The House of Scorta (9 page)

They hadn’t touched what they called amongst themselves “the New York money.” For a long time they thought this money should be used to buy a house. For the moment, they had to tighten their belts and wait, but as soon as an opportunity presented itself, they would buy. They had enough to buy something quite respectable, since in Montepuccio, at the time, stone was still worth nothing. Olive oil was more precious than acres of rock.

One evening, however, Carmela looked up from her bowl of soup and declared:

“We have to do things differently.”

“What?” asked Giuseppe.

“The New York money. We have to use it for something other than a house.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Domenico. “Where would we live?”

“And if we bought a house,” retorted Carmela, who had already spent hours thinking about this, “you would keep on sweating like animals for the rest of your Godgiven days, just to earn your daily bread. That would be all you’d have to depend on. And the years would go by. No, we have money; we have to buy something better.”

“Like what?” asked Domenico, intrigued.

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll come up with something.”

Carmela’s argument had set the three brothers thinking. She was right. There was no doubt about it. Buy a house, and then what? If only they had enough to buy four houses, but that wasn’t the case. They had to think of something else.

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” continued Carmela. “Take me out with you. I want to see what you see, do what you do, all day long. I’ll watch and I’ll figure something out.”

Once again, the men didn’t know what to say. Women in Montepuccio didn’t go out, or if they did, it was only at very specific times. In the morning, very early, to go to market; to hear the Mass—though since the death of don Carlo this was no longer the case; and at harvest time, when they came out to pick olives. The rest of the time, they stayed home, cloistered behind the thick walls of their houses, away from the sun and the covetous glances of men. What Carmela was suggesting went against the grain of village life, but ever since their return from America, the Scorta brothers had complete confidence in their little sister’s instincts.

“All right,” said Domenico.

The next day, Carmela put on her best dress and went out, escorted by her three brothers. They went to the café and drank strong coffee—which wrenched the guts and made the heart beat fast—as was their Sunday custom. Then they sat at a table along the sidewalk and played cards. Carmela was there too, sitting up straight in her chair, a bit off to the side. She watched the men go by. She observed village life. Next, they went to visit a few fishermen friends. At dusk, they went for a
passeggiata
¹¹
along the Corso Garibaldi, strolling up and down the avenue, greeting people they knew, hearing the day’s gossip. For the first time in her life, Carmela spent a whole day in the streets of the village, in a world of men who stared at her in astonishment. She heard comments behind her back. People wondered what she was doing there. They made remarks about how she was dressed. But she didn’t care and concentrated on her mission. That evening, when they got home, she carefully took off her shoes. Her feet ached. Standing over her, Domenico watched her in silence.

“So?” he finally asked her. Giuseppe and Raffaele looked up and fell silent so as not to miss a word of her answer.

“Cigarettes,” she answered calmly.

“Cigarettes?”

“Yes. We should open a tobacco shop in Montepuccio.” Domenico’s face lit up. A tobacco shop. Of course.

There weren’t any in Montepuccio. The grocer sold a few cigarettes, and you could find them at the marketplace, but a real tobacco shop, no, she was right, Montepuccio didn’t have one. Carmela had observed the doings of the men during the day, and the only thing the fishers of the old town had in common with the bourgeois of the Corso was that they were all puffing avidly on small cigarettes. In the shade at the hour of aperitifs, or in the heat of the sun as they toiled, they smoked. This was something to work with. A tobacco shop. On the Corso. Carmela was sure of it. A tobacco shop. You could bet your life on it. It would never be empty.

T
he Scortas set about acquiring the property they wanted. They purchased a commercial space on Corso Garibaldi, a large, empty room of about thirty yards square at street-level. They also bought the basement for storage. After that, they had nothing left. The night of their purchase, Carmela was gloomy and silent.

“What’s wrong?” asked Domenico.

“We have nothing left to buy the licence,” answered Carmela.

“How much is it?” asked Giuseppe.

“It doesn’t cost much, but we’ll need some money to butter up the director of the licence bureau. To send him gifts, every week, until he grants us the license. And we don’t have enough for that.”

