Unto the Sons

by Gay Talese

  Many black American soldiers who had served in Europe were discharged in Paris, and they chose to remain with their French wives rather than accept repatriation on American troop ships that required their traveling alone. Couples could live cheaply and eat well in France if they had American money. The dollar would be worth fifty francs by the mid-twenties. While the sale of liquor was now outlawed in the United States, it flowed freely in Parisian cafés and jazz clubs. Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, which was as much a meeting place for English-speaking residents as it was a lending library and book shop. The young composer Aaron Copland attended a new school for American musicians at the Fontainebleau palace southeast of Paris. The already prominent French designer Gabrielle (“Coco”) Chanel, mourning her lover killed in an auto accident, would soon influence world fashion with her little black dress.

  But if Joseph saw any of these achieving individuals during his time in Paris, he was never aware of it. While he was impressed by the innovations that surrounded him—the city’s underground trains and electric lighting, its many telephones and elevators, its buses and taxis, and the installation of cable wire to initiate radio broadcasts from the Eiffel Tower—he would remember France in 1920 mostly from the vantage point of the small apartment with Antonio and his job at Damien’s. And on a cold and blustery day in mid-December, after traveling by train to Cherbourg, he embraced Antonio on the pier and climbed the gangplank onto a huge German-made British ship bound for New York.

  He had already written his family in Maida about his departure, and had also written his two uncles in America, requesting that they meet him at Ellis Island. In his pocket he carried his passport and visa. Antonio had accompanied him to the Italian embassy, and had gotten on well with the travel counselor. Indulging the man’s fondness for reminiscing, Antonio was able to learn that his mafioso uncle was no longer alive.

  “He passed away last year in Chicago,” the counselor sadly acknowledged.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Antonio had replied. “May God rest his soul.”

  Joseph then followed Antonio’s example in lowering his head in front of the counselor and assuming a demeanor of sympathy.

  It took eight days to reach the United States. The ship encountered storms most of the way, and Joseph was so petrified and nauseated that he remembered little of the journey except the horror of being on board. He spent most of the time in his cabin, holding on to an iron bar above his bed as the ship pitched and churned choppily through the night, and then proceeded each day through heaving waters and under dark clouds and rain.

  Despite his reliance on Saint Francis, to whom he prayed constantly, his dreams of drowning had been more persuasive than the conscious force of his faith. Indeed, on the fifth morning of the trip he was convinced that the ship was sinking, that he was seconds away from death; and in a state of despair he fell out of bed screaming and tumbled to his knees, and beseeched the saint to save him.

  The ship seemed immobile. Its engines were silent. He heard the sounds of bubbles popping softly outside the porthole. For the first time since his departure from Maida Joseph felt shame in his decision to leave, which he now admitted was most likely forever. While it was true that his family’s economic problems could be alleviated only by money earned elsewhere, he saw himself as a deserter, a fugitive from family ties, an escapist from the hard times at home. He waited in his cabin, kneeling on the floor with his head pressed down on the cot, acknowledging that perhaps he deserved to die. He had forsaken his family, his widowed mother and ailing brother in his quest for self-betterment, a life in a land of opportunities and wealth.

  The ship sailed quietly into New York Harbor after dawn on December 23, 1920, a morning so foggy that Joseph could not see the Statue of Liberty. The waters were calm, however, and he remained with the crowd on the upper deck, wearing his best suit under his overcoat, and also the gloves, scarf, and cap that Antonio had presented to him as a going-away gift at Cherbourg.

  Despite his clothes he was extremely cold, and he huddled close to the people standing three deep along the rail. Many of the women, and even a few men, wore full-length fur coats. Joseph had never before seen men in fur, nor had he ever seen men drinking from flasks, as several were now doing. Some of the young women, their bobbed heads covered with turbans or small-brimmed hats, also drank from the silver containers that the men passed around. What most surprised him was the carefree manner in which the women put to their lips what seconds before had touched the lips of several men. Joseph was indeed entering the New World.

