of one is the loss of another. How can that be fair?’

The Roof Lecture Jean-Luc, the Frenchman who is in love with the mountains and wants to make Bellino better, has arranged someone to give a lecture about improving roofs. I’m told the speaker is his kinsman. Felice Martin says he will go because it’s Sunday, but these adjustments take money and who can deal with that? Not he… Anyway, life is better for some when others leave. There is more land near the borgata which can be rented for little money… ‘But if they all came back and claimed it [because the houses are better?] per carità, heaven must help us. It could happen’, he says. ‘Stranger things have already been seen in my lifetime…’ The lecture is scheduled for 2:30 but begins at 3 o’clock. It’s a full house, maybe 100 people, also from the lower parish. Children, including ours, sitting on the floor at the front, fidgeting. Matilda says lucky there’s no mist otherwise everyone would stay at home and sleep. The mayor and his family came late, stayed twenty minutes then filed out. The man shows slides. Fine views of mountains, snow-covered, mostly on the French side. Jean-Luc supports each picture with a line of poetry in French, translated instantly into bad Italian after people insist they don’t understand French. The audience begins to get restive, exchanging jokes, heckling quietly: ‘We have already seen winter…’ ‘I thought he would speak about roofs…’ ‘What is he trying to tell us…?’ The sentiments of the poetry fell like lead balloons – perhaps because of their source: ‘… alone with snow, sun, sky, mountain… the purity…’ Finally came pictures of roofs, very inexplicit. No one believes him, not least because they can’t understand what he says. Fausta, next to me, whispers ‘Our men know it can’t be done because they’re all muratori…’ At this point Matilda begins to assist with translation. The

92 • Sometime Kin

roofs are a question of Masonite and plastic and lathes – with the stone on top for decoration, ‘to pretend it’s traditional’. To do it you need twelve men to jack the roof up… People now begin to understand the technique and discuss it among themselves; the prime technical question for the speaker is how long will it last [after all this work and expense]? What happens after ten, fifteen, twenty years? Toni Truso goes further: ‘What will happen to it in 200 years!!?’ ‘Ahhh’ they say, ‘Ahhh…’ By 4 o’clock the audience begins to trickle out. At 4:20 the ex-mayor, now vice sindaco, takes over. [When the poetry was dragging he was the one who heckled ‘What about the roofs?’] He goes to the front and draws on the blackboard. It now becomes a conversation among those in the first two rows – including the vet. Maybe twenty men left. The meeting is obviously a failure. They say language has been the problem and anyway, the man is a Frenchman, not one of us. He has no idea…

 Note  1. See Wallman, ‘Kinship, a-kinship, anti-kinship’.

 8 Work Work is ranked. There is no skill attached to heavy work as such; no kudos. Hoeing and gardening can be done by anyone. The capacity for physical work is extraordinary. Bellinesi say it’s habit, abbitudine, which makes it possible. And given the annual cycle, the pressure is short-lived – continuous strenuous activity for the summer months and nothing for the rest of the year. Taroul says ‘We are like marmots; in four months we must earn for twelve …’. Eight or nine months go by with little movement, living in the stalla with the cows to stay warm. They talk of a heavy lethargy, of children with high fevers, of biological time… Tasks connected with hay and cows tend to be specialised. The mother of Caterina calls the work of the cows ‘her work’. In Giaco Trous’s family, he and his son make hay, his daughter herds the cows, and his wife stays around the houses, up and down. If there’s a lot of ‘down’ work and she is tired she swops with her daughter and does the herding. Sometimes she milks, sometimes her daughter does. It depends how they feel: even the gender division seems a matter of practicality. Even so, some individuals identify themselves by certain tasks: Antonio Prin who can’t see and walks with a cane still carries his scythe to the field to cut hay. Still doing the work of a man… Children are also workers. Matteo’s son Giovanni, a weedy kid of nine who used to look after his baby brother and is always worried about household problems, is ‘up’ with sixteen cows this summer. His mother feared it was too much for him but Matteo said to let him try – and it’s going well: he has rosy cheeks and is normally very keen. Except on the day of San Giacomo: when at 4 o’clock Giovanni

94 • Sometime Kin

was told to leave the festa and go for the cows (who had been all day alone because of the holiday), he wept and refused to go. It was misty: guiding cows is easy but it isn’t pleasant to look for them. A bigger boy (Arnaud’s cousin on the mother’s side) went up to bring them down instead. And again on Sunday, while we were up at Martin’s granja, Giovanni came down weeping because he had lost the two calves. But Maddalena of Giaco Trous, who was going up to collect hers anyway, kept him company so all was well in the end… Children grow out of herding of course. They get old enough to be paid for it and then learn there’s more money to be made elsewhere: this year Jeannot will get 150,000 lire (plus his keep) for three months as pastôro; next year he won’t do it because he’ll be old enough to work in a factory and be paid 100,000 every month. Girls can expect as

Figure 8.1  The Annual Cycle of Work. Figure created by the author.

Work • 95

much working ‘in service’. Maybe it’s long hours and hard work but with that kind of money, who can resist? Marie says she would: she would get fed up with endless ‘si Signora, si Signora’ and come back for some autonomy… Most people believe experience away makes for discontent at home so you need a large number of children to be sure that some will stay. But too many can be a bad thing too. It depends what you want…

Figure 8.2  Her husband is injured so Felicina drives the tractor. Photograph by the author.

96 • Sometime Kin

Maddelena (of Giaco Trous) wants to stay forever and hopes to marry someone from here, then even if she has to go away she will have family connections. Her mother has never lived anywhere else or worked outside. Neither has her father – except for military service. Titu didn’t even go out for that because when his brother was killed he had to stay to do the work at home. On 7 May the tabacchina says it’s time to plant barley and potatoes. Also some unnamed mixture for the cattle. Rye is planted in the early autumn because it needs to overwinter. In these lands there is only time for one crop per field per year. To make enough to sell you would have to farm many more of the high fields and now there are not enough people to manage large areas. True, de-population makes for less pressure on the land, easier farming – but also less labour. ‘Once we could cope even with steep fields; families had six or seven children who worked here because they had no option outside’. The younger of the Richard nuns says people now think two children, or even one, is enough because of the cost of raising them. They don’t want to work for the parents; they count as mouths to feed, not hands to work. These days most of the young go away and households are too small to grow much beyond subsistence. There are exceptions. Some send one to work away so others can stay. Gallian has a son of twenty-two who works as a builder below Sampeyre and a daughter of seventeen who is helping relatives in the lowlands, in pianura, to plant. The son has decided that looking after cows is better than working in a factory because there are strikes when no wages are paid. He is building a house. There are no doors or windows, it’s all drafts and dust. He says he’ll get a polmonite, a ‘lung thing’. And the wages are only 800 lire an hour for a ten-hour day, which after three weeks gives 168,000 lire maximum – minus expenses of travel and staying away from home. He comes home every night in his car (‘a German car’). At one time people gone to France would ask huge rents, even though they had villas, even castles, in France. Now that many have left more land is available and prices have stabilised. Oreste’s wife has heard on TV that a man under thirty-five, the head of a family, who will guarantee to stay in the mountains for ten years can have three million lire ‘for nothing’. She says they should put a factory in Sampeyre where the men could work to make money while their wives looked after a few cows at home. One can no longer survive just with cows… May is the best time for men to be away because the women can cope with the work at home. There’s no haying yet, and it’s warm enough to get building work. In May Taroul went with four others to Castedelfino

Work • 97

to make someone’s hayloft into an apartment. He took a week off in the middle to do his own hoeing. Haying is the heaviest work. The grass must be cut, spread, dried, bound, carried down or up the steep slopes on your back. Rain and mist get in the way. If the grass is damp it helps to pile it high overnight so it gets hot and dries better spread out the next day. If the weather is bad there is simply no hay and you have to buy it. In the winter of 1972 and the spring of 1973 every family bought some.

Figure 8.3  Carrying a fàscio of hay from high field to low barn. Photograph by the author.

98 • Sometime Kin

Some tasks can be done alone – herding, carrying, hoeing, sowing, weeding, gardening – but picking up stones and sowing barley are usually done in a group of two to four, perhaps just for company. The wheel-less wheelbarrow needs two to pull it along like a sled, chatting or not. Wheelbarrows with wheels often have a second person pulling from the front. Tying hay bundles is better with two but there is no time for social stuff. Each tied bundle (fascio) is head height and weighs 70 to 80 kilos – 200 pounds – a load W. in his prime could not manage. They say there is a special balancing technique which must be learnt from childhood. Most women do their laundry in one of the wash houses. River water is deflected through them, always running, always ice cold, but life is better since they were built. They still freeze in the winter but at least they’re out of the rain. Before they were built, laundry had to be done in the river itself. Anyway, the wash house is the place for chitchat, gossip… Those with washing machines – Marie, Caterina stanca, Oreste’s wife and the tabacchina – all have businesses to justify them – a hotel, a bar, a shop. But they still frequent the wash house from time to time, to catch up. Mules are useful: in the past every household had one. Now they are rare, with maybe only twenty in the whole comune. What the mule can achieve in one day would take fifteen days digging by hand; the disadvantage is that shoeing the animal nowadays will cost 3000 lire a month. And of course they must be fed. Farm machinery is valuable when it works. In Celle there are two large tractors, five small ones and twenty hay cutters. Fifteen minutes with a cutter covers as much as two hours by hand. Jeannot uses his scooter with a hand cart attached behind to move wood; Coustase uses his tractor to pull the trailer carrying a concrete mixer. Toni Trouso says there is no point having such a machine when you mix concrete only once a year: there is no tax on farm machines and ‘they don’t eat’ but the initial expense has to be justified by use. Gian’Toni’s big tractor, one of the two listed, is useful for going into Sampeyre for big loads like five quintale – five times 50 kilos – but is clumsy round corners. The streets are too narrow for it in the borgata. The tractor is bound to crack or knock out boundary stones. He plans to buy a smaller one also, but no one ploughs with a tractor; they are only useful for pulling and hauling. The best machines are multi-purpose: Giaco Trous’ family moves around on son Antonio’s scooter and Felice’s wife comfortably sits behind her son holding the long rake she will use in the fields. Most households need to hire in machines and labour once in a while, especially the widows. Margherita pays the old deaf man 4000

Work • 99

lire per day plus meals. Last year she paid Matteo Coustase 2,500 lire an hour and some food to do the more skilled work (this year she doesn’t know yet, ‘probably more’), but still she does much of the manual work herself. Labour is the limiting factor. Gian’Toni (Loupo) has space available for more cows (he already has twelve) but more work is not possible. In the winter it takes three hours to bring in one load of hay through the snow. He says ‘When I am seventy-five I will no longer work. (He is currently forty.) I’ll seal off half the stalla and heat it with wood. I’ll keep no cows then. No, I won’t move to town. In the city your pension goes all in rent. How would you eat?’ And yet voluntary labour is normally rejected. Twenty students from Tuscany offered to work the season, helping to bring in more hay so that the Bellinesi could keep more cows. Oreste said ‘Give me three or four bodies to clean the stalla and sweep up and I’ll make the extra hay myself. Peccato e that the students only want to make hay, to have a romantic vacation in the mountains…’. There were immediately three objections to the offer: 1) Tuscan people don’t know how to make hay. 2) ‘We each keep only a few cows; only two perhaps. Why waste time showing those students what to do for so few?’ 3) ‘We eat only bread and cheese. How can we eat that in front of them? How can we offer them that?’ You say they could eat apart, eat their own food, but that is not acceptable: any person who helps another must be given something in return. Food is best – even for those who are paid. Anyway, it is risky; one should make one’s own hay. Two years ago Margherita had to buy some but it had been wet and then dried and it made her cows very ill… Nor do the visiting kin solve the shortage. They could – and should? – help with haying because their summer vacations fall in the period of frenzied work, but practicalities get in the way even of the willing: Lorenzo’s wife says her son has fifteen days off work, eight with his wife’s family, eight here. Of those eight two are Sundays, two will be festas of some kind and two days it rains. That leaves only two. She finds this amusing.

 Sundays, Social Moments Martin says they will begin to make hay at the end of June. In the daytime the cows will be up at the first level with Adriana; in the evening she comes down to work at the house. Those who don’t have low pasture have to walk the animals back and forth each day.

100 • Sometime Kin

Povera bèstia! At our place they can walk out of the door and begin to eat. Girls working in ‘service’ take leave in the summer to make hay and help with the cows, even those working in the lowlands. But Adriana’s sister Caterina hasn’t yet decided whether to stay on here for the season. What will her employers do without her? She shrugs. The hardest work is in the summer. In three months they must work for twelve. But Martin prefers the summer: in the winter there is too much time to think. MM says another six years will be enough for her. Adriana will be twenty and she, MM, will be finished! The older one gets, the harder one works, the harder the same work becomes. The pension for women comes at the age of sixty, for men at sixty-five, but it’s too late; she is already tired. This evening she is exhausted and wants to sleep, but once in bed she will feel nervous and restless. Martin, ever the philosopher, reminds her: Più di vecchia non si diviene [‘More than old one cannot get’]. Not very helpful. Everyone has too much work. Loupo says they can’t cope with more cows than the dozen or so they now keep because of hay. This spring they had to buy hay, spending 5,000 lire per day. And in the winter it takes three hours to bring one load, one feed for the cows. Yes, they do have the space for more cows, but no more work is possible. When he’s seventy-five he won’t work at all. Only thirty years more… then he will get rid of the cows, seal off half the stalla and heat it with wood. He won’t move to the city because there your whole pension goes in rent. What does one then eat? One spring evening Ghiaudo is watching his brother Matteo plant Barley; Matteo’s wife is making a neat, taut line along one side of the field with the string she used for that purpose the year before. Ghiaudo talks while the others work. He observes that barley needs no tending once it is sown; that when it is grown it is good for chickens, cows and babies; and that it can also make beer. And they can expect a good season because the sun is strong already and it is not even Sunday: his wife likes to say that the sun always shines on a Sunday… 11 June. Sunday. More bright weather. Should be a day without work. No one in the fields. First Mass at 8:30. Don Ruffa presiding. Three sets of bells. One just before 8, long peals. Another at 8:15 [ding, ding, ding], then just after the half hour struck. Church comfortably full although some came late, in dribbles. Six nuns visible, some I hadn’t seen in Church before. No cantors. The junior priest taking confessions at the beginning of the service and leading the congregation in song afterwards. First time I’ve been to morning service and it’s a different population. Maybe the result of those who work only going early in the day. But then, it is a ‘special’ [?] Sunday. Another peal of bells at 10 o’clock, 10:30 [ding, ding] and at 11 the second Mass. The parish priest from Casteldelfino is here too.

Work • 101

Maddalena of Giaco Trous says ‘as usual’ they are three. Her father leans out of the window and shouts that the bell has sounded and she should stop gossiping and get dressed. She gestures at her fine new trousers and says that she is dressed already. Caught the last part of Mass with Maia. The others stayed outside with W. Strict segregation by sex. Men take Communion then go behind the altar. Women in the body of the church with their children. When the men are done, they troop up and back to their seats. Priest changes his position for the women: comes off the altar and stands at

Figure 8.4  Saints’ Day, San Spirito Parish (Celle). Photograph by the author.

102 • Sometime Kin

the top of the aisle. Another family at the back with us. Husband sitting with daughter, woman standing. Females have heads covered. Many with new scarves. After the service, men and women leave together, mixed. Men gather below the church and smoke… In the afternoon our kids helped Mathilda wash her car – a Sunday job. Then she sat in the sun and plucked her face. Caterina and her mother were lying on the grass nearby, chatting together, pulling fleas out of the dog. One Sunday after Don Ruffa was ‘moved on’ the new young priest made tradition. 3.30ish a rope was slung across the road with flower pots wrapped in paper attached. The children, blindfolded, must then try to break one with a stick. The Mayor says Don Ruffa never did anything like that. Once people danced in one house or another – like the previous nuns’ house, or maybe an empty hayloft. In the middle of the game – at which my camera was the only one in sight – two men, one fat one thin, both with high cameras, arrived in a large car. Behaved like tourists telling people where to stand etc. The thin one tried to line our kids up to take their picture but I pushed him off. Felt like a threat. Reaction of a suspicious peasant…? 12 June. Heavy rain. Sun trying hard. At 11 am a working party digging a great trench to set a plastic pipe into the ground. Teaming with rain, water everywhere, but some shelter from roofs overhanging the road. Seven men working, watched by the priest who holds an umbrella over his own head. I ask if this is lavoro communale. ‘No’, says Gallian: ‘We are a small society of those with houses on the street. – Except for him [pointing to Felice’s son who lives elsewhere]: we borrowed him’. Everyone is putting in drains. Another task for high summer? The baker showed me his blisters from digging. He has each pierced with a piece of thread – looks like tennis racquet nylon – through and out to drain the water. I said it was at least evidence of the baker working and he made as if to hit me. Coustase working with him found it a great joke. Other cures: there is a pleasant-smelling herb called erba bianca, whitish-green. Boiled into tisane it cures worms in animals and people. Disgusting bitter taste. Martin’s cat has the end of its tail cut off. This is to prevent worms, not cure them. The cat is six months old, thin and awful. Martin crept up on it while it was eating. Jeannot’s wife talks of a herb for people who cannot sleep. Name? Camomile also grows but that’s not it.



 9 Animals Pack Animals Twenty mules and donkeys remain. They are all elderly, but still valuable in this terrain. One day with a mule equals fifteen days by man alone. Oreste sold his when it was twenty-seven years old and misses it. Once it was considered vital to have one in every household.

Sheep One sheep is worth 25-50,000 lire. Marie says keeping sheep is a gamble and a bind. If you look after someone else’s you may get 2000 lire each season but you have to go and look at them once a week at the height of the haymaking. And if you lose one sheep you may spend days looking for the bloody thing. Anyway, for each animal the comune takes 300 of your 2000 lire because it’s communal pasture. The rest appears to be profit but raising one mediocre calf is better business. It is common to assess the value of sheep by the measure of cows. Titu is more positive. He says sheep can be watched and counted standing in the village with binoculars: there’s no need to climb to them. They follow each other and always move upward, never down, so will stay clustered at the highest point. They don’t even need shade: when it’s hot they stand extra close together with their heads under each other’s bellies. Titu has had thirteen all this past winter and will have thirty of his own at the start of the season. He plans to take 150 in custody from a farmer in the lowlands. He calculates: 150 sheep for

104 • Sometime Kin

which he gets paid 2000 lire a head caring charge. This makes 300,000 lire – which is the price of a calf… Martin is currently custodian to 250 sheep and will surely get a good calf out of that, but he doesn’t agree that it’s easy. The flock belongs to the man who runs a trattoria in a village below Casteldelfino. Once the man wanted to sell a very particular lamb to some important client and Guglielmo had to drive the whole lot down to the lower baeta so that the man could nab the one he wanted and only had to carry it halfway down the hill instead of the whole way. Martin has only nine sheep of his own but even from so few his wife spun eight kilos of knitting wool. She made fine blankets from that.

