The Children's Train

by Viola Ardone

  “Speranza, Benvenuti, come up to my desk.”

  Luzio and I look at each other for the first time since the mortadella fiasco.

  “Speranza,” he says, “a new girl has arrived on a train from the same city as you. The principal wants us to give the girl a nice welcome and make her feel right at home.”

  I look at Benito and hope the new girl doesn’t get the same welcome I did.

  Outside the principal’s office, Rivo is waiting for me, together with the fifth-grade teacher. He tells me the new girl’s going to be in his class, because they’re the same age, and she’d already been to school. The principal calls us in.

  “Please!” he says, and we go in. He is tall and bald and looks just like the man in the photograph in Alcide and Rosa’s house. I ask my teacher if by any chance the principal’s name is Lenin, like the man who taught everyone about communism. He looks at the principal as if he were seeing him for the first time and bursts out laughing. The principal stands up, walks out from behind his desk, and introduces us to the new girl. He says her name is Rossana, and that she is the daughter of an important comrade. She was supposed to stay with the Manzi family, but Signora Manzi is in bed with pneumonia, so Rossana and her governess, Signorina Adinolfi, are going to be looked after by the priest until Signora Manzi gets better.

  Rossana is taller than me. She has green eyes, long black braids, and an angry scowl on her face. Maybe because, instead of a family, she ended up with Signorina Adinolfi at the priest’s house.

  “This is Amerigo,” my teacher says, giving me a little shove forward. “He’s been here with us for more than a month and he’s getting on very well. These are his new brothers.” Rivo smiles, revealing the gap between his front teeth. Luzio tuts when he hears the word brothers, but then goes red when he looks at the girl. She doesn’t look at me and she doesn’t say thank you or goodbye.

  On our way home that afternoon, Luzio hangs back and walks alongside his brother, rather than striding ahead on his own as usual, and peppers him with questions about the new girl with the braids.

  “My teacher says she’s going to Derna’s for supper tonight,” Rivo says. “The mayor is coming, too. He wants to meet her and Amerigo.”

  “What about us? That’s not fair!” Luzio says.

  “We were born here, stupid. We didn’t come here on a train.”

  “So what? Just because we were born here, he doesn’t want to meet us?”

  Rivo looks puzzled but then he smiles, the gap in his teeth showing.

  “Maybe we can go, too, and meet the mayor?” he says.

  “Of course. We can’t leave him on his own, can we?”

  SIGNORINA ADINOLFI ACCOMPANIES ROSSANA TO the house, but has to leave immediately to prepare the priest’s evening meal. The girl sits at the kitchen table and looks down at the floor. She’s wearing a different dress from the one she had on this morning. This one is red, with black velvet trimmings. I run to my room and switch the light on and off three times. On the other side of the road, I can see the light going on and off three times in Rivo’s window. This is the signal Rivo taught me. When I go back into the kitchen, the girl is as still as a statue.

  “Do you want to play a little before dinner?” Derna asks her.

  She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s scared they’ll cut her tongue off, like Mariuccia before she found her new blond mother. There’s a knock at the door. Derna goes to open it, and we find ourselves alone.

  “Look, Pachiochia was telling lies,” I say, sticking my tongue out.

  She doesn’t know what I’m talking about. She thinks I’m teasing her by making a stupid face.

  “Come in, Alfeo,” Derna says. “The kids are in the kitchen.”

  The mayor is carrying two colorfully wrapped gifts. One for me, and one for Rossana.

  “I’m here to welcome you on behalf of this town,” he says, handing us the packages. The girl doesn’t move a muscle. She’s not even interested in the present. I take mine, but I don’t open it, because I want to wait until Rivo and Luzio get here.

  Rivo and I play on the floor with the toy train Mayor Alfeo gave me, while Luzio sits as still as he can next to the girl. It looks like he’s caught the same disease.

  When the tortellini are dished up, everyone starts slurping them into their mouths, except the girl. The mayor looks happy.

  “I didn’t know you were a good cook as well as everything else,” he says to Derna.

  “My mother made the tortellini,” Luzio boasts.

