by Eudora Welty
"Wait, wait! There went who I love best in world," said Mama. "Little bride. Was that nice?"
"We haven't got all day," said Poldy. "Gee, I can't find her ticket anywhere. Don't worry, folks, I'll show it to you at breakfast."
"She knows how to pose," said Mr. Ambrogio politely. He was a widower of long standing.
"All right, pass it."
At that moment, who but Aldo Scampo elected to come to church! Just in time, as he dropped to his knee by the last chair in the row, to be greeted with Poldy's bride stuck under his nose.
"Curlers!" hissed Mama in Gabriella's ear. She gave Gabriella's cheek one of her incredibly quick little slaps—it looked for all the world like only a pat, belonging to no time and place but pure motherhood.
There Aldo studied the bride from his knees, sighting down his blue chin before breakfast.
"O.K., O.K., partner!" said Poldy, his hand on the reach again, as Father came bustling in with fresh paint on his skirts, and there was quiet except for two noisy, almost simultaneous smacks: Poldy kissing his bride and snapping her back under the elastic band.
"You stay after Mass and confess sloth, you hear?" whispered Mama.
Gabriella and Aldo were looking along the rows of rolled-down eyelids at each other. They put out exactly simultaneous tongues.
By nine o'clock, Gabriella and Aldo were strolling up on deck; so was everybody. Aldo pushed out his lips and offered Gabriella a kiss.
"Oh, look what I found," said Mrs. Serto from behind them, causing them to jump apart as if she'd exploded something. She had opened a little gold locket. Now she held out, cupped in her pink palm, a ragged little photograph, oval and pearl-colored, snatched from its frame. "Who but my Gabriella as a baby?"
Gabriella seized it, where Mama bent over it smiling as at a little foundling, and tucked it inside her blouse.
"No longer a child now, Gabriella," announced Mama to the sky.
"Somebody told me," Aldo said, "it's nifty up front."
"Cielo azzurro!" said Mama. "Go 'head. Pellegrini, pellegrini everywhere, beautiful day like this!"
Three priests strolled by, their skirts gaily blowing, and as Joe Monteoliveto ran their gamut, juggling ping-pong balls, Mama held Gabriella fast for a moment and whispered, "Not the prize Arpistas may think—he leaves the boat at Palermo."
"Keep my purse," was all Gabriella said.
The long passage through the depths of the ship, that was too narrow for Mrs. Serto and Gabriella to walk without colliding, seemed made for Gabriella and Aldo. True, it was close with the smell of the sour wine the crew drank. In the deepest part, the engines pounding just within that open door made a human being seem to go in momentary danger of being shaken asunder. It sounded here a little like the Niagara Falls at home, but she had never paid much attention to them. Yet with all the deafening, Gabriella felt as if she and Aldo were walking side by side in some still, lonely, even high place never seen before now, with mountains above, valleys below, and sky. The old man in the red knit cap who slept all day on top of that box was asleep where he always was, but now as if he floated, with no box underneath him at all, in some spell. Even the grandfather clock, even the map, when these came into sight, looked faceless, part of a landscape. And the remembered sign, so beautifully penned, on the bulletin board—"Lost, a golden brooch for the tie, with initials F. A."—it shone at them like a star.
By steep stairs at the end, they came out on an altogether new deck, where the air was bright and stiff as an open eye. It was white and narrowing, set about with mysterious shapes of iron wound with chains. No passenger was in sight. Leaning into the very beak ahead, with her back to them, a cameriera was drying her hair; when she let it loose from the towel it blew behind her straight as an arm. A sailor, seated cross-legged on an eminence like a drum, with one foot bare, the blackened toes fanned out like a circus clown's, sewed with all his might on a sock with a full shape to it. All was still. No—as close as a voice that was speaking to them now, the Pomona was parting the water.
"Wait—a—minute," said Aldo still looking, with his hands on his hips.
So this was where Miss Crosby came with her book. Still as a mouse, she was sitting on the floor close to the rail, drawn up with the book on her knees.
"Don't bother her, and maybe she won't bother us," said Gabriella. "That's how I treat people."
Aldo came back, reached in his hand, and took the picture away from Gabriella, then sat down cross-legged on this barely slanting floor to see what he'd got.
