Pilgrimage to Capaccio

The bus lurched forward before I had managed to climb the three steps. Wearily, I heaved my bag in front of me like an anchor and opened my wallet underneath the nose of the indifferent bus driver. “Napoli,” I said bluntly.

“Ah, ma, è dopo 6:00 pm. To get to Naples, you should take the Pullman,” he said as I felt the agita rise up in my throat. “This bus makes stops all along the Amalfi Coast.” Well, how could that be? I would take life’s lemons and make limoncello.

I pulled out my guidebook and started laying new plans and decided to disembark at the town of Atrani. I stayed on the coast for the next two days exploring the Arab-Norman Cathedral in Amalfi, climbing the stairs to Ravello and shopping for ceramics in Vietri sul Mare. I had decided to sacrifice my pilgrimage to Capaccio; head back to Florence and make another attempt in the spring, when I could return with a car and some traveling companions. But, as I stood waiting for the bus back to Naples, something just didn’t feel right. I weighed my own common sense versus my own sheer will. I needed a sign.

A bus coming from the other direction pulled over. I approached the driver and asked him in what direction this bus was headed. “Questo è un Pullman a Paestum,” he muttered as he tossed a cigarette under the wheels. A sign! He then reached into his pocket and handed me a printed schedule where I learned that Capaccio was the second to last stop. And best of all, the mystery of the Pullman was solved. An autobus is a municipal bus where a Pullman functions more like a Greyhound bus. Apparently, the manufacturer was the ubiquitous Pullman company and the name just stuck.

The Pullman took me to Capaccio Scalo, a small, modernish, nothing town. I panicked thinking that Nana’s Capaccio had been bulldozed in favor of poured concrete. I found a bar and asked about the statue of the Madonna del Granato on the roadside to the Capaccio I was seeking. The owner informed me that it was the Feast of Ognisanti, and he was planning to drive his family up to Capaccio in Paese to visit the cemetery. This must be the Capaccio I was seeking and he offered to take me along. We stuffed my bag in the trunk and I climbed into the Cinquecento. The bar owner’s son, on break from university in Pisa, helped his 90-year old grandmother ease into the front seat before joining me in the back. I respectfully introduced myself to her, remembering to use formal Italian and imagining the capital S in Signora every time I spoke.

Without turning around, she started telling me all about her grandson who sat blushing next to me as we began winding up the gravelly road into the mountains. My ears popped just as the ocean became glitteringly visible right against the curve of the earth. “Lui sta studiando essere un avvocato,” she said as we swiftly passed a bend in the road and my eye spotted a statue at the side of the road. It had to be the Madonna del Granato! Lost in my excitement, I forgot to respond to her last piece of praise that was supposed to impress me. Suddenly, I caught her eyes staring at me tersely in the rear-view mirror as she yelled in English, “LAWYER!!” I made sure to ooh and ahh appropriately as the boy flushed an even deeper shade of red, nodded shyly and stared at his hands before deciding to sit on them instead. The car plateaued and then there I was...in the main piazza of Nana’s town, which before this moment, had not been anything more to me than an afternoon tale with tea.

The family dropped me off and said that they would be back to retrieve me in just fifteen minutes. Not much time, but it appeared as though time moved a lot slower in Capaccio anyway. I ran through the main square where there is one restaurant called “O’ Scugnizzo.” Maybe this was the same restaurant that my great-grandfather had owned? I had heard the word “scugnizz” used to tease young boys before and had always assumed it was an Italian-American thing. In Naples, I learned that it was a somewhat affectionate term for a young boy, or in a more Dickensian fashion—a street urchin.

I kept going and found a boarded-up church—the Church of the Rosario. I saw the campanile and imagined the little barefoot girls from the convent school, of which Nana had been one, running quickly across the cold marble piazza to ring the morning bells. Judging from the architecture, I guessed that World War II brought progress in Capaccio to a halt. Everywhere, there were still the scars of artillery shells. The majority of the stores and palazzi were long abandoned. Old widows dressed in black walked around at a snail’s place, while the faces of the few young people stared at me with my giant backpack and snapping camera as if I had literally come from another planet. And I might as well have. Many of southern Italy’s hill towns have been drained of their populations by emigration abroad and to the more prosperous north. I found my Uncle’s villa and was told by his neighbor that he was in Geneva for the winter, visiting his sons who lived there full-time. “Dottore,” he told me as he put lifted his chin, wrinkled his nose and waved his hand in a gesture suggesting haughtiness.

I returned to the piazza and waited for the family to show up once again and drive me back. I waited, and waited...and waited for them only to realize that they had abandoned me! An off-duty carabinieri officer pulled over and asked me who I was and what on earth I was doing here. As it turned out, I had also missed the once-a-day Pullman. But he was heading back to his family in Paestum and would take me to the croce to wait for the autobus. No problem. I knew exactly what I was doing this time.

About the Author: Danielle Oteri shares her experiences navigating Southern Italy with all of its linguistic and cultural quirks.