  “Derna can cook, too,” I say. “And she’s good at being a union leader.”

  “I’m not good at anything; that’s why they made me mayor,” the mayor says, laughing.

  “Don’t believe a word of what he says, kids. Alfeo was a brave partisan during the war. He was sent to jail and even exiled.”

  “What does exiled mean?” I ask.

  “It means I was sent for a long time far away from home, from my town, from the people I love, and I wasn’t allowed to come back.”

  “Don’t you get it? Exiled. Like you and me.” It was Rossana’s voice speaking. Nobody had ever heard it.

  “You’re not exiled,” the mayor said. “You’re among friends who want to help you. Rather, you’re among comrades, who are better than friends, because friendship is a private matter between two people, and it can come to an end. Comrades, on the other hand, fight together, because they believe in the same ideals.”

  “My father is a comrade of yours. I’m not. I don’t need your charity, and I don’t want it.”

  Derna puts her spoon down and makes the face she usually makes when she comes back from a union meeting that has gone badly. The mayor raises his hand to signal that he will answer.

  “You can’t have tasted these tortellini. They taste of hospitality, not of charity,” he says, smiling. “Isn’t that right?” he says, looking at me. I nod, but I’m not so sure anymore. Rossana’s words have confused me. This evening, Rosa’s tortellini don’t taste as good as usual; they taste a little bit of charity, and I’m scared I won’t be able to overcome the nasty taste in my mouth.

  “My parents should have given me hospitality at home, not the strangers here.”

  Rossana speaks like an adult who says what she thinks. When I hear her say these things, I feel as though I believe them myself. Derna starts clearing the table and gives us kids permission to get down. Rivo and I go back to the train set, and the mayor unwraps the present he brought for Rossana. Inside, there’s a felt puppet in the shape of a dog, with big sad eyes. The mayor puts his hand inside and starts making funny sounds. The dog leaps, turns somersaults, wags its tail, and finally curls up on Rossana’s lap. She lifts her hand and rests it on the dog’s head. She doesn’t say a word, but a tear is slowly trickling down her cheek. Luzio, who has been sitting like a statue next to Rossana, takes a hankie out of his pocket and presses it into her hand. She picks it up and wipes the tear away.

  23

  A FEW DAYS LATER, WHILE WE’RE DOING ADDITION in columns, I see Rivo’s teacher running toward Principal Lenin’s office through the open door of our classroom. She is shouting and on the verge of tears.

  “She asked to go to the bathroom. Minutes went by, and I asked her deskmate here to go and see if she was not feeling well. Right, Ginetta?”

  The girl, who had followed her teacher to the principal’s office, nods, her blond curls tumbling over her head. Snot is dripping out of her nose and mixing with her tears. Then the principal, the teachers, and the janitors start hunting for the new girl all over the school: the classrooms, the secretaries’ office, the storeroom, the library. There is no sign of her. Rossana has vanished.

  “How come nobody saw her leave the school?” the principal shouts, red in the face. His eyes are like the devil’s, which makes him look even more like the man in the photograph at Rosa’s house. The custodian had gone to the bathroom himself, it turns out. The new girl had taken the opportunity to slip out.

 
“Should we call the parents?” Mr. Ferrari asks the principal.

  The principal looks around him as if he were lost.

  “No,” he says finally, looking down at the floor. “Let’s not make this public yet. I’ll take responsibility. It’s a small town, and how far could a little girl have gone on foot, after all? We’ll find her, you’ll see. Let’s wait until this evening, and then if we don’t find her . . .”

  In the streets, nobody talks about anything but the little girl who ran away from school. Mr. Ferrari told us not to worry, that the adults will take care of it.

  “Adults always decide everything,” Luzio says as we are walking home. “What we want doesn’t count for a thing. You, too. You didn’t want to come here. They forced you, right?”

  I don’t know whether Mamma forced me or not, but I don’t say anything. I walk in silence and think about Rossana, about her face that evening she came to supper, her mouth turned downward and her eyes made of stone. Rivo goes to fetch water for the animals, and I follow him. The expecting cow looks sad. Sick, actually. Her mouth is turned downward, too. But she doesn’t run away. She stays where she is.