Cows Cows define everything. But there are not many left: the current tally is 450 across the whole comune. It is rather poetic that there are also 450 overwintering people: one to one… Pasture land is communally owned, unlike hay fields which belong to individuals. There is more pasture than they need for their few cows. Some have suggested renting it out to people from the lowlands who want to get their animals away from the summer heat, but locals are afraid they will be swamped by too many cows from below. Look at Chianale: they no longer have cattle because they’ve had no pasture to protect since the lowlanders came up. Ghiaudo says ‘yes, but at least they have lots of money. We on the other hand, we never move forward, we’re always in debt…’. All suggestions of improvements or changes that might be made to increase production involve risk – i.e. it’s okay to buy hay to feed cows to increase the number of (good) calves, but suppose they are not good? Or if one rents more fields for more hay and then it rains too much or not enough; or it’s too cold/too hot; or the wind blows it down or away? Gian’Toni says Claudio has twenty-five animals; others report that he has nine cows and six calves. All agree that he buys hay. ‘He puts up a front – but he never has any money in his pocket. It’s not as good as it looks. He’s just like the rest of us… except he owns more land…’. In the communal areas agreement must be reached concerning who goes where so that the herds are not mixed and they don’t compete for water. Also, cows that don’t know each other tend to fight. But there’s lots of room for the present number… ‘One grazes the animals all the morning, then leads them to water and to rest for the hot part of the

Animals • 105

day. Then graze again. So boring’. Matilda remembers how she used to watch the clock and pull flowers apart to make time go. Some manage other people’s cows, keeping all the milk. Martin takes twenty-one cows to pasture but only seven are his: the rest belong to the baker, the tabacchina and Oreste – all commercially too busy to pasture in summer yet needing cows for warmth in winter. Each cow eats fifty fasci of hay in the course of the winter, when it can’t be outside. If you have to buy hay in, one cow can cost as much as 200,000 lire in hay alone. On a good summer’s day, a strong team of two can bring in fifteen bundles to store, each one weighing from 50 to 70 kilos. This doesn’t count the grass grazed at pasture the rest of the year. A calf needs thirty fasci. Titu says the veal from here is good and saleable because it is matured slowly. He might sell seven or eight calves in a good year. On the other hand, they might all die and he’ll have nothing. Sometimes he buys a calf to fatten and sell later… Giaco Trous has eight cows; seven of them pregnant, five for the first time. One aborted this summer. Last winter he ‘lost’ two of the four calves born to his small herd… But ‘we must have cows’. In the winter the family sleeps in the stalla. They come up to the kitchen regularly and eat there if it’s warm enough. Otherwise they stay below, close to the animals. They say people in pianura don’t have this connection: most lowland cattle owners employ help to do the close work and no one lives in such proximity with their animals. The effect of closeness and interdependence is a strong emotional attachment. In Bellino even adults weep when a cow dies – partly no doubt for the economic loss, but the child sees the parents sad and is sad for the loss alone. At school, children refer to their cows by name, telling the teacher what is happening to each one. When they play what ours call ‘mummies and daddies’, they imitate them – ‘You be cow and I’ll be bull…’. The family may eat a cow that has died if the meat cannot be sold and is not unhealthy (the vet certifies yes or no), but no one will slaughter a healthy cow for food. Last year Margherita sold a calf for 100,000 lire and the old cow for 350,000 lire. She would like to get rid of the remaining two because they are ‘too much’ for her. (In extremis five-sons-Levet brings her hay by tractor). But again, what would she do in the winter? The old houses are only habitable with breathing cows in the basement. Without them a wood stove is not enough, even with a mountain of wood. And the cost of it! 2,500 lire per quintale and she would need at least ten to keep warm. When one sells a cow the sale has to be registered. If it has been diagnosed as sick you get 100,000 lire on top of the sale price from the

106 • Sometime Kin

government. If it simply will not produce you get nothing. Margherita expects no income from hers for at least two years. The calf she has will be old enough to mate in November, and will give birth in August (if it takes). Then it needs a few months to grow before the new calf can be sold. Cows used to cost 1000 lire a head; now it is more like 400,000. In the old days before insurance, a sick person might sell four cows to cover medical and labour costs. Now four cows could be worth 2,000,000 lire! Martin owned seven cows last year, and this year twelve – until he sold two calves. To feed his ten cows over winter he will need 500 fasci of hay. A calf might sell for as much as 400,000 lire but the price fluctuates. He finally sold his for 350,000 each, having earlier refused an offer of 390,000. Insemination costs vary as much. Martin says the local bull costs 5000, AID (Artificial Insemination by Donor) at the vet costs 7000 – but from him it’s free from June to September. The vet corrected this: thanks to government subsidy it’s now free all year. Oreste says with the bull it costs 5000 but you see the parentage. If it’s a good bull, you know you get that. Anyway, Martin says AID is ‘not natural’ and the cows produced are no better. Once a cow is served one way, it won’t take the other. And he thinks they can’t reproduce as often the ‘unnatural’ way. He has a cow ‘dal veterinario’ that he bought from Oreste. She’s a fine cow but strange – più pazza, più nervósa (crazy, nervous). Martin also acts as custodian. Owners bargain for the best deal. Kinship doesn’t count. Martin looks after eight cows for others but he won’t do it again next year: it’s not worth it… Well, maybe he will… Looking after a cow brings in 4000 lire a month and the custodian keeps the milk, butter and cheese – anything in excess of what the owner may decide to collect from the high baeta. Eight cows gives an income of 32,000 lire a month, which for the three months of the summer makes nearly 100,000 lire…! In any case no one lives off bestiame any more. There has to be something beyond cows. But calves are the one thing that turns into money – no one makes enough milk, butter or cheese to sell. The vet says it could be different. He has worked here for fifteen years. He is realistic, patient, rather pushy but well liked. Caterina says ‘He’ll perform a Caesarean on a cow and save everything’. Toni Trouso remembers a talk he gave last winter, about all the diseases cows can get. It was so interesting that Toni went away and bought a book about it. But the vet has a jaundiced view of the local cow culture. He has suggested a community barn for fine cattle which the government would support. But it’s hard enough to get on with family let alone

Animals • 107

with those outside it. They say four or five people in a house is already a recipe for trouble. The vet lectured at me: The Bellinesi will not change. They are as intelligent as the next person. But they live in the past. They don’t raise cows in those stalls; they raise microbes. I showed a group the microbes under a microscope and they laughed, as though it was science fiction. They pay me willingly for advice but they never take it… Calves are muzzled to prevent them eating hay or straw. They become nervous, scratch with their noses, eat their own hair. Calves are kept from their mothers because they always have been. There are thirty families in Celle and one hundred cows. They could be put together in a co-op, looked after by three families. Imagine: thirty families for a hundred cows!! And they keep that ancient law which says no pasturing before July 27th; the rest of Italy starts on June 15th. And when the cows do get out and up the grass is too long and the season too short: there’s been winter snow as early as August 10th… Under the best circumstances here a cow may yield seven to ten litres of milk a day while the same breed in the lowlands produces up to thirty! But they won’t change the late start law. Perhaps they can’t. They are all related: each is prevented by ties and obligations from doing anything new. Mind you [this is an afterthought] they are right about no ski lift… My brother runs the one at Chianale and he says only the hotels and bars attached to it make money; never the locals… Education should be compulsory. Gradually the young will want to live in better conditions. Let them earn 150,000 lire a month instead of 30,000. Then they will stay…

 Walking the Cows, Missing TV 15 June. Bright day. In preparation for the move to high pasture on the 27th the passeggiata of cows has started. Once begun they must walk every day, even in the rain. Because they’ve been closed in the stalle for so many months without moving, their leg muscles are too weak to make the climb. So each is walked slowly and sedately up and down the road a few times, until its owner considers it strong enough for the move to the first level where it strengthens some more, until ready to trudge to the good grass higher up. The cows look pretty miserable, blinking in the light, but every so often one will get skittish and sidle into another to make a bit of a stampede. There’s a lot of shouting and swearing and mooing but the feeling is positive: this is one of the better moments in the cow calendar. The children are ecstatic. Maia says they look like big dogs on leads; Julian says we must get one for a pet; Simon runs along the edge of

108 • Sometime Kin

the road with Giovanni, making mooing noises which they hope will cause trouble. When Gian’Toni shouted at them the moos turned into laughter – and Gian’Toni joined it! Efua, stoic as ever, tries to help Margherita move her ancient beast into the stream of cow traffic. By some miracle she isn’t trampled. Not a miracle: I saw Giaco Trous guiding his animals round her so she wouldn’t be hurt.

Figure 9.1  Cows in passeggiata to regain their strength after winter. Photograph by the author.

Animals • 109

19 August. Today Martin said the children could climb with us to the upper level. Getting ready Antonio loaded the mule with the heavy stuff. The old animal stood patiently, his head bent, looking depressed. Julian suddenly ran from me to the mule’s head end, cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted upwards into the mule’s ear ‘Harry! You forgot your lunch…!’ – verbatim from that Sesame Street sketch in which a man cups his hands and shouts it to a builder on the scaffold hundreds of metres above ground. Which reminds me: a favourite rainy day pastime – more often when we first got here – is a sort of charades in which one kid acts out a sketch or a TV character for the others to guess and applaud. Sesame Street is everybody’s favourite, but the boys are also keen on The Flintstones – the jingle rises in crescendo to shouts of ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’. Efua knows a lot of ABBA songs and does a passable imitation of the dark haired one… Quote Maia, watching Efua perform: ‘If we had another sister we could be The Supremes’… I’ve stopped worrying that it’s all about homesickness: they have such a good time making each other laugh. And us of course.



 10 Marie The household: Marie Levet; her husband Giuseppe Levet (Boundonsio), called ‘Bep’; her mother Maddalena; her children Iolanda, Guglielmo and Marielena. The girls’ names are unique in Bellino. Marie speaks: ‘I’ve always hated cows, hated the life with cows. I wanted to study. When I was fifteen I went to college down the valley to train as a teacher, but after one year my grandfather died and I had to come back to help. I married Bep then. Neither of us inherited much land – Bep because he had a large family, me because I had none. We used to climb up and over the top of the mountain to the small parcel that was ours. A whole day’s sweat for three bales of hay… Bep would be so pleased. He would say che meraviglìa! For him even survival was better than he expected. But we were going nowhere. You feed the cow so that you can milk it. It makes manure which you put back on the land to grow more grass to feed the cow… And three or four hens… Even if we prospered our lives wouldn’t change; we’d still be ruled by the needs of the cows – milking, cleaning the stalla, moving to pasture, cutting hay, calling the vet… Every year the same cycle. Year after year after year. I couldn’t bear it. I started the hotel to escape the cows. At first we rented out rooms in Bep’s old house on this site. It was a start, but too small, and there were the stinking tami in front all the time. And flies…! Even today you see cow dung piled along the roadside, waiting for the lowland farmers to come to buy it for their fields. But still people wanted to stay. Soon we were renting and sub-letting rooms all around the borgata. Then a surveyor client said we should build a proper hotel on

Marie • 111

the plot by the road, where we are now. He made many designs before settling on this one. We mortgaged ourselves to the eyes and moved to Turin to make the money to pay it off. All of us worked; any work we could find. I did washing and ironing and cleaning for the cittadini. For ten years I didn’t buy myself a cup of coffee or ride on a tram. Every lira went into the pot, into one pot. The whole family was involved. Even the youngest: at four Marielena would say: ‘Can we look in that shop window – or does it cost money?’ First we dug the basement. When that was done we did the next level, and the next… You see the sign says Piccolo Refugio Alpino, but it’s known as my place, ‘da Marie’. It stands out. It’s the only building on this side of the tar road, facing the track through the village. The track is made of flat stones laid edge on edge. When it rains the road is a river, but it’ll never wear out. Modern buildings can’t last like that; we’ve tried our best, but even this one won’t. And brick can’t age as beautiful as stone. Now the outside is done the hotel looks neat and clean – for years, I admit it, the place was a raw blemish on the landscape – but still it’s stuck out by itself and I see the style is wrong. The same could be said of us. We speak the dialect, keep up connections in the place. I’d even say we belong – as much as you can when half of each year is spent working in Turin. We do have kin around here. I never knew my father – don’t even know who he was – so I have no paternal relatives; and there’s only one aunt and a few cousins on my mother’s side. But Bep – his name is Giuseppe – his crowd makes up for it. He is eleven years older than me, sixty-three last birthday. He has eight brothers and sisters. Only eight survivors of the twenty-five born to his mother! Two of his brothers were killed in the army in 1943 and left no families, but the rest make a big network across both parishes. In terms of numbers we’re normal enough; it’s the not matching that makes us different. I’ve never suffered that village-y fear of what people might say and that seems to have rubbed off on my daughters. Iolanda is thirty years old, Marielena in the mid-teens; they are at ease with all kinds of people. You notice they have names that appear in no other family round here? My son Guglielmo, that’s a traditional Christian name, like his father. Maybe this makes them less visible, less often talked about. And more cautious… Who knows why? My mother lives in the hotel with us. Her name is Maddalena. She’s only fourteen years older than Bep, but that’s old enough to think that better times happened in the past…

112 • Sometime Kin

God helps those who help themselves. Little by little. I can see the hand of Providence in it. Bep can’t. He’s amazed that such presumption has succeeded and worries that it can still fail. He says because we have no lands we have nothing. Remember, he says: In the beginning we had to rent extra rooms at terrible prices. In those summers the neighbours made us pay as much as fifty thousand lire for one room! It was crazy! And then we borrowed thirteen million! Now, yes; he admits we are out of debt – but still without money… In this he’s right. And there’s another three and a half million to spend. He often says: I’ll be finished before the hotel is finished; you wait and see… I know why he’s nervous. The hotel completely covers his land, leaving only the metre and a half buffer against the neighbour which the regulations demanded when we began. Now it’s five metres – but this happened after we’d built the first level so it didn’t change our plans. Something else for others to resent! Giovanni the builder – he’s never been asked to work on the project – he says with satisfaction that it’s bound to cost thirty million at least! In truth if you add in the wage value of the family’s time they’re not far off the mark. Others hope it will be even more, that we will be ‘caught’ by the new designation of the village as an historic monument and will have to plaster the outside walls to make them ‘fit’ better. It’s the same every year. We start to get the season ready in May, all of us up from Turin in the car. Guglielmo and Bep stay the weekend to help open up and then drive back to their jobs in town. So it’s the three of us – four if you count my mother – cleaning the building, working fast like you do to get the hay in before it rains. The place will have been shut up all winter and it’s never that dirty, but I want it perfect. It has to be impeccable. It’s not only manual work. Last Tuesday the Secretary of the Municipio came up to discuss the special liquor license we need for a wedding at the end of May – ‘special’ because it’s outside the JuneSeptember summer period. Of course I sat him down and offered him a drink. He asked why I was bothering with a special license just for one day. I told him I’ve been reported to the carabineri so often that I take no chances. I didn’t have to tell him who blows the whistle: he knows my rival … I don’t mind a bit of competition; there’s room for us all; we do different things. But I wish she wasn’t so stupid; I’d rather do battle with someone a bit clever. Now the Secretary, he’s a worthy sparring partner; his visits cheer me, even if it means I’ll have to pay the extra fee. And he’ll put it through in time. It’s important to keep on the right side of those people: as he was leaving I rolled a bottle of Genepin in paper and handed it to him – a present, I said, not a thank you.

