The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  Maura lay curled up, waiting and watching through half-opened eyes as her mother dressed. The tears welled up again. She didn’t want to be angry with Maman, and she didn’t want her mother to be angry with her. She longed more than ever for Pyotr and Angela. They had loved her. When they corrected her, told her things she had done wrong or thought wrong, they had done it gently. They wanted her to be better. Like them. Instead, here she was, again, fighting with the only person left in the entire world who cared about her.

  After her mother left the room, Maura rolled over to face the cracked ceiling, letting the tears trail down her cheeks onto the thin pillow. The past was past. She was alone. If she wanted to survive, she’d have to stop feeling sorry for herself and do something. The police could come back any time.

  She pushed herself up. Her only chance was to leave. Hide somehow. From the police, from a killer. She began picking up the clothes to pack when she spotted Pyotr’s pants, vest and shirt. Of course. A disguise.

  She threw Pyotr’s clothes on a chair and began flipping through the rest of the debris on the floor. Finding her flowered dress, she anxiously ran her fingers over the hem. The money was still there. She tossed the dress on a chair and began searching for something to carry it in. Slithering out beneath her mother’s shawl was a string bag large enough to hold everything she’d need. Finally, she came across the box that held the tools of her former trade.

  She snatched the small cotton bag inside and poured the needles, thread and buttons on the table. She grabbed the scissors and went to the mirror by the window. She pulled tight on one of her curls and hacked it off, and continued hacking until all of her black locks fell to the floor, until she looked like a boy. Then she scooped up her hair and stuffed it into the bag that had held her needles and thread. She’d sell it later. She picked up Pyotr’s shirt. Until that moment her pulse had been racing.

  Now she held Pyotr’s shirt up to her face, slowly, reverentially hoping to breathe in what was left of his smell and his spirit. She decided then, she’d call herself Pierre, French for Pyotr.

  After putting on his clothes, she whirled around to think of what else she’d need. Protection. She reached for the scissors. Paused. Would a boy carry scissors? No, he’d carry a knife. With all the dexterity that sewing hems and buttons had taught her, she worked for a desperate five minutes to unscrew the blades, leaving one on the table and stuffing the other in the string bag with her dress and some underclothes.

  She should have run out immediately. But she had to look again, at the table where she and Angela had worked, at her mother’s bed and her mother’s cross and picture of the Virgin, at the clothes flung about, the stove, the collection of cracked dishes and utensils. Trying to be strong and logical, she reached up and took a spoon in case she found something to eat. As she tucked it into the string bag, she pressed her lips together to keep from sobbing. Poor Angela. Poor Maman. It would be too cruel to leave without a word, as if she were angry or imprisoned or dead.

  Dropping the string bag on the bed, Maura went out into hall and moved the door back and forth until Monsieur Gaston answered. She pantomimed that she needed paper and pencil, which he kept for the moments when his hand gestures failed. With a frowning expression of concern, he pointed to her hair and touched her cheek lightly. Then he led her to his table, where she sat down and wrote a note to her mother.

  8

  MAURA TIPPED PYOTR’S CAP OVER her eyes and lowered her head, clutching the bundle of clothes to her chest as she hurried out of the courtyard. She did not want the children to take any notice of her. With only one sideways glance toward her past, she turned in the opposite direction from the laundry. She slung the bag over her shoulder and began to sway and strut, trying to appear nonchalant, like a confident young man going forth to meet his future. But Maura couldn’t keep up the act for long, because she couldn’t keep her heart from pounding or her eyes from roving side to side, searching for a policeman or a tall thin shadow. Walking faster and faster, urgently, as if the sun-heated cobblestones were burning through the thin soles of her shoes, she reached the end of her neighborhood, the railroad tracks to the Gare du Nord.

  Her forehead was already trickling with nervous sweat. She wiped her face off with her sleeve before heading up a street that ran parallel to the tracks toward the outskirts of the city. She desperately needed work and a place to stay. If she could find Gilbert’s forge, she would beg him to hire her. She’d do anything: haul coals, sweep the floors, run for provisions. Maybe, after she explained about the police and the killer, he would even help her find a room and help her stay safe. Maybe. Her steps slowed as repeating the plan reminded her of its obvious flaw. The handsome Gilbert had been kind last night, but he might not be so kind today. Fighting back discouragement, she followed the street to its end in front of the huge warehouses serving freight trains going to the two train stations.

