The Bashful Guappo

"How could you or any girl from around here hope to attract such a man?" asked the mothers of Roghudi gloomily. "If he ever chooses, it will be one from outside, one who knows the ways of the world and can read newspapers, as he does." Sadly aware of their own drawbacks, the rustic daughters of Roghudi could only sigh, and some among them hope that a day would come when handsome, dark-eyed Mayor Pietro Nucera might forget himself and take them by violence. In the harsh code of justice on the slopes of Aspromonte, the Harsh Mountains in the toe of Italy's boot, the act of rape is often the precursor of enforced marriage, and the young mayor with his flashing eye and dark, curly hair had all the earmarks of a guappo--a dashing and romantic figure.*

But, alas for the women of Roghudi, an outsider able to read newspapers did at last find her way across the donkey trails and the single, swaying footbridge that were the only entrances to their village. She was round-faced, innocent-eyed Francesca Zavattieri, the new schoolteacher.

Smoke Rings. One look at her and the young mayor was smitten with a disease compounded of love and a paralyzing bashfulness. Before this gentle girl, who could both read and write, the dashing romantic was unable to speak a word. Desperate, he raced off to the town of Reggio Calabria to ask the advice of some more experienced guappi. "Appeal to her feminine curiosity," they suggested, and told him a few tricks of the trade. After that, Pietro, in the company of two friends, took up a stand opposite Francesca's door, puffing cigarettes in an urbane manner, blowing skilled smoke rings and spearing the rings with agile fingers, hoping to attract the lady's eye.

It was an expensive business, for even though he was rich by the standards of Roghudi, Mayor Nucera, a landholder and the nephew of the local archpriest, could not afford those three cigarettes a day. And in the end it proved in vain. Francesca passed by all the smoke rings with a preoccupied eye. Pietro raced off once again to Reggio and bought himself a book on how to write love letters. Francesca left his best efforts unanswered.

Sorry! Spring came; the teacher left the village, and when she returned again, she brought along a sister and a large, protective aunt. "Ah," said the villagers with wise glances, "she has brought a chaperone. Now what will he do?" For a year Pietro did nothing. Then he approached bluntly and announced: "I have decided I want to marry you." "I am sorry," said Francesca. "It cannot be." Stupefied, the mayor went to his uncle the priest. "I don't understand," he said. "How could any girl refuse?" The old priest inhaled a vast nostrilful of snuff. "Women," he said at last, "don't like to be wooed. They like to be conquered."

For two years after that, Pietro Nucera never spoke a civil word to Francesca. As mayor, he barred her from her classroom of children and set her to work teaching a roomful of illiterate louts, many of them her senior in years. At last Francesca let it be known that she was leaving the village forever. On the night before her departure, the mayor set himself up in a room just across the street from her house. All night, as the girl huddled in bed with her sister and aunt, Pietro paced back and forth. Suddenly he opened his window and shot out the street light. Francesca's aunt screamed in terror, but nothing more happened. And in the morning when Francesca, her family, and two other schoolteachers left town to make their way to the swaying bridge leading to the next village, the mayor was gone.

Women! Pietro's uncle the priest gave his blessing as the women started out, and when they reached the bridge, nine members of Francesca's class of illiterates were on hand--but not to bid her goodbye. "Stop!" one of them ordered, "or we shoot." Francesca leaped toward the bridge, but one of the men caught her arm and dragged her back. The other women tried to free her, but could not. While three of the attackers stood with leveled guns, two of the bullies dragged the schoolteacher into the wood. Six days later, the carabinieri found her--ensconced in a haystack with Mayor Nucera. "He has promised to marry me," Francesca told her rescuers. "I agreed to be carried off." "Women!" snorted the leader of the rescue party.

But the story was not ended yet. Last week, when the happy wedding party arrived in Reggio Calabria to make their final plans, Francesca the bride slipped away from her husband-to-be, ran to the police, retracted all her former statements, and accused Pietro of rape. "They will kill me now, I suppose," she said as the police took the mayor into custody, "but I would rather die than marry him."

*-Literally meaning "haughty," guappo is used in Neapolitan argot to denote a petty big shot, found its way into American slang in the early days of the melting pot as the uncomplimentary term "wop."

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