Marie • 113

This year the hotel will have ten rooms ready, all modern furniture, a small chandelier, curtains, starched linen and polished floors with washable mats. We scrape the floors with pieces of broken glass every spring and it looks like sanding done by machine. There is a bathroom with hot water, hand basins in some rooms and two toilets on each floor. This year the sun terrace and the dining room are complete – marble floors, ‘alpine’ style. There’s dining space for 100. In high season I can fill it one and a half times over. The regular guests come on a nomaid-service arrangement. It makes less work for us and they prefer it: it feels more like home, they say, and they know no one’s rummaging through their stuff. Some of them even clear and lay the tables – their own certainly, sometimes all of them. I never employ local people; they resent that too. Some of them resent everything! I tell them that the family does all we need. We have a caterer’s dishwasher and a hot water washing machine for the sheets and towels, but we only manage when all six of us pull in the same direction. That takes some kind of authority system, like a patriarchy. I suppose that’s what I’ve got going. It works because each person thinks they’re doing something for themselves and in their own way… Who knows what this building may be one day? What Providence intends? Even a nursing home perhaps? I feel I was intended to do it. Others have spent the last ten years changing nothing. But I stay apart. And I tell my children to ignore the slights they may get. The three of them are very different from each other. Iolanda is the eldest and the strongest – she works as hard as I do. She’s thirty now; I don’t think she’ll ever marry. She’s had a couple of offers, but none strong enough to exchange for independence. She finished a teacher training course (the one I wanted to do!) and now she’s studying to be a psychiatric speech therapist. In Turin her life is full of exams, work, study, and ‘vacation time’ up here for her – for us – is when we make the holidays of others. Iolanda has the habit of work. She was a waitress when she was twelve. Every evening after school. When she went to enrol in college they made her take ‘waitress’ off the record of previous jobs and put ‘factory worker’ instead, as though this was a better past for a woman aspiring to teach. Iolanda is like me: she’s never let this kind of shame become a part of her. Guglielmo, poor boy, has absorbed too much of it. He’s in his mid-twenties now. He’s the only son, but he won’t take the role. He’s a good person but he keeps himself in the background –fuòri del vento he says – which means the hotel business doesn’t suit him at all. He’ll back up the family effort in holiday periods but he is only comfortable

114 • Sometime Kin

making tyres with Michelin in Turin. As soon as he gets here he says when he will leave. Marielena is sixteen and has still to decide but I don’t expect her to stay either. A couple of years ago she was keen to study and work as a policewoman. She liked that there were only eight in the whole of Turin, dealing with women of the streets, children without families, things like that. She used to say it must be lovely to help people… This ambition seems to have gone, but she’s a striking girl – very sociable, very chatty, very up and down. Very troublesome. Yesterday she wanted to go and watch the song festival on TV. No one was interested so she went outside and nabbed the baker’s son and his brother-in-law and persuaded them to stop playing boccia and come in to buy a drink. Still she was edgy to go and kept on about the programme. I asked where they would watch it. She shrugged and barked at me: ‘There’s only a handful of TVs around. How far can I get?…’ Of course she went. Marielena gets away with it because she’s slim, sometimes even pretty – although lately she’s beginning to look more like her father. Pity she has his character too! But at sixteen one doesn’t see clearly at all. I married Bep at that age for goodness sake! He was eleven years older but he didn’t realize the responsibility he took on. He had to bring me up! Now when he doesn’t like what I do I can say it’s because he brought me up so badly… In those days each person was expected to marry another from this valley. Within 15 km there’s a dozen young men to choose from. All nice, all known since childhood. But then comes a gallant young blood from the world outside, well-dressed, driving a macchina lunga… He isn’t embarrassed by the mocking presence of kin and long-standing buddies so he can hold coats and doors and fuss around in the way that women like. What’s a local lad got to offer against this? His love, of course – but beyond that? A few cows maybe, an old stone house, a remote summer baeta and a bit of land for the hay… And so much work! Of course the girl chooses the man with the long car. She will say she loves him with her eyes and her heart, that the rest doesn’t signify. Of course it does. My mother doesn’t like to talk of these things. She never married. I only know that when she was quite young she went away to work as a housemaid in France and came back pregnant. The shame must have been terrible then, but now no one holds it against her – or against me; not even my enemies. Now she’s near eighty she likes to talk about the past, but never about the man who was my father. It’s childhood that glows for her. When she was a girl there was no road through the valley. She remembers going down the narrow path to Casteldelfino in

Marie • 115

winter, stepping in the footprints of the person in front. She never tires of describing it. It was always a tall person, she says, and she would stretch her legs and strain to follow and soon be so exhausted that she feared she’d never make it home. Mostly she stayed in the stalla and waited for spring. She says it was like being in prison for a crime you didn’t do. You wait for the trial which will put it right but nothing happens to break the monotony, the boredom… The road changed that. It changed everything. Not always for good. In the old days when a house was to be repaired or stones picked off a field everyone helped – for nothing, per carità only. Now, my mother says, carità è in pensióne! That makes her laugh. She laughs gently, with no teeth… I like to see her laugh. My mother lives always with the family, going up and down with us as the seasons change. In Turin when she stopped earning a cleaner’s wage but was still strong enough to work she used to keep the apartment in order and do the cooking. Everyone else was out all day and it wasn’t hard: two bedrooms, a kitchen and the hall. She still does what she can, but she will go on about how much stronger she once was, like a broken record: non posso più fare… She says the same to everyone – small children so little, big men so high – I tell her no one is interested, we all know how it is. I can’t do what I did ten years ago; in another ten I’ll do even less. I tell her – again and again – that it’s quite normal, that no one of seventy-six years can still work, that she has only to get up in the morning, make breakfast and sit by the stove all day… She cheers up when I get irritated; it proves she still has the strength to make me mad. Old age can be her excuse. But I’ve no patience with youngsters who complain of their lot and lack the fortitude to manage a decent livelihood. Even worse are the people who put on airs. Look at those poor creatures who go from here to town and pretend to be cittadini. In French they lard their conversation with ‘c’est-a-dire’. In Turin they pretend they don’t know the dialect, even speaking to the rest of us in Italian. Imagine that! How ridiculous! It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Iolanda and I will be washing, cleaning, cooking, serving, talking all summer. The season is short and hotel work must be compressed to fit, just like haymaking in the fields outside. The bar and the dining room are full twice over twice a day; the rooms are booked solid for July and beyond. Tomorrow eight new guests are arriving to stay and from somewhere we must find an extra half day to clean upstairs after the ones who’ve just left. Bep’s good only for specified heavy tasks – carrying a crate of bottles perhaps, or putting the shelf back over the oven – and Guglielmo shows up only to bring parcels in or to fetch the

116 • Sometime Kin

money Iolanda holds to pay for them. But each of them does something. Even my old mother; she works as an irritant, going on and on about how useless she is.’ Now that August is ending the season is winding down. Weekdays at noon the bar is deserted; all the action is in the kitchen. But today a handful of guests were still sitting in the dining hall at four o’clock. ‘Yes, I am tired. Marielena phoned from Cuneo with excuses: she had been given permission to go for a car ride only to as far as Saluzzo. But I could not summon the energy to tell her off. I know that Bep will tell me off for failing to control her. I see that Iolanda too is exhausted. She goes back to her teaching job next week. I’ll stay here till the end of September. This winter I’ll only work one day a week out of the house; one day is nothing. And there’s enough to do at home. Yesterday in the evening, I went for a small passeggiata, a hundred metres up towards St Anna and back. It was the first time I’d been out for weeks; I’ve not had time even to think of the mountains. As it got dark the air grew chill as autumn. I thought how in the high pasture it must already be cold. Suddenly I remembered going up to the Autaret as a child, how lonely and bare it was, and how lovely to come back down to people and the warmth of people at the end of the summer. I saw myself running in the streets of Celle, hearing the voice of my mother and of the mothers of my friends. We would have one last race after the separate voices of the mothers called us in for the night. Life seemed long ahead then, but it is not. And we arrive at the end with empty hands.’

 Status, Broken Promises Monday, 23 April. At the hotel after lunch, much serious joking about status. Professori. Marie says if you always use the title you suggest that the man is deficient, that he – ha! – can do nothing else. Shrieks of laughter. She tells story of the scholarly ‘X’ who was given (couldn’t even catch…) a mole and asked Marie to boil it for him [for the skeleton]. She refused, but gave him some alcohol in a jar so he could take it with him a casa. Under the laughter they are fed up with ‘research’. The Professor’s word comes to nothing. Marie says people remember he promised a dentist – who never came – and plumbing for the school – which never happened. She scoffs. The school toilet is still only a hole with two boards for twenty children. The professor did get a chemical

Marie • 117

toilet, but he gave it to the mayor who does nothing with it (non ne fa niènte). It sits in a corner of the municipio. The trouble is that people here accept their inferiority. They let themselves be pushed around. But now they have learned something; now they will not willingly agree to be interviewed. Anyway, how is it, after that fiasco, that the professori continue to come each year, to study us? They have skins that do not feel blows, metal skins, she says. Spoke to the very same ‘they’ at noon on Marie’s phone. [They] very busy, but worried about our children in the cold and will look into the loo issue. The professor says he gave it to Don Ruffa [the priest], not to the mayor. But maybe there were two. I told Marie I asked him to procure one for us since he seems reluctant to get back the one already given. Marie says she should hope so: that’s the least he can do. Note: Maybe the so-called ethical dilemma is different in a country where patronage is the natural law. Is it somehow an honour for the lesser to be used by the elite? Benso, the shoemaker in Casteldelfino [the one who got himself involved in our house-hunting] says everything is fine with the Turin researchers: tutto è a posto; their only mistake is to keep explaining what they’re doing. The professor by contrast says you should be quite open – not pretend you are not studying. I guess I’m trying for some anodyne combination of the two. ‘Life of the people of Vale Varaita’? It helps – me and them – that they see my life while I look at theirs. This has nothing to do with the broken promises issue. That can’t be right. Friday, 27 April. Marie’s son Guglielmo, suggesting we ask Mathilde about her house, says it doesn’t matter if we say it was him who told us it was available: ‘We are out of the wind here’ (fuòri del vento…) A reference to their marginal position maybe… Iolanda, Marie’s eldest, goes out with Francesco – a pleasant, intelligent, seemingly very young boyfriend, and he is up for the weekend. There is a wedding at the hotel tomorrow and they are all working like fiends to get ready, but Iolanda is beautifully coiffed. She says it’s for the occasion [of the wedding]; Francesco says it’s for him. I say he is the occasion. All pleased. Sunday, 29 April. Went to the hotel at 11 and asked if we could have lunch. Yes. Anytime. Lots of food left from yesterday’s wedding party. In the end 62 guests, plus the 12 giovanotti of the village who did the decorations, songs, music etc. Yes. Traditional style. You could have come in, she says. I said I didn’t want to intrude. Nonsense, you don’t intrude on us. Anyway they wouldn’t have noticed. And if they had they wouldn’t have minded… Francesco and Iolanda have been to Chianale for a small outing. Iolanda is worried that Francesco is six years younger, that he is

118 • Sometime Kin

devoutly religious, that she would have to live in a flat one floor above his mother… [This sounds like the cruncher.] They met at Lourdes in September. Now they see each other every day. Lots in common. Why does she hesitate? Maybe just afraid of marriage, she says. At yesterday’s wedding party there was a woman ten years older than her husband and quite happy… We’ll have to see. He wants to adopt lots of children, and that too used to make her afraid. But now she has seen ours and knows that things may work out… It was Marie who last year lent us a house, beds and bedding for the six-week summer ‘holiday’. A bleak memory now: it rained all the time and three of the four kids had wet beds every morning. I should remember also those good first contacts, washing sheets in freezing river water at the wash house… Today we took her lovely white local blankets back to the hotel, carefully wrapped in cleaner’s plastic, and stayed to visit. Discussion of the merits of sleeping bags we now use; Marie says they will plan to get some for themselves 12 June. Today at the hotel I met the sister of Marie’s mother. She raised five children, the youngest only five when her husband died. He had a pain in the head. He slept for two days and didn’t wake up. Most terrible was the fact that the husband was someone in whom everyone had much faith [tanta fiducia]. Many had given him their money to look after and when he died so suddenly no one knew where the money was. They searched everywhere. There was no way the family could pay it back – even selling everything they had. But then in the spring her daughter, the eldest, saw that a patch of earth between two rooms in the house had a different texture… They dug down half a metre and found all the money. God is good. While she chats she is mending an old shoe with a homemade awl and a pair of pliers, patching it with a piece of leather. A very old black shoe, putting on a neat brown patch. She moves very spryly – more so than her sister, Marie’s mother, who is younger. But she has some affliction of the voice and says she speaks with difficulty [fattica]. I said I would like to come and see her sometime, to talk more. She said her house was too ugly to visit but [instead] ‘if you need some potatoes I will sell them to you’. Fine, I said. I will come. Her son is Toni Chauvi, the one who does his laundry in the washhouse with the women, the man whose wife is in mental hospital. A womaniser they say. His son, according to Marie, has a good job as some kind of road worker in Turin – a municipal worker, so secure, not hard, and with a pension. Not that he thinks of helping his grandmother. O, per carità…



 11 Caterina The household numbers seven: herself, age thirty-nine, her husband Gian’Toni Levet (Loupo) who is about forty-five, and their three sons. Giacomino, the eldest, is nine. He was named after his mother’s father and will be ‘the little Giacomo’ until his grandfather dies. Giovanni is four, Roberto two. Also present are both Caterina’s parents. Her mother is sixty-five, also called Caterina, and her father, Giacomo Peyrache (Ghiaudo) is seventy. The house belongs to him. Caterina is always tired. It is her habit to say so, regularly and with emphasis: Sono stanca, come sono stanca! We talk of her as ‘Caterina stanca’ to distinguish her from all the other Caterinas. She lives with her extended family in a large house in the centre of Celle but says they need twice as much space. Before marriage she worked in Turin, first in a doctor’s house, then in the house of a lawyer with three adult children. City houses are lovely. She would live in the city if she could, but her husband is attached to the mountains and she is attached to him. He’s his own man here: with land and cows there’s a living to be made. But Caterina compares it to the time when they were young and she was still beautiful, when they had such plans… In those days she expected a great deal of herself and her life. Lately she is mostly discouraged and always tired: ‘Sono stanca. Stanca’. Of course we expect to be tired in the spring, but this spring it is worse. She can’t pull herself out of it. Yesterday she couldn’t get up. The house is across the highway from Marie’s hotel. It’s a fine big house, standing by itself, with a stone ramp at the front. The family has the second of the three licences to sell liquor that Bellino is allowed

120 • Sometime Kin

by law. They bought it from Caterina’s aunt who ran an Osteria in the centre of Celle until she packed up and followed her children to Turin. The children’s official surname is Levet, after their father, but they are Ghiaudo in the soprannóme system because they were born in the maternal grandfather’s house. His surname is Peyrache, but he is known as Ghiaudo. He says it means something like ‘devil’, but he doesn’t know why. Gian’Toni is one of many Levets – Marie’s husband included – but only bureaucrats use that name. Locally his name is Loupo. They say it means ‘wolf’. In the winter old Ghiaudo was ill and Caterina stayed up nights at a time. His heart is not good. Then he went to hospital in the lowlands for forty-two days for an operation on his prostate gland and she got up at five twice a week to visit him. But she is tired anyway. Sometimes she has a headache the whole day. Aspirin doesn’t help it. And her legs swell horribly with veins. The doctors say it is bad circulation and give different advice. How to know who to trust? She has started to take a vitamin-mineral supplement. She didn’t get it from a doctor and is unsure about it. Her father also took some but he too feels no different. Every day here is harder than any housemaid’s job in town. Whatever she does to it, this house is pokey, never clean, full of children and mud. She puts sawdust on the tiled kitchen floor and scrubs it hard with a whisk broom to clean it. Two lots of sawdust: the first wet, the second dry. When it’s a bit clean she can just pass a wet cloth over it. Now it’s too dirty. She never wanted more than one child but the second one came and even the third. Now? Caterina is ‘modern’ but she cannot speak of contraception. She averts her face and says only speriamo non più – we hope for no more. Whenever she is with them, she feels completely nervous but they can’t be left; they ruin everything. The small Roberto doesn’t eat. He never has. It takes two hours to make him take in a reasonable amount. He alone is a full-time job. Today is especially hard because her mother has gone to the high pasture. She went with Loupo and Giacomino but these she doesn’t mention: their help isn’t significant. Her mother is regarded as one of the hardest working women in the borgata; she supervises the children and the animals. Caterina is overwhelmed by housework, dirt, children, things. Having worked for doctors and lawyers she aspires to their standards but fails for lack of time, energy, money, space and organisation – especially organisation. ‘Labour saving’ devices don’t help: the household has every possible appliance but few of them work and now the problem is storage space for dead machines and discarded toys.

Caterina • 121

The kitchen measures four metres by five. It has in it a table, six matching chairs, a chest of drawers, a large dresser, a fridge, a wood stove, a big modern gas stove with oven, a large old-style radio, a 45 rpm record player, a cold water sink and a washing machine. The machine works, the drain functions, but routinely there will be two or three buckets of muddy water against the wall, with children’s trousers put to soak. In the trattoria, the room which was the camera before they adjusted the house, there is an alpine style bar on which, throughout the weeks of early summer, there is an ornate chocolate Easter egg and a vase of quite dead carnations. In the same room there is a scatter of toys and games, a clothes horse carrying damp sheets and towels and a price tag for 2,700 lire, an electric ring for cooking, a paraffin heater with a chimney, and half a dozen cafe tables – four of which have their chairs piled on them as though out of use. There are two child’s bicycles leaning against the wall; both have flat tyres. The boys ride them anyway. On the same level there is a third room, so small that all the floor space is taken up by a large double bed. Much of the wall is covered by clothes hanging on nails. There are two more sleeping rooms above, on the level that was once for hay and wood. The family uses a lot of houses. Apart from the one they live in, the granja half way up and a baeta in the high Autaret, they have two houses in Chiazale (inherited through Caterina’s mother-in-law) and one in Prafauchier (inherited from her aunt) which are used to store hay, and two others in Celle (from her uncle) which they use for the bottles of the bar, full and empty. They also rent a large room, again in Celle, where they keep old toys, unusable furniture, out-of-season or broken tools, and moveable legacies for which they have no use but cannot throw away. These things are called collectively la roba – stuff. They have roba all over the place because – again – this house is too small. The tasks of the household are performed by particular members of it. Caterina stanca does the cooking, the housework and the washing, every day. Two or three times a week she irons her husband’s shirts and his pantaloni da festa, not his working clothes. If they have customers in the trattoria she helps him serve them. Trade is not often brisk, but it’s a sociable place: Caterina is a reliable source of gossip and she welcomes company. Loupo, apart from playing host, does the ploughing (with the horse), and the hoeing and planting. He is also responsible for the household’s wood supply which he cuts by hand and carries with the tractor. In high summer, he and Caterina bring in the hay together. Only the two of them spend the whole year in the Celle house. Their parents and children move up and down with the cows.

122 • Sometime Kin

Nine-year-old Giacomino does the herding in summer; in winter he goes to school. Old Ghiaudo acts as babysitter to the two younger boys and does a few odd jobs around the house – only light chores since he was hospitalised last year. His wife by contrast to the rest does everything. She is responsible for everything concerning the cows – milking, feeding and tending them, cleaning the stalla in winter and managing the high baeta in summer. Cows are ‘her work’. She is also effectively the mother of her grandsons; this is not called ‘her work’, but she has more to do with the children than Caterina does, and more patience. The little one cries for the old lady in the night, not for his mother… At the granja there are two beds – one for Ghiaudo and one child, the other for his wife and another child. Once, when Caterina was visiting up there, she slept in the second bed with little Roberto and her mother went to sleep on a pile of straw in the kitchen (‘because she prefers it’). In the night Roberto got up crying and went to find his grandmother… One day her right hand is swollen and painful with blood blisters from some unspecified accident and she complains that she has not been well. Yesterday she vomited everything. But she works anyway. None of us is well, she says. There are always accidents. Yesterday too, in the stalla, Gian’Toni was kicked in the knee by a calf. He was playing with Roberto and fell full length on top of him. The boy was not hurt but Loupo could not walk all day… In fact he always limps a little. He was knocked down by a drunken lowlander on the highway two years ago and has one leg 3 centimetres shorter than the other. He has been trying to get a pensione d’invalidità ever since, but the bastards won’t give it to him. True, he is not an invalid; he is strong enough to work. But it’s a good thing to have. Anyone who has a chance of making a successful claim to invalidità will be wise to do so. The old age pension comes fifteen years too late for the mountains. An invalid of any age gets as much – 25,000 lire a month – and may be young enough to use it… Loupo resents this very deeply, but he speaks of it without bitterness. He, like his father and brothers, is said to have a ferocious temper, but he is normally affable – if sometimes whiny. He still openly enjoys those tasks which involve driving his tractor or his horse around the borgata. Both commodities are rare in Bellino, some say because they cost too much, others because they are not useful. Indeed, one day in mid-May Loupo and his mother-in-law go on foot to collect wood up at the granja. The horse has not yet been let out of the stalla after the winter and even a small tractor can’t make it up the steep slopes. Like Caterina’s washing machine, these items are only occasionally labour saving.