  She sheltered her eyes from the hot noonday sun as she watched workers in smocks carrying and hauling huge crates and wine barrels. Back and forth they went, bringing goods to wagons hitched to restless snorting horses or into the vast, mute storehouses. In the horizon far beyond the railroad yard, plumes of smoke and fire rose from the tall chimneys of suburban factories. Maura covered her mouth as anxiety constricted her throat. It was all so dusty and gray, a world meant for men with strong arms and callused hands. How would she ever fit in? A self-pitying sob escaped through her splayed fingers. Life was so unfair. Somewhere a girl her age, in a pristine white shirt and navy blue skirt, was standing in a department store amidst a rainbow of luxuries. To serve fashionable women in a bright, clean place, was that really too much to wish for? She pulled at a strand of her cropped hair. What had she done? How had she gotten into this mess? Retreating a few steps, she pressed her lips together and nodded to herself. I’ll find a way, someday I’ll find a way, she whispered.

  First, she had to find the forge. The only thing she knew was that it was on the rue Marcadet. Turning her back on the railroad yard, she slipped into the first shop she encountered. The proprietor gave her directions and called her “son.” Her spirits lifted. She was not far away from the right street and her disguise was working.

  Although the eastern end of the rue Marcadet was every bit as grim and industrial as the warehouse area, as the street curved up toward the northern slope of Montmartre, it reminded her more and more of the Goutte-d’Or. There were men talking and smoking in clusters, and women out shopping; tenements and humble hotels, as well as workshops and cheap clothing stores. The smell of fresh baked bread wafted out of a boulangerie and the shouts of a farmer selling lettuce and spinach from a cart echoed down the street. Finally, after several blocks, she heard hammering and glimpsed flames leaping from an open hearth. As she neared the forge, she caught the intense, blood-like smell of hot iron.

  With the roaring fire, the shouting and the pounding, there was no reason to enter the open shop on tiptoe. Yet Maura, suddenly shy, approached cautiously. She longed to be noticed, recognized, and welcomed. Instead, Gilbert, pasted with soot, was fully focused on shaping a lump of glowing hot metal, which a shorter man held steady over the anvil with long tongs. Nearer the kiln she recognized the gawky figure of Léon, who was bent over, pumping air into a tube. “More, until it’s high,” Gilbert yelled as his strong arms brought the hammer down again and again. Maura crept closer. Without even looking up, Gilbert shouted, “We have no work. Sorry. Go away.”

  “It’s me, Maura, from last night,” she called out, then put down her bundle and waited.

  Gilbert barely glanced at her as he turned toward the furnace and announced that Léon could stop. He resumed hammering and said, a little quieter this time, “Sorry, the boss says we’re full up.”

  Maura wasn’t sure he had heard her say her name. He didn’t seem to recognize her in Pyotr’s clothes. She drew a bit closer, only to have him wave her away, so intent on his pounding that he didn’t even look up. She clenched her jaw. She’d a
lmost given herself away to someone who couldn’t take the time to remember her. Suddenly, Léon emerged from behind the fire. Still holding the bellows, he approached, smiling his jagged-toothed smile. The flames threw orange waves across his smudged face. Maura stumbled backward. She didn’t like the devilish look the fire gave the nasty boy, nor the heat from the forge, nor the way Gilbert just went about his business, ignoring her. She didn’t like any of it. She shouldered her bag once more. She wanted to shout, “Don’t you see, I still need help,” but she swallowed the cry and hurried back to the street.

