The Shoemaker's Wife (17 page)

“Really? You would call us lucky?” Ciro believed fate had been against them at every turn. Had he remembered his keys that night, he would not have discovered Concetta and the priest, which had set all these horrible events in motion.

“Yes, brother. We’ve made it this far.” Eduardo looked up and down the tracks, trying not to cry.

The Lazzari boys stood on the platform, having never been apart, not for a day or night of their lives. Little had gone unsaid between them. They had been one other’s counselors and confidants. In many ways, Eduardo had been Ciro’s parent, setting his moral compass, helping him navigate convent life, prompting him to study, all the while encouraging him to see the good in people and the possibilities of the world beyond the piazza in Vilminore.

Eduardo was now seventeen, and he possessed a contemplative air and a humble attitude. For a young man, he was unusually solemn, as well as empathetic.

Ciro would turn sixteen on the ship to America. He was over six feet tall, the pugilistic stance and comedic expressions of his youth replaced with a grown-up masculine prowess that made him appear much older. Eduardo sized up Ciro and was reassured that his younger brother could take care of himself physically. But he worried that Ciro was too trusting and could be taken advantage of by people less honorable than he. It was always the young men of gentle natures who acknowledged the worst in the world; strong boys like Ciro never did.

“You know, Ciro,” Eduardo began slowly, “I never felt I really lost Papa, because you look so much like him. Sometimes when I was studying late at night and I would look over at you sleeping, I would remember him lying on the grass, taking siesta. And I would swear Papa had never really left us because he was alive in you. But you are like him in more ways than your appearance. You have a mind like him too.”

“I do?” Ciro wished he could remember more details about his father. He remembered his laugh, and the way he held a cigarette, but beyond that, very little.

“You always tell the truth. You stand up for the weak. And you’re not afraid of taking chances. When the sisters told us that we had to leave, and they told you that you had to go to America, you didn’t flinch. You didn’t cry. You didn’t try to make a better deal for yourself, you just accepted their offer.”

“Maybe that makes me a pushover,” Ciro said.

“No, it makes you wise. Like Papa, you aren’t afraid of trying something new. I don’t have that kind of daring in my nature, but you do. I’m not going to worry about you in America.”

“Liar.”

“Let’s put it this way, I’m going to
try
not to worry about you.”

“Well, I wish I could say the same.” Ciro said. “Keep your eyes open, Eduardo. Holy men sometimes aren’t. Don’t let them push you around or make you feel like you’re not one of them. You’re smarter than the keenest of their lot. Take charge. Show them what you can do.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll work hard because it’s all I know,” Ciro said. “But, everything we do, everything we make, is done so we might to return to the mountain.
Together
.”

Eduardo nodded in agreement. “Pray for me.”

“Papa said something to me the night before he left, and I wrote it in my missal, so I would never forget it.” Eduardo’s eyes glinted with tears as he opened his leather-bound black missal to the first page. He handed it to Ciro. In a young boy’s measured script, Eduardo had written:

Beware the things of this world that
can mean everything or nothing.

Ciro closed the book and handed it back to Eduardo. “You’ve never been without this missal. It belongs to you. Keep it.”

Eduardo placed it in Ciro’s hands firmly. “No, it’s your turn now. When you read it, you will think of me. Besides, I know you aren’t one for daily mass—”

“Or Sunday mass.”

“Or any mass!” Eduardo grinned. “But if you’ll read the missal, I think you’ll find some comfort.”

Ciro closed the missal. “The sisters of San Nicola, my brother, and the world conspire to turn me into a good Catholic. To all of you, I say, good luck.”

The whistles of an incoming train pierced the air. An attendant climbed a ladder and wrote the new arrival on the station’s giant blackboard:

R O M A

“I have to go,” Eduardo said, his voice breaking. “That’s my train.”

The brothers embraced. They held one another a long time, until Eduardo straightened his back and gently released his brother.

“You go to track two for the train to Venice—”

“I know, I know, then the ferry to Le Havre. Eduardo?”

Eduardo picked up his satchel. “Yes?”