At last he hit his leg a slap. He said, "They took one of me the same age! They had me dressed up like a little St. John the Baptist. Can you beat 'em?"
Gabriella had been standing behind him, where she could see anew. Suddenly she grasped a length of the hem of her skirt and blindfolded him with it. Aldo threw up both hands, the hand with the snapshot releasing it to the milky sea. The uncovered part of his face expressed solemnity. Like all blindfolded persons, he was holding his breath. Gabriella couldn't see his face; hers above it waited with eyes tight-shut.
A moment went by, and she jumped away; that was all that had come to her to do. Aldo promptly wheeled himself around, one leg flailing the deck, and caught her by the ankle and threw her.
She came down headlong; her fall, like a single clap of thunder, was followed by that burst of expectancy in the air that can almost be heard too. The cameriera bound down her hair, and the sailor put on his sock; as if they'd been together a long time, they disappeared together through the door, down the stairs.
Neither Gabriella nor Aldo stirred. They lay, a little apart, like the victims of a passing wind. Presently Aldo, moving one finger at a time, began to thump on the calf of Gabriella's leg—1, 2, 3, 4—while she lay as before, with her back to him. Intermittently the 1, 2, 3, 4 kept up, then it slowed and fell away. Gradually the sounds of the dividing sea came back to Gabriella's ear, as though a seashell were once more held lifted.
She turned her head and opened her eyes onto Aldo's clay-colored shoe, hung loose on his sockless foot. Far away now was his hand, gaping cavelike in sleep beside her forgotten leg. Past the pink buttress of his jaw rose the little fountain, not playing now, where his mouth stood open to the sky. He lay there sound asleep over the Mediterranean Sea.
Gabriella stayed as she was, caught in an element as languorous as it was strange, like a mermaid who has been netted into a fisherman's boat, only to find that the fisherman is dreaming. Where no eye oversaw them, the sea lifted and dropped them both, mindless as a cradle, up and down.
Even when La Zingara clattered out on deck, with a spectacled youth at her heels, and, seeing Aldo, gave the sharp laugh of experience, Aldo only shut his lips, like a reader who has just licked his finger to turn a page. But Gabriella sat up and caught her hair and her skirt, seeing those horn-rims: that young man was marked for the priesthood.
With the pop of corks being drawn from wine bottles, La Zingara kicked off her shoes. Then she began dancing in her polished, bare feet over the deck. ("Practicing," she had replied with her knifelike smile when the mothers wondered where she went all day—furiously watching an actress rob the church.) She made the horn-rimmed young man be her partner; to dance like La Zingara meant having someone to catch you. In a few turns they had bounded to the other side of the deck.
"Excuse me," said a new voice. Miss Crosby had unfolded herself and come over on her long legs. Speaking across the sleeping Aldo as though she only called through a window, she asked, "What do you call those birds in Italian?"
"What birds?"
"There! Making all that racket!" Miss Crosby pointed out to sea with her book, First Lessons in Italian Conversation. "Ever since we've been passing Sardinia."
"Didn't you ever see seagulls before?"
"I just want to know the Italian."
"I gabbiani" said Gabriella.
In a moment, Miss Crosby made a face, as if she were about to grit her teeth, and said "Grazie." She went away then.
Gabriella crossed her legs beneath her and sat there, guarding Aldo.
Three members of the crew presently materialized, one raising his gun toward the birds that were flying and calling there, shifting up and down in the light.
"No!" cried Aldo in his sleep.
In two minutes he was up shooting with the sailors, and she was merely waiting on him.
"Terrible responsibility to be coming into property—who knows how soon!" said Mama.
"It's nothing to be sneezed at," said Gabriella. A white triangle of salve—Maria's Harry had tucked that into her suitcase—was laid over her nose; the rest of her face still carried a carnation glow.
Just those three sat propped on the back of the rearmost bench—Gabriella, Aldo Scampo, and Mama. They could see the long blue wake flowing back from them, smooth as a lady's train.
"Look at the dolphins!" cried Aldo.