  He began to feel better among the friendly and boisterous passengers on deck, a crowd that was gleeful and easily amused. They laughed when one older man’s homburg blew off his balding head and sailed into the sea, prompting him to shrug gallantly and smile. They applauded when one of the scavenger birds circling overhead caught in its beak a piece of bread that a passenger had tossed into the air. There was even more applause as the sun streamed through the clouds and the skyline of lower Manhattan came vaguely into view. At first glance Joseph thought he was sailing toward a cluster of cornstalks, dense and golden in the misty morning light. The land was fertile, overplanted, growing before his eyes. Everyone on deck was now concentrated upon it, as if seeing it for the first time, although Joseph was fairly sure that most of these passengers were Americans. He had heard a few older couples on deck speaking French, but the great majority spoke English in the unaffected and slightly blunt way of those people he had seen in the Left Bank cafés and jazz clubs. He might have seen a few of these passengers before in Paris; he was quite sure of having seen the tall black-haired man who stood near him now, wearing a voluminous raccoon coat, facing the sea with his long shaggy-sleeved arms draped over the shoulders of the petite women in fur-trimmed leather coats and spike-heeled shoes with dark stockings. In Maida the sight of a man standing with his arms embracing two women simultaneously would have invited trouble from at least one aspiring or jealous suitor, but no one on deck appeared to be concerned, certainly not the women snuggled merrily within his grasp. One of them sipped from a silver flask. The other gazed through a pair of binoculars and pointed enthusiastically toward something that delighted her on shore.

  The ship was now within a few thousand yards of a row of piers, its bow cutting through chunks of ice, driftwood, and debris. Barges and small steamers were moving slowly up ahead, along the edge of the riverfront, and so was a red-and-white ferryboat trailed by low-flying birds feeding on what was churned up behind the ferry’s stern. Beyond the shorefront, visible between the anchorages and a few seaport shacks, was a roadway being crossed by motor vehicles and horse-drawn wagons; and rising in the background were massive buildings of stone and steel. Some of them looked nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower, but so much bulkier and weightier it was a wonder they did not sink through the thin layer of the ground and disappear under the sea.

  With its horn sounding, the boat edged into the slip, and Joseph could see gangs of stevedores standing on the pier below, and many people waiting on the deck of the anchorage. He had been told earlier that he could pass through customs and immigration here in Manhattan, together with the other cabin-class and first-class passengers; but since he had asked his uncles to meet him at Ellis Island, he had to board a ferry with the third-class passengers.

  The ferryboat was waiting at the pier near where the big ship had set anchor. Blue-uniformed immigration authorities were assembled to direct the passengers. Instructions were called out in different languages, and after forming lines the passengers were taken aboard. These were people Joseph had not seen during the crossing; they were plainly dressed, in heavy wool coats and long scarves and with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. A few women carried babies; the men carried wooden boxes or leather valises or cloth bags in their ungloved hands. Some of the men were not much older than Joseph; these men were not accompanied by women. They were sturdily built and ruddy-complected for the most part, and seemed cla
nnish in the way they stood apart from the others as the ferry pushed off noisily through the pilings and headed back out to sea.

  Joseph sat on a rear bench behind rows of couples and children, listening while they communicated loudly in French and in languages that he could not identify but thought might be Scandinavian or Slavic. He heard no Italian spoken, and not even English. There was none of the friendliness and frivolity that had existed earlier on the deck of the ocean liner, but mercifully the ferry took only fifteen minutes to cross the waters and approach an odd, almost arabesque red château with four domed towers and a big spike sticking up through each.