Domenico and Giuseppe were dismayed. This was a new, unforseen obstacle, and they did not know how to overcome it. Raffaele looked at the three of them and said to them softly:

“I have some money, and I want to give it to you. The only thing I ask is that you don’t ask where it came from. Or how long I’ve had it. Or why I’ve never mentioned it before. I’ve got it. That’s all that matters.”

He laid a wad of crumpled bills on the table. It was Father Bozzoni’s money. Raffaele had sold the watch. Until this day he had always carried the money on him, not knowing what to do with it, not daring either to get rid of it or to spend it. The Scortas shouted for joy, but he felt no relief. Bozzoni’s crazy silhouette was still dancing in his head, twisting his guts with remorse.

With Raffaele’s money, they set to work on getting the licence. Every two weeks for the next six months, Domenico would leave Montepuccio to go to San Giocondo by donkey. There was an office of the State Monopolies there.
¹²
He would bring the director prosciutto,
caciocavallo
cheese, and a few bottles of
limoncello
.
¹³
He went back and forth tirelessly. All the money went to buy these delicacies. Six months later, the authorization was granted. The Scortas were finally in possession of a licence. But they had nothing left. Not one lira. Just the walls of an empty room and a little piece of paper that gave them the right to work. There wasn’t even enough left over to buy cigarettes. They got their first crates of cigarettes on credit. Domenico and Giuseppe went to fetch them in San Giocondo. They loaded everything onto the donkey’s back and, on the way home, for the first time in their lives, it seemed to them that something was finally starting to happen. All they had done up until then was endure their fate. Choices had been made for them. For the first time, they were going to fight for themselves, and this prospect made them smile for joy.

They laid the cigarettes down on cardboard crates. They stacked up the cartons. The place looked like a contrabander’s outfit: no counter, no cash register, nothing but the merchandise on the floor. The only thing that indicated that it was an official sales outlet was the wooden sign they had hung over the door, on which was written
Tabaccheria Scorta Mascalzone Rivendita no. 1
.
¹⁴
Montepuccio had its first tobacco shop. From that day forward, they would dive heart and soul into a life of sweat that would break their backs and kill them with exhaustion. A life without sleep. The fate of the Scortas would be bound to the boxes of cigarettes they unloaded from the donkey’s back early in the morning, before the workers got to the fields and the fishermen returned from the sea. Their whole life was bound to the little white sticks that men held tightly between their fingers and the wind slowly consumed on mild summer nights. A life of sweat and smoke, which was just beginning. A chance to escape from the misery to which their father had condemned them.
Tabaccheria Scorta Mascalzone Rivendita no. 1.

W
e stayed on Ellis Island for nine days. We were waiting for a boat to be chartered for the return. Nine days, don Salvatore, to contemplate the country that was forbidden us. Nine days at the gates of paradise. That was the first time I thought back on the moment when my father came home after his night of confession and ran his hand through my hair. Now it seemed that a hand was passing through my hair again, the same hand as before. My father’s hand. The hand of the cursed winds of the hills of Apulia, calling me back home. It was the dry hand of misfortune that, since the beginning of time, has condemned whole generations to remain simple clods, living and dying under the sun, in a land where the olive trees are more coddled than the people.

We boarded the ship home. The embarkation wasn’t at all the way it was in Naples, with all the confusion and shouting. This time we took our seats in silence, walking slowly, like convicts. The dregs of the earth got on that boat. The sick from all over Europe. The poorest of the poor. It was a ship of sadness and resignation. A boatload of the luckless, the damned, returning home with the endless shame of having failed. The interpreter hadn’t lied, the crossing was free. In any case, no one could have afforded a return ticket. If the authorities didn’t want beggars piling up on Ellis Island, they had no choice but to arrange the return trips themselves. On the other hand, there was no way they could charter one boat for every country or destination. That ship of rejects crossed the Atlantic and, once in Europe, slowly put in at all the main ports, one by one, unloading its human cargo.