Caterina • 123

Loupo’s father and brothers live in the lowlands. His married brothers are all married to Bellino women. When the men visit the trattoria their wives visit their own natal kin. There are tensions between this family and the families of the various sisters-in-law. They are explained either in terms of disputes over property, or in terms of the violent tempers displayed in the course of those disputes. Everyone knows of the tensions and can relay versions of the occasions on which they were expressed, but no one finds the productive working relationship between Loupo and his mother-in-law worthy of comment. He is, after all, in his wife’s father’s house, his children carry the soprannóme of their maternal grandfather, Ghiaudo (although they are, of course, Levets, not Peyraches), and he works their lands as well as his own. In practical terms a viable relationship with his parents-in-law is more important than his attachment to his wife. In May all the animals are still under the house in the stalla. It is ten metres by five, extremely hot, with a pale light from outside. This household is rich in animals. The stalla houses one horse, one bull, five cows, five calves, one goat with two kids, and one cat with four kittens. It also contains an accumulation of excrement and the aged Ghiaudo who is resting on the winter bed built into a corner near the entrance. It is a good stalla. Friends and neighbours like to sit and chat in it, even in the spring months. Ghiaudo, like his daughter, is very sociable. They take the cows up to the first level pasture in June. On or after 27 July, when it is allowed, they move higher, to the Autauret. In principle the children and the grandparents go up together in June and stay away for four months. But in fact, Caterina’s mother comes down quite often ‘to help’, and Ghiaudo will go up only if he feels like it, because of the two months in hospital this winter. If he doesn’t go, he will divide his time between the winter bed in the stalla, the kitchen in the house, and the roof of the shed in front of it. The sun shines there on fine days and he has a view of the hotel, the highway and the narrow street leading up to the bakery. Anyway, Giacomino, now that he is nine, can look after the cows by himself. In Ghiaudo’s view, the law against taking the cows up to the Autaret before 27 July is irritating because it means extra work taking them in and out, up and down, in June and July. But it has advantages. It protects them from Bellinesi without cows of their own who might be tempted to rent out the communal pasture to lowlanders early in the season. Then the rest of us would get up there and find the grass gone. By the end of July the lowlanders have always made other arrangements to get their animals out of the heat and the grass has been left to grow knee-high for Bellino’s cows.

124 • Sometime Kin

Caterina thinks that law is right enough; but the law against new building is something else: ‘The Regional Authority want Bellino to be a museum to advertise to tourists. Wicked. Our house is too small and the law means we can’t make it comfortable. Even in the winter we must go outside to go upstairs or downstairs or into the stalla; we are not allowed to make an inside staircase and we can’t use the top floor in the winter. Without heat it is too cold, with heat it is so humid that the walls are frosted. So anyone who doesn’t choose to sleep in the stalla with the warm cows must sleep in that small side room off the kitchen…’. It pains Caterina that Marie’s hotel was built high and wide in red brick before ‘the museum laws’ came in. It is impossible to compete with something so big and so modern. She talks of this unfairness as Marie’s doing. Old Ghiaudo shrugs and says the hotel will last only as long as it will last. Water will get into the bricks and freeze and crack them. He had a few bricks in his cellar that froze and cracked this winter. Such a building would last well enough in the city, but here in the mountains, no. Here it is different… Ghiaudo himself built this house, his own house, with his father and two others helping. He was the stonemason for it, the muratore. He no longer works at that – or at anything else to tell the truth. Since he returned home from hospital he says he acts the signorino, just sitting about and looking after his grandchildren. He finds it pleasant. Caterina complains that he sleeps all day in the sun and lets her sons run as wild as they like, with their noses dirty, no shoes, and their socks not matching. Ghiaudo will keep the three boys company during the long evenings when the others work in the fields until it is dark. But even if it is ten o’clock, he doesn’t give them their meal. It’s not his job to prepare food. He likes them all. The older ones are boys like he was. They have their own games already. But the youngest still needs him. He cares warmly for Roberto. About 6.30 one evening in spring, Caterina is at the wash house rinsing some jackets. The washing machine is run every day, but there are always buckets of things needing her attention because she is convinced they can’t be trusted to it. Roberto wakes up from a belated midday nap in the small side room and goes straight to his grandfather. Ghiaudo embraces him: Mio angelino! The child is wearing pyjama bottoms and a sweater. The old man wants to dress him. He seats him on the table and begins to look for pants and socks. He can’t find them: ‘Che vita! How in a hundred years am I to guess where they have hidden his clothes?’ He ransacks the bed, slowly and carefully, twice. Roberto sits patiently, watching him, saying nothing; he is calmer with

Caterina • 125

his grandfather than with his parents. On the second search Ghiaudo finds the boy’s trousers in the bed and puts them on over the pyjamas. He then returns to the bed to look for the socks. While he is looking Roberto gets down from his perch and retrieves one by crawling under the bed. His grandfather takes another, not matching, from the kitchen table. They smile together: Roberto is dressed. When there is quarrelling or nagging around him Ghiaudo is silent, thinking, he says, about other things. Otherwise he is humorous, philosophical and chatty. He likes to talk about life and about his own life. He tells good stories. Regular visitors to Marie’s hotel tend to cross the highway and seek him out as part of their annual routine… When he was young, from 1921 to 1930, he worked in France every winter. They used to walk over the pass through Pontechianale. He did many different jobs, not all of them bad, once in a metal shop the size of Celle! He says he hopes to be a builder in eternity because he can repair St Peter’s gates! But no one really knows, not even the Pope. All religions are similar. The Jews are still waiting for the Messiah, the Protestants believe he has come – but not by immaculate conception! There are fewer Muslims, but in Africa there is already a black Cardinal. The amount of money Mussolini spent in Abyssinia, for his own glory, could put the whole of Italy to playing boccia. The fascists did nothing for the people. Now it is better. If you want to build an agricultural building, you amass half and the government will give you the rest. That’s how we built the baeta. If you can’t raise the half you can borrow it from them and pay back over thirty years… And there are pensions for everyone at sixty-five. He and his wife together get 55,000 lire a month. She is five years younger, but got it two years before him because she is inválida. ‘It is a stomach problem; I don’t know the name. But still she is strong…’ He is proud of this. Yes. No doubt. Life is better now. This morning he leaves the comfortable stench and heat of the stalla to ‘look at the sun’ and see how the people are in the fields. He chats for half an hour with a couple preparing a small field thirty metres from his front door. Later (the sun is still shining) he has moved 200 metres along the main road and sits below it to watch his brother Matteo and Matteo’s wife sow barley. Roberto stays close to his grandfather; now he’s pushing a small toy tractor through the dust. He has a bottle at night but otherwise, as Caterina says, he never eats. Giovanni, at four, is given a bottle during the day when she wants him to sleep. She says she can do nothing while any of them is awake and they stay up at night as late as the adults. Giacomino at nine may be a completely efficient herdsman but he’s never still in the house. On an ordinary evening he can manage

126 • Sometime Kin

within minutes to eat a fistful of sweets, spread a pack of cards across the floor, pelt a passing child with a volley of corks from the bar, and prance around the kitchen table pulling at his grandmother’s shawl, his grandfather’s cap and his mother’s head scarf on the way. The old lady calmly readjusts her clothes, talking normally throughout. The old man doesn’t react, leaves his cap where it has fallen on the floor. Only Caterina rises to the taunt, shrilling threats of punishment which he seems to ignore. Giovanni chooses this moment to join in. Ignoring the grandparents, laughing, he dances at his mother with a broom, hitting her chronically tender leg as he swings away. She smacks him so hard that he staggers. Her mood changes immediately. Now she is sad, sentimental. She tells the still jubilant Giovanni to fetch the can of hair lacquer from behind the bar, sprays it on his head and gently smoothes his unruly hair. ‘Adesso tu sèi bello’, she says. ‘But not I. Not any more. I, instead, am only tired. Sono stanca. Stanca…’. Caterina is overwhelmed by her children and by what they represent – too much family, too many possessions, too many expectations… Her mother tells her to fix her headscarf and she does so without looking up.

 Fatigue, Accidents, Reputation 7. May. Went out at about 3 o’clock with our vegetable leaves, aiming for Deferre’s rabbits and a list of the local fauna. Rounded up the children. Efua playing with the two sixteen year old girls, one Felice Martin’s daughter and the other Giaco Trous’ immediate neighbour. Caterina emerged as I waited for her and we exchanged pleasantries. I suggested to W., since we have not patronised Caterina’s place since the hotel opened up, that we buy a drink from her. She is pleased, although as usual overwhelmed by work, especially by her children. As we drink our shots she says today is specially rough because her mother has gone up to the baeta [with Gian’Toni and the nine-year old Giacomo]. She usually takes care of all the animals. I asked if we might see them. Why not? We all troop through to a surreal, incredibly hot stalla: one horse, seven cows, one bull, four calves, one goat, two kids, one cat, four kittens, grandfather Ghiaudo and a lot of excrement of every known variety. The children seemed fascinated at the time but later only talked about the stink. A lot of giggling about it.

Caterina • 127

11 June. This evening at 9.30 another road accident. Luigino di Jeannot [Pichot] was hit by a car outside the hotel. His face and chest injured but we don’t know how badly. Simon – who should have been in hours earlier – had been watching the bocce with Luigino: his father and Romano [his eldest brother] playing. Apparently they [who?] drove him straight down to the doctor. Clusters of people standing about. Gian’Toni is hopping mad. He longs to send his kids up to the baeta: another eight days and via! The road is always bad in the summer. The ferr’agosto is a madhouse. One cannot keep children down here. He says he has paid agricultural insurance – a lot of it obligatory. He pays 20,000 lire a year and if he touches another car he will be covered for the 100,000 he would have to pay. [Funny switch from kid damage to car damage. May be a bit drunk]. ‘When the children go up [with the grandparents] there is left only me and Caterina. Then I shall be tranquillo.’ 27 July. Today the high pasture opens in Blins. Walking down from the granja with Martin I said maybe I should speak to Gian’Toni about renting his extra house in Chiazale next year. He was appalled: there are matters of honour and reputation I should know about… Gian’Toni has four brothers and two sisters; he’s the only one still here and [so?] he worked all their father’s lands. At some point the four brothers said they should have some returns, rent maybe, even if only a little. Gian’Toni refused. His brothers then persuaded their father to ‘push him off’ the family land. Now most are rented to unrelated people: Celestino, for example, rents a large piece just over the Chiazale bridge. Against this, eight days ago, Gian’Toni’s father was up here in Celle. Ghiaudo [Caterina’s father] said: Why not let us use the lands? G.T.’s father said: What? A family like yours!? At which point, so the story goes, Ghiaudo smacked the other man’s face in a fury – hard, twice… Martin tells me that the reference was to the fact that Caterina ‘non ha tenuta la sua posta’. She had stepped out of line by having it off with Toni Chauvi – the city bloke with the wife in a mental hospital. Very slick, dapper and jolly. It was two summers ago, when Gian’Toni was up at his baeta, working around. [What did he do?] What can he do? Nothing. They fight a lot but no one does anything… He went on about avoiding families who fight; how he rejected one of his daughter Beatrice’s suitors because he came from a family always in conflict.



Figure 12.1  Margherita poses outside her house. Photograph by the author.

 12 Margherita This is a one-person household. Margherita lives alone in a large well-appointed house towards the top of Celle. She never had children. She says she is seventy, but her posture is younger: tall and straight, patrician. Like all proper widows, she dresses only in black. She is Richard, vedova Estienne (Pichot) – born a Richard, married to an Estienne, both big local families. But she is apart from the others. She insists, emphatically and repeatedly, that she has no kin. It is the link theme of her conversation, the explanation of her fatigue, her loneliness, her sadness – even of the tribulations of age. This is except for one first cousin, Lorenzo Gallian, who is very old. He is her only kinsman in Bellino and – dismissively – he has been abandoned by his children. Only that piece of his story is different when he tells it himself. He is frail now, but before his marriage he lived in France for twelve years, as a waiter – something in a hotel. His mother died while he was away, and after his father had been alone four years he stopped going out of the house and couldn’t cope at all. Lorenzo came back to help out for a while and got stuck. He married here and had three children. He had a chance when a beloved uncle went to America and offered to help him go too. But he didn’t. One shouldn’t be so attached to lands. They give nothing back. One works and works and eats – and then works again… ‘Nothing was too hard when we were young. Now people keep leaving this place. The old die, the young go away. Soon there will be no one’. Once she had three brothers here. They each had a separate house, but all spent time together. Then they all went off to France. Now they

130 • Sometime Kin

are all dead. ‘Their issue is not family to me. One from there came here four years ago. He wasn’t kin, but he liked me [mi voleva bene]. Called me Aunt Margherita. But there is no one left here…’ True, one brother’s son comes every summer and stays in the house next door, but he ignores her completely [non mi guarda]. Another, on her late husband’s side, lives in the borgata, here in Celle, but he is only interested in prosperous connections. In fact, formally speaking, she has numerous kin among the full-time residents, and in both lines. Matteo Gallian is her second cousin, and she is aunt-by-marriage and godmother of Agnese. But these are not kin; she has no kin in Blins. Quite often depressed, she talks of death. When she was young and her brothers were alive, she spent three months in Avignon, in service, but she didn’t take to it. Her husband was here and he wouldn’t leave his mother so they couldn’t migrate together as they wanted to. His mother, her mother-in-law, spent a lot of time up the mountain at the granja, but she was always around the house. ‘Too much’. When Margherita went alone to France, she languished – not for Bellino really, not for this house, more because she missed the husband. In those days it wasn’t possible to trip down the road to Turin, work for a while and then come back. If you went to France, you stayed there for years. Now it’s easier to come and go. But this makes no difference to her alone-ness. None of the kin she grew up with remain, only memories. The others don’t count in the same way. It seems she has been looking for a family. Martin says once, years ago, he cut hay for her and over the meal she got a bit happy (she drank a lot at one time) and suggested that he and his family move in with her. If she had been older he might have done it, but he was afraid of the involvement. Another time she hired him to plough with his mule. She urged him to go slowly because she wanted a perfect job, which was fair enough. But she paid him outrageously too much: 5,000 lire for only two hours. ‘She is a woman who will give everything to someone she likes, but will slice up those who cross her – sometimes even when they didn’t intend it or didn’t notice they had done so. She is unpredictable…’ He implies that she is held a bit away, outside the core community. The gossip confirms it. Most scurrilous is the story that she pushed her troublesome mother-in-law down the stalla stairs… Old Ghiaudo, good friend and age mate to her late husband, confirms it too, but more kindly. He says she has had ‘mental difficulties’ and is not quite stable, but who’s to wonder; she is always alone, without kin. Her husband’s lot only look at her when she is giving them something. True, non è una

Margherita • 131

donna brava: when she does something for you there must be a motive behind it, and she makes a lot of the ordinary irritations, complaining too much when cows stray on to her land at the baeta, or when the youngsters shepherding up there throw stones on her roof. Margherita says when relatives work for each other, they arrange things somehow: one for one. If there is no kinship, then there must be money. Maybe once people gave help just for friendship, but not any more. ‘We used to do our washing together, at the streams in the summer and the wash house in the winter. Still a fine construction, yes, with a clear pool, the river water deflected through it and rocks around for sitting on, but now it is ruined’. She gestures at rocks in the pool and some garbage accumulated in the corner. Once Margherita had some money put by. She kept it in a chest in the cupboard. But then Matteo Gallian (one of Lorenzo’s sons) needed to borrow some. He is the one who bought and is adjusting that fine house by the road (some say it’s worth six million lire). Of course she could have said no, that she didn’t have it, non ne ho, but she calculated that she was alone, isolated without him, and that perhaps she could turn to them if she needed something. But since she lent the money they have avoided her. ‘Stupid I am’, she says, ‘Laughable. Now even with the pensione there can be not enough to buy bread’. She gets 50,000 lire every two months from the Post Office in Pleyne. All the old people go there at once. Before the pensions it was impossible. Her mother had three children and a bad leg. ‘She died like that’ (snapping her fingers), ‘with nothing. I always buy carefully. I can tell you wine is cheapest at Caterina, more expensive at Oreste, and most da Marie. Shall we go for a drop da Caterina?’ In the winter Margherita sold a carved chest for 50,000 lire to have cash in her hand. It was about the drain running down the middle of her street. Matteo Ghiaudo began it at the top, and when it reached her level she thought she’d better join in. Her share was 30,000. But she thinks she paid too much, that he paid nothing, that he would have done it without her because when it freezes his water floods her stalla and he has to throw it outside anyway. These days she feels old, tied by her cows. She needs new glasses but cannot leave the cows to go to Turin or Cuneo or Saluzzo or wherever it is – she doesn’t know where – to get them. Like yesterday, she got up late because she’s tired. She fed, watered and cleaned the cows, had something to eat herself, rested a bit, went to Mass, fed and watered them again, did a bit of milking and went to bed. The whole day can be spent on three cows. They always need work; she never catches up. And they give nothing back, not even milk. A calf is more worth keeping

132 • Sometime Kin

than a cow; at least it grows. She paid to have a cow served (fecondata) two months ago, hoping for a calf, but she can’t be sure it took hold. The merchant who buys cows came to see her other brown one. She had hoped for 400,000 lire – which is the going rate – but he was offering only 300,000. She wanted to stick at 310,000: if the cow were still able to calf, it would be worth twice that amount. A week later he came back, looking ‘out of the sides of his eyes’ (she mimics it) and offered 260,000. She refused flatly, he went on his way, and she was left distressed and anxious, glad to accept the 290,000 offered by a second merchant three days later ‘because I need the money… But others would be angry if they knew I sold so cheap’. Some days after this Margherita decides that the cow is in fact pregnant – the one she sold, not the other one. This amounts to a waste of 3000 lire paid to the bull, and another 200,000 lost, gained by the merchant if the calf comes. The deal is done. He has already paid her, yet she continues to feed and clean the cow. A bit sheepish, she says she has known the cow a long time and is loath to see it go: ‘one feels affection also for animals…’. Twenty-four hours later, it turns out the cow is not pregnant. ‘You can tell because it will go to the bull. Usually you take a cow to the bull every twenty days, on foot by road to Chiazale where he lives. When the cow refuses him you know it will calve within nine months. Never allow a cow to give birth in the summer; winter in the stalla is safest.’ Her cousin Lorenzo has three cows. Two had calves this year. He will sell them so he’s alright… In his own good time the merchant comes for the brown cow. Margherita helps him load it, backwards into the truck. It could have been worse; the cow could have made a lot more noise. But she is visibly distressed as they drive off. When the neighbours sit her down to a glass of wine, she leaves it untouched; she can’t drink it. She goes home to give the calf a brew of milk and flour, and the other cow some hay. It’s not the usual feeding time, but she wants them to feel better. (Two days later.) ‘Yes, she was a beautiful cow… I miss her already; the house feels cold. I had her mother before her. That one was yellow. The white cow is being very good [about the absence of the brown] and has said nothing. She won’t accept the bull because she has an inflammation. Her milk is still alright, but not much today: I didn’t feed her enough. And the calf has diarrhoea. They don’t talk – I know they are not people – but they are company. It pains me that I sold the brown one… but in truth the work is lighter since she left.’ The brown cow transaction drags on through the week. Margherita goes down the valley to cash the ‘note’ from the merchant who bought it. He had given her 50,000 cash and a note for 239,000. But the bank