  Uniformed officials speaking a variety of languages waited at the pier, and then escorted the arrivals, with all their trappings, into the four-domed building. Here, on Ellis Island, the immigrants would spend most of the day, standing on lines waiting to be interrogated by agents and physically examined by doctors. Joseph stood with the others, quite anxious as representatives of the United States Public Health Service took turns scrutinizing his eyes for signs of trachoma, his hair for lice, his neck, arms, and hands for sores, tumors, moles, or other possible indications of insalubriousness. Medical machines probed him for evidence of tuberculosis, heart deficiency, nervous disorders. Joseph had heard that newcomers sometimes failed these examinations, and were turned away back to the boats—deported from America, separated from fellow-traveling kinsmen. But on this day, Joseph and the other ferry passengers moved unchallenged from one medical station to the next; no one had the back of his coat chalked with white letters signifying possible ailments that required further examinations and possible deportation, his travel costs to be absorbed by the shipping company that had booked his passage.

  Joseph was eventually escorted by an interpreter toward a row of desks. The same interpreter, a slightly stooped man in his forties, with a moustache and steel-rimmed glasses, who had introduced himself as Professor Carlino, helped Joseph through the medical stations. He said he had come to America as a two-year-old from Naples. He now taught engineering at a city university, and he worked on weekends and holidays as one of the Italian interpreters on the island. “You could not have arrived at a better time,” he told Joseph. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, and the staff here wants to leave early this afternoon to complete their shopping, including the deportation officers. Only the extreme cases should be detained, the terminally ill and any Bolsheviks carrying arms.”

  “Who paid your ship’s fare?” an official asked Joseph, not looking up but flipping through papers on his desk, where he noted that Joseph had traveled cabin class.

  “I did, sir,” Joseph responded in Italian, then listened to the translation by Professor Carlino. The benign-looking interpreter stood behind the chairs of the two uniformed interrogators, a hopeful tutor supporting his pupil. The interrogators were both gray-haired and stout, but one appeared much older than the other. Both had gold insignia on their lapels bearing the letters “U.S.”

  “What is your occupation?” the younger official asked.

  “I am a tailor,” Joseph replied.

  The officials looked at how Joseph was dressed, and neither showed signs of disapproval. His white shirt was clean, he wore a bow tie, and he had polished his shoes before leaving the boat in the morning. He carried his topcoat over one arm, his cap in hand, and wore the new suit that he had left hanging over the portal in his cabin, where it not only masked the sight of the moving sea but also avoided becoming wrinkled in his suitcase or in the cabin’s dank cubbyhole closet.

  “So tailors can achieve prosperity even at your age,” the older official remarked with a smile, while the other added: “And I assume you have a job waiting for you in this country?”

  “Yes, sir,” Joseph said forthrightly, hiding his uneasiness about the fabrication. Antonio had told him that in front of immigration officials it was wiser to be very positive than very truthful.

  “And where will you work?” the same official asked.

  “In Philadelphia.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “it seems that every Italian tailor who passes through here is heading for Philadelphia.”

  “Can you read and write?” the older man asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever been in prison?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How much money are you carrying?”

  Hearing the translation, Joseph looked with concern toward the professor. Professor Carlino had witnessed the rejection of even some well-dressed people because they were discovered to be destitute, but the financial question was unexpected for someone who had traveled cabin class. Now the professor himself had no reason not to wonder if this young man, traveling alone, carried at least the required minimum of ten dollars in foreign coins or currency that most inspectors demanded prior to validating an applicant’s entry into the United States.

  “I have a hundred forty dollars in lire,” Joseph said, and the professor, who seemed quite pleased, was about to relay the figure to the officials, when Joseph interrupted to explain that it was hidden in a money bag strapped around his waist inside his trousers. He added that it was locked, and that opening it would necessitate his lowering his pants practically to his thighs, for the lock was affixed to a lower part of the bag.

  “I hope I won’t have to show them the money,” Joseph said, aware of the fact that he was standing within view of hundreds of people; there were very few walls and partitions in this great hall of Ellis Island—symbolic of an open society perhaps, but potentially embarrassing to an individual who might be asked to lower his pants. In fact the great hall was now jammed, as several ferries had unloaded passengers since Joseph’s midmorning arrival. Worse, a disproportionate number of these were female.

