The Children's Train

by Viola Ardone

  I look at her, dumbstruck.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for three months. Have you been very busy?”

  “You’ve been waiting for me? To do what?” I ask, still confused.

  “At least, send an answer. These people looked after you for six months. They treated you like their son, and they keep writing to you. Your mother said you would come to get the letters, but Christmas has been and gone, and now it’s Epiphany, and no one’s the wiser.”

  She hands me the package of letters. They contain Derna’s words, Rosa’s, Alcide’s, my northern brothers’. All of a sudden, their voices explode in my head, their faces, their smells. Everything. I leap out of the armchair, and all the letters fall onto the floor.

  “They sent you food packages, too, but nobody came, so I distributed them to others in need. It was a pity to waste them!”

  I can’t speak. I sit on the floor and pick up one of the envelopes with Derna’s name on it, addressed in her tiny, tidy handwriting. She’s so good at it, and I hold on to it tight with both hands, so tight that the envelope tears a little on one side. Then I get up and put it in my pocket. Maddalena comes up to me and reaches out to stroke my hair, but I pull my head away. I’m not the same kid who got on the train that November morning.

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Maddalena says, finally under-standing.

  If I stay one second longer, I’ll start crying, and I don’t feel like crying right now.

  “Okay, it doesn’t matter,” Maddalena says. “Everything works out in the end. Let’s get a pen and some paper, shall we, so we can answer?”

  “Mamma’s so mean,” is all I can say, and I run out of the house.

  I leave the letters there. I don’t want to read them. There’s no answer, anyway. Maybe it’s for the best. It’s better if they forget me altogether, and I them, and if they change the calf’s name, too. Mamma’s right. How do I fit in with them? Pianos, violins, animal pens, the partisan Befana witch, fresh pasta made with flour and water, Principal Lenin, the light signals, the coat with a red badge on it, Mr. Ferrari, me forming letters in a schoolbook, with the body in the thin space and the tail in the fat space, and him with his red and blue pen corrections. These things can’t be contained on sheets of paper stuck into envelopes with stamps on top.

  When I come down the steps, I show my empty hands to the gang of boys.

  “Empty, see?” I say to the boys. “I’m going back to where I came from. I have nothing. I’m just like you. If anything, I’m even more screwed.”

  33

  MAMMA’S MADE ME HER PASTA WITH BLACK olives and capers that used to be my favorite before I went north. I throw myself on the bed.

  “What’s wrong, aren’t you hungry?”

  I don’t talk about the letters at all. I’m not angry with her, but I’ve lost my appetite, even though I haven’t eaten since this morning. She comes and sits next to me on the bed, like Derna used to do every evening.

  “Are you feeling okay?” she asks, her hand on my forehead. “You’re not running a fever, but you look a little pale around the gills,” she adds, as if she were a doctor. Looking over at the photo of my big brother, Luigi, on the bedside table, she says, “You’re getting too thin.” Then she gets up, sits down at the table, and says, “Your plate’s here. Come and sit down.”

  “Where’s my violin?” I say without moving from the bed.

  She doesn’t answer immediately. Then, after a pause, she says, “Come on, it’s getting cold.”

  I don’t move.

  “I want to know where my violin is,” I say, my voice shaking.

  “You can’t eat a violin. Violins are for people who already have food on their table.”

  “It was my violin. Where is it?” I shout this time.

  “It’s where it should be,” she says, calmly, even though I shouted at her. She gets up from the table and comes to sit on the bed again next to me.

  “With the money from the violin I’ve been able to buy food and new shoes for you, since your feet grow as fast as weeds. I’ve managed to set some aside, too, just in case. It’s God’s will,” she says as she looks over at the boy in the photo with the dark black curly hair like hers. Then she does something she’s never done before. She scoots over even closer and hugs me tight with both arms around me. I can smell her on my face and in my nose and eyes. She’s warm; too warm and too sweet. I close my eyes and hold my breath.

