Room 213 was small and tidy, a strong perfume smell overlaying a faint whiff of mould and rot. The furnishings—a two-tiered bunk up against the inside wall, two slender-framed armchairs with flowered cushions, a round coffee table with an old brown map veneered over its top, the countries and continents all distorted from the shapes la maestra had taught us—were bolted to the floor, the bolts and clamps plainly visible above the floor’s grey carpet, as if they had been added as an afterthought. On one wall hung a heavy-framed painting of St. Christopher crossing the river, the baby Jesus sitting placidly on his shoulder, a gold sceptre in one hand and a small globe of bright blue and green in the other.
In the bathroom, bright porcelain and chrome gleamed under the white clarity of an electric light. A chain above the toilet sent a rush of water swirling into the toilet’s bowl, and silver taps over the sink and tub brought hot and cold water gurgling down from the faucets at a turn.
‘Don’t worry,’ my mother said, ‘for the next two weeks you’ll get your fill of water. Acqua, acqua, dappertutto. When you get to America you won’t want to see another drop of water for a hundred years.’
My mother closed herself into the bathroom to wash and change.
‘When I’m through we’ll go upstairs to watch when the ship leaves.’
On the far wall of the cabin two curtained portholes looked over the sea. By standing on one of the armchairs and leaning over its back I was able to peer out one of them into the bay. From here the sea, about a dozen feet below me, looked not blue but murky green. Out on the bay a large black ship was just heaving into port, a crowd of small dinghies bobbing precariously in its wake.
But someone pounded on our door now, hard and frantic.
‘Apri! Senti! Open the door, I know you’re in there!’
It was a woman’s voice, angry and shrill. My mother came out of the bathroom in her slip, wiping her face on a towel.
‘Ma chi è questa? There must be some mistake.’ More pounding.
‘Open up, I know who you are! Open so I can see your face! So I can see the face of a whore!’
‘This woman is mad,’ my mother said, paling; but she went to the door and drew it open.
In the doorway, blocking it like a mountain face, stood a short older woman of generous proportions whose too-tight dress seemed ready to burst with the pressure of its owner’s trembling, red-faced anger. But as my mother drew the door fully open, the blood seemed to drain away suddenly from the woman’s cheeks.
‘Madonna!’ she cried, clapping her hands together like a penitent. ‘She’s pregnant! My God, it’s come to this!’ Then, catching sight of me hovering near my mother’s side, her eyelids drooped as if she were about to collapse.
‘Another one! God help me!’ And pushing past my mother and me she lunged across the room and fell heavily into an armchair, her chest heaving.
‘Two children, I never imagined, not in my worst dreams. And four at home who never see his face!’
‘Scusi,’ my mother said slowly. She shifted the strap of her slip and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging her shoulders protectively. ‘Ma chi è Lei?’
The woman drew a handkerchief from her bosom and patted at her forehead.
‘What does it matter, who I am,’ she said, still struggling for breath. ‘Nessuno. I’m no one. Two children! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t go on like this any longer. I’ll kill myself.’ She blew loudly into her handkerchief, then broke finally into heaving sobs. ‘Trent’ anni! Thirty years I’ve worked like a slave for him!’
‘Scusi, but I don’t understand,’ my mother said, still hovering uncertainly near the open door. ‘Who have you worked like a slave for?’
‘Who, who, you know as well as I do, who,’ the woman said, her chest still heaving. ‘What’s the use in hiding it now? When the cook’s wife told me I didn’t believe it, I thought it was invidia, because her own husband has been running around with a tramp. But then I found the key in his pocket, room 213, just like she said—ten years! Ten years this has been going on, and no one told me a word. If you knew what I have to put up with—’ but she broke into sobs again.
But a look of sudden understanding had crossed my mother’s face, and she moved towards the woman now and crouched down beside her.
‘Calmatevi,’ she said gently. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m not the woman you’re looking for.’
