On the way back from Sassello I have passed the sign for Luceto every time and not taken the turn. Today I turn. I haven’t been to Luceto in over 20 years. It's a tiny town with a house and a garden that belonged to my mother's family, it has history for us and it's a beautiful little place, as I recall it--personally and through photographs of my mother and her family when they were young. When they were younger than I am today.
I think it’s 100 yards or so after the turn, but it’s not quite that close. I keep going, and I don’t recognize any of it, I’m not sure I’ll find it. Then suddenly, maybe a kilometer from the turn, not far after all, I see it. It looks nothing like I remembered it, but I know I’m there. The little square to the right off the main road where you have to leave the car because the streets are too narrow for cars. The little church with the little steeple that has been restored and repainted into a little bijou.
To the extent that every village has its church and every church has its village, Luceto is a tiny village with a tiny church. It’s on flat ground near the river, or rather near the dry river bed.
We leave the car and walk. The street runs between walls, with orti, vegetable gardens, not visible on the other side of the walls. We turn right under the little arch where the swallows had their nests. We keep walking, with the walls now gone and orti visible—little plots of land meticulously tended.
We walk by a group of people sitting and chatting, and we exchange a “Buona sera.”
Then we get to the house. This house belonged to my grandmother’s family. During the war, World War II, my mother lived in this house. Savona was being bombed, so my grandmother and her brother took their families here, for safety. Her brother had a bomb shelter built into the hillside behind the house. I remember seeing the small cave.
My grandfather was a career officer in the navy, so he was in the war immediately. My mother remembers hearing the declaration of war on the radio, and she remembers them being sad because they knew her father was going to be in it immediately.
My mother remembers multiple families living in the house together during the way, different families coming and going at different times. It’s a nice house but not huge: two stories, three windows across the front, two across the side.
For many years the house was in usufrutto—available for use—to a broad number of descendants, but when my grandmother’s generation passed away the house reverted fully to one set of heirs, who live in Uruguay. They sold it.
There were caretakers, permanent residents of the house. They were there during the war and I remember them both from many years later. They were a married couple, Pedrin and Carmela. Pedrin’s regular job was at the port, where he worked as a longshoreman. In the evening he would come home and take his caprette, his goats, to the dry river bed where they would graze. My aunt remembers that he had more than one goat, while my mother remembers him ever only having one, so there’s a discrepancy in the historical record.
He would come home at the end of the day and ask Carmela, “What’s for dinner?”
“Potatoes and beans.”
“Again?”
I don’t remember the goats, but I remember him: he was strong and very tanned, and he wore a dark blue sleeveless undershirt. He rolled his own cigarettes, which I had never seen anyone else do.
Carmela was small and also very tanned, and when I knew her she wore her gray hair in a bun. My mother remembers her going up the hill behind the house, known as Garbugia’, to collect herbs. I remember arriving at the house once to find her sitting up straight on a little stone bench that was attached to the side of the house, in the sun, immobile, like an old Italian woman Buddha. She had lived here also, she must have sat on that bench so many times. Was she thinking, or just sitting? I wonder.
Back to the present, George and I walk up to the house and there is a dog, a German shepherd, that barks at us furiously and continuously from behind a fence that surrounds the garden. I see the steps leading up to the house, I see the top of the gazebo, I see the house, but I don’t get to enjoy it. I remember next to the steps, there was a tree with a bed of lilies-of-the-valley under it. I would like to see if it’s still there, but I can’t.
On the way back, we stop at a little grocery store, one of these small stores that sell two of everything, and I buy some aranciata S. Pellegrino. The owner is speaking dialect to the customer before me, then he switches to Italian to speak to me. He gives George a piece of candy even though he knows I’m not a local, he knows it because he’s not speaking dialect to me, and even though he must suspect he’ll never see me again.
I tell my aunt later that I went to Luceto, and she says they repainted the house but not well. I tell her I think they did a pretty nice job, that they painted Art Nouveau accents, what the Italians call stile Liberty, around the top, which would be appropriate to the age of the house. She’s not entirely convinced that I know what I’m talking about, but she concedes that if they did, that’s good.