  “Derna?” I say before going to sleep. “Is it cold outside?” She understands what I’m getting at right away and takes my hand. She gives it a big squeeze. Maybe they’ve found her by now. Alfeo is hardheaded; he’s not one to give up easily. He was a partisan up in the mountains. There’s no way he’s going to let a little girl with braids get away.

  Derna leaves a glass of water by my bed, as she does every evening, and turns the light off. I close my eyes, but sleep is the last thing that comes to me. There’s too much noise, and everything tumbles around in my mind: Rossana’s downturned mouth like the sad cow, the felt dog, the partisan mayor, Mr. Ferrari’s reassurances, the mortadella hanging from the ceiling, the train trip with all the other kids, the bus where I fell asleep with no shoes on. I finally understand Luzio was right. Adults don’t get kids. I look out the window to see whether they’re still up. I flash my light three times. No answer. I try again, on and off three times. I go back to bed. Maybe they’re already asleep. But then the signal comes: one, two, three. I get dressed quickly, put on my shoes, heavy jacket, and hat, cut off a nice big chunk from the round of parmesan cheese on the sideboard, and slip out of the house as quietly as I can. I cross the road and wait near the chicken pen. There’s total silence. All you can hear are the groans of the pregnant cow every now and again. The cold creeps up from the ground into my shoes. I’m tempted to go back inside and wrap myself in my warm covers, but I see a light coming toward me. It’s Luzio with a lantern.

  “I didn’t wake Rivo up,” he says. “If I did, he’d tell Mamma.”

  “I may know where Rossana’s gone,” I tell him. “Do you know how to get to where the bus stops?”

  “Let’s go!” he answers.

  WE WALK SIDE BY SIDE, HARDLY SAYING A WORD. The roads are empty, but he knows his way and isn’t scared. I am, a little. I take my hand out of my pocket and reach out for his. Luzio gives me three soft squeezes, like our secret light signal. We get to the place where the bus stops after walking for half an hour or longer. The last bus for Bologna is pulling out, its engine on, and its headlights beaming toward the ticket office. Together with Luzio, we run in to take a look. There are three men and a woman. Rossana is not there. I’ve gotten it all wrong, I think. It’s late, and the sky is pitch black.

  “Let’s go back home,” Luzio says. “It’s cold.”

  We go into the waiting room to warm up a little and sit on the bench to rest. Finally, we see her. She’s sitting in a corner, downcast, her usual serious expression on her face. I signal to Luzio to stay put and not say a word, and I approach her slowly, slowly. I sit next to her, and as soon as she sees me, she jumps up and makes as if she’s going to run away. Then she stops. She doesn’t know where else to go. I take the lump of cheese that I had brought along out of my coat pocket and offer it to her. She takes it without saying anything and eats it in two mouthfuls. She hasn’t eaten a thing since this morning.

  “I know everything is strange at the beginning,” I say. “I understand you . . .”

  “What do you think you understand?” she answers in that grown-up voice of hers. “I’m not like you,” she says. “I’m not like any of you.”

  Her words upset me. I don’t understand what she’s saying. Luzio is sitting on the bench opposite us, waiting. Rossana tries to fix her braids, which are coming loose.

  “We’ve never lacked for anything back home. Do you know where I live? If I tell you, you’ll have a good laugh. One of the most beautiful streets in the city. My father forced me to come, so that we would look good. To give an example to others, he said. My mother begged him, but he wouldn’t budge. Why me of all people, when I’m the youngest in the family? What’s it to do with me? It’s not fair! It’s just not fair!”

  She starts sobbing. One braid has come undone, and the red ribbon has dropped on the floor. The stationmaster notices us and comes over.

  “Where are your parents, little ones?”

  “Far away,” Rossana says, crying her eyes out. “Very far away!”

  Luzio and I explain the whole situation, and he says, “I’ll call Mayor Corassori right away.”

  He comes in person. He’s as relaxed as he was the other evening at dinner, and smiles when he sees us.

