The Children's Train

by Viola Ardone

  Tommasino doesn’t get it. Until a few days ago, it was them chasing me. Now it feels like the opposite. My hand has been shaken in a promise, and it has started making plans for the future. Tommasino pulls a file from the pile on his desk and leafs through the papers inside. Then he scribbles an address and a number on a scrap of yellow notepaper.

  Tommasino and I say goodbye as if we would be seeing each other the next day, as two friends always say goodbye. I have only taken a few steps when he calls me back.

  “Wait! There’s something I want to give you.”

  He starts rummaging through his desk drawer and eventually finds the piece of paper folded in four.

  “I went to look for this after you came to see me. You brought back so many memories . . .”

  He unfolds the yellowing sheet, and the faces of three children sketched in pencil appear: the coal head, “evil hair,” and the dirty, straw-haired tomboy.

  “Those are the portraits that young man drew of us the day we left,” I say.

  “You keep it; it’s a gift from me. He signed and dated it. Comrade Maurizio, remember?”

  I say nothing. I fold the sheet back in four and look down at the toes of my shoes, still amazed they are not hurting. I rest a hand on the door handle and gaze out the window. The wind is bending the treetops in the direction of the sea. The weather is changing.

  51

  THERE IS A BRASS PLAQUE ON THE DARK WOODEN door: A. SPERANZA. It could be me. This could be my house, my life, but it’s not. This is Agostino’s apartment and his life. I don’t know if it has been better or worse than mine. There’s grass and then there are weeds. That’s what you used to think. I stand in front of the door without knocking and try to conjure up the other Amerigo, the one who stayed in the city where he was born and lived there all his life. I can see him strolling through the narrow streets and alleys, different but the same. Made different by a different life. Fatter, perhaps. With less hair. A darker complexion. More smiley. With a woman at his side. A woman with black hair and big breasts. He would be a craftsman, or a factory worker. He would have gone to work with Mariuccia’s father, the cobbler. That’s what you wanted. Then, as he grew up, he would have opened a little shoe store. He would have resoled shoes and made them as good as new. He would have adapted them to the feet of those who had to wear them. Because he knew what it meant to wear shoes that did not belong. Or perhaps he would have made shoes himself; handcrafted ones. The shop might have done well or it might not have. It might even have been very successful. He would have exported his shoes abroad. To America. And he would have taken you there. He would have taken care of you.

  THERE’S A BELL BUT I DON’T PUSH IT. I KNOCK GENTLY, with my knuckles.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice asks from inside.

  “Amerigo. You don’t know me. I came to say goodbye to the boy.”

  I can hear voices behind the door. The woman is talking to her son, who is in the other room watching TV. Then silence. I knock again and finally the door opens a chink, just enough for me to see a pair of hazel eyes set in a long, thin face framed by blond bangs.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” my sister-in-law says. “I can’t let you in; I’m not allowed to let anyone in. Agostino has told me a lot about you.”

  “We’re family, can we at least use first names?” I say, peering into the space between the door and the wall.

  “My name’s Rosaria,” she says, reaching her hand out through the gap. “Listen, if you like, you could take Carmine out for a bit. I’m not allowed out of the house.”

  The boy slips through the opening and grabs my hand.

  “Uncle!” he exclaims. His eyes are shining as if I had kept my promise, after all.

  “I’ll bring him back in an hour or so, don’t worry,” I say.

  “I’m not worried,” she answers.

  She is about to close the door when she changes her mind.

  “You’re not to worry either,” she says, her expression tense. Her face is still young and fresh; the bags under her eyes must be a recent addition. “Agostino is a good man. They’ve got it all wrong. We are all respectable people here.”

  “Of course,” I answer, a little embarrassed. “I know.”

  “No, you don’t know anything,” she says, opening the chink a little wider. I can now see her hands resting on the doorjamb. Her fingers are long and tapered, her nails cut short, like a pianist’s. “You don’t know anything about us; you have never cared one bit.”