  “Do not concern yourself,” the professor reassured Joseph, while at the same time he nodded toward the inspector, who had turned around to express impatience at the delay in the translation. As Joseph stood waiting, he heard the interpreter using the word “dollars” and saw the younger official, with a raised eyebrow, saying something that made the professor frown. After more discussion, the professor shook his head, lowered his eyes, and announced softly:

  “Joseph, they insist on seeing your money.”

  Joseph blushed. He looked pleadingly at the officials. The older one was looking at his wristwatch, the younger one tapping a pencil on the desk. The professor, looking pale, was staring absently around the room. Joseph wondered if the professor had made it clear to them that the money was hidden inside his pants, and that to retrieve it here would be undignified.

  But the officials were waiting, and Joseph knew that he had no choice, so he bent down and placed his topcoat and cap on the floor in front of him. He unbuttoned the jacket of his suit, trying not to imagine the people who might be watching him, especially the young woman he had noticed standing in line nearby, her flaxen braids dangling behind her bonnet.

  He unhitched his trouser belt. One of the officials coughed, but said nothing as Joseph placed two fingers behind his bow tie and pulled out the chain that hung around his neck; on it were his Saint Francis medal and the silver key to his money bag. Discreetly he unbuttoned the top three buttons of his fly front and tried to untie the money bag around his waist. But the knot was too tight—it was now necessary to undo a fourth button and reach down to try to unlock the money bag with the key.

  The officials now suddenly seemed confused and aghast, and the older man turned around to the interpreter and asked: “What the hell is he doing?”

  The professor had apparently not explained how complicated it would be to fulfill their request; or perhaps he had underestimated the difficulty Joseph might have in reaching into the internal pocket.

  “This isn’t burlesque,” the official went on huffily to the professor, who stood speechless and flustered behind the chairs. “Tell him to button up. We’ll take his word that he has the money.”

  After the professor had communicated the message, and Joseph ha
d rearranged himself, the professor instructed him to express his gratitude in English.

  “Thank you very much,” Joseph said, picking up his coat and cap from the floor and following the professor out of the area.

  “You’re welcome,” the older official said, “and welcome to America.”

  Joseph walked into a large reception room that was noisy and crowded with people waiting to greet their newly arrived relatives and friends. He looked around, moving from group to group, but saw no sign of his uncles. After searching for almost a half-hour, he became worried. The professor, who fortunately had stayed with him, suggested that they go to the Western Union counter; and there, among stacks of yellow envelopes, the clerk discovered one addressed to Joseph.

  The professor translated:

  “SORRY YOUR UNCLES CANNOT COME. ENTRAIN TO PHILADELPHIA, THIRTIETH STREET STATION. CALL ARRIVAL TIME NUMBER BELOW. WILL MEET YOU. YOUR FATHER’S GOOD FRIEND. CARLO DONATO.”

  Joseph had never heard of Donato, and did not know how to get on the train. But the professor said: “Come, I owe you a favor for all that embarrassment. I’ll see that you get there. We can buy the ticket here, and the terminal is just across the water in New Jersey, where we’ll go together by launch.”

  After the professor had helped Joseph convert his lire into dollars at the exchange office—Joseph had visited a washroom beforehand, and discreetly laid claim to his funds—a card bearing the number 6 was pinned to the side of his cap by a transportation guide helping to process passengers after they had purchased their rail tickets. The numbered card would remind the train conductor that Joseph’s destination was Philadelphia.

  Carrying his suitcase and escorting Joseph to the track of the Philadelphia-bound express, the professor reminded him: “Stay on until it no longer moves and everybody is off. That’ll be Thirtieth Street Station, the final stop. Mr. Donato will find you. I’ll phone him to tell him when you’re scheduled to arrive. Good luck. And Merry Christmas.”