“I’ve never been to France.”

“Ciro?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve never been to Venice, either.”

Ciro put his hands on his hips. “Do you think anyone can tell? Do I look like a goat herder from the Alps?”

“Only when you wear lederhosen.” Eduardo slung his satchel over his shoulder. “Be careful in America, Ciro. Don’t let anyone take advantage of you. Watch your money. Ask questions.”

“I will,” Ciro assured him.

“And write to me.”

“I promise.”

Four young men, similar in countenance and age to Eduardo, each carrying a single satchel, boarded the train for Rome. Eduardo turned to follow them. “Your new brothers are waiting for you,” Ciro said.

“They will never be my brothers,” Eduardo said. “I only have one.”

Ciro watched as Eduardo slowly disappeared into the crowd.

“And don’t you forget it!” Ciro shouted, waving the missal, before he, too, crossed the platform and boarded a train to take him to his new life.

PART TWO

Manhattan

Chapter 9

A LINEN HANDKERCHIEF
Un Fazzolletto di Lino

T
wo days after he left Eduardo at the train station in Bergamo, Ciro made his way up the plank of the SS
Chicago
in Le Havre, hauling his duffel over his back. His impression of the French port city was limited to the view of the canal, with its bobbing dinghies nipping at the hulls of ocean liners lashed to the docks. The pier was cluttered with passengers filing up the planks of the ships with their luggage. Behind a wall of fishing net, swarms of loved ones waved their handkerchiefs and tipped their hats as they bid their final good-byes.

There was no one to see Ciro off on his journey. For an ebullient young man who had never known a stranger, he was subdued and sober as he made his connections. Ciro bought a meal of cold polenta and hot milk before boarding. He skipped the sausage, so the hearty meal only cost him a few
centesimi
. He hoped to arrive in America with his small purse intact.

The attendant took Ciro’s ticket and directed him belowdecks to the men’s third-class compartment. Ciro was relieved the sexes were segregated on this ship, as Sister Ercolina had told him about grim steerage accommodations where men, women, and children stayed in one large room, separated only by squares drawn on the ship’s floor with paint.

Ciro pushed the metal door to his cell open, dropped his head, and stooped to enter. The room was five by five feet, with a small cot jammed against the wall. Ciro could not stand up in it, and there was no window. But it was clean enough, with a scent of saltwater.

Ciro sat down on the cot and opened his duffel. The fragrance of the convent laundry—lavender and starch—enveloped him, fresh as the mountain air of Vilminore. He snapped the satchel shut quickly, hoping to preserve the scent; this was all he had left to remind him of his life in San Nicola.

The ship creaked in the harbor as it floated in place, rubbing against the pilings. For the first time since he’d boarded the train in Bergamo, Ciro exhaled. The anxiety of changing trains, meeting the ferry in Venice, and processing his ticket once he arrived in La Havre had kept him in a state of highest alert. During the day, he dared not nap or let his mind wander, for fear he would miss a train or ferry and bungle the trip entirely.

The first night, he’d slept in a church in Venice; on the second, he found a spot between shops on the boardwalk in Le Havre. Now only the ocean kept him from the start of his new life. He had avoided conversation with strangers, having been warned about the swindlers who preyed on unsuspecting passengers. He would like to see anyone try to get his money. He tucked it carefully in a pouch around his neck, then pinned it to the inside of his undershirt for safekeeping.

Ciro’s heart ached for all he was leaving behind, especially the company and counsel of Eduardo, the person who had made him feel safe in the world. None of the events of the past week had seemed real as they were happening, but now that he was alone, Ciro felt the finality of all of it. Ciro had been punished for something he had seen, not something he had done. He was aboard this ship because he had no advocate and was an orphan. The nuns had spared him the work camp, but the priest had levied a far worse punishment when he separated one brother from the other. Ciro buried his face in his sleeve and wept.