Margherita • 133

couldn’t handle it – who knows why? – and she must go back next Thursday. To make the most of the trip, she goes to find the doctor. He tells her that her heart isn’t good. She didn’t know this before, and wishes she hadn’t gone to him. She focuses her depression on the cows. ‘I should get rid of them all, but I’ve always been with cows; without them I’d be completely alone. And I need the heat of them in the winter. Even with three in the stalla I burn a piece of wood and a piece of carbóne every night. Around midnight, before it burns out, I get up, heat some coffee and make up a bottiglione. Then I go back to bed near the cows. Without them I would have to go to a casa di ripôso. The rooms are warm, but sono tanti insième and I am so used to being alone. I wouldn’t be able to tolerate people interfering with me. Non so. I don’t know…’. So, in mid-April, she is still spending each night in the stalla to keep warm. She shares it with two cows, one calf, a cat, and two hens which no longer lay eggs. It’s very warm and quite dark. Upstairs in the kitchen the floor is warm underfoot. The rest of the house is ‘adjusted’ and cold. She fancies moving somewhere like Verzuolo where you don’t need cows, but she has no people there: ‘I have no people here either – but at least here there are the cows’. Yet from the outside, it seems that her life is full of ‘family’. On a Sunday morning in May she has two Frenchmen visiting from Marseilles. One, the younger, forty-ish, was her pastôro for five years, aged nine to fourteen. He calls her Tondo Garitū – Aunt Margaret in the local dialect. He came up to see his mother in Sampeyre. His wife doesn’t like coming even that far but he came with his brother-in-law. Together they made a special ride up to see her. They are not kin, she says. They are more than kin. The real kin are a different story. Towards the end of June, her niece Eliane, one of the daughters of her late brother Costanzo, arrived from France. She’s been married twelve years to the same man from Cannes, but without children. They have come to organise a surveyor to divide Costanzo’s house above the piazza between her two nieces – his two daughters. It’s been empty for forty years. Last night the couple paid an ‘amazing’ 500 lire for a room in Casteldelfino; tonight they will sleep in her house. She must organise the bed – her bed – for them in the camera. The couple is very French, very urban. The woman works in a caffé, the man on the trains. He travels 50 kms a day. He’s not the driver, but he gets good pay and without danger. Although the niece is the daughter of a Bellinese she doesn’t speak the dialect; after all, her father married out. She finds the village alien, the people closed but nosy. In town you don’t know your neighbours but they will help you if necessary; not in

134 • Sometime Kin

the country. She could never live here. If they come they will stay in the hotel so as not to disturb Margherita. Today Margherita took them to the baeta; the niece in chunkyheeled boots, her husband in a track suit. Of course, they are on holiday, everything must be tutto a posto. ‘Summer people look at us sideways, critical of the way we look, the way we live. But these two are friendly enough’. He plays with our children on the way up to the baeta. In it, panting slightly, the visitors marvel at the prehistoric items, at how much the bed would be worth in Cannes, at the low ceiling… Back down for supper in the too hot kitchen, the meal is built around wine and cheese brought from France because the Italian stuff is ‘not possible’. They compensate with funny stories about the film festival, about the starlets exhibiting their all. The niece says people here would be appalled. ‘Come to think of it, ma tante, you would be a sensation in Cannes. They never see people in costume there. They would film you right and left. You could make a fortune – and without cows!’ Margherita, pleased, giggly after the first drink, almost blushes. Her mood shifts when in the morning they decide they rather like Bellino and will stay another day. All very well, she says, but there are expenses: ‘I live too poorly and Eliane lives too well’. It would be alright with only one of them, but not the couple. And then the other niece will come to take care of her share. That one has a grown-up son. And these, a few days ago when it was raining, said they were not interested in Bellino, but now talk of having Costanzo’s house as a summer home when they retire. ‘They have already paid to divide it; the notaio and the geòmetra have done their part, taken their money. Then in some months, probably November, they must all be here together to decide which way to make the halves. That will make more confusion. And [with them here] I haven’t planted my potatoes. Everyone else has…’. Around ten o’clock next day she is shopping at the tabacchina, for cheese, lettuce, wash-up fluid, coffee beans - all costing 5000 lire. She is very tired; they are still sleeping. She has left the milk that she milked this morning ready for them and the coffee on the stove. Are they leaving today? Who knows. They want to eat polenta one more time. She has been touring around with them. The tabacchina teases her about it: ‘Signora Margherita doesn’t like to stay put anymore. Always in giro’. ‘What d’you mean, calling me “Signora”? Va te coucher…’. Still the potatoes have not been planted. She digs a bit, waiting for the visitors to emerge, working in the garden of another (absent) niece (but she will have the potatoes for herself...). She has made a fine scarecrow to frighten other people’s chickens off it, but her three chickens are in the garden with her. It’s good for them; after a year they’ve started to lay

Margherita • 135

again, even the blind one… That niece’s house is well adjusted. It cost a million lire to do it up. Now it has three taps: two in the kitchen and one in the bedroom per lavarsi. It also has a bidet. She makes a fleeting gesture towards her parts and giggles at the thought: the visiting niece has said they will have to go to Cannes even to wash their faces. There are no taps like that in Margherita’s house. They came initially for three days and stayed for eight. It was pouring with rain when they left and she worried about their journey. But it’s a relief. She’s not keen on people around her place in the summer. It’s expensive and visitors take up your time. There’s never only one of them, always several. And the niece’s husband has left her troubled. He said he prefers Margherita’s house to Costanzo’s – even the baeta, but particularly her house… He intended a compliment; she heard a threat. She won’t give her house to anyone; there are too many of them. Una nebbia di nipoti – like a mist, she says: there’s no way to distinguish one from the other. All the time she’s been alone, twenty-six years, no one has thought of her; now they all claim their part. Each tries to take it all. Not long after, as though to underline her point, the ‘other’ niece arrives. She is vexed that Eliane has been before her and arranged with the geòmetra to divide the house; when they met a fortnight ago she had said nothing, even about coming up. Margherita insists she had no part in any of it; it’s not her fault. The house has been dividable for ten years. They obviously don’t want to reach an agreement. ‘There are many quarrels accumulated here. Each knows the chinks and the secrets of the other. But when I think I might go somewhere else I am afraid. It is hard to change one’s life. Anyway Eliane told me yesterday that in France people, the young, they throw the old away – even their parents – so I, who have no one…’. She trails off. ‘This year I am very tired. This is too much for me alone, but it’s what I know’. When the visitors had finally gone, she went again to the baeta and found there was rain on the table. She couldn’t stay because mist was coming and it was too cold up there even to eat a meal. Last year a man asked her to sell him the place. Yes, he is from here, from Chiazale. He came with an outsider who hadn’t even seen the inside of the baeta but offered her half a million for it, the money ready in his pocket. She had pasta on the table and was just getting around to lunch – it was after 5 pm – planning to go to Mass, but they would not leave. So she said she was not interested in selling. Anyway when she realised the local man was fronting for an outsider, she couldn’t and wouldn’t sell. And now, she says slyly, it should be worth a million. In mid-July, another batch of nephews arrives. She will eat with them all tomorrow. For the next fifteen days she will be too busy for the

136 • Sometime Kin

important things. When Eliane came it was potatoes that were delayed. Now it is the hay. The visitors never help; they only take time from her – always the same story. Margherita knows she is not materially poor, that her assets, if liquified, probably match those of much bigger households – house and contents, baeta, lands, even the cows. But she will ‘never’ realise them because money won’t solve the loneliness of her life in Bellino and she can’t face leaving it: ‘It’s what I know’.

 Kin Are Not Family Margherita came in depressed, cold. ‘Only under my arms is warm’. Maia, who likes old people, kissed and hugged her. When the old women said, in Italian, ‘Don’t do that: I’m too ugly’, Maia responded, a month into the language: ‘Tu non brutta, tu molto bella’ which impressed me and cheered Margherita to tears… Martin says she’s always looking for a family. Until we came on the scene, rumour was that she planned to leave everything to the man who was once her shepherd boy. When he was fourteen he was nice to her; called her ‘Tonde Garitū. Still visits once in a while. But now some are saying she favours us. He has heard Margherita herself say so… How to take this? [What’s the gossip really about?] Plainly the children’s presence in the long-empty house across the road lightens her life. She takes every opportunity for contact, for inviting us over, for easing our way, for dropping in to watch the children playing or bathing by the stove at night. Bellinesi children are never naked, she says. They catch cold. Why do ours not? The beauty of a child’s nakedness is God’s miracle… Now that Martin points it out, I see she treats us like her own. Like ‘more than kin’. She is generous towards us – routinely bringing eggs and vegetables, urging us to eat at her table. No one else is so persistent. Possessive. More than generous… Whenever she can she controls small aspects of our lives; joins in with conversations started without her, with groups and activities not, as they say, her business. When the Levet men shifted beds with us Margherita appeared, inevitably blocking the narrow road, to tell us she had not been well. With gestures she described a kind of vertigo… The men moved her aside respectfully enough, proceeding with the furniture, but they seemed to feel it necessary to hold her off, a bit away. Now she has offered to lend us a piece of land to make a vegetable garden. Efua and I walk with her to the Chiazale crossroads where

Margherita • 137

there is a large patchwork of small allotments. Margherita marks the centre of the plot for us with a branch we break on the way. Chatting en route I say I think her mid-level stable, her granja (indicating it) very pretty. She says: ‘If someone wanted it, I would sell it’. I heard myself saying we could be interested in buying. I guess we could, but the impetus was Martin’s ‘warning’ and the need somehow to step out of the family role. [Surely it can’t be right to let informants bequeath you their property?] There followed the first conversation about it, punctuated by her explaining how we must do the vegetable garden, and by halloo interruptions from children calling to ours from afar. I am in deeper than I meant. Today Margherita says it’s too cold for working at the granja, but if she doesn’t take up stones no one will cut the hay when the grass grows long. I say we’ll help if she does decide to go up. Lunchtime, looking brighter, she comes and tells us three o’clock. The children go off to play, rushing back at 2:30 saying she’s ready. She wasn’t; I watched her feed the cows. When W. went ahead with Simon and Julian, she said she thought one of us would stay down with the kids: it’s so cold and her place is far for them to walk. Turns out to be lovely with a view all round. Kids happy to eat sandwiches at the table inside. On the way back down, Julian and Simon are running on ahead when Julian panics and cries. He is rescued by two old women and a man working the field with a donkey and a ‘French’ plough whose blade must be taken off and switched around at each turn. Barley, the man says. When we finally reach the borgata, Margherita takes us to her stalla to get warm. I offer a drink at our house but she prefers hers. Upstairs she produces coffee, spumante ‘for the children’(!), Chianti in a plastic basket, bread sticks, bread rolls, some cake left from a visit at Easter, and a tomu cheese which she made herself. While we ate she said she liked seeing us up at the granja. It is twenty-six years since the place had company. Her husband died so suddenly. The newspaper lining the shelves is still 1947. She hasn’t been there to live since, but when she cuts hay she eats in its kitchen. It smells beautiful on the mountain. The flowers and grass and herbs… Thursday, 10 May. Margherita is at our vegetable plot with a load of dung. She shows us how to dig a trench with the hoe, fill it with dung and shovel over. The children quarrel over use of hoes, Lorenzo’s shovel, etc. I leave to ask the neighbouring field whether it is too early to plant lettuce and carrots. No: you can plant anything now except basil – maybe leave the onions for a week. Two women and assorted children on the field. I offer to help shift their wheelbarrow. Caterina’s son Giovanni, aged eight, pulls on the string at the front of

138 • Sometime Kin

it. They are moving a slice of earth, 2–2.5 feet wide and 4–6 inches deep, from the bottom of the field, back up to the top… 11 June. Margherita came to lunch as invited yesterday. She showed me a receipt from the butcher which apparently she was to initial on the letterhead [?]. She said they had written to tell her they had killed her cow. The figure on the receipt was 239,000 lire. But she said it should have been – must have been? – 289,000 plus a thousand for stamp duty. Or else the lower figure and the rest tax? Anyway, whatever the price, she is obviously upset that she sent it to slaughter. She brought eggs and butter and the lightbulb [replacing the one that W. had taken in to mend her light]. Seems she enjoyed the meal. Tuesday, 26 June. More on the property front: Margherita decided to confide in Marc Matteo and Matteo Coustase about the possible sale because ‘they will find out when it’s done’. She learned from them that lawyers or someone [she is not sure who] are likely to come back at you afterwards and ask for more. Coustase said he paid a bill of 40,000 lire when he bought his place in the autumn and now the man wants 12,000 on top. Margherita tells me she couldn’t cope with that; she is always ill in the winter and couldn’t possibly go down [to the lawyer’s office] to fix things. Nel invèrno sono sempre malatta [I’m always ill in the winter]. Maybe we could leave someone to act for us? I say we must organise things so that there can be no demand on her after. We will ask what it will cost; even if it is high we will discuss it at the time; there should be no kickback. She seems mollified but I’m not sure where this is going. Where it should go… She hasn’t been to Casteldelfino for more than a year. She gets carsick. That’s why she won’t go to France to spend any part of the winter with her niece. Anyway it’s too strange. ‘I won’t leave here again – even though summer is hell, and winter is awful’. She continues to sweat to bring in hay in case she decides to buy a calf to keep her one cow company. She made coffee, nicely, precisely, and fetched biscuits. As I left she insisted I take ten of a dozen bought eggs, a box of sugar and the rest of the biscuits home to the children. Embracing her to say goodnight, she said the cold wind has made her mouth sore and she doesn’t feel she should kiss anyone anymore. Saturday, 14 July. Margherita says the new batch of visiting nephews have prevented her seeing us, doing the hay or arranging the notary as planned. She refuses to believe that we can or want to help her. When I said W. had already helped Martin she was more impressed. The visiting kin will not help: O, per carità!

Margherita • 139

20 July. Today Oreste delivered ten quintale of wood. He wanted to charge 4000 lire but she said it had taken him the whole morning with the tractor so she gave him 5000 instead. The niece and nephew heard there was wood for sale at Chiesa and she went with them to order it – otherwise she wouldn’t buy so early. Anyway, she says it costs more further down. Me and the children helped her stack it so were given a fine supper. We brought our stew… She gave us a cake to take home, wrapped in newspaper. Probably spent a month’s pension… Prices keep going up. Last year a wholesale box of ten kilos of pasta cost 2,200 lire; this year 3,500…



 13 Martin Household members: Guglielmo Snr, unusually called ‘Martin’ without reference to given name or soprannóme (Soudalo), his wife Margherita (‘MM’ in this text to avoid confusion with the other Margherita), Guglielmo Jnr and Antonio; daughters Caterina and Adriana in residence and Beatrice, married away in the lowlands, ‘lost’ to them – as are her two small sons. Martin is an optimistic and generous man, thoughtful, sometimes given to melancholy. He is one of the three who survived the Russian front. He was the one who came to us to mourn the awful teasing of Efua at school and became our close friend thereafter. In the winter of 1948, November to February, Martin went with Oreste to work chopping wood in France. They were a team of twenty-five or thirty working for one man. When they were fed up with it (stufa), they crossed back over the mountain border on skis. It took seven or eight hours – snow as high as a man! Also once, by himself, he went as a knife-sharpener (arrotino). He says times have changed so much since then. (Hand palm up then palm down.) It’s worse, much worse. People are not bravo as they used to be. Once they helped each other, talked together with enjoyment in the winter, but not now. It’s true there are more commodities, a road, TV and stuff, but it’s not so good. Why? Because people are nervosi, their heads are wrong. The high baete are all abandoned. He sees a connection. He likes where they live because of the view and because the house is away from others. One can get up at six or at nine and no one will know. ‘Yes they will’, says MM. ‘They will see no smoke from the

Martin • 141

chimney and they will know’. Caterina says ‘But sometimes you don’t burn a fire…’. The kitchen is large with an area marked off by furniture to form a scullery, a sink with water and two wood stoves. One is large, white, new and doesn’t work well; the other is old and rusty but does. There are two sideboards, many silent clocks, a TV and a radio, both old style. Two sleeping rooms run off the kitchen, one for the couple and son Guglielmo (!), the other for the girls or just Adriana if she is the only one home. Unlike many, they don’t sleep in the stalla in the winter. They sleep in the bedrooms and eat in the kitchen all year round. ‘We may go to the stalla to get warm during the day and to work, but it’s too hot to eat or sleep. And smelly’: Martin makes a face to underline the point. There are numerous animals around the house: three dogs – one for sheep, one for cows, a small one for the lap; one cat with its tail cut to half ‘to get rid of the worm at the end’ so the cat eats less and is beautiful. There’s a small canary in a cage high on the wall; sometimes it tweets. In the stalla in the winter when they cannot be outside, there are five cows, three calves, a mule, half a dozen chickens and some baby chicks. When asked about his ideal life, Martin says he would have lots of money and no work and he would travel about, visit around… Today is far from this ideal and he is downhearted. On top of it all MM has stomach flu or dysentery or such. Martin himself had it last week. She says she got it from eating meat. She is obviously ill: she went up into the bushes at least eight times in three and a half hours. Martin is thinking of all the work to be done. If more people would leave, he says, he would have a chance to make good, make a better life. If he could cut all the hay near his house, down on the valley floor, he could bring in twice as much – eight hundred instead of four hundred fasci. Land for hay is the problem. He already spends 120,000 a year renting fields. ‘I’ve already paid 10,000 for the two fields which gave us only nineteen fasci today’. And they had to cut it earlier than before… W. asked him why he doesn’t buy hay. He could keep more cows, sell the odd calf and have money to buy any hay they needed. ‘Not feasible’, he says. In the lowlands, Saluzzo way, the cows are only inside for three months, so if you’re buying to feed them it’s not a lot. But up here they’re in the stalla for eight months; that’s a lot of hay… Another thing: in the lowlands even a failed calfing brings in money from milk, . Maybe 100,000 lire income from a cow’s milk, whatever the calf production. ‘Our cows don’t give milk at such optimum’, he says: ‘the same breed in the lowlands gives up to three times as much. Lowlanders feed them more flour so they produce more milk. Mind you,

