Waiting.
And waiting again.
And again.
***
THREE AND A HALF YEARS WENT BY.It was late October 1939. The world was going to war, and I really can’t tell you how Antonio managed to secure visas for his family in the precious last batch before all emigration was halted. Some of the people I’ve interviewed assume that money must have changed hands.
There were three passports this time: a wife and dependent children visa for Assunta, Giuseppe, and Luigi, and two solo adult visas for Mariastella and Concettina. They were to sail on December 16 from Napoli on a ship named theCountess of Savoy.Antonio had bought second-class tickets; they would not sleep in steerage, as he had, but would come over to their new home in style. The voyage would take seven days; he would meet them on December 23 at New York Harbor.
Za Ros’s older son, Franco, who lived in France, bought the house on via Fontana so he could give it to his son, who wanted to come back to Ievoli to find a wife. Stella knew Assunta was happy the house was staying in the Mascaro family, even if she had gone from owning a house to having nothing at all with a few strokes of a faraway man’s pen. That is how things work, so. Why worry about it?
“Whatever happens,” Cettina told their cousin Cicciu, “please. You cannot let Zu Franco cut down the lemon tree.” She pointed out the window at the little lemon tree that stood in the sunny spot between the house and the stable, the one she had planted when she was a little girl.
“Of course they won’t cut down the lemon tree,” Cicciu told her. “That would be bad luck.” They did, though, of course. They cut down all the trees and filled in all of Assunta’s land to build houses they sold to other men’s sons.
Assunta and her four children made a shopping trip to Nicastro at the end of November with a packet of money Antonio had sent them. Everyone was to buy a traveling outfit. Nine-year-old Luigi was adorable in his first good shirt and a pair of brown short pants. Stella and Cettina picked out ready-made dresses at a shop, dark blue dresses the seamstress assured them were appropriate for American sea travel, with wrist-length sleeves that would cover Stella’s scars. Assunta could not be talked into any color but black for herself.
From the post office in Nicastro, Stella sent a note to Stefano’s mother in Sambiase so that Stefano would have the Fortunas’ mailing address in America. He had been deployed with the Infantry Division Catanzaro to Africa. During his years in the army, Stefano had written letters periodically, although Stella never wrote back. She didn’t know what to say, and besides, her writing would only have been an embarrassment to her. When he’d joined the army, Stefano must have thought he’d be out already by 1939; Stella couldn’t believe he had imagined he would be twenty-two and Stella almost twenty and still neither of their futures had come about. Stella prayed for him, but he was so far away, in a place she couldn’t contemplate, and her prayers felt empty and directionless. Or maybe it was that her prayers felt tainted—tainted by her secret hope that the army would keep him away indefinitely, that she would never have to be his wife.
STELLA DID NOT VISITthe cemetery the second time she left Ievoli forever. She counted down the days until December 14, when they would catch the train for Napoli, and she kept thinking,tomorrow, I’ll go.But she didn’t.
NAPOLI WAS WETLY COLD INDECEMBER,damp winds gusting off the open harbor and sticking to the shabby waterfront buildings. Stella felt no wonder this second time in the port city. She had not been able to shake off her sense of hopelessness, that there was still a great thing that was going to go wrong. She was queasy with nerves, thinking about the last attempt they had made, of all hands and souls at the bottom of the sea.
The Fortunas arrived in Napoli on the evening of December 14.They went first thing next morning to the ocean liner’s ticket office. The tickets were in order, and the names matched the passports this time.
When the ticket agent showed Stella her visa, she noticed the birthday written next to her name:12 GENNAIO 1920. She was about to point out the mistake to the agent—her index finger was already hovering over the page—when her heart started pounding crazily in her chest at the idea that she would be the reason, again, that the entire family was turned away.No, Stella, she told herself.No one needs to know.She had to cough to cover the words that had half emerged from her throat.“Scusi,”she said politely.
She didn’t say anything to her mother or Cettina about the mistake on her visa, not until they were safely through the immigrant processing at New York Harbor—either of them might have been unable to cope with the news. By then it was already on all of her government-issued paperwork. January 12 was her new American birthday.
AFTER ACQUIRING THE TICKETS,they went to the doctor’s office for the medical certificates they would need to board the ship. The line snaked out the door and into the chilly street, but the Fortunas only waited half an hour; the examination was very quick, an inspection of eyes and tongue and a general up-and-down.
In their hotel, they shared the bread Cettina had packed. Cicciu took them out for a walk in the evening, but they were all anxious about getting lost in Napoli, so after ten minutes he brought them back. It was a long, dreary evening. The three women lay head to toe in the sour-smelling bed; Giuseppe and Luigi slept on the floor and made restless sounds all through the dark night. When the knock on the door came before dawn the next morning, Stella was awake, head aching.
It was Cicciu, but he hadn’t come to tell them it was time to take their things down to the dock. No—he was holding a newspaper, and his face was red as a cherry pepper. There it was, across the front page—Stella felt like she had been waiting for the headline Cicciu read out to them. Mussolini had halted all transatlantic voyages; the countrywas preparing for war. No more boats would be departing from Napoli harbor. No more Italians would be allowed to leave.
The ticket office was already thronged with people by the time the Fortunas got there. The clerk would not give anyone their money back, dismissing threats and curses with a weary wave. Everyone needed to settle down, they were trying to see if the ship might be allowed to leave, even though the orders from Rome seemed unambiguous. Hours dragged on and panicked anger stretched into exhaustion. People sat on trunks, strutted, shouted, picked fights. There were some women weeping, although for once Assunta wasn’t one of them. Stella watched her mother’s shrewd eyes and wondered what she was thinking, if maybe she was hoping to be sent back to Ievoli a second time.
They waited in the drafty ticket hall all day for news. Assunta sat on her trunk, because the varicose veins in her legs, which had never stopped swelling after Luigi was born, were sore from standing. Stella braided and unbraided Assunta’s long hair. Luigi was a good boy; he worked off his bored energy walking in laps around the ticket office, and eventually squatted on the floor to nap with his head in his mother’s lap. Giuseppe, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. Stella imagined him running free on the streets of grungy, crime-ridden Napoli. She wondered how far he could possibly get in this city where things cost ten or a hundred times what a person expected them to.
“What if the boat leaves while he’s gone?” Cettina said.
“Would serve him right,” Stella replied.
When the bells sounded in the piazza outside for evening mass, the ticket agent made everyone leave. “Come back tomorrow!” he shouted over the murmuring, fretful people. “Same time, same place. The boat leaves tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.”
Would-be passengers, stupid or intractable with mind-numbed exhaustion, looked dully at one another, trying to decide if they were going to trust and obey. The agent’s boys made rounds, shaking dozers awake and repeating the instructions in loud, slow Italian to old people and country bumpkins.
The hotelier checked them back in for another night; luckily he had two rooms, which the Fortunas paid for with the coins the ocean liner agent had given them. Cicciu offered to go out and buy them some food, but Assunta waved him off. She knew he needed what he had to get back to Ievoli. They went to bed early without supper.
“What will we do if the boat doesn’t leave tomorrow?” Cettina whispered to Stella. She didn’t whisper softly enough, because Luigi’s heavily lidded eyes slanted toward his sisters. “We don’t have any more money for a hotel for another night.”
“Don’t worry,” Stella said, making her voice deadly serious. “It will be fine, although we might have to sell Giuseppe to the organ grinder.”
“The what?” Cettina, always a little late on the pickup, was taken aback.
“You know, the man with the little monkey in thechiazza,” Stella said.
