Unto the Sons (61 page)

Antonio and Joseph exchanged several letters during the summer and autumn of 1919; and in January 1920—by which time Antonio was discharged and back at Damien’s—Joseph wrote saying that he had received permission from his mother and grandfather to join Antonio in Paris later in the spring. Postwar life in Maida continued to be bad, Joseph wrote; the town was still operating largely on the barter system, and many customers in Cristiani’s tailor shop, recently reopened, were paying for new clothes with bushels of flour, heads of cattle, and other tradable commodities. The family farm was operating, but with Sebastian bedridden and Grandfather Domenico, almost eighty-two, less active, half its acreage was untilled, and laborers were scarce even in this time of vast unemployment.

Many of the returning veterans who were physically able to work seemed unwilling to do so. They spent their hours playing cards in the café, or in the back of Pileggi’s butcher shop; barely subsisting on their
wartime savings and small pensions, they cursed the government that had promised so much but was doing so little to improve the peacetime economy in the south. There were antigovernment demonstrations in Maida and elsewhere during the winter of 1920, all of them led by disillusioned veterans. But the most ambitious of these men, instead of demonstrating, were packing their bags and leaving the country. They were en route to promised positions as high-paid laborers in North and South America and in Australia.

Two of Joseph’s uncles, the older of the four Rocchino brothers, left the village in late February 1920 to take up the factory jobs being held open for them at the Keasbey & Mattison asbestos plant in Pennsylvania. Joseph had accompanied his mother and other relatives to see the two men off. It was a bitterly cold morning, but the Rocchino brothers wore the same lightweight American linen suits and boaters they had worn back to Maida in answer to the call of conscription. Now, waving good-bye from the windows of their slow-moving Naples-bound train, they looked like two carefree tourists off on a grand adventure. Joseph, sixteen years old, watched from the platform, wishing he were with them.

Three months later, however, Joseph made his own exit. His mother came to the station with him, along with his grandparents, his younger siblings, and other relatives from both sides of the family. Domenico and Ippolita stood arm in arm a few feet back from the others on the platform; they were more reserved and better dressed than Joseph’s outgoing Rocchino grandparents, his sheepskin-jacketed uncle on his mother’s side, and her two gold-toothed, black-veiled widowed cousins. Joseph’s aunt Maria had stayed home to look after Sebastian. Joseph had gone earlier in the day to the bedside of his brother, but Sebastian had merely whispered unintelligible words and did not seem to understand that Joseph was saying good-bye. Joseph’s youngest brother, six-year-old Domenico, had been crying, disappointed that he would not be traveling on the train; and now on the platform he sat sullenly on Joseph’s suitcase, his right hand firmly holding on to the handle. The old suitcase had belonged to their father, and jagged strips of American steamboat stickers still clung to its sides. Behind the suitcase stood Joseph’s eleven-year-old sister, Ippolita, and fourteen-year-old brother, Nicola, looking at Joseph but saying nothing.

“You won’t forget about us, will you?” Joseph’s mother asked.

Joseph shook his head. He felt awkward with all eyes upon him, and he could barely wait to board the train. He was wearing the new brown overcoat and matching cap that his uncle Francesco had made for him,
and delivered in the morning on his way to the shop. Tied around Joseph’s waist, inside his trousers, was a money bag containing the American dollar bill his father had given him, plus five hundred dollars in lire loaned to him by the Rocchino uncles who had departed for America. They had told Joseph he could live with them in Ambler if things did not work out in Paris. He had been happy to hear this, for the bombing of Paris about which the elder Cristiani had spoken so often as he worried about Antonio had made the city lose some of its appeal; as a result Joseph was now more receptive to his father’s affection for America. But Marian was expecting her son to return to Maida within a matter of months. This train ride to Paris was intended only as a summer visit in which Joseph would decide whether or not he liked Paris well enough to want to live there.

“You’ll be home before your birthday?” his mother asked, more as a reminder than a question, for this had already been decided. On October 6, his seventeenth birthday, his grandfather Domenico was having a Mass said in his honor and would give him a party. The age of seventeen marked his arrival into manhood. Only then would he be free to decide his own destiny.

