Reader’s Digest
76 february 2020
After World War II, he decided to re-
turn to Italy and invited Marilena, his
eldest granddaughter, to come along.
In April 1951, the SSConte Bianca-
mano, an Italian ocean liner, departed
the Brazilian port of Santos. My grand-
mother was the youngest passenger
in first class, which included counts,
members of the Brazilian aristocracy
and the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro.
After the ship docked in Genoa,
Marilena and her grandparents took
a train to Puglia, the heel of the boot.
The war had been over for six years,
but destruction lingered. The rub-
ble, though, could not dampen the
bleached beauty of Polignano a Mare,
her grandfather’s hometown. The vil-
lage is perched on limestone cliffs on
the edge of the sea. As a returning rice
tycoon, Antonio would stay with his
family in the Hotel Sportelli.
The hotel was three stories, with a
terrace facing the sea. Underneath,
scooped into a cliff, was a vast cave
that held the Grotta Palazzese luxury
restaurant. Visitors from around the
world came to dine.
Marilena, who spent her days peo-
ple-watching from the hotel terrace,
was never allowed into the cave. After
catching some businessmen ogling
her from the restaurant, her grand-
mother started shooing her to the
kitchen as soon as the lunch-rush
began. Svelte, with a tiny waist, she
exuded the kind of aloof, effortless
glamour of a Hollywood movie star.
Dark curls framed her face. She hadShe pictured his youthful face and
wondered what he looked like now. Al-
do’s voice trembled as he recalled the
last time he saw her in southern Italy.
He had spent years tracking her down.
For 10 minutes they caught each
other up on how their lives had un-
folded—both married for half a cen-
tury, my grandmother widowed,
Aldo’s wife in the last stages of Al-
zheimer’s, kids, grandkids, careers.
“You just don’t think this type of
thing will ever happen to you,” my
grandmother told me.I
n 1951, when my grandmother,
Marilena, was 14, she set off on
a year-long trip to Italy with her
grandparents. Her grandfather, Anto-
nio Lerario, was the son of an illiterate
fisherman who, in 1885, at the age of
14, had left Italy for Brazil as a stow-
away. He joined thousands of Italian
immigrants in São Paulo, where he
sold bags of rice on the street. He even-
tually saved enough money to open his
own warehouse and went on to create
a multimillion-dollar cereal empire.ALDO WATCHED
AS MARILENA'S
TRAIN PULLED AWAY.
IT WAS ONE OF THE
SADDEST MOMENTS
OF HIS LIFE.