142 • Sometime Kin

their cows are productive only three, four, maybe five years – instead of twelve like ours. They get used up…’ Why not sell off a couple of calves? The market price fluctuates and the merchants are wily (furbo). In early June one offered 250,000 for a male calf of three months which Martin says is worth 350,000. The merchant says the same animal is worth 100,000 less than when it was a month younger. That man rarely comes; he is looking for calves to raise himself. Of the three they have they’ll soon sell the two males but keep the female who is the daughter of a good milker. Adriana is very clever at school but she will not go on to the media. She herself sees no reason for it: she wants to live as her parents do, with them, looking after the animals. She could easily stay in Sampeyre with her sister so it wouldn’t cost much. And Antonio even said he would pay for the whole business of her education. But she is not interested. Given what she wants to do, school has no relevance. The parents would willingly let her go but without voglio, with no will, there is no point. Antonio’s keeps the money he makes at FIAT for himself, all of it. He seems to need it – the way he lives in Turin. Caterina on the other hand is sensible, practical, solid – when she has a bit over, she hands it straight to the parents, 10,000 lire here and there. Antonio will give it to them if they ask for some special purpose (like Adriana’s education?) but Caterina volunteers it. Antonio is courting the daughter of Tofu la Font who lives next to the tabacchina. Martin calls her his nuora (daughterin-law) already. Tofu once made a bench in Martin’s house with 1971 carved on the seat. Guglielmo junior doesn’t much like to work – not in the stalla, not cutting hay, not with cows, only cutting hay with the machine and following the sheep. Every year he takes on a batch of sheep, this year he says 124. He is paid 3000 lire per head for the season and pays 400 per head to the comune. So he gets about 2600 lire for each animal. Altogether (I suggest), the price of a calf? Yes, but he doesn’t like to do that kind of work. The money from the sheep goes into the family pot but his pension for invalidità is his own. He gets it for ‘that lung thing’ (polmone, not the usual polmonite), and spent more than two years in hospital in Cuneo. Martin says he got it when high up in the winter getting wood – working hard, sweating and drinking frozen wine. On top of that he got a fright: the mule slipped on ice and fell with the load and Guglielmo was almost killed. It was the fright (spavento) that did it. ‘We asked the doctor whether his sickness was contagious because of Adriana being young and at home. Eating together… But the doctor said it wasn’t’. Never in the entire discussion was TB mentioned, not

Martin • 143

even to say what Guglielmo didn’t have. Recently he has had trouble with his liver, and gallstones. ‘Probably from drinking. We all drink a lot but they (the young?) don’t only drink wine. He also smokes: a packet of tobacco a day when he is working and more when he is not. He has strong views: Italians are backward because they speak no other language.’ Martin repeats the story of trying to learn Yugoslavian in the army and being further back in a month than when he started (this being the impetus for his reaction to Efua being mocked at school). Caterina was next on the sick list. All the Martin children had been hale and hearty until the age of twenty but then… First she had a pleurisy, later an infection of the eye, both ‘caused by cold’, finally an internal cyst which had to be operated on. MM stayed awake all night in a chair by the hospital bed – twenty days and nights in hospital! The operation alone cost half a million, but the insurance paid. In fact, all the family illnesses have been covered by it. Martin pays 100,000 lire a year for the whole family but says it’s a bargain; they’ve more than had it back. It’s been two years since Beatrice was here. To see her at all they must go down to Sampeyre. Her husband is a guàrdia pesca, controlling the fishing, out at 5 am, back at 9 pm. He could easily bring her and their two small babies up for the day but he is very jealous of her and of what she does. Her parents clearly don’t like him: Martin implies that he takes too readily to the punitive aspect of his work.

 Moving up with the Cows Sunday, 10 June. Another fantastic day, sun, blue sky, green everywhere. The stove went out in the night and we left it off till 3 o’clock. Everyone wearing new clothes at church. The French Gallian kin from the big house by the road sat in the front row with their daughter, very isolated and important. Efua and Maia went in with Maddelena of Giaco Trous, Simon with me. W. and Julian not present, not keen. Five-ish me and W. went to Martin’s house, having sent the children ahead with a cake for Adriana’s birthday. Martin and MM said separately that we shouldn’t have done it, but when I said it was for Adriana, not for them, they seemed mollified. A very jolly interlude. The children ate most of the cake we brought and some bread and cheese provided. We grown-ups had bread, cheese, wine, coffee. We are always placed on the same side of the table opposite Martin and MM, always husband and wife next to each other.

144 • Sometime Kin

On 15 June. Caterina came back again from Turin, staying till Sunday. The parents want her to stay on through the summer, not only because they are approaching the most crucial work period – haying will begin in the next couple of weeks – but also because she may go away ‘forever’ in the autumn. Nothing is specified until she is out of the room then I’m told she is courted by one of Loupet’s sons who has a large farm outside Turin. He once had eighty cattle but now has only thirty because the lands are too small. It’s some sort of tenancy. The parents like the boy. But her previous fiancé had a good job with FIAT which meant that Caterina would not have had to work. They will be sad to lose her: she is a most satisfactory daughter. Helps willingly and cheerfully, contributes money when possible, brings presents. For Easter she brought an electric coffee grinder for MM and a pipe for Martin. For Father’s Day a bottle of his favourite grappa; for Mother’s Day a necklace with a medallion which read L’amore d’un figlio per sempre aurai. Once a pair of Sunday shoes. 27 July. This is the day after St Anna, the day when the move up to high pasture is allowed to begin. I walked up with Efua to Martin’s first level granja. Guglielmo is ill. Ulcer maybe. Liver? Adriana is going with Felicina and her four children to Traversan and [so?] Efua stayed up to work all day around the house. Guglielmo ‘had to’ go back down to Chiazale because he needed bread and had to shave. I said we could bring the bread. MM said ‘But look at him; he must shave!’ Why? And why in Chiazale? She said he must speak to Antonio today: it’s the beginning of FIAT’s twenty-day holiday. Efua asked me later: ‘How can Martin be poor when he has three houses?’ 2 August. At 7 am weather is patchy, cloud but with no mist or rain. Martin said they will go up to the high baeta today if the weather is good. Clearly difficult to decide what weather is good enough. I set out anyway; mustn’t miss anything! Reached the bridge shortly before eight. House smoke visible around: the Colonel, someone in a loft in Chiazale, and one Frenchman up and cooking. Continued up to the first level granja. Found MM and daughters Adriana and Caterina occupied with the cows. All very dirty, splashed with cow dung, uncombed, unwashed. Martin himself in the kitchen. Gives me coffee, says we are not going up because the weather is uncertain. Shouts and curses heard from the stall below… He smiles and says ‘The things one hears in the morning are fascinating. The women get mad because the stalla is still dirty and the cows flick them with their dirty tails’. ‘About 8:20 the women come upstairs, wash their visible parts – hands and faces – and change their outer clothes. So does Martin. He turns his back to change, but the women, including Caterina

Martin • 145

in front of her father, go down to their underwear with no pudeur. Caterina appears to be wearing a black vest and underpants; she added an ill-fitting old-fashioned corset, then a sweater and slacks over woollen socks which she had attached to suspenders on the corset. MM is mending a similar corset for herself, but seems not to be wearing knickers. [This confirmed later when she peed standing beside the road without adjusting her clothes at all]. She wears two shirts; one goes on to finish the dressing, the second as she leaves the house so she won’t have to carry it. She says people will think her ‘una donna che sta molto bene’. She means stout. Which she is. After the ablutions comes breakfast. Bread is crumbled into the bottom of each coffee bowl then sugar and the milky-pale coffee mixture. They asked if I’d rather have my bread in a lump for dunking, a recognised alternative, but not for them because it needs good teeth. They bare theirs to demonstrate the lack. After breakfast things are cleared away and our milk supply prepared for me to take down. Also a tomo cheese. MM shows me that the pups can eat; it’s time for me to take one home. The black one is committed to Romano’s father, the blond female Martin wants for himself, I have a choice between two others. The stocky one has always been mine, according to Martin; it’s the biggest. Am happy to stick to this: the other one has pretty markings but a narrow head. Pointy. Ours is like a small bear. 9:15am. starting back down for Chiazale, carrying the milk, the cheese and the dog, when Guglielmo looms out of the distance coming up the hill. We are going up after all, he says. Antonio is following with the mule… The decision to leave the first level today was based on calculations about the weather and its effect on the calves. It wasn’t a decision made by one in authority over the others. But MM complains: last night they agreed they would go if the weather was good; this morning early [7-ish] she said it looked good enough, that they should send Adriana to Chiazale to get the sons up and get started. Martin said no: maybe he didn’t agree with the weather estimate at the time, but the whole plan is reversed just because Guglielmo turns up. MM complains that he changes his mind after she’s fed the calves. He knows they shouldn’t eat a lot before that walk. 9:20. Antonio arrives with the mule and Caterina helps to load it. Martin, Caterina and Adriana then move on up with the calves. MM tells me to make coffee; Guglielmo tells me to pour. Then the cows are released and move off, unguided, close together, mooing a bit, following their young.

146 • Sometime Kin

Figure 13.1  Martin’s daughter Caterina with the mule ready for the climb. Photograph by the author.

Martin • 147

9:30. The men finish their coffee and set off with the mule. By now the cows have disappeared. No one is worried: first it is said they remember the way from last year, then that they will follow the scent of the calves. MM and I finish washing and drying dishes, glasses and parts of the milk skimmer. Her sister-in-law, Claudio’s wife, installed in the same cluster of buildings, coming in and out through the morning, now says she has made coffee for us at her house. The three of us drink it, well ‘corrected’ – the glass half filled with castor sugar, then a solid shot of grappa, then very black coffee on top. [This is not breakfast…] MM is rushed, but she knows the woman is alone except for the herd boy so she sits to hear about Claudio’s bad hand. It needs more injections, that’s why he’s not here, why he’s still down in the borgata. When he gets better, in eight or ten days, they will leave for the top pasture… Their house up there is ancient, not aggiustata, uncomfortable. So why go? Because there’s better grass. The pull of good grass must be very strong to persuade the family out of Claudio’s new granja into a ruin, even temporarily. This place is lovely. MM says later that the woman is foolish to go to the high pasture leaving that house. You see how fine? And its only used six weeks in the year… The women wept a little as they embraced goodbye. MM explained: ‘You see, we’ve been here together six weeks. Up here [mid-level] we prepare meals together, eat together, work together, help each other with the milking. We are not together at the high level; our places are spread wider. That’s why she is sad when I leave’. Trudging upward, MM expands on the uselessness of her sons. They earn money but will give none back. They will not work on the hay unless the father goes down to get them out of bed. They play cards and drink all night; that costs a lot of money. Why give it to them? Because if they have no money they will run up bills in the bars and alberghi; they will make ‘brutta figura’. This usually means they will lose face, but her expression implies [also?] that they sulk if refused. The upshot is that sons are more difficult, less obedient than daughters. Theirs anyway. It is because their father didn’t discipline them when they were small. Now they won’t listen to him. 10:45. We continue the climb over St Anna plain. Lots of cars passing both ways. Weather still good. I stop to pull up the sock that has slipped down into my shoe [Is this why they use suspenders?]. MM stands nearby. Suddenly the sound of a heavy stream of liquid. She is peeing at the roadside; no crouching, no special posture. Casual and dignified. [So that’s why women prefer skirts!] On St Anna bridge a group of three middle-aged Italian city types say they thought this was Pontechianale. MM does the talking. We part with much polite greeting and the tourists wish us buona passeggiata – enjoy your walk. MM is carrying a full rucksack with six umbrellas strapped to

148 • Sometime Kin

it; me with a large casserole three-quarters full with a plastic bag of cream which will be turned into butter. Both loads are heavy. MM is furious at being wished ‘buona passeggiata’. What do they think we are doing? I laugh and immediately feel sorry for laughing. OK. She’ll allow that it’s funny, but they get on her nerves: ‘Mi danno nòia, sai’. Later, another set asked if we had been to see the lakes… She had a similar reaction. At lunch Antonio said somebody had asked him the same question. He told them he knows nothing about any lakes; he is only passing through on his way to France. That was funny. Even MM thought so. Another anecdote. Even better. Martin heard it yesterday when he delayed himself and Caterina by stopping in St Anna to have coffee with Tofu la Font – ‘a good man, sort of kin to us’. T. swears he sold two shopping bags of cow dung, tame, to a tourist for 500 lire each. Howls of laughter. MM is disapproving. Funny, maybe, she says, but disgraceful also: she herself would give anyone dung from their upper baeta for nothing. Martin thinks it was cheap at the price: the man said he wanted it for his potted plants!! O per carità! A minute later his habit of empathy asserts itself: ‘We, on the other hand, up here where there is no wood, used to shape it into patties and dry it on the rocks to make fuel. Sometimes we still do; tame is the best fuel around… And free. But imagine how they would laugh if they saw us doing that now! Each looks odd in the eyes of the other…’. The temperature keeps changing as we walk. The climb is not steep, only steady, but it makes you hot. You take off your jacket. A minute later you turn the corner into a biting cold wind. Hence the preoccupation with chills and anxieties about avoiding them; hence the extra shirts and the woolly socks. Layers. Midday. As soon as we arrive, Caterina comes over strange. She is physically distressed and near to tears. So bad she has to leave immediately, even before lunch. She is alright to go alone because she always recovers when she reaches the bridge. Every time she comes here, every time since her operation, she has a reaction to something. A kind of asthma maybe? Allergy? The parents think she is allergic to the one plant that only grows here, not down or across the slope – ‘the fuel bush’, called in dialect Verous, in Italian Ontano verde. The doctor doesn’t agree; he says the air is too strong for her because her blood pressure is high. She’s been told she shouldn’t eat pasta or bread or wine. But what else is there? If she is hungry, she must eat. Today she’ll have something when she reaches the borgata. MM on the contrary says she breathes best here – ‘but that’s because it’s ours; we bought it together. The air is never as good in una casa degli altri’. The view is spectacular, even with patches of mist. [Or are they clouds? Can we be above the clouds?] There is no one else

Martin • 149

in sight. The one other baeta, visible across the river, is empty. It belongs to Peyrache Jari of Chiazale, father of the other Battista. All of them are old enough to be pensioned so they don’t need to work it. No one’s been there for years. In this weather the climb would have been too much for the children. Sadly we all agree, I have left them below with W. So there are only seven of us here for lunch. Main course is a lot of macaroni boiled on a wood stove in the small kitchen; a large tablespoon of tomato extract and half a tin of meat [smallest size] is added to the water to make a sauce. Also on the table: bread, a tin of sardines [eaten only by Adriana and her mother], a tin of tuna and mushroom [which I also ate – but not the men], cheeses in all stages of ripeness, a salami which no one eats and abundant wine – MM says we just got here and already there’s a wine store. Also carried up today: radio, cassette recorder and tapes, milk skimmer, two three-quarter size metal beds, three mattresses, clothing and the seven umbrellas. Crockery and glass was already here. Also a stove [MM keeps one in each place] with two gas bottles to spare. The stuff amounts to four trips of the mule, fully loaded. They have all they need now. Any more will only be potatoes and bread. Anxiety about the calves dominates lunch. They worry most about the prize male who should [may?] fetch half a million lire in the autumn. They will put blankets over all of them; penicillin shots would be good, but they don’t have any. In three days they will know if any calf has caught a polmonite – a cold in the lungs. Because they’re up here, they should escape the cow flu which is going around. You know the cow has it when it produces blood instead of faeces. Some in Claudio’s herd are infected; some also in St Anna, but that’s further away. The cows were out – up – about 11:15, back in the stall at 12:30, out again at 3 pm until about 6:30. Then another milking, supper and bed. MM says bed will be about 8 o’clock. She will not stay up talking. Everyone, young and old, knows the sound of each cow bell and can recognise the voice of every cow. Sunday, 19 August. Went up again, all of us this time, encouraged by Martin whom I ran into in the street yesterday. Fine weather. Left the house before ten and already very hot. Got hotter and hotter as we climbed. Maia stricken by the sun it seems. She had a headache by the time we got here which lasted all day. She was hungry for lunch but regurgitated whole spaghetti. So did the pup. Otherwise a pleasant meal – the whole kitchen full. Their complete family minus Guglielmo but plus Antonio’s intended, always referred to as

150 • Sometime Kin

the sister-in-law of one of the others. Caterina not eating because of her allergies. All in the tiny kitchen. We have brought some of W’s fishcakes and tomatoes. There is antipasto from a tin and then the spaghetti, with a sauce from their Saluzzo friend who also cuts Adriana’s hair and referred them to a different doctor for Caterina’s affliction. A real friend that one. Un intimo. To finish the meal MM produced a large tomo, the local cheese made by compressing the curds of sour milk between wooden plates. She held it high to be admired; Martin smacked his lips, cried ‘Brava!’ and poured more wine. Simon meantime, gimlet-eyed as ever, whispered that he could see maggots crawling on the cheese: white maggots on the white surface. He was appalled. MM saw his face and laughed affectionately. With no embarrassment she held the cheese vertical in one hand and banged the holding arm with the other. A cloud of maggots rose in the air and fell, visible on the dark earth floor in what seemed like hundreds. Instantly, as though whistled in, all the dogs bounded in from outside to hoover them up. Of course the cheese was delicious. And of course the chidren wouldn’t go near it. MM thought they were very sweet… On two occasions [during the second trip] conversations about sex show that finally we can be part of ordinary banter. They also show the adults’ effort to keep sex knowledge away from children. On the first occasion ours had gone for a walk with Adriana while W. and I passed the evening with MM and Martin. They bantered about getting divorced – he said he could do with a younger woman, adding bisogna scherzare in case we haven’t realised that he’s making a joke. MM said he’s always complaining of stomach ache but he never stops smoking his pipe. Ahh, now that the children – including his big daughter – are not here he can reveal that the reason he smokes is because there’s ‘nothing to do’ with his wife anymore. We all laugh. He is encouraged and embroiders the theme. Once a month, he says. No more. MM is giggling appreciatively. He asks W. – ‘What do you think of that?’ ‘Bene’ says W. ‘Basta’. Martin says ‘No, once is not enough; two or three times perhaps’. W. says that’s only for the rich. Splendid joke… On the second occasion we have all had supper together. This time MM’s brother Claudio, MM, Martin, W. and me in Marie’s bar. Claudio has had one glass too many. Speaking freely and bawdily: ‘Times have changed. At the age of these children [he waves towards ours who are ‘helping’ in the kitchen, probably listening] we knew nothing. They know everything. Maybe TV does it. Also, we ate only barley, potatoes and white cheese. We couldn’t manage… [he gestures to indicate an erection, and guffaws]. Now by the time a child is 15 it is like an adult. There is nothing left to be told’.