“Yes,” Joseph replied, not looking into his mother’s eyes. Antonio had said that the important thing was to get
out
of Maida; once you were out, there was little that anyone could do about it. Joseph had prayed regularly to Saint Francis, seeking guidance and wisdom; but at this moment on the platform—as the train stood waiting, and the porter pulled the suitcase out from little Domenico’s grip and swung it up onto the steel steps of the car—Joseph was consumed with conflicting emotions.

The train traveled overnight up the coast, and by the next morning it had passed Rome and was rolling toward Tuscany. Joseph had spent his hours quietly in the compartment, alternately sleeping and reading through a French phrase book and a French dictionary that Antonio had sent him. But after the stop in Rome, the train became crowded, and Joseph shifted on the velvet bench closer to the window to accommodate the two nuns and the elderly white-haired gentleman who sat down on his right. Now across from Joseph were two young women in black dresses and lace mantillas, and a portly bespectacled man wearing a black suit, a black tie, and a black bowler, with a black ribbon sewn across the left sleeve of his jacket. The man took the young women’s valises and placed them on the overhead rack. Then he removed his bowler and fanned himself with it a few times before sitting down between the women, the hat in his lap. His fingers drummed impatiently along the brim until the train began to
move. He said something to the young woman on his right, then to the one on his left. The first was about Joseph’s age, the other a few years older. Both were pretty in a serene and delicate way, and the man’s familiarity toward them made Joseph think that he was their father; from the way they were dressed Joseph guessed that the three were either going to or coming from a funeral.

Joseph went back to his French book, but every so often he gazed out toward the shimmering sea outside, and up at the mountains and hillside towns overlooking the train to the east. Diverting as the scenery was, it did not look all that different from what he remembered of earlier train rides between Naples and Maida with his uncle Francesco; and Joseph had to remind himself constantly that he was now passing through unexplored territory—he had
indeed
left home, and he was traveling up the Tyrrhenian shoreline into northern Italy, and would soon reach Turin and cross the French border en route to an entirely new life. Having never before ridden in a plush compartment, he was grateful to his grandfather Domenico, to whom the stationmaster in Maida was in debt, for procuring this window seat in the first-class section.

As the journey continued, however, Joseph began to feel uneasy. The man seated between the young women kept looking at him. It was not a critical look, as if Joseph were guilty of some mild indiscretion; but neither did the man’s attention suggest the amiable curiosity that a paternal figure might bestow upon a studious-looking young traveler cradling a French dictionary. The man obviously was troubled by some aspect of Joseph’s appearance; and after he exchanged a few words with his female companions, they too studied Joseph with expressions that, though passive, were concentrated.

Joseph shifted in his seat behind his book. Twice he looked up, and both times the women averted his glance. But the man continued to stare. He seemed to be looking at Joseph and
through
Joseph. It occurred to Joseph that the man might be blind. But Joseph recalled that he had lifted the women’s luggage effortlessly to the rack after they had entered the compartment.

The train was now passing through a tunnel, and the compartment lights were flicking on and off. A hollow echo permeated the car, and the sounds of the wheels rolling over the tracks rose a full octave. Beams of twilight sun flashed again through the windows as the train sped out of the tunnel, and the man looked down at his feet. But in the flickering light of the next tunnel, Joseph again saw the man staring at him, as if Joseph were projecting some sort of aura.

The nuns on Joseph’s right seemed oblivious to all of this. They continued to talk between themselves as they had since boarding the train. The elderly gentleman, his head bent to one side against the corner cushion near the door, was fast asleep.

When the train stopped at Genoa, the nuns stood up and one of them nudged the old man. He quickly got up, took the nuns’ valises, opened the door, and led them out. Joseph also stood, intending to wander the train in search of a seat in another compartment. If he found one, he would return for his suitcase. He was tired of being the object of this mysterious attention. But as he headed out, he felt a hand holding on to his arm; and the man asked in a gentle voice, while extending in front of him an empty cut-glass pitcher: “Excuse me, please, but would you mind getting us some water?”

