GAETA – Good but impertinent, generous but (unfairly) an obstacle. Gaeta is mourning in recent days one of his sons, Vincenzo Ciano, known to all as “Cianiello”, for years guest of a care facility in Belmonte Castello, not very far from the Sora-Cassino highway junction. Here “Cenzì” lived, far from his city (and from old Gaeta where he was born into a modest family) of which he had become an icon for his picturesque behaviors chasing something else: the absolute hunger for affection and, perhaps, understanding. For the people of Gaetano, Vincenzo was crazy, but that wasn’t the case. His credit with his life was manifested in several ways: walking in Corso Cavour or being photographed on the beach of Sant’Agostino or in front of the Ariston theater with a wedding dress, wearing a musque rat fur on the Caboto seafront attracting the curiosity of many hot bathers coming from Serapo beachdiving into the fountain in front of the Triestina and wearing sumptuous rings. But the main ‘trand’ of her was his voice, hoarse due to the industrial quantities of cigarettes who had started smoking when he was (perhaps) in diapers.
With that voice ‘Cianiello’ expressed another desire that had remained in the drawer, that of studying and building a better life. He knew that the name of his city etymologically came from Aeneas’ nurse and for this reason he harbored quite a few mythological visions. He had a nightmare that perhaps didn’t let him sleep at night: the sorceress Circe “who would have transformed us all into pigs”– now says with emotion his colleague Luca Di Ciaccio, one of the editors of the great team of “La Gazzetta di Gaeta” which in the tenth issue (of the new edition) had hosted a beautiful and profound profile of Vincenzo.
“Once he tore up and threw all the manholes in via Lungomare Caboto into the sea – recalls Di Ciaccio – He did it without ever taking a breath, proclaiming war cries against Aeneas and the Trojans”. In Gaeta everyone made fun of “Cianiello” for his “Damn the Sorceress Circe” which, translated, was a legitimate and humane imprecation life that has always turned its back on him and his family. Son of Tommaso, garbage collector and worker from the municipality of Gaeta – who everyone remembers for his acrobatic ability to sneak into the city’s blocked sewers but also for his easy hiding in the fumes of alcohol and beer – life for Vincenzo and his family was terribly marked by one of the murders which, after more than half a century, has still not had justice.
Pietro Ciano, Cenzi’s younger brother, was walking home on the evening of April 9, 1974 after spending the evening and early hours of the night at the bar Eden, near the Carducci middle school. What happened 50 years ago was effectively recalled (as always) in the tenth issue of “La Gazzetta” Erasmo Lombardi Di Perna. Pietro was happy that eveninghe had won a lot of money at cards, convinced that he was lending a hand to his large family (he lived in via Pio IX in the Gaeta Sant’ Erasmo district), made up of mum and dad and four other siblings, two female and three male, of which the eldest son was Vincenzo.
Pietro was halfway between Piazza Trieste and crazy XIX Maggio when he was reached by two people. They wanted the spoils of that win, 300 thousand lire, intended instead for the Ciano family. Vincenzo used his body as a shield for that money but it was all in vain: The stab wounds to his abdomen, face, neck, arms and behind his back proved fatal.. The slaughter continued near the bust in honor of Jose Gervasio Artigas, behind which Pietro’s bleeding body was dragged and again grabbed at the throat and wrists. The investigations were complicated, i the suspicions of the then lieutenant Aldo Lisetti fell on some young people from Gaeta (frequenting the Eden bar) but their alibis held up, just as the easy drug lead was aborted due to the presence of NATO soldiers in the city.
Thanks to the investigative activity carried out by the then head of the Latina Prosecutor’s Office Vito Giampietro, it took offalmost two months after the crime, the robbery was revealed which, degenerated, culminated in the murder of 19-year-old Pietro Ciano. THE suspicions fell on two unsuspected people (one of whom was an employee of the municipality of Gaeta) that they had to face a trial definitely circumstantial as the murder weapon was never found.
The life of “Cianiello” junior – his father Tommaso was also called that – changed for the worse during the three trials held for the death of his brother Pietro: all acquitted due to insufficient evidence. Perhaps thanks to a network of complicity, covers and, above all, silence. From that moment Vincenzo began to curse the Sorceress Circe and, apparently, he had plenty of reasons to spare. Even when he was disrespectful towards city politics. The second house of “Cianiello” had become Piazza XIX Maggio, the one in front of the municipality of Gaeta.
A personal memory: “Cianiello” had cursed the sorceress Circe when one day, in the afternoon, sI snuck into the council chamber of the Municipality armed with the usual bottle of beer. It was underway a union meeting and its very laborious themes and languages had burdened its participants. Some intolerant trade unionists and municipal employees asked Ciano to leave. Someone else had the opposite opinion: “You stay as long as…”. As long as it doesn’t bother you. Vincenzo Ciano had become a little lamb, never a word out of place. Only silence and the desire to understand what they were talking about. “Cianiello” wanted closeness, he demanded listening and the city, after his death, the city should apologize to him for the many ironic and mischievous smiles behind his back. The mayor of Gaeta Cristian Leccese was right to remember the “legendary Cianiello” in a funeral poster but perhaps he was careless – perhaps ill-advised? – to define him as “King of Fools”.
The “level”, of Decurtisianamente memory, demands, unlike what the councilor Pasqualino De Simone defined as “institutional madness”, only silence and respect, even (and above all) on a cold funeral poster.
A sweet thought to “Cianiello” from the entire Temporeale.info editorial team.
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