W I I on my honeymoon, I expected to dig up a trove of information from my great-aunt and great-uncle who still resided in the old family house. I learned a lot. But I also discovered there was so much I’d never know.
When I arrived in Italy, I asked my Great-uncle Domenico to show me the family land. He pointed behind the house to a patch where corn used to grow. It was no bigger than 200 x 200 feet. en he led me along a road, past a cheese factory, and onto a rutted lane that wound past trees and dilapidated barns before he stopped, surveyed the area with a slow, 360-degree turn, and pointed again, “ ere. We own that.”
What? I couldn’t tell what he was pointing at.
“ e land between this tree behind you and the corner of that house,” he continued, “from that house to that fence post, and from the post to the stream.”
e plot was tiny, no bigger than the rst.
e day was cool and overcast. Up the mountain we went, with Domenico waving right and le . “We own that, from the stump to the well and down past the lane, but not including that barn,” or “ at’s ours. From this garden to that pasture beyond those trees.” Some of the parcels had trapezoidal shapes; others contained so many twists and turns they looked like gerrymandered congressional districts. Not one amounted to a respectable family farm by American standards.
“Why don’t we own one big piece of land? Wouldn’t it have been easier?” I asked.
Cigarette dangling from his lip, Domenico suppressed bemusement. “ e land is old here,” he said. “Families acquired it one piece at a time.”
at’s when I wanted to ask him to whom our house really belonged, but I knew it was a touchy subject.
Before leaving for Italy, my grandmother told me to look for a dress she’d le behind during her last visit 30 years earlier. She gave me the precise location: third oor, rst room on the le , oak armoire. Green dress. She stressed that I check without Domenico’s wife knowing.
“You want me to bring it back?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Just make sure it’s there.”
Leaving behind the dress, I learned, was her way of asserting that a third of the house still belonged to my grandfather.
When I returned from Italy, Grandma pulled me aside and asked, “La vesta, l’era la? e dress, was it there?”
Yes, I said. Right where she le it.
e house itself had been le by my great-grandfather to his three sons: Domenico; my Grandfather Tony who immigrated to America in 1922; and Paolo, who immigrated to Argentina. For years, my father tried to get those three brothers to make a decision about the house. Should it be sold? If one brother wanted it, what should he pay his siblings in compensation? But no one was willing to act. Instead, each brother owned a portion of the house—not shares, individual rooms.
A er my grandparents died, I found letters from Paolo to Tony asking that a monetary debt he owed my grandfather be discharged. In exchange, Paolo would give up two of his rooms in the house. But there were no other records of this agreement to be found.
When I asked my father if these letters would complicate the matter of who owned the house, my father laughed. “Are you kidding?” he said. “ ese old peasants kept tabs on everything. I once told Domenico he should take the house and pay o his brothers. He said, ‘Fine, but we have to take into account that I put a new roof on the place in 1979.’ When I told my father, he said, ‘Yeah, but when I was there in ‘ 58, I rebuilt the terrace.’”
Su ce it to say, no single person yet owns the house. Instead, half of the house is closed o , crumbling away. To me, that portion holds a family history that remains beyond reach. What I can’t know has to be glued together with conjecture and imagination. For now, I just have to put it aside with the piece of stone façade that I took when I was there.
is a New York-based writer and editor.
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