  Maura wandered in a sullen daze until she reached a crossroads, a steep street leading up and down Montmartre. She glanced toward the top of the hill, where they were building a big church; where cabarets, every bit as famous as the Moulin Rouge, promised pleasure and forgetfulness. She shook her head. She would not go near those places, not for a long time, not with their Ralphs and his dirty-minded companions. But where should she go? If she kept on the rue Marcadet, she had no idea where she’d end up. At least she knew what lay below. Escape. The walls of the city and the Saint-Ouen Gate. She had passed through it on the saddest day of her life, when they buried Angela.

  She began zigzagging north and west, through city streets and past pocket vineyards, in a hurry now, eager to leave the city and all its perils behind her. Maybe she should visit Angela’s grave. Sit by it and talk to her. Or maybe she’d find the paupers’ cemetery where criminals and the unknown poor, where Pyotr, had been buried. Or perhaps she’d just keep on walking until she reached the next town, Saint-Ouen, which she had glimpsed from the funeral dray. She didn’t stop her headlong march toward the fortress walls until she had to wait for the passing of the petite ceinture, the “little belt” train that circled the city. Maura stared as a few of the well-dressed passengers waved at her. She didn’t wave back. Why should she, when she’d never have a life like that, with lots of money and nothing to do? Disgusted with the rich, with herself, with everything, she crossed over the tracks and continued walking along the walls.

  When she reached the Saint-Ouen Gate, she came to another halt. Men in uniform! She clutched her bag to her chest and flattened herself against the gray stone wall, watching. Two officers approached a guard house. They took over for the man who was stopping wagons, carts and pedestrians as they entered the city. She let out a sigh of relief. Of course, they were collecting taxes and tariffs. They didn’t care about who or what left Paris, only what came in. Besides, she was no longer Maura Laurenzano, a fugitive. She was a boy. An ordinary runaway.

  Swinging her string bag back over her shoulder, she strode out of the wide opening onto a field sparsely covered with grass. She was not alone. Others, perhaps on the lookout for cheap food or drink, sat around in groups, enjoying the sun. She squinted, trying to get her bearings. The town of Saint-Ouen loomed about a kilometer away directly in front of her, its skyline punctuated by a church steeple and smoking factories. It was not a welcoming sight. Tired, discouraged and hungry, she wasn’t ready for graveyards either.

  Maura followed her nose and a cluster of people to a man selling sausages from a cart. She had heard that everything cost less outside the city walls, and she got a long baguette filled with greasy meat for only a sou. When she asked for water to wash it down, the seller shrugged and offered a bottle of cheap red wine. Grabbing it by its neck, Maura hunted for a spot near the fortress walls where she could settle on the hard dirt, little softened by the scarce, browning grass. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be out of the sun. She wanted … as she tore the meat and the bread with her teeth, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. In the courtyard of her tenement, she had seen others drink themselves into oblivion. She, too, wanted to be numbed. The wine, though raw and sour, was cool enough to quench her thirst.

  But the sun was hot and impossible to escape. By the time she finished half the bottle, the ground beneath her began to sway and lurch. Nausea engulfed her. The world was spinning. She had to find a way to keep perfectly still. She pulled her flowered dress half-way out of the sack and draped the skirt over her face to block out the light. Gently, ever so gently, she lowered her head, using the rest of her possessions as a pillow. Mercifully, after what seemed an eternity, she fell asleep.

  “Garçon, garçon.” Someone was poking at Maura with a stick, calling her a boy. She threw the dress aside and focused her blurry eyes on a frail white-haired old man.

  “Stop that!” she yelled. “Get away from me!” She was trying to sound forceful, but her voice came out in a whimper.

  “Oh, garçon, I wondered if you wanted to sell that pretty rag.”

  “That’s not a rag, it’s my—” Maura stopped herself before she said “my dress.” She was a boy. Boys didn’t wear dresses. “It’s not for sale.”

  She wanted nothing more than to lie, still, on the ground; but she sat up, placing one hand firmly on her dress while she felt around the hem for the coins she’d sewn into it. She stuffed the dress back into the bag, before surveying her surroundings. The field was almost deserted. The sun had dipped. Hours had passed. And she still felt like she was on a rolling sea, her stomach churning inside of her.

  “Are you alone, my boy? Was that your mother’s dress?”