  “You need to pinch yourself and wake up from that dream, Amerì,” she says. “Your life is here now. You wander around all day like you’re sleepwalking; your thoughts are always someplace else. You look beat. That’s enough now. Do you want to get sick, too?” She stares at me as she holds me close. “I did it for your own good.”

  I pull away from her embrace and get up from the bed.

  She thinks she knows what’s best for me, does she? Well, nobody knows. What if it was best for me to stay up north, like Mariuccia did, and never come back? What if it was best for me never to have left, and to have stayed here at home? What if it was best for me to learn music and play in the theater? I want to say all these things, but the only thing that comes to mind is that I’ll never get my violin with my name in its case back.

  “You’re a liar . . .” I don’t have time to finish the sentence before her slap lands on my cheek, so hard that my tongue is stuck between my teeth, and I can’t say another word for the stab of pain.

  34

  I RUN OUT OF THE HOUSE AND DOWN THE STREET, taking the alleyways to avoid being swallowed up by the crowds. I run with the shoes Alcide bought for me rubbing the back of my heels. I run without looking back. I can hear the music coming from Piazza del Plebiscito. It is getting dark and all the festival lights are ablaze. The streets look as though they are made of light: the shapes of the buildings have been outlined with strings of colored bulbs that also run around the windows and walls. It feels like a city of stars in the middle of a pitch-black sky. I’d like to get lost, but I know these streets by heart. House by house, door by door. I follow the lights and run. I take Vico Figurelle at Montecalvario and turn into Via Speranzella, until I find myself at the Vico Tre Re in Toledo, right in front of the church where there’s the chair of St. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds they say works miracles. Tommasino and I have been here often to listen to the stories, but we have never been inside.

  The stories were always the same story, actually. Women arrived from all over the city, and even from outside, to beg the saint for a baby that didn’t seem to be coming to them. So many women, every day, with their mothers or with other women in their family: a sister, a sister-in-law, a mother-in-law, whoever. Women from poor areas and women from rich families, too. Some people have too much, and some people have too little. Mamma Antonietta, who was dying of hunger, had my brother, Luigi, and then me, with no father, while these ladies in their colorful clothes and shiny shoes, with husbands and everything else, can’t even have one child. If there were justice in this world, as Zandragliona always said, only people who could afford to would have kids.

  OUTSIDE THE CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA FRANCESCA, there’s a line of women even at this time of day. An old nun, with a wizened, colorless face, walks toward me. She probably wants to send me away, I think, but she takes my hand and leads me into a little room that smells of warmed-up old broth. She sits me down at a table with some other kids.

  “Eat,” she says. She must have mistaken me for an orphan from the soup kitchen. I eat the pasta, bread and tomato, and an apple. When I’m done, the old nun goes into the other room and sits on a stool in front of the chair, where women go to receive a baby by the grace of God. She takes each woman’s hand in her own, and with the other one makes the sign of a cross over the woman’s belly, right where the new baby will be. The women say a prayer, thank the old nun, and leave.

  By the time I get out of the church, it is even darker, and the streets are almost empty. The few people still around are heading toward the sea at Mergellina
to see the fireworks and hear the songs.

  I wonder what Derna is doing at this moment. She’s probably walking along the silent road, where all you can hear is the chirping of crickets. Maybe she’s laying the table with a single place, for herself. Or maybe she’s just gotten back after a meeting with the women factory workers and she’s stopped over for dinner at Rosa’s house, where the table is full and all the lights are on. I reach into the pocket of my pants and pat Derna’s letter. Sadness hits me like a punch in the belly. So I keep walking down through the alleyways until I get to Via Roma, which is now deserted. Where have all those people gone? Where did they all vanish to in so little time? The only noise I hear is in the distance. There is music playing, shouting, and singing, but it sounds squeaky and off-pitch, like an instrument that hasn’t been tuned. They need Alcide’s tuning fork, I think. All of a sudden, I hear an explosion behind me. My knees wobble as I remember the sound of the bombs when they fell from the sky; when the sky was filled with gunfire instead of stars, and the explosions were shells dropped by airplanes, not air-bomb fireworks. I run like crazy, but my shoes are hurting. So I stop, turn around, and see them arrive.