  As she is speaking, bringing her face closer to mine, so that she can be heard without shouting, I discover that her eyes are not hazel but dark green.

  “I’m sorry, Rosaria,” I say, as if the apologies I owe her are also for you, Mamma.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Rosaria says, suddenly changing tone as if she’s no longer angry, just sad. “When Agostino gets home, I’ll have him call you. He’s made mistakes with you, too.” As she says this, she gives a shy half-smile. She closes the door before I have time to say anything.

  “Shall we go?” he says.

  We stroll through the tree-lined avenues of this residential quarter. It feels like we are in another city. The faces are a different color, the features less pronounced, the tone of voice lower, the air cooler.

  “Have you always lived here?” I ask him.

  “No, when I was little, we all lived with Nonna Antonietta. That’s what they told me, anyhow. I can’t remember. But I was always at her house even when we lived here. I slept and played there. I went to the oratory playground at Don Salvatore’s church . . .”

  “You also hung out with your friends making trouble . . .”

  “Mamma’s always a wreck.”

  “Mine was, too.”

  “That’s not true! Nonna was cheerful.”

  Love is always filled with misunderstanding.

  We walk toward the park.

  “Would you like an ice cream?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “You don’t like ice cream?”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “What do you feel like?”

  “I miss Nonna.”

  “Me, too.”

  We walk in silence for a while, until we reach the park gates. The boy pulls my hand.

  “You’re leaving again, aren’t you?”

  I can’t face lying to him.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’ll be back soon.”

  “Well, we’d better go quickly then.”

  “To do what?”

  “It’s a secret just for you. A surprise from Nonna. She said that when you came, we would surprise you together, but now . . .”

  I look at him, and for the first time since I met him, he smiles. I realize he has a gap in his front teeth. Here they say a tooth mouse takes your baby teeth away.

  “Now I don’t know if it’s still a surprise.”

  “Let’s see,” I say.

  We go up the hill again and take the Funicolare Centrale. We get to your neighborhood, with its low buildings, crammed tight together, and its railings draped with drying laundry, wedged-in between the more elegant streets, a stone’s throw from the piazza where the theater is. In your street, people’s voices take me back in time to when everyone was chanting, “Good evening, Donna Antonietta!” “Top of the day to you, Donna Pachiochia!” “How’s the little one today?” “He’s growing so fast, just like the weeds . . .” they would chant. “How’s business today?” “I don’t understand, Pachiochia . . .” “Well, ask Capa ’e Fierro . . .” “There are too many tongue waggers around!” “Is your husband coming back?” “Of course he is!” “Ex-cuse me, Donna Antonietta!” “Good ni-ight, Donna Pachiò.”

  WHEN WE GET TO YOUR DOOR, I TAKE CARMINE’S hand and squeeze it, just a little. The door is still on the latch. Nobody has touched anything. We go in together. I feel sadness in my stomach. The boy leads me to your bed.

  “It’s under here,” he says.

  I don
’t understand.

  “It’s here. Your surprise.”

  I crouch down on the floor and look under the bed, where once upon a time Capa ’e Fierro stored his contraband. I look at the boy. His lips are pressed tight, holding in his excitement. I’m excited, too. I stretch out my arm and touch it.

  “Nonna took ages, but she finally found it. We wanted to give it to you next time you came down.”

  I pull out the dusty case and open it. The violin is even smaller than I remembered it, almost like a toy. It feels like I’m receiving it as a gift again, only this time it’s from you. Inside the case there’s still the label with my name on it: “Amerigo Speranza.”

  “See? You’re a Speranza, too.”

  I run my fingertips over the strings and see the colored paper it had been wrapped in on my birthday. I remember Maestro Serafini giving me lessons at the back of Alcide’s workshop, my pleasure at hearing the screeches becoming softer and sweeter, the more I practiced and the more expert my fingers became.