  He was still bent over her, watching her. Although he spoke with an accent like her mother’s, the simplicity, even stupidity, of his expression and the slightness of his frame reminded Maura of the deaf-mute Monsieur Gaston. “I’m fine. Leave me be,” she said, sticking out her lower lip to show she meant business.

  But instead of leaving, the old bones, with some effort, sat down beside her and pointed to the overturned bottle of red wine. “If you are drinking that, you are not fine, young man. And you do not look fine. Are you running away?”

  Maura’s head and mouth felt fuzzy. She had no desire to argue, or even talk. Besides, her life was none of his affair. At least he was not scary. She had the feeling that she could knock him down with one solid punch.

  “You can’t stay here, you know,” the old man persisted. “Not at night. Thieves and robbers gather here after dark. They’ll hit you over the head for a few sous.”

  Although he was clean and didn’t smell, his clothes looked liked they had belonged to someone else a long time ago. How did she know he wasn’t a thief? “What are you?” Maura sniffed, as she held everything she owned close to her chest.

  “A ragpicker,” he sighed. “An honest old ragpicker, who, at your age, was also a runaway, a twelve-year-old runaway, who would not have survived if—”

  “So all you are is an old ragpicker!” she interrupted. “What makes you so proud?” There, Maura thought, that should send him on his way.

  But instead of getting angry or insulted, the old man smiled, baring a mouth of yellowing small teeth, only a few of which were missing. “Does it matter what you do, as long as you are free and honest and love your fellow human beings?”

  Maura stared at the old man. That was exactly the kind of thing that Pyotr used to say when he talked about the “dignity” of workers and the poor.

  “See here,” he said, pointing to a small oval brass medal pinned on his vest, “I’m registered. Everyone trusts me. Everyone knows Nico.”

  “I don’t,” Maura said. After squinting at the name and the number on the piece of metal he bore on his chest, she groaned and lay down again, her head on her bag. She did not want to talk to anyone. Especially not a ragpicker with a ragpicker badge.

  “Do you have a place to stay? A family?”

  “I’m going to Saint-Ouen.”

  He shook his head as if he did not believe her. “There are desperate people there too. It’s not a good place for a boy alone.”

  Worse for a girl alone. Maura wished she didn’t feel so sick.

  “I am getting old. Other pickers have families to help. I’m all alone. You can stay with me, at least tonight. I have some bread left. That will help make you feel better. You can use my bed while I am out picking. Then ma
ybe you will decide to help me.”

  Maura closed her eyes, trying to think through the throbbing in her head. She hated it when people tried to be kind. She hated talk about dignity and being free and loving your fellow human beings. Stupid words, stupid! Because that is not how the world worked. Because somewhere deep down Maura suspected that Pyotr’s eloquent words had gotten him killed. Because, despite their stupidity, those very words had made her love him, trust him. And now, because before the sun was going down, she might have to trust someone who talked like him—even as she resolved to keep the scissors blade in her hand while she slept.

  “Come,” he said, struggling to his feet. He offered a hand so papery and thin, it was almost translucent.

  Refusing his help, Maura got up and brushed herself off. She was glad to see that she was taller than him.

  “Do you have a name, my boy?”

  “Pierre,” Maura muttered, turning away as she tried out Pyotr’s French name. “Pierre,” she whispered to herself. That’s all she was going to tell this Nico. She wished he would stop talking.

  He nodded and, alternating steps with the rhythm of his walking stick, started toward the Saint-Ouen Gate back into the city.

  “I can’t go there,” she said, remembering the uniformed men.

  “You are in trouble, my son, I can see it. Most runaways are running from something. I know. I did. Don’t be afraid, all the men know Nico, they’ll let you through.”

  Maura stopped and gazed out in the dimming light, calculating her choices. One way led to Angela’s grave; another to a town with smoking factories; the other to warehouses, the gasworks and trains coming into the city. If she didn’t go back inside the walls now, how long would she be exiled from everything she had ever known? Maura nodded, and followed the ragpicker, staying a little behind, in case she had to flee. Her heart was pounding so hard that she almost forgot her throbbing head and wobbly stomach.