  “What a lucky evening this is: three brave kids in one fell swoop! But you made a big mistake,” he says, looking at Rossana. “You don’t run away like that without first tasting Rosa’s tortellini, not to mention the mortadella . . .”

  I check on Luzio from the corner of my eye, but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s not even listening. He bends down, picks up the red ribbon that had fallen out of Rossana’s hair, and puts it in his pocket.

  When we knock on the door, there’s no answer, and all the lights are out. Then we hear a terrible roar coming from the cow pen. We rush in and see Rosa with her hands covered in blood. Rossana screams and runs out. I hide behind the mayor, while Luzio runs up to his mother. A minute later, we hear another, softer moan, like a baby crying. Rosa beckons us in, and even Rossana comes back to take a look. The cow is lying there sweating, looking like she’s just seen death. The newborn calf’s eyes are still sticky, and it groans with hunger. Rossana approaches it, her hands shaking. As soon as she sees it, though, she smiles and reaches out to stroke its muzzle.

  “Eat, little one. Your mother is right here beside you.”

  It smells its mother and starts suckling. Rivo appears from the back of the pen carrying some fresh hay.

  “Since you were wandering around at night without me, I’ll choose the new calf’s name,” he says, smiling.

  “Not fair,” Luzio says. “It’s my turn to choose the name.”

  “Luzio’s right,” Rosa says. “It is his turn, even though you still need to explain why you’re here with the mayor at this time of the night.”

  Luzio looks at the calf, then at me, then at the calf again.

  “I’ve decided; I want to call it Amerigo,” he says, walking out of the pen.

  I’m struck dumb, and for a moment nothing feels real. The calf has stopped suckling and has curled up under his mother, fast asleep. Its legs are like twigs, and its fur is matted. It’s so thin that when it breathes, you can count its ribs. And it has the same name as me.

  When we are all sitting in the kitchen, Rosa wants to know why we went out on our own in the dark.

  “They went out to find a certain something that was lost. It was heroic, Rosa. Don’t tell them off. They deserve a medal.”

  I try to picture Mamma’s face when I get home with a medal, like Maddalena Criscuolo.

  THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, PRINCIPAL LENIN CALLS me and Luzio into his office and pins a medal and a red, green, and white rosette on our chests. Our classmates crowd around, asking us how things went, and when we tell the story, we make it seem much more adventurous than it actually wa
s. Rossana comes to say goodbye during the break. Her hair is tightly braided again, and she’s wearing a nice light blue dress. She beams us a smile for the first time, as she tells us her father’s coming to get her and take her home. Luzio pulls the red ribbon out of his pocket and hands it to her.

  “You keep it,” Rossana says. “To remember me by.”

  Luzio closes his fist, and the ribbon disappears into his hand.

  Mr. Ferrari tells us all to go back to our places and, since Benito has gotten mumps, too, everyone wants to sit next to me.

  “It’s my place,” Luzio says. “I’m his brother.”

  And he comes to sit at the back of the class with me.

  24

  THE CHRISTMAS VACATION HAS STARTED. WE never saw Rossana again. On New Year’s Day, we went to see the band playing in the town hall, and the mayor told us her father had come a few days before Christmas to pick her up. Rossana was right. She’s not like me at all. She had left a greeting card for the three of us, but Luzio hadn’t wanted even to read it. Bad luck, I think. She’s missing the Epiphany Partisan Festival that Derna has organized.

  The big square with the tall, tall bell tower is crisscrossed with strings of lights and bunting. The Communist ladies are dressed up as Befana witches with torn shoes and big noses. Rivo and Luzio laugh. I don’t, because I used to have shoes with holes in them. They hurt, and there’s nothing to laugh about. The witches hand out bags of candy and a wooden puppet to all the kids, whether they were from the north or from the south. Alcide and Rosa are drinking red wine and dancing, while Rivo, Luzio, and I play with our school friends. Nario is lying in his stroller sleeping, even though there is music playing and people shouting, because he’s already eaten. When the games begin, we three brothers are put on the same team, and we win a rosette and an orange. I’ve never won anything before, not even the raffle Pachiochia used to organize on the last day of the year, because Mamma didn’t have the money to buy a ticket.