Martin • 151

Both MM and Martin are silent. Perhaps MM embarrassed because it’s her older brother talking. She says only that these things are never discussed in front of their children, at any age, and the children never ask or tell anything. W. said afterwards that this has to be the form where there is such proximity of sleeping places. We’ve noticed Matilda’s blindness to the obvious sexual spark of her parents. There’s a huge discrepancy between these exchanges and her view of gender relations in Bellino. Maybe a generation thing, i.e. no sexual reference between parents and even their grown-up children. Because for us it’s normal to talk [almost] freely about such matters, the two-room arrangement of our Blins house is already nearly impossible. Maia reports that Giaco Trous’ family – husband, wife and two teenage children – all sleep in the same room, mother and daughter sharing the larger bed. Marie, my most frank informant, says couples looking for privacy contrive to go alone to the fields or up to the baeta… Another piece of etiquette. Now that we are something like friends the family is prepared to eat when we are not – much as the Deferres do with virtually everybody. [Significant that Oreste is an outsider?] One should always take something from the table, and one should set one’s glass down firmly between sips, not sit back from the table holding it in one’s hand…

‘Ugly’ Postscript Martin died suddenly in 1977, aged fifty-seven, three years after our last meeting. In a note sent to London in April 1978 Adriana wrote: ‘Dear Friends, It’s a long time since we saw you. Ugly things have happened. My father died on December 17th. I think this small memorial [card enclosed] will please you. We think of you all, especially Efua, so simpàtica and quick to learn italian. Here we still have much snow but I hope we will see you this summer. Ciao. Adriana e famiglia.’



 14 Twenty-Five Years On News of the School Leavers (Chapter 5) in a Letter from Matilda, Year 2000 Only one still lives in Bellino; one other has married a Bellinese. The others are married out and live ‘away’: Renato Martin has a Sardinian wife. He works digging channels for electric wiring in Savigliano. Luisa Brun is a housewife with two sons, married to her cousin Matteo who works in the Michelin factory in Piasco. The marriage is said to be ‘strange’ but successful. Rita Arnaud, pregnant with her first child, is married to a builder in Piasco. She spent years as a housemaid. Alfredo Peyrache has two children and a wife from Sampeyre. They are one of three young families still in Blins. She works part-time for a factory making ‘Vale Varaita furniture’ in Bronsio; he is ‘all about cows’. Enrico Levet has a Calabrese wife. The marriage is ‘not good’; his son lives with his ex-wife. Enrico worked a while with Renato in Savigliano, but now works in Cuneo for Michelin. Rita Richard is married in Busca. He works for Michelin, she once worked making frozen fruit, but now, after ten years of marriage, is at home with twins. Early in 1999 I visited Marie in Turin. She is retired in a comfortable apartment. She shares it with Iolanda who is unmarried and now runs the Blins hotel. It was ‘da Marie’, now is ‘da Iolanda’. Marie’s husband is long dead. Her son Guglielmo, married with two children, lives in the apartment above and works for FIAT. Marielena lives not far away and came for tea. She is married with one

Twenty-Five Years On • 153

child (the husband was working and didn’t appear). She is, apparently very happy, still pretty but frankly obese – a sign, they say, that she doesn’t have to work. Marie herself is smiley and content to be ‘occupied’. Yes, with her grandchildren, but she is also busy with a new venture – painting miniature flower pictures on small porcelain plaques which are sold in a local boutique. They are quite lovely and she is proud… Later that year W. and I drove to Blins from the city, starting early to spend the longest possible time there. We found the house of Giaco Trous and he, unchanged, was our local guide for the day. There was news.

Caterina’s Family In spite of the family’s reputation for conflict and bad behaviour, Giovanni grew up to marry the tabacchina’s niece Costanza, Felice’s daughter. Both had been born and raised in Celle. Twenty-four days after the marriage Costanza was killed by a car across the road from the big house. After her death Giovanni married a calabrese woman, the sister of his little brother Roberto’s wife. Now they are all away from Blins… Caterina was also killed in a car accident: Giovanni lost his wife and his mother on the same stretch of the Blins road. Add in the accident twenty-five years ago which left Gian’Toni with a shortened leg and his reaction to Luigino’s injury on the road outside his house, and it might seem that the family has been cursed by the road. However, his mother-in-law, aged ninety-five, is still alive and well. During the same period three others of Giovanni’s generation died in road accidents – one of them Antonio, the son of Martin (Chapter 13).

 Oreste, Battistino, Luigi Oreste Me and W. call unannounced at Oreste’s house. He is fixing a window, firm on a ladder; he says his wife is at the washhouse. Uncertain of us but because we know his name and mention our kids, he opened up, telling his wife we’re okay. They are afraid of robbers and Marocchini who prey on old people. A modern bathroom but the kitchen looks as before. Each of the three children [including teacher

154 • Sometime Kin

Matilda] owns a piece of the house. Son Guido is on the Blins Council but lives away. We are invited to sit and drink amaro with them, all of us happy to be together. They say our children were ben elevati. Oreste remembers when an old and ugly friend of theirs just back from hospital said he would give Efua money for a kiss on the cheek. She complied. ‘So kind. And later you came with her to our house to give the money back…’.

Battistino We saw the baker’s son Battistino driving past the church to the back of the bakery with a load of branches for kindling. He has the same face; I knew his face. He greeted us. Said he recognises me but doesn’t remember W. [?] He is alone in the huge house, without parents or wife. [Giaco Trous says his mother drank herself to death, that there was once a marriage prospect but the age gap was too big and the girl’s mother was awful…] Battistino says Bellino is lonely, sad, empty. He still bakes bread and sells a few small groceries. Immediately he began to speak he knew the names of all our four; he remembers the details of the kitten incident exactly as I do… They were good days, he says.

Luigi It happened in 1974. In November of that year Luigi, husband of Felicina and son-in-law to the tabacchina, was cutting wood with Coustase. A tree fell on his back and broke his spine in two places. They carried him to the house then put him in the small FIAT to drive to hospital in Saluzzo. A ‘Professor’ on the phone at the Saluzzo end said weights should be put on his feet for the journey to the hospital. When they did it his feet were almost detached from his body. Now they – ‘They’ – say he could have/might have recovered but for that. Instead he is paraplegic… He will never walk… His legs are spoiled [guasti]. He moved a bit in the wheelchair eight weeks after the accident – but it was too much; he went back to bed. Now he is always in bed. In 1974 the tabacchina wept as she spoke: ‘Last year we were all happy. One never knows what can happen in a family. Felicina now is only with Luigi. She alone is with him. She cannot shop, cook, clean, cut hay. The cows are up with Martin. He can manage the extra for now at least…’ It’s the same in 1999. Giaco Trous guided us to the old shop. Luigi, Felicina and the tabacchina will soon go down to Piasco for the winter. It’s better there for Luigi: he can move around the house in the wheelchair. Felicina says she prefers Blins [but] the house is not aggiustata, there is no inside toilet… The gabinetto is outside. A sort

Twenty-Five Years On • 155

of cabin round a hole in the ground with a china loo-bowl cemented on top. There’s a tap when you need water to throw into it… As we arrive the tabacchina responds to Giaco Trous’ calling but doesn’t know who we are. Bad eyesight, she says afterwards. Felicina [also later] says she thought we were from ‘the colony’ at St Anna and therefore strangers. She hid in the gabinetto where she’d gone to empty Luigi’s pee bag. He’d just been turned [to the wall] in his bed in the corner. The curtain on a string is drawn back. There’s a pull up harness thing and a clock. No books, no pictures visible. Awkwardly we shake hands on arrival; more awkwardly we kiss each other leaving… Luigi is huge. Stranded like a beached whale. Twenty-six years this month. Giaco Trous says he lives only through his wife. Felicina is as ever: energetic, enthusiastic, rushes in and out of the ex-shop for sweets, coffee, ‘baci’. [They closed the shop in the summer of 1990.] We sit together, close to Luigi’s bed. He doesn’t join in much but smiles his sweet smile… Felicina is happy remembering the children. ‘We had never seen such children. So beautiful, so affectionate. Working with Luigi and me in the fields. They were always here. Simon would sit on the earth carrier or the wheelbarrow as we moved the earth from the bottom of the fields to the top… He was always laughing… Of course I remember all of them, all their names! I don’t know how they are now, but I remember them exactly as they were. Tell them I embrace them as they were.’



 Ethnographer’s Epilogue Essentially this story is built on layers of memory. All of them relate to Bellino, but only a few to direct experience. The things written about happened at different times and to different people; even the shared occasions are not remembered the same way by everyone who was there. Records of the place were kept in the past, first by functionaries or clerics without by-lines, later converted into ‘historical documents’ by named scholars. Each of them has added a layer to the other’s memory of people and events. I even add layers of my own. I catch myself using ‘now’ memories of that time to fill out notes of what I recalled of the day’s happenings ‘then’. Some entries in my field diaries come back sharp, re-remembered as soon as they are read. Others, just as clearly made by me then, are unrecognisable to me now: I read them like accounts of someone else’s experience. Reclamation only works if they can be suffused with things I do remember or can persuasively make up. Or if they come up in casual conversation, they resonate with any of the (now) children’s memories of ‘then’ – usually very different from each other’s, certainly not the same as mine. How is this different from a memoir? Similar combinations of personal and social memory make up an autobiographical family history: ‘When, with the aid of fragmentary family recollections, I depict [X or Y or Z], I must round out their images using as well, consciously or not, whatever I know about devout wives and respectable landowners [of that time]’.1 Yes. But I think that ethnography deserves a more interactive layering process and (perhaps) more extra layers. I am aware that not only ethnography, but also the process of informants informing ethnographers is a memoir. In their telling too, then becomes now, now is layered over then, the fragments of one memory must be rounded out by others. ‘It’s the old biographer’s problem: even when people are telling their own life stories, they are invariably improving on the facts, rewriting their tales, or just plain making them up’.2 The palimpsests build. As an ethnographer I can only write down what informants do and say – i.e. what they seemed to do and were heard to say. Sometime

Ethnographer’s Epilogue • 157

later and in other contexts I write it up, colouring the field notes with other memories and tracing a story through them. Two separate issues are embedded among these layers. One is the indeterminancy of the truth – ‘The Truth’ – of ordinary people’s statements about their own lives and of professional accounts of them. I will not agonise about this. In my view acknowledging the problem both creates and (dis)solves it. But it is important that the truth of ‘objective’/quantitative/official accounts of the history or the kinship or the agriculture of the place is no less provisional than the truth of ‘subjective’ stories told by or about its people which I put together to illustrate the meta-tale. Truth is not a useful measure of the value of either. It is the recognition of its provisionality which counts as science. And in the assessment of personal memoirs, whether or not they are called anthropology, even that may be beside the point. Perceptions, after all, are real in their consequences. Or, more poetically, ‘the truth of such stories lies in what they reveal about their protagonists’ hearts, rather than their deeds’.3 The second issue does warrant a bit of agonising. It is covered by the question ‘Whose story is it anyway?’ In early anthropology the question was rarely asked. If it was, there was no need to hesitate with an answer: anthropological accounts were ‘theirs’ – ‘they’ being the people/informants/subjects/objects of the study – apparently without reference to the writer/observer’s part in the plot. Perhaps the ethnographer was not considered relevant; more likely everyone knew he (usually ‘he’) was there and so no one saw the need to mention it: a non-negotiable presence. And if that (essential) presence was not to be made explicit, then the (variable) domestic trappings of the ethnographer/observer were even further from the point. It was decades ago that I went to Bellino with four young children. It could not then have occurred to me to write the story as I have here; these days we feel obliged to convey the layering. There are few howto-do-it pointers and none without its risks. We know that what used to be backstage, off-stage, must now be front stage.4 We also know that front stage, sharing the informants’ limelight, we blush and gush in ways that are more likely to discomfit the reader than enlighten the text. Reflexivity which puts the observer front and centre is a turn-off. And if autobiographical anthropology5 has opened the discussion of dialogue between anthropological writers and their writees, it has not closed the confidence gap which these new circumstances have created.6 I teeter over it here. This is deliberately my story as much as theirs. Yet as soon as ‘I’ becomes legitimate there is a risk of becoming too selfreferential – my story, not theirs at all. ‘They’ act only as contributors to

158 • Sometime Kin

my self-knowledge, self-doubt, self-fulfilment, self… It must be better to recognise myself as an actor on their stage, usually as chorus or narrator, sometimes allowed (forced?) out of the wings to play a part. Always the script is multi-vocal; in this case my observant-outsider, participant-observer children only add numbers to the cast. Always the encounter between writer and writee is reciprocal, the exchange generalised.7 Invariably the balance of influence, each on the other’s memory, has to be negotiated. ‘[These pages] are a montage. Out of a concern for authenticity I have allowed [others] to speak for [themselves] as much as possible… Even where I have not used quotation marks I have summarised conversations which are too diffuse to be inserted as they are. The phrases I myself have invented are at most only a sort of basting together: still I have endeavoured to infuse them with something of [the speaker’s] own rhythm’.8 The effect which ‘they’ and their memories have on me and mine is relevant to their story because I feed a reaction back into it. The plot of our joint story is changed in the encounter – by their being observed, asked, talked at, listened to, laughed with… and by their observing, asking, talking, laughing with and at us in their turn. The anthropologist cannot count on being the only participant-observer on the scene.9 The aim of this book about Bellinesi is to tell their story with me in it. To start I did not know how visible, in the writing, my presence should or would be. And while I have no doubt that the book is rightly dedicated to my children ‘as they were and as they are’, I cannot specify how they fit in the ordinary life of Bellinesi at that time or in my memory of it since. It is clear only that they are and have been integral to both, and that their steady presence should somehow be reflected in the script. A lot can be achieved with a bit of typographical licence. Writers outside anthropology sometimes vary the font or print form to reflect a change of place or point of view. Copying them, I have used one typeface for stories in which my children are off-stage and a different one for field diary entries, afterthoughts or memories in which they are front and centre. This bi-modal device suggests a separateness that I do not intend, but it is a handy way to make important points. On the one hand, it implicates my personal sphere and (my reading of) my family’s experience in the ethnography. On the other, notionally at least, it distinguishes both from accounts by or about the Bellinesi. At the same time alternation gives the text the interactive shape of a theatrical script – first A speaks, then B, then A again… This is not, of course, the

Ethnographer’s Epilogue • 159

way it actually happens: real life actors construct and tell their stories in a continuous stream, as they live them. And, making the task of the ethnographer more difficult still, real life is made up of everybody talking at once… The challenge is to hear separate voices in all this noise, and yet to hold on to the connectedness of the stories they tell. The multi-vocality of ethnographic texts is no longer a secret. Still, the voices need to be orchestrated and their volume adjusted to make a book and I am responsible for the sound of this story. It is one of many possible arrangements – not ‘The Truth’, but my particular shuffling of the layers of it. Any other participant would select and emphasise and interpret differently. But since I, like each of them, can only ‘remember’ through myself, it may not be possible to avoid this being my story with ‘them’ in it. Perhaps it is a memoir willy-nilly.

Notes  1. Yourcenar, Dear Departed, 228.  2. Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh, 135.  3. Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh, 135.  4. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.  5. Okeley and Calloway, Anthropology and Autobiography.  6. Geertz, The Anthropologist as Author.  7. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics.  8. Yourcenar, Dear Departed, 185.  9. Paine, ‘Our Authorial Authority’.