It was a long journey, don Salvatore, endless. The hours passed the way they do in a hospital, to the slow drip of the IV. People were dying in the dormitories, from sickness, disappointment, and solitude. Abandoned by everyone and everything, those creatures had a hard time finding a reason to live they could grasp onto. Often they let themselves drift into death with a vague smile on their faces, happy, deep down, to put an end to the series of trials and humiliations that had been their lives.

Strangely enough, I got stronger. My fever broke. Soon Icould cross the deck from end to end. I raced up and down the stairs, I wended my way through the corridors. I was all over the place, going from one group to the next. In afew days, everybody knew me, regardless of their age or language. I spent my days doing little favors, darning socks, finding a little water for the old Irishman, or someone to trade a blanket for a small silver medal that a Danish woman was willing to part with. I knew everyone by name, or surname, at least. I wiped the brows of the sick. I prepared food for the elderly. People called me “the little one.” I got my brothers involved. I told them what to do. They moved sick people out onto the deck on sunny days. They passed out water in the dormitories. We were alternately messengers, merchants, nurses, and confessors. Little by little, we managed to improve our lot. We earned a few pennies, won a few privileges. Where did the money come from? Most of the time, from the dead. Many people died. It was understood that the few possessions the dying left behind would go to the community. It would have been hard to do otherwise. Most of the poor creatures were going back to a country where no one was waiting for them. They had left their loved ones behind in America or in lands where they had no intention of returning. Were we to send the few coins they hid in their rags to an address where they would never arrive? The booty was redistributed on board. Often the crew helped themselves to it first. That’s where we came in. We made sure the crew was informed as late as possible, and we divided things up in the darkness of the hold. This involved long negotiations. If the deceased had family on board, everything went to the survivors, but if not—which was more often the case—we tried to be fair. Sometimes we would spend hours reaching an agreement on the inheritance of three pieces of string and a pair of shoes. I never tended a sick person with the idea of his impending death in mind or how I might profit from it. I swear it. I did it because I wanted to fight, and this was the only way I had found to do so.

I looked after on an old Polish man in particular, whom I liked a lot. I never succeeded in pronouncing his full name, Korniewski or Korzeniewki, I just called him “Korni.” He was small and wizened. He must have been about seventy. His body slowly abandoned him. People had discouraged him from making the trip, from trying his luck. They told him he was too old, too weak, but he had insisted. He wanted to see this land that everyone was talking about. His strength had begun to wane from the start. He kept the smile in his eyes, but he was losing weight by the day. Sometimes he would murmur things in my ear that I couldn’t understand, but he made me laugh because the sounds he made seemed like anything but a language.

Korni. He saved us from the poverty that was eating away at our lives. He died before we reached England. He died one night when the ship was gently rocking. The moment he felt himself fading, he called me to his side and handed me a little rag tied with string. He said something I didn’t understand, then, letting his head fall back on the bed, eyes wide open, he began to pray, in Latin. I prayed with him, until the moment death robbed him of his last breath. In the rag there were eight gold coins and a small silver crucifix. That was the money that saved us. Shortly after old Korni’s death, the boat began to put in at the ports of Europe. First it berthed in London, then cast anchor in Le Havre, and then set off again for the Mediterranean, where it stopped at Barcelona, Marseilles and, finally, Naples. At each of these ports of call, the boat discharged its bedraggled passengers and was reloaded with merchandise. We took advantage of these stops to do a little business. The ship would dock at each port for two or three days, enough time for the cargo to be loaded and for the crew to sober up. We used these precious hours to buy a few things, such as tea, pots and pans, cigarettes. We would choose what was most typical of each country and then try to resell them at the next stop. It was a ridiculous business for laughable sums of money, but we carefully amassed a tiny treasure. And we arrived in Naples richer than when we had set out. That’s what matters, don Salvatore. I’m proud of this. We came back richer than when we’d left. I discovered that I had a gift, a talent for business. My brothers couldn’t get over it. It was that small treasure, wrung from squalor and resourcefulness, that kept us from dying like animals in the teeming crowds of Naples when we returned.