Santa Maria the “White”
Laura walks the streets of Castrignano del Capo aimlessly, pushing a bicycle, with her headphones in her ears. The streets of the old town don’t hold any joy for her any more. There’s too much pain, too much nostalgia. There was a time when she played on these streets with friends, when everything was better, and a passerby asking, “How are you?” was enough to bring a smile to your face.
How much joy and laughter there was among those short typical Salento houses, among the orchards of lemons and prickly pears, and how many ball games and games of hide and seek around the church of San Michele. Now it’s not like that. Going home for such a short time every time, just at Christmas and at Easter, is painful. So Laura walks to Castrignano and tries to feel like a tourist on holiday.
Of course this time of year is far from hot. It’s January so the sun is sorely lacking as the cold smacks against her cheeks and the streets are all but deserted. In her headphones Loredana Bertè sings of the sea, so an idea almost unconsciously takes hold of Laura, of jumping onto her bike and going to see where the land ends and where, by the sea, you can be carried away dreaming of stories of other lands. With a combination of road signs and her memory she makes her way to Leuca, while the sky clouds over and swells with a soft whiteness. Snow! “Maybe I should go home… but no, I’m going to the beach” she thinks while the cold scratches her hands and face as she accelerates. Beside the road are olive trees and houses, alternating with houses and olive trees, by beautiful hotels, like the Montirò, B&Bs and guest houses for every taste, immersed in a blaze of dry stone walls and brown earth. They start to take on a different look as snowflakes begin to settle. “Ah Sud, fuga dell’anima” canticchia Laura. Finally she reaches the southernmost tip of Italy, at Capo di Leuca, and goes along the unusually deserted waterfront, until an open space that, with its rounded shape, seems to jut out into the sea like a trampoline, with two nice street lights as a backdrop.
Suddenly the snow, as if by magic, has covered everything, everywhere, in a white coat. Laura looks around in wonder, alone in the cold and white there, in the town named after the Greek word for white, in Leuca. In front of the spectacle of the dark and stormy sea fighting against the graceful snow, Laura really does feel like a tourist, discovering new landscapes and for the first time in a long time not feeling the same nostalgia and sadness, but only the joy and wonder of winter in Salento, with the sea and the dry stone walls, the brown earth and a bit of snow to design a nativity scene.