by Peter Watson
He thought about Anna-Maria. She had been waiting for him last night, with the promise of yet more sexual favors. Would she be angry with him for not coming? He couldn’t believe so. She must have heard what had happened to him.
Should he get a message to her? Yes. He got off the bed, but at once felt dizzy and sat down again. His head cleared and he stood a second time. The Syracusa was fairly steady, and the rough weather of the previous evening seemed to have died down. He went to the door and tried the handle. It was definitely locked on the outside. He banged on the door itself with the fist of his left hand.
There was no response.
He banged again.
Still nothing.
He gave up. There had been someone outside while the doctor had been with him. Was the guard permanent? If there were any more Orestanos on the ship, and they found out where he was being held … It didn’t bear thinking about.
He lay back on his bed. He had only just awakened, but he felt tired again. He closed his eyes.
For God knows how long he slept, wakened, slept again. Twice when he woke it was dark, but on the third occasion it was light, so he must have slept through the night. From time to time his arm hurt, and once he noticed a tray of food just inside the door. Cold pasta and a glass of beer. He ate and drank greedily.
By the time he could sleep no more, it was, he judged by the light and the position of the shadows, late the following day. That meant there were three nights to go, if he’d correctly remembered what the doctor had said. For hours Silvio lay on his bed. Someone had left a newspaper on a ledge in the cabin wall. Silvio couldn’t read but he could look at the engravings. One showed a mammoth gun, a cannon of some sort. Was this a report of some war? he wondered. But the sight of the gun made him think back to the fight with the Orestanos.
Silvio was beginning to realize that he did have brains. When he had pretended he had kicked Onofri’s knife overboard, he had shown an ability to think quickly. It was true there were other occasions, too—such as when he’d fooled the sbirri who had questioned him about the mule. His quickness of mind had been such, in effect, that others had believed him. Say something quickly enough, and confidently enough, and people will believe you. Was that what brains was really about?
At the same time he wondered whether he had Nino’s sheer brutality. Was he as hard on the inside as he told himself? Could he, Silvio, have fired that gun at the three men standing on the deck? Or if they had begun to clamber out of the lifeboat at the last minute? He doubted it. Could Nino? Oh yes.
They were different. The differences were becoming clearer as this voyage progressed. It was worth bearing in mind once they arrived in New Orleans.
His arm still hurt from time to time, but he played it up as worse than it was so that the doctor kept coming. This was the only company that Silvio was allowed. The doctor told him that the immigrant galleries were rife with gossip about the treatment of the Orestanos. Tolmezzo was of the opinion that no one on board ship had the guts to take on Nino—or Silvio, for that matter—but that the moment the ship docked at New Orleans, it would be different. The vendetta would be resumed.
That apart, the doctor had little to report. A woman in the lower immigrant gallery had given birth to twins, some chickens kept onboard as fresh food had escaped and caused havoc on the boat deck, a man had lost his house, gambling at the casino. One imigrant had developed typhus fever and been isolated. For Tolmezzo, the voyage was scarcely out of the ordinary.
Silvio couldn’t sleep, but lay awake, thinking. He thought of his father. Had he lived, what difference would it have made? His father would not have let him leave Sicily, that’s for sure. His father might have been Capo instead of Nino. They would have stuck to cattle rustling. There would have been no kidnappings, no Lazio Brigade, no betrayal, no vendetta, no exile.
Was America so exciting, so wonderful as everyone made out? He suddenly became very homesick.
Some hours after dark that night there was another knock on the door. Silvio raised himself on his elbows—to see Anna-Maria being admitted by the man outside. She was dressed in a long pink silk dress and long white silk gloves and she carried a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The door was closed behind her, and locked.
“How did you manage this?”
“You look terrible. Kiss me.”
He got up and did as he was told. Not having had the option before, he suddenly realized how badly he needed a drink. It was the first time he could recall that he had ever felt a need for alcohol.
She started to open the champagne. With his bad arm, he obviously couldn’t do it. “We’re not far from America,” she said. “In America, money is what counts. In America, money is more important than sex. You can buy anything. A thousand lire, in the right pocket, opens doors.”
With his good arm, he took the opened champagne bottle from her and began to fill the glasses. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep our last meeting.”
“You’re forgiven. Provided you make up for it now.” She started to take off her dress.
Silvio removed his own clothes, but as he took a step toward Anna-Maria she said, “All your clothes.”
“I’m completely naked.”
“Everything,” she said, nodding to his arm.
“You want me to undo my bandage?”
“I want to see your wound.” She looked him straight in the eye.
Dumbfounded, but considerably aroused by the sight of her body, Silvio unpinned the bandage and began to unravel it. Layer by layer he unwound the linen strip until at last the gash was revealed. There was a line of black thread, all but obscured by the purple blood beneath the skin and a number of yellow patches at the edge of the purple. He had not seen this himself, at least not since he had been on deck two nights before, and he didn’t like it. The view made him feel ill.
“Seen enough?” he said brusquely.
“What a scar you’re going to have. What a badge of honor.” Then she smiled at him. “Put the bandage back,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Then you can do anything you want with me.”