"Where, where? Wanting their dinner. A terrible responsibility," said Mama. She ran her loving little finger over the brooches settled here and there on her bosom, like St. Sebastian over his arrows. If she had had to slap Gabriella at the lunch table for getting lost on her morning walk, all was delicato now. Nice naps had been taken, tea was over with, and real estate in the vicinity of Naples had come up in conversation.
"And tomorrow, Gala Night," said Mama. "Am I right, Mr. Scampo?"
"Yeah, Mrs. Serto, I guess you are," said Aldo.
Mama slipped down from between them to her feet, her fingers threw them a little wave that looked like a pinch of salt, and she began a last march around deck. Her opposite turn was the public room, where her friends would by now be collecting, the indisposti propped deadweight among them but able to listen, and the well ones speculating peacefully out of the wind.
When Mama passed the bench again—really her farewell time, and then she would leave the sunset to young sweethearts—all seemed well. With the obsessiveness that characterizes a family man, Aldo was drumming a soft fist into Gabriella's plump young back, which held there unflinchingly, while her words came out in snatches with the breath cut off between.
"Nothing to be sneezed at—We'll have to wear paper caps—and dance—"
The wake of the ship turned to purple and gold. The dolphins, in silhouette, performed a rainbow of leaps. Gabriella screamed and her laugh ran down the scale.
Mama bowed herself into the public room, where the mothers were expecting her, the full congregation; and taking the seat by Mrs. Arpista, she continued with the subject she loved the best—under its own name, now: love.
But the day of Gala Night broke forth with a trick from the Mediterranean. Its blue had darkened and changed, and here and there at the edge of things could be seen a little whitecap. Father did not look too cheerful at Mass, and among other sad messages coming in from either side to Mama was the one that Aldo Scampo himself had not been able to rise. When a wave was seen at the glass of the porthole, looking in the dining room at lunch, Mama retreated upward to the public room, with Gabriella to sit by her side; and through the afternoon she declared herself unanswerable for the night.
But when the dinner gong was sounded, Mrs. Serto found she could raise her head. She believed, if she were helped to dress up a little ... After she had pinned and patted Mama together, Gabriella got out of her skirt, into her blue, and up on her high heels; then she guided Mama down that final flight of stairs.
And when they had crossed the dining room to the Serto table, one of the old, old ladies was sitting in Mama's place. Was it simply a mistake? Was it a visit? She was far too old to be questioned. Every little pin trembling, Mama sat down in Gabriella's place, which left Gabriella the vacant one, with Mr. Ambrogio between them. The first thing the waiter brought was the paper hats.
The old lady put on hers, and so did they all after her. Gabriella's was an open yellow crown, cut in points that tended to fall outward like the petals of a daisy. But poor Mama could not take her eyes away from the old lady who sat in her place.
She was a Sicilian. With her pierced ears and mosaic eardrops, the skin of her face around eyes and mouth like water where stones have dropped in, her body wrapped around in shawls and her head in a black silk rag—and now the paper hat of Gala Night atop that, looking no more foolish there than a little cloud hanging to a mountain—their guest was so old that her chin perpetually sank nearly to the level of the table. She treated their waiter like dirt.
He was bringing every course tonight to the old lady first, instead of to Mama, and with a croak and a flick of the hand the old lady was sending it back—not only the antipasto, but now the soup. She wanted to see something better. Their waiter treated her dismissals with respect—with more than respect; some deeper, more everlasting relationship was implied.
And suddenly, as the pasta was coming in, their long-missing tablemate chose to make his appearance. Another chair had to be wedged between the old lady's and Mr. Fossetta's, where he sat down, with pale cheeks, snow-white hair, and mustaches that were black as night. He looked at them all in their paper caps. His first words were to demand, "Is it true? There is no one for Genoa but me?"
Mama looked back at him, in a little soldier hat with a tassel on top, and said, "This boat is Pomona, going to Napoli."
"And after Napoli," said he, "Genoa." A paper cap was put in his hand by the waiter, and he put it on—it was a chef's cap—and lowered his head at Mama. "Genoa I leave only on holiday. Only for pleasure I travel. Now I return to Genoa."
"Please," said Mr. Ambrogio politely, "what is there beautiful in Genoa?"