 Cast of Characters Friends Households

Marie Levet (Boundonsio) (Chapter 10) Caterina Levet (Loupo) (Chapter 11) Margherita Estienne (Pichot) (Chapter 12) Martin (Soudalo) (Chapter 13) Oreste Deferre Giaco Trous Felicina and Luigi (daughter and son-in-law of the tabacchina) Teenagers

Adriana, Alfredo, Antonio, Battistino, Costanza, GianBattista, Maddalena, Marielena, Renato Children

of Caterina: Giovanni, Giacomino, Roberto of Gallian: Marco, Giovanni of Jeannot / Five-sons-Levet: Benjamino, Enrico, Luigino, Romano, Tino of teacher Angela: Luisa

Acquaintances Angela (second teacher) Battista (our landlord) Benso (handyman and taxi)

Cast of Characters • 161

Don Ruffa (the priest) Felice Martin (survivor of the Russian front) Jean-Luc (French intellectual) Matilda /Mathilde (the teacher) Mariotta (the tabacchina) Richard (a builder) Titu (our next door neighbour) Giacomo Peyrache (Ghiaudo), (Caterina’s father)

Walk-On Parts Anna, Antionetta, Antoinetta Roux, Antonio Prin, Claudio, Coustase, Fausta, Lorenzo Gallian, Loupet, Marc Barnardo, Marc Cristoforo (Moto), Marc Matteo, Marco Gallian, Matteo Gallian, Matteo Ghiaudo, Miserio, Pasqualina Mariotta, Perin Angela, Taroul, Tofu la Font, Toni Chauvi, Toni Trouso, Tonio

 Glossary of Terms and Expressions abbitudine Adesso tu sèi bello. aggiustata albergo/alberghi amaro arrotino asilo Avete preso, o è suo? baci baeta bambino bella famiglia bellinese Bellinesi ben’ elevate bestiame bianco Bisogna scherzare. Blins boccia bocce borgata

habits, custom Now you are beautiful. (Caterina has lacquered her son’s hair.) fixed, adjusted; refers to ‘modernised’ houses hotel/hotels lit. bitter; here a bitter digestive drink knife sharpener orphanage Did you take him in, or is he yours? (Query regarding my child’s origin) lit. kisses; here a popular candy summer dwelling on high pasture a child (Sono bambino: I am a child – not a signore) a fine family adj. [thing] of Bellino people of Bellino well brought up livestock whitewash (paint) It’s good to joke. Provençal version of Bellino bowling ball (game of) bowls hamlet, village

Glossary of Terms and Expressions • 163

bottiglione buon pàscoio cacciatore caffé correcto calabrese camera carabinière carbóne carità carità è in pensióne casa di ripòso c’est-à-dire Che meraviglia! Che vita! cinque minuti cittadini Cognoscere la vita famigliare di Bellino. còmodo così piacènte comune con fòrza cucina disattenzióne dispersi essere contadini fa niente fàscio/ fàsci fecondata ferr’agosto festa degli alberi fienile forestièri

large metal bottle holding cooking gas good pasture hunter coffee ‘corrected’ by a tot of alcohol adj. of Calabria a room, usually for sleeping military policeman charcoal charity, mercy charity is retired/finished/gone old age home lit. so to say; here imitating pretentious French visitors What a marvel! How wonderful! What a life! lit. five minutes; a short time lit. citizens, urbanites; here usually derogatory: snobbish city people To learn about ordinary life in Bellino. (Answer to the question: Why have you come here?) comfortable, convenient so pleasant noun: municipality; adj. common lit. with force, energetically kitchen, here also living room inattention, carelessness people who are scattered, missing, lost to be/act like peasants it doesn’t matter bundle/bundles of hay fertilised the August holiday local celebration of trees hayloft strangers, outsiders

164 • Glossary of Terms and Expressions

fratelli fraziòne fuòri fuòri del vento gabinetto Garitū genovése geòmetra giornata giudiziòsa granja grappa guasto Guàrdia Forestale/Pesca impianti in gamba invéce invìdia invàlida invalidità L’amore d’un figlio per sempre aurai. lavoro communale liquóri lo faccio io lavandina macchina lunga Marocchini ma tante matrimoniale Mi danno nòia, sai? mi voleva bene mio angelino!

brothers hamlet out, outside lit. out of the wind; here: not in the thick of it toilet provençal version of Margaret of Genoa surveyor day, day’s work sensible, wise high grain store (provençal?) short alcoholic drink spoiled, wrecked guardian of forests/fish installations smart, clever instead envy disabled [f.] disability A son’s love is forever. communal work alcoholic drinks I do it myself, I’m doing it sink, basin here, a long tractor dark-skinned people as from Morocco; here derogatory [fr.] lit. my aunt; term of address used by Margherita’s niece large double bed They trouble me; know what I mean? he liked me my little angel! (a mother describes her child)

Glossary of Terms and Expressions • 165

municìpio muratore Nel invèrno sono sempre malatta. nipote nomi non ha tenuta la sua posta non c’è perìcolo non è una donna brava non me ha fatto niènte non mi guarda non ne ho non posso più fare non si deva scherzare O non vogliono affitare, o vi prendono per milords… padrone paesani palazzo pantaloni di festa pàscolo passeggiata pastis pastòro/a pazzo peccato pensióne/i pensióne d’invalidità per carità! per cento peccati! per conto mio pèra pianura

municipality, city hall stone mason, builder I’m always sick in winter. lit. grandchild, nephew; here also used for more distant kin surnames she stepped out of line there’s no danger, don’t worry She’s not a good woman he hasn’t hurt me he ignores me I don’t have any I can’t go on we shouldn’t joke [about…] (Told of the rent asked for a house Marie says: Either they don’t want to rent it or they take you for millionaires…) boss countrymen; here: fellow Bellinesi grand apartment building best trousers pasture a walk, a promenade; here refers to exercising the cows before the climb to high pasture [fr.] an alcoholic drink shepherd/ess; here: a child tending animals at pasture crazy (sono pazzi: they are crazy) a pity pension/pensions disability pension for goodness sake! such a pity! according to me light bulb [lit. pear] plain, lowlands

166 • Glossary of Terms and Expressions

Piccolo Refugio Alpino povera bèstia! prendono male professori provençal pudeur polmóne polmonite quéllo Sala del Pàrroco St Veran roba ricòrdo scarpe grosse serietà simpàtico/a sindaco signor/signore sono tanti insième soprannóme sotto veste spumante stalla stanco/a stufa stupido/a tabacchina tame tout court tranquillo

Marie’s hotel poor beasts! they get hurt professors; here: educated people [fr.] the local French dialect [fr.] modesty lung pneumonia that [thing] church hall local herbal liqueur stuff, things a memory, memento lit. heavy shoes; derogatory term for rural people seriousness, gravity, propriety pleasant, congenial (said of a person) mayor term of address or reference to a grown man. they are [too] many together [in the old age home] nickname; here: locally significant second surname undershirt sparkling wine stall; here: cellar under the house where cattle stay in winter tired (sono stanca, come sono stanca! I am tired, so tired) stove, heater stupid tobacconist; here: also keeper of the general shop manure [fr.] briefly peaceful

Glossary of Terms and Expressions • 167

trattorìa Tu non brutta, tu molto bella.

bar, restaurant You’re not ugly, you’re very beautiful. (Maia’s broken Italian comforting Margherita) tutti dobbiamo vivere we all have to live tutto è a posto everything’s fine una donna che sta molto bene a well set up (stout) woman una vita semplice a simple life vale/valatta/val/valle valley va te coucher! [fr.] Get away! védova widow villeggianti, villeggiatura people on vacation, summer vacation voglio I want

 Bibliography Aime, Marco. Il lato selvatico del tempo [The Wild Side of Time]. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie [GeMS], 1987. Allais, Claudio. La Castellata: Storia dell’alta Valle di Varaita. Lobetti-Bodoni, 1891 (reprinted in 1975 by l’Artistica di Savigliano, Savigliano [Cuneo]). Baker, W.V. 1976. ‘Aspetti ecologici dell’accumulo dei rifuiti in un villagio alpino’, in Populamento e spopulamento di una vallata alpine: Archivio per l’Antropologia e la Ethnologia, Vol. CV1. Florence: Società italiana di antropologia e etnologia. Barnett, Anthony and Piers Blaikie. AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact. New York: Guilford Publications, 1992. Berger, John. Pig Earth. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1979. Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘Celibat et conditions paysannes’, Etudes Rurales 5–6 (1962). Doro, Augusto. ‘Antica civiltà di un remoto angolo alpino’ in Scaglie di Storia della Valle di Bellino. Pamphlet printed by Stabilmento G. Richard, Saluzzo, n.d. Fox, Robin. Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press / Penguin, 1967 [1995]. Geertz, Clifford. The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1956. Kaplan, B.A., G.W. Lasker and B. Chiarelli. ‘Commonality of Surnames: A Measure of Biological Interrelationships among Thirty-one Settlements in Upper Val Varaita in the Italian Alps’, American.J.Physical Anthropology. 49 (1978): 251–56. Kosko, Bart. Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic. London: Flamingo, 1994. Lasker, G.W., B. Chiarelli, M. Masali, F. Fedele, B.A. Kaplan. ‘Degree of Human Genetic Isolation Measured by Isonomy and Marital Distances in Two Communities in an Italian Alpine Valley’, Human Biology 44(3) (1972): 351–60. Marris, Peter. Loss and Change. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. Okeley, Judith and Helen Calloway (eds). Anthropology and Autobiography. A.S.A. Monographs No. 29. London: Routledge, 1991. Paine, Robert. ‘Our Authorial Authority’, Culture IX(2) (1990): 35–47. Rapport, Nigel and Andrew Dawson (eds). Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World in Movement. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Rushdie, Salman. The Moor’s Last Sigh. London: Vintage Paperbacks, 1994. Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics. London: Tavistock, 1974. Wallman, Sandra. Take Out Hunger: Two Case Studies of Rural Development in Basutoland. L.S.E. Monographs No. 39. London: Athlone, 1969.

Bibliography • 169

 . ‘Preliminary Notes on soprannóme in a Part of Piedmont’, Studi Piemontesi 2 (1973): 126–32.  . ‘Kinship, A-kinship, Anti-kinship: Variation in the Logic of Kinship Situations’, J. Human Evolution 4 (1975): 331-41  . ‘Conditions of non-Development: The Case of Lesotho’, in Sandra Wallman (ed.), Perceptions of Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. (ed.). ‘Introduction’, in Sandra Wallman (ed.), Perceptions of Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.  . ‘Epistemologies of Sex’, in Lionel Tiger and H.T. Fowler, Female Hierarchies. Chicago: Aldine, 1978.  . ‘The Boundaries of “Race”; Processes of Ethnicity in England’, MAN 13(2) (1978) 200-217. (ed.). Contemporary Futures: Perspectives from Social Anthropology. London: Routledge, 1992.  . ‘When Is Home in Town a Good Move?’, in Nigel Rapport and Andrew Dawson, Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World in Movement. Oxford: Berg, 1998.  . ‘Ordinary Women and Shapes of Knowledge: Perspectives on the Context of HIV/AIDS’, J. Public Understanding of Science 7 (1998): 169–75.  . ‘Boundaries of Memory and Anthropology’, ETHNOS 67(1) (2002): 99–118.  . The Capability of Places: Methods for Modeling Community Response to Intrusion and Change. London: Pluto Press, 2011. ‘Reflections on Temporariness’, Anthropology of This Century (2017) Issue 20. Wulff, Helena (ed.). The Anthropologist as Writer. New York: Berghahn, 2016. Yourcenar, Marguerite. Dear Departed. London: Virago, 1997.

 Index A accidents, 18, 85, 122, 126, 127, 153, 154 adoption, 36, 73 age, 14, 42, 87, 114, 137, 147, 150–1, 154 cohort effect, 5, 62–5 of conscription, 27 and language, 42 old age, 87, 129 old age home, 133 of pension, 85, 100, 122 of school leaving, 24, 81, 83 teenage, 35 Alps, 1, 19, 20, 39, 61, 64 ambiguity, 2, 3, 66 the architect, 89 avalanche, 20, 26, 41 Avignon, 26, 130

church, 21, 24–6, 42, 47, 54–5, 57–8, 68–9, 100 –102, 143, 154 cittadini, 8, 25, 72, 111, 115, 163 cows, 1, 12, 54, 79, 83, 84, 88, 99, 100, 104–107, 123, 140, 149, 152 attachment to, 131, 132, 133, 137 care of, 24, 44, 45, 52, 93, 94, 96, 106, 107, 123, 132, 149 dislike of, 110 financial costs/benefits, 40, 45, 90, 96, 105, 106, 141, 148 as heat, 5, 24, 40, 93, 105, 124 insemination of, 24, 105, 106, 132 naming of, 105 passeggiata, 107, 108, 116, 165 sale of, 24, 40, 42, 87, 90, 91, 105, 132, 138, 142 work of, 7, 24, 45, 82, 83, 93, 94, 96, 107, 110, 121–123, 143 –145

B boundary/boundaries, 2, 3, 4, 11, 27, 39–60, 63, 89 bread, 7, 16, 24, 37, 59, 64, 73, 99, 131, 137, 143–5, 148–9, 154 Bronze Age, 25

D death, 8, 12, 17, 42, 62–4, 71, 88, 90, 130, 153–4 decline of Bellino, 62, 63 of population, 27, 41, 61, 62, 65 demographic change, 4, 27, 63, 65. See also World War II children leaving, 68 last cohort, 68, 71, 73 dialects. See also language Blins dialect, 1, 19, 33, 41–43, 44, 50, 111, 115, 133, 148 piemontes’, 42, 50, 54 provençal, 42, 43, 61

C calves, 24, 40, 42, 45, 54, 79, 88, 94, 104–7, 123, 126, 132, 141–2, 145, 147, 149 celibacy, 65, 68 Chianale, 36, 39, 40, 44, 47, 48, 71, 104, 107, 117

172 • Index

vernacular, 41, 42, 61 disputes, 42, 87, 123 the doctor/doctors, 82, 85, 86, 87, 120, 127, 133, 142, 148, 150 donkeys, 103, 137 drains, drainage, 30, 34, 35, 37, 102, 121, 131

insurance, 86, 87, 106, 127, 142, 143 invalidità, 85, 122, 142. See also illness

F fatigue/tiredness, 35, 55, 78, 93, 100, 116, 119, 120, 126, 129, 131, 134–5 FIAT, 25, 27, 48, 72, 81, 85, 87, 142, 144, 152, 154 France, 8n2, 19, 24, 26, 39, 41–2, 44, 47, 50, 61, 88, 96, 114, 125, 129–30, 133–5, 138, 140, 148 future plans/expectations, 13, 27, 68, 82–84

L land/lands, 11, 12, 40, 44, 45, 66, 68, 87, 88, 89, 91, 96, 104, 110, 112, 114, 119, 123, 127, 129, 131, 136, 141, 144 language, 1, 8, 12, 19, 41–43, 50, 57, 70n3, 92, 136, 143. See also dialects loneliness, 27, 68, 129, 136 lowlands/pianura, 2, 16, 39, 40, 44, 61, 63, 81, 96, 100, 103–105, 107, 120, 123, 140–41, 165 lung disease/infection, 96, 142, 149

G gardens, 51, 52, 56, 79, 93, 98, 134, 136, 137 gender, 2, 18n2, 93, 151 gossip, 37, 98, 101, 121, 130, 136 H hay/haying, 6, 7, 12, 21, 24, 25, 29, 32, 37, 44, 45, 52, 83, 91, 93, 96–100, 103–7, 110, 112, 121, 130, 136–8, 141–2, 144, 147, 154 heat/heating, 5, 7, 15, 16, 21, 29, 37, 44, 55, 99, 100, 121–125, 133 hotel ‘da Marie’, 24, 28, 29, 33 – 37, 48, 51, 55, 57, 73, 110–117, 124–5, 152 hospital, 86, 87, 120, 122–124, 142, 143, 154 house ownership/property, 11, 29, 43, 65, 69, 87, 88–91, 123, 138 I identity, 11, 12, 13, 27, 40, 41, 64 illness, 51, 82, 86, 87, 105–6, 120, 122– 124, 133, 142–3, 148, 150 inheritance, 7, 33, 42–44, 68–9, 72, 88–9, 110, 121, 123

K kin/kinship, 6, 87–91, 99, 111, 106, 123, 129, 130, 131, 133, 136, 138, 157

M marriage, 3, 4, 36, 42–3, 48, 54, 62, 6–5, 67–8, 69, 71–2, 79, 88–9, 113–4, 118–9, 129, 152–154 Mass, 28, 29, 40, 54, 55, 57, 71, 82, 100, 101, 131, 135 memoir, 156, 157, 159 memory, 25, 115, 156, 158 migration, 6, 25, 27, 46, 61–2, 66–68. See also demographic change; villeggianti mist. See weather N names, 4, 19, 42–43, 70n3, 110–11, 120 nicknames, 42. See also soprannòme nudity, 79, 136 nuns, 6, 15, 21, 32, 36, 64, 65, 68, 69, 96, 100 O ordinariness, 12–15, 63, 67, 157–8 outsiders, 7, 27, 40, 42, 43, 47, 71, 90, 135, 151, 158

Index • 173

P pasture, 19, 24, 40, 44, 82, 83, 87, 99, 103, 105, 107, 110, 116, 120, 123, 127, 144, 147 pensions, 85, 99, 100, 118, 122, 125, 131, 139, 142, 149 Perpignan, 6 pneumonia/polmonite, 96, 142, 149 Pontechianale, 38n4, 125, 147 the priest, 6, 7, 15, 21, 28, 32, 48, 50, 57, 59, 64, 68, 69, 71, 73, 100–102, 117 professori, 6, 7, 8, 116–17. See also outsiders punishment, 51, 82, 126 R rain. See weather reputation, 11, 27, 64, 127, 153 resources, 11, 12, economic, 44, 46, 66, 67 material/social, 11, 47 scarce, 27 shared, 89 systems of, 41 roads, 26, 34, 37, 41, 46, 61, 107–8, 110–11, 114–15, 127, 130, 132, 140, 153 S school, 24, 40, 42, 55, 6–8, 81–84, 86, 88, 116, 142 seasons growing season, 20, 45 summer, 24–5, 29, 36, 40, 44–5. 47, 100, 122 winter, 5, 7, 15, 20–1, 24–7, 32–35, 37, 39, 40–1, 45, 48, 55, 64, 68, 78, 82–3, 86–7, 91, 97–100, 105–6, 108, 112, 115–6, 120, 122, 124–5, 131–2, 138, 140, 142, 144, 154 winter bed, 79, 123, 141 sex   privacy, 151   sex activity, 150, 151   sex jokes, 6, 150   sex ratio, 63, 64

sheep, 103–104, 142 snow. See weather soprannòme, 4, 9n9, 43, 54, 70n3, 120, 123, 140. See also names, nicknames sun. See weather summer. See seasons T the tabacchina, 35, 36, 47, 48, 56, 57, 58, 89, 96, 98, 105, 134, 142, 153=155 television, 18, 24, 36, 46, 55, 58, 88, 96, 109, 114, 140–41, 150 time divisions of, 63, 67, 94 as identity, 11, 12, 13 as past-present-future, 3, 11, 12, 13, 63, 82, 89 and work, 11, 24, 25, 93, 94, 96 toilets, 24, 113, 116–17, 154 tourists/tourism, 2, 7, 36, 40, 44, 102, 124, 147, 148 tractors, 48, 58, 86, 98, 105, 114, 121, 122, 125, 139 truth, 157, 159 tuberculosis, 30, 69, 73, 85, 142 Turin, 6, 7, 15, 29, 30, 32, 46–8, 50–1, 59, 61, 63, 66, 68–9, 81, 111–119 V Vale Varaita, 1, 19, 20, 25–6, 38n4, 39, 117, 152 the vet, 71, 89, 92, 105–107, 110 W wash house, 6, 58, 98, 118, 131 weather/climate, 20, 148 mist, 19, 20, 29, 34, 45, 47, 57, 91, 94, 97, 144, 148 mist of relatives, 135 rain, 6, 20, 34, 45, 52, 58, 60, 73, 79, 134 rain shadow effect, 20, 60 snow, 7, 29, 34, 41, 47, 64, 78, 82, 91, 99, 107, 140, 151 (see also avalanche) sun, 32, 51, 56, 84, 100, 102, 122, 124–5, 143, 149

174 • Index

widowhood, 64, 98, 129 winter. See seasons

World War II, 41, 69 demographic effect, 27, 40, 63–66 (see also nuns) Russian front, 27, 64, 140