She visited him for two more nights. Each time, she told Silvio, the price for opening the door went up. “But I can’t sleep unless I’m fucked first.”
“I don’t like women who use bad language,” Silvio replied.
“Bullshit, as the Americans say. You’ve only ever had me, so don’t start laying down the law. In any case, I only talk dirty in the bedroom—and you’ll find out soon enough that’s what most men like. Now, I’ve got a message from Nino. Tomorrow is our last night at sea, and you and he are being taken off before we get to New Orleans. You’re to meet Dr. Tolmezzo after breakfast in the morning. Be ready, with your bag packed. Are you listening?”
He nodded.
“So this is our last night, for the time being. I brought you something.” She handed him a card.
It was an engraving of the Church of the Annunciation in Palermo.
“What’s this?”
“It will take you longer to get to New Orleans than it will take the Syracusa. I’ll be home the day after tomorrow. When you arrive, come and see me. The butler will answer the door. Give him that postcard and say you’re expected. This way, if you are arrested, there is nothing to connect you to my name. Also, you will have changed your name. Send me the card and I’ll know it’s you.”
“What’s a butler, and where do you live?”
“Ask Nino what a butler is. And ask anyone in New Orleans where Angelo Priola lives. Everyone knows. Come around four in the afternoon. Don’t bring Nino, not the first time. Are you listening?”
Silvio nodded.
“Now,” she said, “tonight has to be something special. What haven’t we done?”
Sono pervertito? Silvio asked himself. Am I a pervert? He had no idea.
“Lie back,” she said. “Lie on the bed.” When he had done so, she knelt by the bed and took his penis in her hand. She lowered her head over his groin.
“Now, some men think this is even better than talking dirty.”
“Sit down, both of you. Here, and here.” Dr. Tolmezzo’s office, on the first-class deck, was small but comfortable. Silvio and Nino had been summoned there just as Anna-Maria had predicted.
The doctor lit his first cigar of the day. “I have been asked to look after your immigration into America. You are a … shall we say unusual couple, but we are going to try something that has worked before. Thanks to your treatment of the Orestanos, we are three passengers short of the number that should be onboard. However, because the Orestanos were dressed as crew when they attacked you, they left their papers belowdecks. We have found them.”
He held up two sets of documents that had been on his desk in front of him. They were colored a pale pink.
“The captain has decided you will both, for the time being, change your names to Orestano.”
“I’m not doing any such—”
“Of course you are, Nino. Hear me out—you’ll see how neatly it all fits in. In the first place, we can give you correct papers, which is saying a lot. In the second place, it means that the captain needs to account for only one missing person rather than three. One is normal on a voyage like this, but three would have needed some explanation. It also means the captain has to pay only ten dollars instead of thirty, no small thing.”
Nino muttered under his breath. It sounded like the beginnings of an earthquake, but quickly died away.
“Now, I’m going to give these to you. Nino, you become Lorenzo Orestano—and Silvio, you become Livio Orestano. You stay that way for as long as it takes. However, there is a problem with these documents. The physical descriptions of the Orestanos don’t fit you two. Lorenzo was heavier than you, Nino, and Livio was fairer than Silvio. Which is where I come in.
“Before we get to the main port of New Orleans, about two miles to the south, we come to quarantine. We’re now just passing somewhere known as Eads Jetties, the southern tip of the Mississippi delta. That means we are a hundred miles from New Orleans. From here we take Southern Pass to the Head of Passes, where we reach the river proper.”
“What’s quarantine?” Nino growled belligerently.
Tolmezzo puffed at his cigar. “Quarantine is a form of hospital. We have to stop the ship, and an immigration officer and a doctor will come aboard. They tour the ship and can go anywhere they choose. If they see someone who looks ill, they haul them off the ship into quarantine, where that person remains until he or she recovers, or dies. It’s a simple but effective way of ensuring that infectious diseases do not enter America.
“It is also my responsibility, as ship’s doctor, to draw to the authorities’ attention any of the passengers on board who I know are sick. We usually have one or more on a ship this size and this trip is not out of the ordinary in that sense, since one of our passengers, as I think I told Silvio, has developed typhus fever. Now, I propose giving you two a dose of a powder about two hours before we reach the quarantine station. The powder will make you feel feverish, with a high temperature, and you’ll come out in a rash. It will also make you dehydrated, so you’ll be thirsty. It’s not very pleasant, but those are an approximation of the symptoms of typhus fever.”
“What! I don’t like the sound of this.”
For once, Silvio agreed with Nino.
Tolmezzo batted away the cigar smoke that hung in the room. “The effects will last for only twelve hours. Enough to make sure that you are taken off the ship and put into a hospital, along with the man who really has the fever. I will tell the doctor who comes aboard that I have had you in isolation for three or four days, as I have the real patient, and no one will be able to contradict me. Your immigration papers will be visible, stuck in your pocket, so in these circumstances it’s extremely unlikely that anyone will come near you during the inspection of the ship, and so no one will read your papers, to discover that you don’t fit the description.
