Unto the Sons (41 page)

19.

G
aetano Talese’s first visit home to Italy in more than six years was made memorable a week after his arrival, when, while standing one evening beneath the balcony of a young woman with whom he was having a prolonged and lightly flirtatious conversation, he was grabbed and choked from behind by a man who, before stabbing him with a knife, whispered: “You have no right to speak to this woman.”

As Gaetano fought the man off, then felt the blood flowing from his right temple, the assailant disappeared into the shadows between two buildings, never to be taken into custody. The woman later swore to the police that she could not identify the attacker; nor could she suggest the name of any man in whom she might have encouraged such impassioned possessiveness. But at that time it was not unusual for a woman in Maida not to know that a particular man had laid private claim to her, since such a man felt compelled to inform only his close male acquaintances, whose noninterference he sought and required while he watched her window at night, and frequently followed her during the day, learning all that he could about her until he was ready to reveal his ardor and marital intentions to her family.

This ancient rite of remote courtship, which still existed at the turn of the century in southern Italy, was seen as both natural and proper: the woman was secretly desired and pursued; her family was later informed and consulted; and finally the nuptial terms were agreed upon by mature representatives of both parties—devoid of the ambiguous utterances, the furtive liaisons, and the fickle dalliances of a young couple in love. A stable society was founded on pragmatic matchmaking.

But recently, the return of many native sons visiting from the New World who presumed the right to speak to any woman who caught their fancy was causing agitation among the population. While most people publicly expressed regret at what had happened to Gaetano, in private many believed he had gotten what he deserved.

Other offenses by returnees had gone unpublished. Several naive maidens, swayed by the men’s exaggerated tales of their wealth and accomplishments overseas, and believing their promises would deliver them from the poverty and stagnation of the village, later found themselves
pregnant and abandoned by their persuasive lovers, who returned alone across the sea. Even when a young man was honorable, and wanted to marry his
innamorata
in Italy, he was sometimes rebuffed by her parents, who feared that if she joined him overseas they would never again see her. For the first time in local history it seemed that the closeness of the large Italian family could be weakened and fractured by its transoceanic extension.

Therefore these visits home by workers from abroad were viewed apprehensively by many elders, who saw the migrants not as returning sons but as young men on the prowl, soldiers of the economy who were here today and then gone forever as men with a personal role in the village’s future. Their American experiences had desensitized them to local customs, made them another in the long line of invaders. And during the
passeggiata
they were conspicuous in their foreign-made clothes, pridefully striding arm in arm with their more modest relatives, often failing to tip their hats to the passing priests or to members of the aristocracy, as if
they
were now the new aristocrats.

Financially generous as many of them undoubtedly were to their relatives in Maida, and thus an asset to the local economy, they nonetheless by their very existence prompted questions about the worth and courage of those hometown bachelors who had shunned the opportunity of enriching themselves overseas. The choice of local men to remain at home would not have become an issue had so many local women not become attracted to the travelers, and to the idea that a woman’s life might be improved by taking chances and deviating from the path chosen by her elders. Even if she remained at home, the typical village maiden was no longer contented with what she had—her horizons had been widened, options were in the offing; the hometown boulevardiers, walking in circles, now lacked the mystery of the men visiting from abroad.

Gaetano was unaware of the tension between the young women and men of his village during his first days home, prior to the stabbing incident. He had, in fact, been gratified by the friendly greetings of everyone he met, and particularly by the loving reception of his family at the Maida train station, a group that included his mother; his married sister, Maria, and her husband, Francesco Cristiani (holding their infant son, Antonio); and even his father, in his mid-fifties, his reddish hair now turning white. Domenico embraced him tightly within his cape, misty-eyed and strangely sentimental; and later, during a private moment, his father admitted that he had prayed for Gaetano’s safe return during each and every day of his absence. While Gaetano was moved on hearing this, he hoped
that his father was not counting on his resettling in Maida and fulfilling some function in the family enterprises. Gaetano intended to return to the United States within a few months, when the milder spring weather melted the frozen mortar and permitted the resumption of stonework outdoors on a full-time basis. He liked his job—and also the three-month hiatus each winter that had permitted him to board trains in Philadelphia and wander about the country.