‘Ma come, what are you saying?’ the woman said, still sobbing. ‘It’s this room, I know it, it’s always this room. I wanted to wring your neck, but now I see how things are with you, two children, he’s probably ruined your life too—’
‘Scusate, signora,’ my mother started again. ‘We’ve both been tricked—the captain’s friend isn’t coming aboard this trip, they must have put me here to confuse you. I don’t know anything else about it, except that they tried to make fools out of both of us.’
The woman looked over at my mother now with new attention, her sobs subsiding.
‘Ma è vero?’ she said, daubing at her eyes. ‘You’re not trying to make fun of me?’
‘Sí, è vero.’
‘And the children?’
‘Whoever they belong to, it’s not your husband.’ The woman looked from my mother’s face to mine, then back to my mother’s.
‘Oh, thank God!’ She let out a great sob and clasped thick arms around my mother’s neck. ‘Thank you, signora, thank you, you don’t know what a burden you’ve taken off me! Beh, you can imagine when I came in here and saw you bloated up like a whale, and then the little boy, his eyes are just like my husband’s —’
But a foghorn sounded now, drowning the woman out, and the floor beneath us began to tremble like a huge stomach growling.
‘Signora, I think they’re starting the engines,’ my mother said. ‘If you don’t want to follow us to Canada, you’d better get off the ship.’
‘Sí, sí, grazie. I hope you’ll excuse me for the way I lost my head but you can imagine how a woman feels—’
‘Hurry now,’ my mother said, helping the woman to the door. ‘If I have a chance I’ll have a few words with him for you.’
‘La ringrazio, signora, grazie tanto,’ she said, backing out the door and clasping my mother’s hand; but a moment later, as she hurried away down the hall, she was cursing again. ‘L’ammazzo! I’ll kill him! I’ll kill them both!’
‘Addio,’ my mother said, watching her go. ‘Poveretta.’ But a smile was playing around her lips. ‘Well, at least we got this room out of it, eh Vittorio? Come on, I’ll put on a dress and we’ll go say goodbye to Italy.’
Up on deck the gangway was just being pulled up, newly boarded passengers abandoning their suitcases and bags to flock to the rails and wave their final goodbyes. All along the port side the rails were lined three and four thick with people exchanging shouts with those they’d left behind on the pier or simply casting their goodbyes to the wind.
‘Addio Italia! Salve America!’
My mother managed to squeeze us through to a place against the rails just as the ship was churning away from its moorings. On the pier people were shouting last minute instructions, raising enough noise to wake the dead.
‘Tell Giovanni the army is looking for him!’
‘Say hello to President Eisenhower! And send me back an American woman!’
‘Tell your father that when I get my hands on him, I’ll break his balls!’
Then, amidst the noise, I made out a boyish shout of ‘Ho, Vittò!’ and my eyes scanned the crowd until they lighted on a familiar face peering out from the shadows of a corduroy cap. My hand shot up instinctively to wave.
‘Who are you waving to?’ my mother asked.
But I shrugged in embarrassment—the corduroy cap had come up now, in response to my wave or someone else’s, to reveal not a boy but a small, ancient man with a wrinkled face and blackened teeth.
As the gap between the rails and the dock widened, the ship’s horn boomed above us, drowning out the shouts from the shore. Slowly the ship, like a great tired whale, pulled back into the waters of the bay and began to turn its nose to the sea. At last the people on the pier had become a single undulating wave, their shouts barely audible, and as the ship slipped away from them I felt a tremendous unexpected relief, as if all that could ever cause pain or do harm was being left behind on the receding shore, and my mother and I would melt now into an endless freedom as broad and as blue as the sea.
We stood at the rails until most of the crowd around us had filtered away. Gradually the wind stiffened, the smells of the shore, of Naples, of the crowds, giving way to the briny smell of the sea. For a few minutes my mother cried silently beside me.
‘Is grandfather going to die while we’re away?’ I asked her, when she’d stopped crying.
‘Maybe.’
‘Do we have to live with my father when we get to America?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I don’t know.’
When we went down to our room, finally, the bay of Naples was no larger than a cup you could hold in the palm of your hand, and we were on the open sea.