husband went on about Fascist glory.
T he following morning she woke up in a panic. She had a thousand things to do. Change, dress the two children, fix her hair up in a bun, make sure that the white shirt that Antonio had selected was wellpressed, pomade Elia’s and Donato’s hair and douse them with cologne so that they would look as beautiful as shiny new coins. And remember her fan, for it was a hot day and the air would soon become stifling. She was in the sort of nervous state one gets in before the children’s First Communion or one’s own wedding. There were so many things to do. Not forget anything. Try not to be late. She was running from one end of the house to the other, a brush in her hand and a hairpin between her lips, looking for shoes and cursing her dress, which seemed to have shrunk and was hard to button up.
At last the family was ready to leave. Antonio asked yet again where they were supposed to gather, and Carmela repeated, “Sanacore.” “Where is he taking us?” Antonio asked, worried. “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s a surprise.” And so they left, leaving behind the heights of Montepuccio and taking the coastal route to the place of that name. There they turned onto a narrow smuggler’s trail that led them to a sort of embankment overlooking the sea. They stayed there awhile, undecided, no longer knowing which way to go, when they spotted a wooden sign on which were painted the words Trabucco Scorta , and which pointed to a staircase. At the bottom of an interminable descent, they came to a vast wooden platform, hanging from the cliff-face and suspended over the waves. It was one of the many trabucchi that still dot the Apulian coastline, fishing platforms that look like great wooden skeletons, clusters of time-whitened planks that hang from the rock and look as if they would never survive a storm. Yet, there they are and there they’ve always been. Hoisting their tall masts over the water. Resisting the wind and the rage of the waves. They were formerly used to catch fish without going out to sea. But they’ve since been abandoned and are now nothing more than strange lookout posts that give onto the water as they creak in the wind. One would think they’d been constructed haphazardly, yet these unsteady towers of wooden planks can stand up to anything. On the platform itself one finds a jumble of ropes, cranks, and pulleys. When the men put it to work, the whole thing creaks and strains. The trabucco raises its nets slowly, majestically, like a tall, thin man plunging his hands in the water, then pulling them slowly back up as though they held the treasures of the sea.
This trabucco belonged to the family of Raffaele’s wife. The Scortas knew this. Until now, however, it had always been an abandoned structure that nobody used anymore. A heap of boards and worm-eaten poles. Several months earlier, Raffaele had begun restoring the trabucco . He would work on it in the evening after a day of fishing, or on days when the weather was bad. But always in secret. He worked on it furiously, and to help him through those moments when he felt discouraged by the immensity of his task, he would think of what a surprise it would be for Domenico, Giuseppe, and Carmela to discover this utterly new, accessible place.
The Scortas couldn’t get over it. Not only was there a strange sense of solidity about that heap of old wood, but it had all been decorated with taste and charm. They were even more surprised when they went further inside and discovered, at the center of the platform, amidst the ropes and nets, a great, majestic dining table covered with a fine white tablecloth embroidered by hand. From one corner of the trabucco came the scent of grilled fish and bay laurel. Raffaele stuck his head out of a recess in which he’d installed a wood-fired oven and grill, and with a broad smile across his face, he yelled: “Sit yourselves down! Welcome to the trabucco ! Sit
T he following morning she woke up in a panic. She had a thousand things to do. Change, dress the two children, fix her hair up in a bun, make sure that the white shirt that Antonio had selected was wellpressed, pomade Elia’s and Donato’s hair and douse them with cologne so that they would look as beautiful as shiny new coins. And remember her fan, for it was a hot day and the air would soon become stifling. She was in the sort of nervous state one gets in before the children’s First Communion or one’s own wedding. There were so many things to do. Not forget anything. Try not to be late. She was running from one end of the house to the other, a brush in her hand and a hairpin between her lips, looking for shoes and cursing her dress, which seemed to have shrunk and was hard to button up.
At last the family was ready to leave. Antonio asked yet again where they were supposed to gather, and Carmela repeated, “Sanacore.” “Where is he taking us?” Antonio asked, worried. “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s a surprise.” And so they left, leaving behind the heights of Montepuccio and taking the coastal route to the place of that name. There they turned onto a narrow smuggler’s trail that led them to a sort of embankment overlooking the sea. They stayed there awhile, undecided, no longer knowing which way to go, when they spotted a wooden sign on which were painted the words Trabucco Scorta , and which pointed to a staircase. At the bottom of an interminable descent, they came to a vast wooden platform, hanging from the cliff-face and suspended over the waves. It was one of the many trabucchi that still dot the Apulian coastline, fishing platforms that look like great wooden skeletons, clusters of time-whitened planks that hang from the rock and look as if they would never survive a storm. Yet, there they are and there they’ve always been. Hoisting their tall masts over the water. Resisting the wind and the rage of the waves. They were formerly used to catch fish without going out to sea. But they’ve since been abandoned and are now nothing more than strange lookout posts that give onto the water as they creak in the wind. One would think they’d been constructed haphazardly, yet these unsteady towers of wooden planks can stand up to anything. On the platform itself one finds a jumble of ropes, cranks, and pulleys. When the men put it to work, the whole thing creaks and strains. The trabucco raises its nets slowly, majestically, like a tall, thin man plunging his hands in the water, then pulling them slowly back up as though they held the treasures of the sea.
This trabucco belonged to the family of Raffaele’s wife. The Scortas knew this. Until now, however, it had always been an abandoned structure that nobody used anymore. A heap of boards and worm-eaten poles. Several months earlier, Raffaele had begun restoring the trabucco . He would work on it in the evening after a day of fishing, or on days when the weather was bad. But always in secret. He worked on it furiously, and to help him through those moments when he felt discouraged by the immensity of his task, he would think of what a surprise it would be for Domenico, Giuseppe, and Carmela to discover this utterly new, accessible place.
The Scortas couldn’t get over it. Not only was there a strange sense of solidity about that heap of old wood, but it had all been decorated with taste and charm. They were even more surprised when they went further inside and discovered, at the center of the platform, amidst the ropes and nets, a great, majestic dining table covered with a fine white tablecloth embroidered by hand. From one corner of the trabucco came the scent of grilled fish and bay laurel. Raffaele stuck his head out of a recess in which he’d installed a wood-fired oven and grill, and with a broad smile across his face, he yelled: “Sit yourselves down! Welcome to the trabucco ! Sit
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