  The floats are setting off on their procession around the city, followed by the crowds. That’s why the streets are so empty. They are gigantic and brightly lit. I’m under their spell, and so I stand still as the lights on the floats come closer and closer, getting bigger and bigger the closer they get, like trains when they pull into the station. As the first float passes in front of me, I can see it is a train. It’s our float, the kids’ float, the one that the women’s committee had had built. The kids inside look just like us, but they’re not us. The train looks real, too. But I know it’s not real. It’s all pretend, and I don’t believe the lies anymore.

  That’s why I turn the other way, wrench my shoes off, and start running toward the Corso.

  35

  AT THE STATION THERE’S A REAL TRAIN. THE same as the one I took the first time, but with no kids inside. Everything is quiet and nobody is running back and forth. There are lots of men carrying suitcases, and a few families traveling together. And me. I can’t hear the music from the floats anymore, nor the air-bomb fireworks from the festival. The people around here don’t look like they’re in the mood for festivities.

  A ticket collector comes by the platform. I ask him if the train is leaving. He says, “Of course it’s leaving, do you think the trains are here just to look good?” Then he asks me what I’m doing at this hour all alone, and I tell him I have to go to Bologna with my mother, my father, and my big brother, Luigi; that we are going to visit an aunt in Bologna, and that my parents have sent me to check if we’re on the right train. The man takes his cap off and dries his brow with the sleeve of his uniform.

  “Watch it,” he said. “There are bad people around at night. I’ll take you to your mother.”

  I see a lady at the end of the platform and say, “She’s just over there,” as I turn, pretending I’m running toward her. When I look back, I see him walking in the other direction.

  I put my shoes on again, even though they’re rubbing badly. I go to stand near the lady who’s not my mother and wait for the train doors to open. We climb up onto the train together, and the lady starts looking for her seat. I don’t know where to sit. I’m scared the ticket collector from before, or another one, will find me and make me get off. The lady has two children, a little boy and a girl, only a little younger, in a stroller. The boy can hardly keep his eyes open and soon falls asleep in his mother’s arms. I sit in the same compartment opposite them and stick my face against the window. The glass is cool and smooth. I like the cold on my face. Tomorrow, once I have gotten there, I will be able to fall asleep next to Derna. She’ll tell me a story, and she’ll talk to me about the problems of women factory workers, and we’ll sing together, and she’ll take me to the sea, but this time I won’t go far. I won’t get lost in the waves. This time I won’t.

  The mother opposite me takes her knitting out of her bag and slowly, knit one and purl one, she makes a pink cotton blanket, resting the end of it on her sleeping son’s head. It reminds me of Mamma Antonietta when she gave me her old sewing tin, the one I hid at Zandragliona’s house. They must both be looking for me high and low, and they won’t find me anywhere. The stationmaster blows his whistle. I leap up and look out the window.

  “Where are you going all on your own?” the mother with the two kids asks. “Have you run away from home?”

  I’d like to tell her the truth, get off the train, and go home. But where is home now?

  The train starts pulling out of the station slowly. I’ll never get Derna’s letters. I’ll never get my violin with my name in it back. But if I manage to get to the other end of the line, there’s a chance I’ll get another one.

  So I sit back down and try to invent a lie. I think about the orphan’s soup kitchen at the church and say, “Mamma’s dead.”

  My tongue is burning with shame but I go on. I tell the lady that I’m going to meet an aunt of mine who lives in Modena. I pull Derna’s letter out of my pocket and show it to her.

  “Poor creature. Poor little lost soul,” she says, with tears in her eyes.

  She believes me. It’s not the first time I’ve told a lie, but this one’s different. I told it so convincingly, I almost believe it myself. And I’m scared it’ll come true. The lady carries on consoling me.

  “Everything will work out, poor little darling,” she says, taking my face in her hands. I pull away because I can feel my cheeks flushing with shame.

