Scribbling

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
‘Twas sad as sad could be ;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea !

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

These lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner may be a trifle excessive in describing my emotional state since I had the rare good fortune of discovering and contacting relatives in Italy while researching some of my family’s ancestors. Against formidable odds, and, with the extraordinary help of some very generous and dedicated people, two branches of our family, a limb here in the US and another in Italy, were given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with each other, and, perhaps, revisit an old story with a hope of revising and extending it through the lives of the descendants of the original protagonists.

The serendipity of connecting with my relatives in Italy had occurred as the long, communal process of translating a series of letters written to my grandfather by his brother in Sicily was nearing completion. Two translators, Carole and Luca, who exemplify the character and camaraderie found at the Gente di Mare site, were instrumental in helping to extend the story of the letters from rote translations to one of anecdotal significance as the interest of the wider online community continued to grow as letter after letter was posted and translated. As the number of letters left to be translated became fewer and fewer, I mused online in a post about the possibility of the other half of this conversation existing somewhere in Sicily, stashed away in an old shoe box in a closet or attic, now long forgotten. It was possible, after all, the letters from my great uncle had somehow managed to survive the early nomadic lifestyle of my Sicilian grandparents in the US, houses destroyed by fires, and the general diaspora that became the hallmark of subsequent generations of immigrant families amid changing cultural values. Privately, I thought the letters written by my grandfather must exist. When I ventured upon this journey to learn more of my family’s history, I approached it with complimentary intentions: to get to know these gente di mare and, like them, embark on a voyage, both figuratively and literally; I reasoned somewhere in Sicily, in the Comunes of Belmonte Mezzagno and San Giuseppe Jato there must be living descendants of our common antecedents.

Perhaps my imagination had got the best of me; time and events had conspired to remake the world ravaged by war, despotic men, and the chaos which ensued in the violent aftermath of both. There were losses that could never be recovered and the life blood of one family may not have been sustained in the reservoir of a single surviving relative. Hope persists in unlikely places and resides where we least expect it: the generosity of strangers, the inexorable march of a story, once commenced, to complete itself. Maybe all dreamers share a dream, but whatever the reason behind his efforts, Luca inquired if I would like him to call two people he had discovered listed in pagine bianche (Italian white pages) who might be related to my grandfather. Of course, I said, and waited impatiently to see what might come of his unexpected offer. At first it seemed as if his inquiries led immediately to a dead end; however, as swiftly as failure seemed imminent, it evaporated, and somehow, Luca persuaded one family member to relent and and allowed him to relate the events of the story that was unfolding on the Gente website. What was once speculation in the online community became fact as the two families greeted each other publicly while conducting more extensive introductions privately.

I saw the faces of my great uncle’s descendants and responded with those of my grandfather’s descendants. There was much to tell, much to inquire about. I learned that the house mentioned in the letters where the family lived in Belmonte was still in the family, which buoyed my hopes that the letters my grandfather wrote and the pictures he sent to his brother might still exist, stashed away, waiting to be found, waiting to tell their side of the story, now. One of the brother’s daughters remembers the letters–they were prized and kept in a special casket and were still in the house when she moved from Belmonte to Turino. Additional particulars about the families followed and then as abruptly as the exchange began it ended. At first I thought language was the culprit as I didn’t speak Italian and my Italian counterparts did not speak English; however, as I had been able to enlist people willing to translate Italian to English for me, I assumed that the reverse might be true for my relatives. Unfortunately, my emails were not acknowledged. Although it had received terrible reviews by some native speakers in the Gente forums, I decided to use an online program that translates English to Italian in hopes of encouraging resumption of communication between the two families. Alas, not a single response has followed any of my overtures since the blush of novelty faded following the first few days of contact.

Most of the particulars I have learned about my ancestors in Sicily has come from my own genealogy research: letters written to Comunes for extracts, microfilm from the LDS Family History Centers, Ancestry and other online sites, the anecdotal history contained in the letters written by my great uncle, and a good bit of investigative guesswork. I had hoped that the pitch and intensity of excitement on Gente’s translation forum would spill over and lead to the articulation of my grandfather’s experiences in his own voice as his life unfolded during those years from 1932 through 1946. There may be more of my grandfather and his family in his missing soliloquy to his brother than the fractured life I observed first hand through the filtered lens of my childhood. Even now, it is only speculation that two of the unidentified photos from Sicily I have recently discovered are my great uncle Gaetano; the inquiries to Gaetano’s family to confirm the identity of the subject in the photos I sent remain unanswered.

I am tempted to grasp at unsubstantiated conclusions which shimmer like mirages in the Doldrums of my voyage. Why has the exuberance of discovery vanished; and, what was mutually embraced suddenly tossed aside? I cannot put out of my mind the anguish the letters revealed; however, it was love and not pain that penned the broken dialect of those epistles. If the letters are any indication of the man he was, Gaetano would be disappointed that we did not make more of an effort. These two brothers endured too much to be forgotten. What is the nameless fear that terrifies the living?

Tags: Belmonte Mezzagno, gente di mare, Italy, research, Sicily, translation