THE NEUSTRIA SLOWLY PULLED AWAY FROM THE PIER AND into the harbor. The red port buildings, Castel Nuovo, and the glass dome of the Galleria grew miniature in minutes, but the wind and the smell of the sea, the salt air, grew stronger. As the ship gained speed and passed the long black jetty, Vesuvio rose up, getting bigger and closer. Seagulls circled as they passed buoy after buoy, the red lighthouse, other ships riding at anchor.
Most of the passengers shoved their way to the upper deck to watch their country shrink in the distance. And so Vita went with her son and daughter to say a final goodbye to Italy’s beautiful face. A final vaffanculo.
Capri began to fade. The water was a deep sapphire with whitecaps, the spray hitting the faces of those nearest the railing. Soon the houses on the mainland thinned out, replaced by rocky cliffs and patches of green. Eventually Vesuvio and the coast blended into one single mountainscape beyond the stern.
The Neustria slipped past the pastel houses of Procida Island and the Palazzo d’Avalos; Ischia and its volcano, Mount Epomeo, with its silent crater up top; and small volcanic islands whose names Vita didn’t know. Nunzia counted the castles hanging near the edges of earth, so many castles, Castel dell’Ovo, Castel Sant’Elmo, and Castello Aragonese, in front of Ischia. They had been built centuries ago to scare invaders. But now they were growing smaller, like toy castles in the distance, no longer large and imposing, no longer threatening.
The hills grew greener, the houses fewer and fewer until all Vita and her children could see was blue. Blue sea. Blue sky, a gentle blue like the color of Mary’s veil at the Chiesa Madre. Everything Vita ever knew, fading, fading, not just the landscape, but the memory of it all. The murder, the lover, the dead babies, and Rocco cradled in her arms. All of it. Fading fast.
THE PASSENGERS RETREATED TO THEIR QUARTERS, WHICH WERE divided into three classes: women traveling alone, men traveling alone, and families. Vita was allowed to stay with Nunzia, but Leonardo was on his own since he was thirteen, already a man.
Men made up nearly 80 percent of the immigrant population coming from Italy. Women almost never traveled alone.
The sleeping quarters were barely lit and cramped, with as many as three hundred people to each. The six-by-two-foot berths, with two and a half feet of headroom, were packed tightly in two tiers. Each iron bed frame contained a lumpy mattress filled with either straw or seaweed, covered in coarse canvas, a life preserver for a pillow, and a small, thin blanket, which wasn’t nearly enough for the chilly September nights at sea.
Vita and most of the other passengers went to bed fully clothed, sometimes wearing everything they’d brought, since there was no room in the berth for bags. You wore it or slept on top of it or hung your clothes like drapes from your berth, which was the wisest option since crew members came and went as they pleased, barging right through the women’s bunk areas in the morning, just when the women were dressing or undressing. Washrooms were above deck and less open to shifty porters.
A law passed ten years earlier barred the crew from the passenger compartments, but no one really paid much attention to it, since many of the passengers couldn’t read the postings placed on the walls. When a crewman entered the women’s compartment, he would gawk at those dressing and undressing and sometimes even cop a feel. Some women fought back. But the commotion just blended into the general din of steerage.
The Italian men played lotto and shouted at one another. One man played his violin. Children laughed. Babies cried, their mothers pushing them toward withering breasts.
Passengers of different sexes could mingle by day, usually fighting for space above deck, trying to take in a few rays of the precious sun, the lovely sun that they had all abandoned in Southern Italy.
They sat amid all the machinery that crowded the deck, the cables, winches, spare masts, and curving air intakes, because there were no chairs or benches. Some were lucky to scam a coveted spot on the cover of the cargo hold, spreading a shawl or jacket to claim the space as their own. A steady snowfall of cinders from the black funnel floated down onto Vita’s kerchiefed head and into her children’s eyes.
The crew was allowed to mingle with passengers on deck, cursing and making inappropriate comments to the women, sometimes touching or fondling them. But if anyone tried to touch Vita or her daughter, she would not hesitate to punch him.
Women wouldn’t dare venture out on deck at night, though some men, like Leonardo, did, to breathe the fresh salt air, and wonder at the phosphorescent wake, the sky salted with stars and the glowing Milky Way, that last vestige of Hera’s squirting breast milk. “Count your nights by stars, not shadows,” went the Italian saying. And Leonardo did. Though there were too many stars, really, to count.