  Then my tiredness wins over my sadness, and I stretch my legs out on the empty seat next to her.

  I dream that Tommasino and I are playing hide-and-seek in Prince Sangro’s chapel, and I take the place of one of the two skeletons, the one with the bones and all the veins, so that he won’t find me. Then I hear the steps coming closer and I chuckle, thinking Tommasino will have a shock seeing me there with the mummified skeletons. The steps come even closer, and Tommasino walks into the room where I’m hiding. But he can’t find me. I’m so well hidden that nobody ever finds me. and I’m left there in the middle of the skeletons and stone statues that look alive. I shout, “I’m here, I’m here,” hoping someone will find me, but nobody does.

  My own shouts wake me up. I look out the window. It is pitch black, with no moon and no stars. The mother with the boy sleeping next to her opens her eyes and looks at me.

  “What happened? Are you all right? You had a bad dream, that’s all. Come over here.”

  I go over to her, and she pulls her hand out from under her son’s sleeping head, dries my sweaty forehead, and smooths down my hair.

  “Go back to sleep. Don’t think about it. It’s nothing. I’m here.”

  She makes a little space near her on the seat. Now there are three of us: her, the boy in her arms, and me. She picks up her knitting again and, one knit and one purl, the blanket grows long enough to cover me, too. I hope the sleep that runs through the mother’s body into the son’s, helping him sleep right through the night, will help me sleep too; help my eyelids go heavy and take all the thoughts out of my head. But it is not to be.

  Part Four

  1994

  36

  IT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT. YOU HAD MADE A PASTA alla genovese for the next day. You had washed your cutting board, ladle, and pan, and put them on the rack to dry. You had taken your apron off and left it, folded up, on the back of the kitchen chair. You had put your nightdress on, and let your hair loose. You never liked sleeping with your hair tied. Your hair had stayed almost completely black. You had gone to bed and turned the light off. The genovese had stayed on the stove, “resting” for the next day. You always used to say the genovese needed to rest. Then you had turned over and gone to sleep. You were resting, too.

  They called me at dawn. When I answered on the third ring and heard the news, I realized I’d lived with the idea this might happen, looming over my life, like a curse. I
didn’t even manage to cry. My only thought was “There you go; the curse has finally come true.” I said, “Yes, yes. I’ll take the first flight down,” and then I left. Now, alone in the night, you are the one that has gone. No other phone call will ever scare me again.

  As I get off the plane, carrying my bag in one hand and my violin case in the other, I am engulfed in the heat. A slow bus deposits me in front of the arrivals hall, and I walk down the corridor to the automatic doors. They glide open, but there’s nobody there to greet me. I walk toward the exit, while passengers flying to Munich are being invited to go to the gate.

  A group of Spanish tourists approaches me asking for information. I pretend not to understand, otherwise I would have to confess I am a foreigner in my own city. I’m hot, and my shoes are hurting. A big blister has formed on my left heel and another, smaller one, on my right. My beige linen jacket sticks to my skin as soon as I emerge from the unnaturally cool air of the airport.

  I flag a taxi and ask to be taken to Piazza del Plebiscito. The taxi driver tries to take my bag and violin case to put into the trunk.

  “Not the violin,” I say. “I’ll keep that with me.”

  As we drive, I gaze out the window: stores, buildings, streets communicate nothing to me. The few times I’d been back, I’d always gotten everything done quickly and arranged a hasty meeting with you. I never set foot in your house. You were ashamed that I might be ashamed of you. We used to meet in Via Toledo, the one that was called Via Roma in my day, and I would treat you to lunch out. I would book a restaurant on the seafront. You liked it, even though the water still scared you a little, because for you the sea had always been dirty, damp, and diseased. You always used to say the sea had no purpose. Some of those times, Agostino had come, too. But only in the early days, when he still listened to you. Then, as he grew up, he started inventing excuses. He always said he was busy. It was for the best, I always thought. You wanted us to be more united. But I always wondered: What unites us?