Joseph stopped and looked directly at the man for the first time. He was certain he had never seen this person before. The man’s face was round and kindly, with a crown of receding light brown hair, and a broad chin tipped by a grayish-red goatee. His steel-rimmed glasses fit tightly on his bony nose, and his pale-colored eyes were quite bloodshot. The two young women adjusted their mantillas and edged forward on their seats but made no attempt to rise. The older of the two studied Joseph momentarily and did not turn away as he looked at her; she in fact bowed her head slightly and smiled after he took the pitcher and said he would get the water.

He stepped down into the evening air and filled the pitcher at one of the fountains along the platform. The air was very chilly and damp, smelling slightly of the sea. After the departing passengers had disappeared, the platform became quiet except for the hissing of the locomotive and the chatter of a few newly arrived passengers who were going on to Turin or possibly onward across the French border. The smile of the young woman had been heartening, but Joseph’s earlier uneasiness now returned as he heard the conductor’s final whistle and he climbed back into the car. Holding the handle of the pitcher carefully, he waited as two passengers in front of him dragged their hefty luggage into their compartments, and then he continued until he arrived at his own. The man stood in the aisle, near the door.

“You are very kind,” he said. He took the pitcher and handed it directly in through the door to one of the women, and then shut the door. Joseph stood in front of him for a moment expecting him to reopen it, but instead the man blocked the doorway and leaned closer to Joseph.

“I wish to apologize,” he said, almost in a whisper. “I know we’ve
probably made you uncomfortable, the way we’ve been watching you. But I’m afraid we cannot help ourselves. You see, you could be the identical twin of my only son. You not only look like him, but you hold yourself and move like him.” Joseph stood speechless in the aisle, then lowered his eyes as the man added: “My son is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said.

“Yes,” the man went on, “he died during the war. On the last day of the war. He might have been the last Italian killed in the war. He was only seventeen. He had been at the front for less than a month.”

The train started with a jolt, and the man lost his balance and bumped against one of the aisle windows, grabbing on to Joseph’s arm for support. Even when he regained his balance, he continued to hold on to Joseph, although his grip was now very gentle as the train smoothly picked up speed.

“We’re returning to our home in Turin, my daughters and I,” he explained. “We’re coming from Rome. There was a memorial service there, and we received the personal condolences of the king and members of parliament. We felt very honored. But,” he added, his eyes moistening, “there are still times when I do not think I want to go on facing life.…”

Joseph nodded but could think of nothing to say. He wished the man would let go of his arm and permit him to leave the aisle and return to the compartment, although he was not really sure he wanted to. He would be boxed in there with this man’s sadness. Here in the aisle, other passengers might stroll through, restless passengers unable to sleep and wanting to talk—potential company. But no one was afoot now as the train moved steadily northwest, leaving the last lights of Genoa fading in the evening fog.

“Where is your destination?” the man asked. Joseph told him, but volunteered that he might later sail on to America.

“And what of your family?”

Joseph’s natural caution regarding strangers did not inhibit him, for despite his earlier discomfort at being scrutinized, he now understood the reason, morbid as it might be. This man seemed to be a sincere individual, rather than a prying one; and as the trip progressed, and as Joseph remained standing close to the man even after he had removed his hand from Joseph’s arm, he replied to the man’s ongoing questions with increasing candor and trust. Joseph spoke of his family in Maida; Sebastian’s illness; the postwar poverty in the village; and the fact that he must soon assume the main responsibility for the support of his mother and kin, since his father was no longer alive.

“I’m sorry about your father,” the man said, but in his voice there was now a certain piquancy and enthusiasm. He stopped questioning Joseph and began to talk about himself. He said that he owned a large manufacturing firm in Turin, one that he had inherited from his father and that his son was to have inherited from him. His daughters, university students, lived with him on the family estate and would continue to oversee it, he hoped, because their mother—his wife of twenty-five years—had died of tuberculosis three years before. As the man talked on, Joseph could see in the train window a reflection of the daughters enclosed behind the glass, their pale skin draped in black mantillas, their figures so close together on the seat that they almost appeared to be a split image of a single person. Joseph did not hear the question as it was asked, and so the man repeated it.