During the previous winter, that of 1893–1894, he had spent six weeks in New Orleans. The winter before, he had gone by train to California, then traveled by stagecoach from Santa Ana to the Mexican border. Having learned to speak and read English, Gaetano was a knowing and communicative traveler; and despite the expense of such trips (and having to pay off almost three hundred dollars in gambling debts to Bosio), he still had a few hundred dollars left in a safety deposit box in Philadelphia after he had advanced the payment for his passage back to Italy. Had he been more frugal he could have saved five times that amount. But Gaetano spent money nearly as fast as he made it, living for the day, unconcerned about tomorrow. During his fourth year in America, before turning twenty-one, he vacated Lobianco’s boardinghouse for a small, expensive apartment in Philadelphia, which he shared with a fellow worker of his own age, Carlo Donato, who commuted with him each workday to Ambler. Donato came from a village just south of Maida called Jacurso. Each evening after returning to Philadelphia, and all day on Sundays, Donato earned extra money working as a waiter in an Italian restaurant, where Gaetano went to eat.

Gaetano had no idea what he would do after Dr. Mattison’s Gothic community was completed. He had been told by his mentor, Mr. Maniscalco, who was almost as casual and unconcerned about making plans as Gaetano, that there would always be plenty of work for stone artisans in the eastern area of the United States. Maniscalco had predicted that the current building boom in the region would last for decades, and Gaetano had readily agreed. He had noticed several busy construction sites from his train window during his excursions—signs of a prospering economy in a growing nation to which he would soon apply for citizenship, a young country that differed greatly from what he saw when he returned to Italy in late 1894.

Disembarking from the steamship in Naples for a three-day stopover before boarding the train to Maida, Gaetano observed that little had changed in the city since he had been there in 1888. It seemed as boisterous, dirty, and overcrowded as ever. Nothing new was being built; nothing
old was being renovated. Beggars were everywhere. Herds of goats clopped through the teeming streets among the carriage drivers and pedestrians, and between tight rows of beige stone houses that fanned out from the harbor up toward Mount Vesuvius. Herdsmen sometimes escorted goats
into
the ground-floor apartments of customers wanting milk, and even up the steps to top-floor apartments, leaving behind a trail of animal droppings that no one seemed to mind.

On the Piazza del Plebiscito was the royal palace, its throne long vacant; and behind the equestrian statues of two Bourbon kings was the Church of Saint Francis of Paola, its dome eroding and parts of its columns cracking and chipped. Within the arcade of the church, and within other sheltered spaces throughout the city, stood itinerant cooks, their pots steaming with macaroni, fish, and sausages; and mingling around them were vendors hawking a variety of items—gloves, hats, rosary beads, trays of cigar ends (retrieved from gutters), stolen jewelry, and ornaments made of lava. As usual, the citizenry kept an eye on the volcano as a guide to forecasting the weather. On the day of Gaetano’s arrival, the crater was concealed behind a thick layer of clouds, and the wind was coming from the south, indicating wet weather was due. By noon, the city was drenched in rain.

The newspaper headlines were no less grim than they had been six years before. Italy was still engaged in colonial wars in East Africa. Gaetano had seen several Italian soldiers in the streets of Naples, a few wearing bandages and walking with the aid of canes. The government in Rome had kept up its campaign against the anarchists and radical Socialists. Nearly all of the radicals Gaetano had known in Naples were now in the United States, lamenting from afar Italy’s decision to disband the Socialist Party and to institute strict new laws against anarchists. But not even the most ardent of antianarchist legislators in Rome believed that the life of King Umberto I, son of the Risorgimento king, Victor Emmanuel II, would ever be endangered by an anarchist assassin.