The sea was a vast void of nothingness by night, until the moon rose. The voyage to America was so long, some watched the moon wax through a third of its cycle, growing like the belly of a pregnant woman. Its milky light was reflected on the ink-black water. At 10 P.M. the deck was hosed down, forcing everyone down for the night.
Vita was already inside, and sat with her youngest snuggled up against her, keeping her warm between her chest and her armpit, singing songs or telling her stories to pass the long hours. She told her all about Francesco and the murder, though Nunzia had heard this story dozens of times and could practically recite it. The stolen pears, the young man with the gun, the fight, the prison sentence. Vita sang to Nunzia. She sang a version of the song, “Canto di Carcerato,” that she had learned years ago after the murder and would cry herself to sleep with on those long nights when Francesco first went away.
See what in town they all are saying of me
And see if my affair is growing quiet
For then, if God so willing as I am praying
My longing eye for freedom soon will spy it.
Vita would sing her daughter “Ninna Nanna” to put her to sleep on the rocking ship. And when she was sure Nunzia was asleep, when no one else in the world was watching, Vita would finally cry, those pent-up tears spilling out finally, tears for her three dead babies and for Grieco and for her long-lost love, Francesco.
WHEN THE SUN ROSE, BEFORE MOST OF THE OTHER PASSENGERS were awake, Vita would set Nunzia free, let her run around on deck so that she could stretch her young legs. Little children, even girls, were like young goats or sheep. They needed space to roam and grow.
When they first boarded the ship, Vita and her children were each handed a metal fork, a spoon, a cup, and one tin dish for all their meals, which they had to store in their berth somewhere and had to somehow clean in the scarce fresh water on board. Water here was nearly as rare as back home in Basilicata, and because of the new layout, much harder to find. It seemed ridiculous, with those miles and miles of rolling waves out there. No towels were provided. Passengers used clothing or their blankets to dry their dishes.
The wooden floors below deck were never washed on the voyage, only occasionally swept. No sick bags or buckets or trash cans for waste. Fruit pits, fish bones, nail clippings, eggshells, apple cores, wrappers, cigarette butts, orange peels, and other garbage sat for hours or sometimes days.
Vomit stayed on the floorboards for hours, soaking into the wood, the stench remaining the entire trip. Which led to more vomiting. A few conscientious crew members sprinkled a bit of sand on top.
When it rained, everyone stayed inside their berths, which were wet from the rainwater coming through the hatchways and leaking from the ceilings. With the roiling, rolling sea, seasickness was widespread, and without proper ventilation, those suffering didn’t stand a chance to recover.
Only on the day the voyage ended were the toilets and washroom floors finally cleaned with disinfectant to pass inspection. But not before then.
The only good places to throw up were overboard and into the washbasins in the washroom. But those basins were also used to bathe, wash your dirty dishes and utensils, do your laundry, and shampoo your head, if you could stand it in that dirty, nasty basin. There weren’t enough basins for so many people, only ten basins per washroom.
Simple wooden benches were placed in the passageway between sleeping compartments to serve as a dining room. Passengers lined up in a single file in front of four stewards handing out rations. Breakfast at 7 A.M. was easiest, since it was only coffee and a few hard biscuits, keeping with Italian tradition. The other meals, served at noon and at 6 P.M., were slightly more elaborate.
When the bell rang, stewards ladled out the soup, limp vegetables, leathery, smelly meat, or pasta—often pasta, or what the steamship company liked to call pasta. Any fruit was of the poorest quality, the bruised, sad remnants from the bottom of the barrel, literally. Children and infants were served condensed milk.
The food was so bad that some of these people—these starving people who had gleaned in empty fields for wild roots and herbs—wound up throwing more than half their meal overboard. Most lived on coffee and bread, which was stale and sometimes moldy, but at least not rancid.
Some of the smarter passengers, with time and money to plan ahead, had brought their own rations—fruit, some fresh bread, scamorza, or homemade soppressata—the likes of which no Italian on board would see again for a very long time. Maybe a lifetime.
A bar served fruit for three cents apiece, candy, and drinks, though hardly anyone had any money for that.
Vita and her children learned to scramble for their food, as bad as it was, and as quickly as possible, since once it was gone, it was gone, just like back at home in Basilicata, with that big plate in the middle of the table. You had to be fast, or else you went hungry. You also had to hightail it to the washroom, to get a spot at the single warm spigot, to get your dishes clean. Leonardo simply licked his clean, then placed it under his pillow, his life preserver.