He was handed a calling card. Mama's little hand asked for it, and she read to them in English: "C. C. Ugone. The man to see is Ugone. Genoa."
"For one thing, is in Genoa most beautiful cemetery in world," said Mr. Ugone—and did well to speak in English; otherwise who could have understood this voice from the north tonight? "You have never seen? No one? Ah, the statues—you could find nowhere in Italia more beautiful, more sad, more real. Envision with me now, I will take you there gladly. Ah! See here—a mama, how she hold high the little daughter to kiss picture of Papa—all lifesize. See here! You see angel flying out the tomb—lifesize! See here! You see family of ten, eleven, twelve, all kneeling lifesize at deathbed. You would marvel how splendid is Genoa with the physical. Oh, I tell you here tonight, you making a mistake to leave this boat at Naples."
Mama returned Mr. Ugone's card.
"I go to Rome," Mr. Ambrogio said.
"Say, mister," said Poldy. "What you say sounds worth coming all the way to Italy to see."
"Signore," said Mr. Ugone, turning toward Poldy—he had to lean across Mr. Fossetta and his pasta—"you will see this and more. Oh, I guarantee, you will find it sad! You want to see tear on little child's cheek? Solid tear?" Mr. Ugone made a gesture of silence at the waiter coming with the fish. "Ecco! Bringing the news! Is turned over, the little boat. Look how hand holds tight the hat. Mmm!"
"No sardine!" said Mama, ahead of the old lady, but there was no need of warning. The waiter had dropped his tray on the floor.
But Mr. Ugone, with his untoward respect for Poldy, went on above all confusion. "Signore, we have in Genoa a sculptor who is a special for angels. See this tomb! Don't you see that soul look glad to be reaching Heaven? Oh! Here a sister die young. See her dress—the fold is caught in the tomb-door—delicato, you accord? How she enjoin the other sister she die too, before her wedding day. Sad, mmm?"
"Say!" said Poldy.
"Gabriella, you please listen to me, hold tight that hat!" said Mama. "You shake your head and it goes round and round."
"I show you," said Mr. Ugone to all, "the tomb my blessed mother."
Back in the corner, old Papa had been fixing his eye on Mr. Ugone for some time. Now he blew his whistle.
"Go ahead," said Poldy. Mr. Ugone had stopped with his napkin over his heart. "He does that all the time—we're used to it."
"Of course," said Mr. Ugone, "other beautiful things I show to you in Genoa.
I enjoin you direct your attention to back of old wall where Paganini born."
"Say, what are you?" Gabriella asked him, holding her crown on straight.
"Who's Paganini?" said Poldy.
But Mr. Ugone, who had never really taken his eyes off Papa, waiting there still in that red engineer's cap with his whistle raised, now rose to his feet. With the words, "Also well-known skyscraper!" flung to them all, he suddenly left them—almost as though he hadn't ever come.
Mr. Fossetta brushed off his hands, and poured more wine around. Under cover of Mr. Ugone's departure, the old lady stole a roll from Mama's plate, and Mama watched it disappearing into that old, old mouth. But Mama remained throughout the evening just as nice to the old lady as Gabriella was nice to Mama. Even when the old lady described the Cathedral of Monreale from front to back, and more than one time said, "First church in the world for beauty, Saint Peter second," Mama only closed her eyes and gave a brief click of the tongue.
"Mama," said Gabriella," are we coming back home on this boat too?"
"No more Pomona!" said Mama. "We come home Colomba. By grace of Holy Mother it will not rock—beautiful white boat, Colomba."
"You are full of thoughts too." Mr. Ambrogio turned to Gabriella. "I am still missing my tiepin. Do you feel I will ever find it?"
"Who knows?" said Mama. "You never know when you find something. That's what I tell my poor daughter every morning she wants to sleep late the nice bed."
"Ah, it could have been lost into the sea—before we start, who knows? Standing to wave at friends, from the rail—'Good-by! Good-by!'" and Mr. Ambrogio half rose from his chair to wave at them now.
"But you're wearing a tiepin!" said Poldy, and laughed loudly at poor Mr. Ambrogio, who sat down; and it was true that he was doing so, and true too that he had been showing them from the first night out the way he had said good-by to all those friends he had in America.