This time, it was cold. There was a wind slicing the harbor in two, a wind that wouldn’t stop blowing. He could have taken shelter behind a warehouse wall, or a boat in dry dock, but he didn’t want to.
Plenty of steamships had set sail since she’d left, and he had come back every time, rain or shine, and he’d sat in their old spot even though he knew she wasn’t coming. Not for now.
What must it be like, to set sail in stormy weather? Maybe the sea was scarier, chilly and black, tossing and noisy, but then again, maybe without the scent of flowers in the air, without melodious strains of music, without the sun shining to catch all the colors out of the houses along the waterfront, vanishing slowly into the distance, maybe then the departure weighed less on you.
The emigrants hugged each other close to keep warm. He scrutinized their faces, but he saw no trace of the fear that had once been there. Things had changed. They’d changed for everyone: for him too.
The departure of the steamship: that had always been their place and their time. For the two of them. Ever since, all those many years ago, they were little more than children. She’d followed him here, without asking a thing: she’d understood intuitively. Because they understood each other.
Both of them silent, both of them determined, both of them poor, both of them convinced that they wouldn’t always be.
But he wondered now, as the sailor lowered the gangway with the passenger list in one hand, what did they want from the future? Did they really want the same things?
He pulled his collar tight, lowered his cap over his ears. America. What he wanted was America.
So many people had told him that, with his skills, he could make plenty of money. In America, there was no tradition, nor was there imagination. His ambition would know no bounds.
Because yes, he was ambitious. No one had ever understood just how ambitious he really was. He was good at what he did, and he was going to get even better. But what good is it to have a skill, what good are success, money, reputation, except to make the person you love happy? What good is all that, if it doesn’t bring a smile to anyone’s lips?
He would have liked America, but with her. Without her, America was empty. It meant nothing.
For so long now, one steamship after another, he’d hoped that she would fall in love with the idea: him and her together, across the sea, far away from those who didn’t understand, far away from those who let life roll over them. Him and her together in a new world, part of a people who were capable of looking the future in the eye and changing it.
He’d been told that across the ocean, there were no aristocrats. That what you were was what you were, and that you could build something without anyone asking your name or who your parents had been. He’d been told that you could even become president, which was something like being king, even if you came from the manure of the stables.
Here, on the other hand, if you were you, you remained you, even if you were a genius capable of working miracles with your hands.
But she didn’t want to leave. She was captivated, he could sense it, and she cared for him; maybe not as much he cared for her, but enough to accept as a given that they were going to spend their lives together. That’s the way things were, where they lived. Two people would meet, and they’d stay together for the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t part ways, they wouldn’t take different paths. Together for the rest of their lives. The two of them had met and they were never to part, just like their parents before them, and their grandparents before them, and so on, back into the dark night of time.
This is what he couldn’t seem to figure out, as he watched the weary line of emigrants wend its way up the gangway, lashed by the gusts of chilly wind. If he wanted to leave, why hadn’t she just accepted that? Why hadn’t she said yes, like women were supposed to, and then set about helping him scrape together the money for the tickets?
He’d understood that she didn’t want to go, and he’d stopped talking about it. He’d hidden his dream from everyone. That had been their secret, the reason they sat in silence, among the hawsers and the nets: they watched the departures that would always be for others, never for them.
She was different. That was the truth. Her eyes were different, her hands were different, her mouth was different. Different. She didn’t belong to their world, even though she was born there just as he had been, even though she had breathed the same air and eaten the same bread, even though when it was a feast day she put on her Sunday best and linked arms with him so that he felt like the king of the world. She was different.
When she had told him, right on that spot, as they were watching a steamship depart, that she was going to be leaving, but leaving him, he had died. He’d felt the blood stop in his veins, and if he hadn’t spoken, if he hadn’t shouted out his despair, it was only because he didn’t want to sever the thread that still held them together.
Because love—he thought to himself as he watched a woman pick up her toddler, who was unable to climb up the gangway on his own—love is a germ. A disease that springs from a tiny seed and takes root in a specific spot. At the bottom of your heart.
She had promised that she’d come back. That it was just a matter of time, the time needed to gather the strength, the money, and the prosperity so they could stay together for good.
She had promised that they’d never be apart again and that, however long it took, sooner or later their paths would converge again.
She had promised.
But she was different. She belonged to another world, not to his. And he, who was of that place, of that neighborhood, would never have another woman, because she was his companion, and she had been on his arm the night of the festival, when they set fire to the bell tower and made a wish.
He had her. He had no one but her.
At the bottom of his heart.