It was in the release of his sadness that Eduardo’s reassuring words flooded back to Ciro. He took stock of his situation. He knew how to work hard. Hadn’t the nuns marveled at his strength and stamina? He looked down at his hands, replicas of his father’s. Ciro was a common laborer, but he was intelligent; he could read and write, thanks to Eduardo. He knew how to cut a fair business deal because of Iggy. He had mastered self-denial and sacrifice through convent living. He would live frugally in America and save his money, thus speeding his return to the mountain. In this instance, his banishment was also his ticket to adventure, to his future.

Ciro would show the priest what he was made of by making something of himself. He would eat just enough to maintain his strength, pay as little as possible for his accommodations, and avoid temptation. A full purse cannot be denied; a full purse has power and a voice. Ciro learned that, watching the collection plate being passed in San Nicola.

Ciro poured water from his canteen onto his clean handkerchief and washed his face. He placed his duffel neatly under the cot. He locked the cell door before he climbed back up the steps to the deck. He was not going to isolate himself because Don Gregorio mandated it. Ciro decided to throw himself into the experience of the crossing, so he positioned himself on the promenade and watched the passengers board, dazzled by the variety of people who climbed the plank.

Whenever there was a festival in Vilminore, hundreds of visitors from nearby towns emptied into the village. The revelers were hardworking mountain people who toiled in the mines or on the farm, just like the people who lived in Vilminore. There was no discernible difference in wealth or status. Men worked to provide for the table and had to work the same amount of hours to get it. But even among the padrones of the Italian Alps, there was nothing that compared to the opulence Ciro watched sashay up the plank of the SS
Chicago
.

The wealthy Europeans were beautifully dressed in pastel linens and pale silks, followed by maids and errand boys who carried their luggage. The servants were dressed better than anyone Ciro knew in Vilminore. His eyes fell upon an older woman, dressed in a wide-brimmed straw hat. A servant followed her, balancing two leather hatboxes, one in each hand. She was followed by a second maid who pushed a canvas dress box on wheels, as tall as she, up the plank. Ciro had never seen such service. His first observation was that the rich didn’t carry their own weight.

Ciro heard a variety of Italian dialects. Ciro’s own, the Bergamasque of the Lombardy region, was heavily influenced by the Swiss that bordered them to the north. The Venetians, by contrast, had low, rolling vowels and enunciated clearly, something Ciro was quick to pick up as influenced by the French. He heard all manners of Italian spoken—Barese, Tuscan, Calabrese, and Sicilian. The world was noisy. As Ciro looked around, he was the only person who seemed to be listening.

Sometimes there was no need for words. Ciro watched as young women floated through the crowd. Perhaps it was their lace shift dresses, or the soft sway of the cream-colored tulle on their hats, but they appeared light and airborne, moving like a dizzy constellation of white butterflies that hovered over the fields of Alta Vilminore in the springtime.

Ciro saw people he had only read about in books. Turks wore starched tunics in shades of indigo, the color of the waves of the Adriatic, embroidered with silver thread. Portuguese laborers, squat and muscular, wore overalls, straw hats, and looks of defiance. French nuns, wearing white winged wimples, skimmed down the steps into steerage like a flock of gray pigeons.

The sisters of San Nicola had taught Ciro to seek the nuns dressed like them,
le bianconere
, the “black-and-whites” who wore a large wooden cross on rosary beads draped from the waist. He had been instructed to approach them and explain his connection. The sisters promised he would never be turned away from any convent of their order, if he ever found himself without a place to stay.

Two old British men wearing rumpled wool suits with plaid vests, the uniforms of
il professore
, climbed the steps to first class, speaking proper English. An Italian family, with grandmother in tow, headed to second class. She directed her grandsons on the proper technique for hauling the food hampers. It occurred to Ciro that men pretended to run the family, but in truth, the women were in charge. He wondered why this family was emigrating, as it appeared that they were doing well in Italy. It occurred to Ciro that most people were not on the run as he was. Perhaps they were looking for an adventure, just for its own sake. He could not imagine the luxury of that.

“
Ciao
.”

“
Ciao
,” Ciro said as he turned to face a man of thirty, with thick brown hair, who wore an immaculate white uniform with colorful bars across the pocket.

“Are you the captain?” Ciro asked.