Of feste and Sunday morning walks

Last night I went to a Festa. You should know that in Italy every town, no matter how small, has a Festa during the summer. These feste usually started out as something religious and have evolved over time into something with a religious origin but a more modern party feeling. Badia Petroia, the town where I live, is tiny. I would imagine there are no more than 200 people living in and around, and certainly no more than 100 that live in the immediate town center (if you could call it that). It seems to be a little comune that time forgot. There is a little abbey that has been lovingly restored, and clustered around it is the town, a series of tiny vicoli (alleyways) from which the houses spring. It seems as though it has become something of a suburb (though I hate that word) for country-loving folks that work in nearby Trestina. The people are young and the cars nice and new, which I suspect makes the older folks very happy – this infusion of youth to keep the town alive.

So from the 11th-13th of June, Badia Petroia has the Festa del Corpus Domini. I had the children last night, while Honor was working, and as I was trying to figure out how to keep them entertained, Chiara asked if we could go to the Festa. I was a bit hesitant, knowing nothing about the party and knowing I’d be only the only English speaker there, but I decided what the heck.

More things to know. Parties in Italy don’t start until at least 9 o’clock. Parents have no qualms about keeping small children out till midnight. So we left the house at 9 and headed to the hill….well, let me start from the beginning.

This festa started with a tradition the origins of which I didn’t quite understand…all I knew for sure was that it was a tradition, and that was reason enough. Basically, the older children and a group of adults climb this very large hill (kind of a small mountain, or so it seemed – about a 20 minute walk to the top) and from there, we all waited around till dark. I kept asking the girls what came next but they had no idea (their answer was – you’ll just have to wait and see! – but I found out later that they had never done this before either). While we stood around waiting, someone walked around handing out panini and bibite tickets and the girls tried to find their friends in the near-dark.

As I stood around, watching everything and everyone, a peculiar sensation settled over me that happens from time to time when I am in Italy. It is the feeling of seeing something that no one else you know has ever seen, of being somewhere that most of your friends and family have never been, and trying to reconcile your two lives in your own mind. It is hard to explain what I mean, but as I was standing in a field at the top of a mountain in Umbria, looking out into the violet sky and the dusky half-light, watching farmhouses breathing quietly in the distance, I had this odd feeling that, though I was surrounded by laughter and screams and thirty voices, I was the only person on the planet.

When darkness finally fell, someone lit a patch of grass, which I thought seemed rather imprudent, until the next step when everyone else, who had been carrying long sticks with cloth wrapped around the top, lit their sticks, one at a time, and began proceeding back down the way we came – suddenly the burning patch of grass seemed like a great idea. Keep in mind there were children about 10 years old, carrying flaming sticks down this hill at nearly 10 at night. I overheard the word benzina (gasoline), which didn’t make me feel any better. We merged into the line (no torches for us) and proceeded down with everyone else. I asked a couple of Italians to explain the festa to me, but the two I asked were from out of town and weren’t much help. All I got was what I already suspected – this was a tradition, and it had to do with Corpus Domini (which is today). I later found out that this has been going on for over 100 years in this little community. I am sure if Smoky the Bear found out about this, his little heart would palpitate madly in his chest, because as we descended the hill, I noticed people swinging their torches about, small children nearly dragging theirs on the ground, and occasionally, chunks of fire would sort of leap off the stick and into the nearby brush. The grass would begin to burn, children would shriek and leap aside, and eventually someone would come to flail it out with some of grassy broom thing. I was just glad to get on level ground before the whole mountainside went up in flames.

Once we got back down to the center of town, there was a man with a giant sack of sandwiches, and then I realized that only the people who had climbed to the top received sandwich tickets, so at least we had that going for us. The children ran over to the main attraction, this giant swingset (like at Six Flags, the one that goes round and round, higher and higher) and though it seemed a bit dubious (the “safety” check was a girl walking around with a sandwich in her hand, sort of lackadaisically checking to see if the bars were latched), I told them they could ride it. They had a great time, though I was a bit panicked by the Italians who thought it was a good idea to see if they could sort of propel their chair forward into their friend’s chair and grab on to it, then rock it from side to side. It all seemed a bit mad but the girls were shrieking with delight (as opposed to their frequent shrieks of distress) so I let them ride it twice more before we went home around midnight.

I woke this morning and walked to a café about 4 km down the road. Rather, I intended to walk, but a few paces out of Badia Petroia, Marco passed me on his way to Mass and took me there. This is such a small town that every time I have taken a walk to anywhere, at least one person I know passes me and honks – and I don’t know that many people. Anyhow, I had a lovely coffee, pastry, and sandwich (3 Euro), read a book (Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis), and enjoyed the gray morning. It was very cloudy and blue out, and as I walked back to the house, I felt that feeling again. So I shall tell you that it was lovely out – the sky purple and white, the hills dark green and rolling, and in front of the hills, fields of white-yellow grain, and in front of the grain, rows of brown soil with tiny green tobacco plants sprouting up, and in front of the soil, me, walking on the side of the road in the calf-high grass, among the clusters of bright red poppies.

And now you see, it is as if you were there too.
Buona Domenica,
vanessa