In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

113 Walking over Death Signs of death are all around in Italy. Churches display bones of martyrs and important citizens. Obituary posters line the streets, and a wreath is put on the door of houses where someone has died. Even the Ghirlandina tower supposedly has some saint’s bones tucked away in the top of the spire to watch over the town. While visiting Vignola, a castle town in the hills, we witness an enormous funeral procession of solemn old men with a slightly out-of-tune marching brass band repeating a mournful dirge. The cars stop and the kids turn off their mufflerless motorini since obviously someone important has passed on. They march right into the center of town, where the annual Texan festival is under way with bales of hay stacked up next to potted cacti and a band dressed in cowboy hats and bandanas but playing Italian folk songs with American lyrics. Red-faced Italian shopkeepers in hokey Injun outfits want to get their photo taken next to Katy and me because we’re the “authentic” Americans—dressed in Italian clothes. The mechanical bull is switched off, and the country band members take off their cowboy hats in respect to the deceased. The funeral is for a partisan who helped free the town from the Germans. Each city has tales from World War II and bullet holes in the old buildings to prove them. After the procession, an older man at the café asks where I’m from. I tell him I’m visiting from the United States, and he thanks me for liberating Italy from the Nazi scourge. “Thank you,” I reply, “but, you know, I really didn’t have that much to do with it.” Not only were these towns battlefields, but also scenes of horrible pestilence. A huge stone in the main Piazza Grande of Modena was the site where unclaimed bodies from disease or wars were displayed for the relatives to recognize and bury. My friend Antonio shows me the “plague church” in Modena built for the Madonna as a last-ditch attempt to rid the scourge from ravaging the town. A huge painting in the church shows the village priests and politicians offering a mini version of the town to an indifferent Virgin Mary and baby Jesus while thousands of pockmarked cripples cry in pain. Outside the plague church, I tell Antonio that church altars in America generally don’t have these gruesome scenes of death. He says, “Oh, it’s not just the churches. During the fourteenth century, they had to bury the bodies as quickly as possible. Here, we’re standing on top of a mass grave site for victims of the plague.” 114 Walking over Death ...

Share