After three days in Naples, Gaetano checked out of his hotel, took a carriage to the east end of the city, and boarded a southbound train to Maida, having sent a telegram to his parents the previous night, announcing his presence in Italy and his scheduled time of arrival in the village. It was a tedious journey: the train stopped at almost every town along the route, allowing passengers to use the toilets in the stations (there were none on the train), and some second-class travelers in the rear car to walk the baby goats and lambs they had brought on board. Gaetano sat alone in
one of the first-class smoking compartments, which were in the front of the train behind the compartments reserved for women.

On this day the train had left Naples with no women aboard, and only five men in addition to Gaetano in the front section. Unlike the gregarious young travelers with whom he had drunk wine and sung songs while crossing the ocean, his rail companions were middle-aged seignorial figures in dark suits and hats who exchanged few words even when standing together in the aisle. Each sat alone within a glass-paneled enclosure, surrounded by empty seats, reading a newspaper or a book, smoking a cigarette or small cigar, and occasionally glancing out at the passing countryside with a facial expression that was pensive, even sad. Gaetano thought they might be Neapolitan landowners en route to survey the fallow fields of their plantations, anticipating the dismal financial reports they would soon be receiving from their foremen in the deep south.

The land did indeed seem barren, no matter where Gaetano looked out from the train as it slowly chugged and choked its way through the black smoke of its locomotive, following tracks that at times skimmed along the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea, then swerved inland and climbed high on viaduct bridges into promontory tunnels, rumbling and swaying in the darkness for several moments before emerging again in the daylight and down again toward the bleak coastline. Only rarely did Gaetano see a fishing boat in the sea. Even the once ubiquitous scavenger birds seemed to have disappeared. But the mountains inland, to Gaetano’s left, never disappeared—they remained framed within the rows of windows during the entire trip, dominating the skyline with their snowcapped peaks, fir-forested hills, remains of ruined castles and ancient watchtowers, and cliffside villages that were invariably lopsided. Gaetano knew that many of these villages had been struck by earthquakes decades before, centuries before; but only now, with the perspective that a long absence from home can bring to a returning native, could he contemplate with fresh clarity this mutilated and precipitous land, and acknowledge the adaptability required of those who chose to remain here.

As the train pulled slowly in and out of stations and brought him closer and closer to Maida, Gaetano saw gathered along the platforms many people he thought he had seen before; but he could recognize none of them. Most of those in the waiting crowds were young men of his own age, often accompanied by older men and women who stood next to luggage and sometimes dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs. The young men did not board Gaetano’s train. They were waiting on the opposite
side of the platform for trains heading north toward Naples. From the quantity and size of their luggage Gaetano guessed that the young men were going away for a long time, perhaps via a steamship to America, and that the older folks were relatives and friends who had come to say good-bye.

At the station in Amantea, about an hour upcoast from Maida, Gaetano saw a young couple who gave the impression of being newly married. The woman was very pretty and looked barely twenty, and she carried a bouquet of flowers tied with a long white ribbon that trailed against her maroon skirt and brown fringed shawl. She stood in the center of the platform, opposite Gaetano’s window, and as he leaned forward and studied her under the stanchioned light she seemed to be in a mood of much gaiety and anticipation. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright; and while she appeared attentive to what was being said between her boutonniered young companion and the elders who stood next to him, she also glanced down the tracks constantly in the direction from which the train would come.

Gaetano was affected by her spirit, and he imagined himself one day marrying such a woman and embarking on a new adventure. He had never had a close relationship with a woman of his age during his earlier years in Maida, or since he had been away. Despite his travels in America, and the widening circle of people he had befriended since taking the apartment in Philadelphia, he had met few eligible women. America was open-armed, but its daughters were invariably off-limits. There was the social barrier that existed between non-Italian women and such workers as himself, as well as the fact that practically all the young Italian women he was aware of in America were already married or engaged. He had therefore been very pleased and receptive when his roommate, Carlo Donato, had suggested that Gaetano look up a certain cousin of his who lived with her family in the valley of Maida. Donato described her as being very attractive but a bit stubborn, and said that her name was Marian Rocchino. Donato also composed a letter of introduction and gave it to Gaetano to deliver to her home—which Gaetano did five days after he had arrived in Maida.