“You’ll be taken ashore and placed in an isolation ward for a few days, during which time you’ll make a steady recovery. Now listen to me carefully here because the quarantine hospital has very strong security, so if at any point anyone realizes you are faking your symptoms, you’ll be in a pretty hopeless position. After a few hours ashore your temperature will come down again and the rash will fade. However, although you can do nothing about your body temperatures, I want you to pretend that you still feel feverish, weak, and thirsty. In actual cases of the disease, after several days the patient reaches what we call a ‘crisis.’ At that point, if he’s going to recover he will fall into a gentle sleep, and wake up some hours later with the fever gone, but still very weak. Obviously you must keep faking the symptoms so that no one becomes suspicious, also so that very few people will come near you.
“As well as appearing dehydrated, and so forth, I also want you to be very tired, lethargic, in a stupor, sleeping all day.” He smiled through the cigar smoke. “I don’t imagine that will be very difficult. Again, if you sleep all day you will be behaving as if you are still ill, and no one will bother you.”
He tapped some ash onto a metal tray on his desk. “All clear?”
Both Nino and Silvio nodded. Neither was exactly thrilled by what lay ahead.
“You will remain in isolation for perhaps ten to fourteen days, until you show signs of recovery. Then you will be examined a second time by immigration. They will insist on seeing your papers but, with luck, will still not risk coming too close to you.
“Now, here comes the clever part. There were three Orestanos who attacked you, which means we have a spare set of papers, those belonging to Onofri Orestano. The captain will say that Onofri died of typhus fever here on the Syracusa, and I shall agree with him. Onofri Orestano, we shall say, was buried at sea, and in view of the fact that he died of an infectious disease, all his belongings were buried with him. This will be accepted.
“Once the Syracusa reaches New Orleans proper, I shall contact one of our people there who will find someone—a friend—who fits the description of Onofri Orestano, as set out in his immigration documents. He will then come to visit you in quarantine. As I said, security is very tight, and only blood relatives are allowed to visit. The fact that the name on his papers is the same as yours will be enough.
“On his first visit, I want you both to be very lethargic, still weak. This will enable whoever we send to appear shocked at your appearance. This is important. He will remark, in a vague, not too obvious way, to the doctors and any immigration people who may be around, that you both look terrible, that you, Nino, have lost a lot of weight, and that you, Silvio, are still sickly looking. He will repeat this on a subsequent visit. With luck, this will mean that when you are judged to be recovering, and your papers are inspected more closely, if they are inspected closely, the authorities have been, so to speak, ‘primed.’ They will expect ‘Lorenzo’ to have lost weight and for ‘Livio’ to look sickly. Am I still making sense?”
Again both his listeners nodded.
“Good. We’re almost through. You will be allowed to leave when you are clearly on the road to recovery and are without the symptoms of fever. You must remember to act as though you are genuine immigrants who came to America of your own accord and are looking forward to starting a new life here. Also, get your story straight. You are supposed to be brothers, so you have to know about each other—birthdays, nicknames, the sort of thing brothers would know about each other. The immigration people might just ask you questions to satisfy themselves that you are who you say you are. They have enormous powers.
“The man impersonating Onofri Orestano, whoever we choose, will come to the hospital every other day and, at some stage, will be allowed to take you away with him. And that’s it. I gather everything is paid for, so all you have to do is remember how to act ill.”
For the next twenty-four hours Silvio tried not to think about his forthcoming ordeal. When the powder was finally administered, the drug took about half an hour before starting to
work, and Silvio began to feel dreadful. Nino and he were taken to a cabin on the second deck that he had never noticed before. It had four bunks in it. At first Silvio sat on one of the lower bunks and stared out of the window. The Syracusa was now in the mouth of the Mississippi and he was having his first glimpse of America. It was very flat and sparse, except for the occasional wooden fort that went by. There was more life on the river itself—countless other ships passed them, causing the Syracusa to rise and fall in their wake and making Silvio feel even worse. Eventually he lay down on the bunk.
By now he was shivering one moment and sweating the next. His shirt was damp and clung to his shoulders. His body felt as if it were on fire, and his skin prickled and burned. He suffered in silence, but Nino let out a series of little grunts. It passed through Silvio’s mind at one stage that, in fact, Tolmezzo had misled them, that the doctor was himself in the pay of the Orestanos and that he had poisoned them.
But then Silvio felt the vibration from the engines change as the Syracusa slowed. Soon it stopped altogether, and after a moment he heard voices. Some of the time the language was Italian, at others a tongue he didn’t know—which he presumed was English. Then the light in the cabin darkened, as people—presumably immigration officers and the quarantine doctor—looked in through the window.
There was a short delay, and the cabin door opened. Tolmezzo appeared. “I have two stretchers for you here,” he said quietly. “You are being taken ashore, to the quarantine hospital.” This was all done for the benefit of the quarantine doctor outside, on deck.
The stretchers were carried ashore, where the sailors handed them across to four men whom Silvio presumed to be nurses. Nino and he were taken into the building, a red-brick affair three stories high, with a slate root. They were carried down long corridors painted pale green and eventually placed in a room with two beds and a window from where they could see the river. Then they were left alone. Fortunately there was no sign of the third passenger, the man who really had typhus fever.