A Sweet and Glorious Land by John Keahey Read Free Book Online Page B

tourists view as quaint villages and countryside, vowing never to return or to look back at the crushing, bone-jarring poverty, malaria, and near starvation that were so prevalent here then and that still have not entirely disappeared.
    â€œYou cannot eat ‘quaint,’” said an Italian man with whom I shared a train compartment a few days later as he shook out the newspaper he held, buried his nose deep within its pages, and silence enveloped our small, southbound compartment.
    Within this quiet space—the only sounds being a rustle of the gentleman’s newspaper and the clack of wheels—I shifted from reflecting about Italian poverty to the question of why Greece moved west so long ago.
    *   *   *
    I recalled a conversation in Rome, in a small, cramped, book-lined study located in an exquisite apartment owned by one of Italy’s leading archaeologists, Professor Baldassare Conticello. We have an appointment for an early afternoon lunch. I am delayed at the airport, picking up a friend who is being treated at a first-aid station for what could be food poisoning acquired during his long flight from Texas. I call the professor, and we reschedule for dinner. My friend is deposited in his room, sleeping off the mysterious affliction, which was never resolved. I arrive at the professor’s home at five o’clock and leave around midnight, my stomach full of fine Italian food prepared by Signora Lucia Conticello, my head full of ancient history.
    Conticello has an impressive résumé. He has been superintendent of archaeology for many regional areas, including ten years at Pompeii. Nearing retirement, the sixty-seven-year-old scholar is central inspector for archaeology in the Italian Ministry for Cultural Goods and Environment.
    As I write this, I visualize the mustachioed professor at his desk. Behind him are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves taking up most of the tiny room. Sometimes, to underscore a point, he reaches across the desk to where I am writing in my notebook, the index finger of his right hand tapping the back of my hand.
    Frequently, he jumps from his chair, scans his bookshelves, and pulls down and opens a volume to illustrate a detail. He is passionate, but calmly so. When my passion over the subject matter rises, I gesture expansively, raise my voice, and struggle with the words, whether Italian or English. Years of digging into the ancient past have made Conticello reflective. He leaves the outward display of emotion to students—and interviewers.
    His appearance is conservative. He is wearing a comfortable forest green sweater covering a pale blue shirt cinched together at the neck by a darker blue tie, specked with reds and yellows, that peeks above the sweater’s collar. He says he purchased most of his shirts at Brooks Brothers in New York City, a place he loves to visit.
    He fits my image of a scholar, pausing occasionally to rub his eyes with long, tapered fingers that look like a piano player’s rather than those of someone who has pulled artifacts from historic rubble or unearthed massive Roman and Greek columns and statues. All that is missing to complete the professorial image is a pipe or wire-rimmed spectacles. He does not smoke or drink alcohol. “Sono astemio,” he says with a sigh.
    He used to smoke cigars—“the ones called toscani, a typical Italian cigar made of Kentucky and Burley tobaccos”—until late 1998.
    â€œI was famous among my friends for always having a cigar in my mouth. All my official and private photos are with a cigar. Finally, my family and my friends convinced me to renounce. I did it many times in my life; once for three years. I hope that this is the right one.”
    But why no wine? I asked.
    That, too, is unfortunate, he told me, sighing.
    â€œI used to drink wine and I make my own wine: vigna d’Aglianico from Rionero in Vulture, Potenza. Recently we discovered I have a C