  “You’re happy, right?”

  The boy is not asking; he’s commanding.

  52

  I’VE COME TO THE GRAVEYARD TO BRING YOU A flower. For the first time in many years, we are alone. Just you and me. At first, I tried praying, but I soon realized improvising was not a good idea under the circumstances. Then I tried talking to you. I thought I had important things to say to you, but nothing came to mind. I’d consumed so much rage that I’d forgotten why I was angry.

  The sky is still. The weather is neither good nor bad; it’s waiting to see what happens. A few people, mostly old, are looking for their loved ones along the rows of gravestones. They are carrying fresh flowers and oil for the grave lights. I’ve put my flower in front of your stone. I haven’t set out any lights. I remember you didn’t like going to sleep with the lights on. The flower will wither tomorrow or the day after. It doesn’t matter. The memory of you will not lose its bloom; all the years I spent far away from you have turned into a long love letter. Every note I played, I played for you. There’s not much else. I have nothing else to say. I don’t need to know your answers now. About my father, about Agostino, about your distance, about my silence. My questions are still there. I’ll keep them with me, take them around. They’ll keep me company. I haven’t resolved anything, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

  I stay for a while in front of my flower. I stand there until my legs start to ache. Then, and only then, I say goodbye.

  The things we haven’t said to each other, we’ll never say now. For me, it was enough to know that you were on the other end of that railway line, all those miles away for all those years, with my coat clasped to your breast in a cross. That’s where you will always be. Stay there. Wait. Don’t go.

  53

  ALL OF A SUDDEN, IT’S COLD. IT’S JUNE, BUT IT could be November. It rained last night. A storm that felt like the end of the world. And yet this morning a wan sun came up: a thin, wrinkled thing, suspended in the gray sky. The temperature has dropped, though, an advance warning of fall. People on the street mutter that nothing is certain these days. They had had to get their coats out from the inside of the wardrobes where they had been stored for the coming winter.

  Garibaldi Station is crowded. When we used to go with Tommasino to watch the departing trains, everything looked twice the size. I remember the speaker system announcing arrivals and departures, people hauling heavy suitcases onto their shoulders and making their way along the platforms. I look up at the display, read the numbers, and walk slowly to my platform. The last time I was here, it was dark. You and I had argued, and I’d run barefoot away from the singing and lights of the Piedigrotta Festival. Since then, I’ve always avoided train stations. They made me uncomfortable. But yesterday, I went to a travel agency and changed my plane ticket to a train ticket. I feel the need to take the same journey I took so many years ago.

  A cold wind starts to blow. Everyone waiting on the platform wraps their coats around them more closely. I shiver in my linen jacket.

  It has started to rain hard. I arrived in this city drenched in sweat and leave it soaked with rain. And yet I don’t feel sad. The cheerfulness of the sun and the blue sky is a falsehood propagated by popular songs, while the dripping rain serves to remind me that time is passing and it is getting late.

  I LOOK AT MY WATCH AND TURN AROUND ONE LAST time. I look over at the people huddling under the shelter and I sigh. The train pulls into the station with an out-of-tune whistle and screeches to a halt. I clamber slowly up the steps of the carriage, checking my ticket to see where my seat is. I don’t sit down. I carry on staring at the platform shelter, waiting. A blond woman with a big suitcase bumps into me as she tries to maneuver her way past without asking permission. I’m about to tell her off rudely, but just at that moment I see them coming. Running against the wind, which is whipping up more strongly than before, hair flying, I see them go past my carriage and then stop a few yards ahead. The train gives another whooshing sound, but the doors are still open. I hurry out of the carriage. Carmine lets go of Maddalena’s hand and runs toward me.

  “The bus was late, there was traffic,” he says, out of breath while I crouch down beside him. I don’t say anything but I hold him tight.

  “When I come back, I want to see you here waiting for me, okay?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” Carmine says. “I’ll come with Papa.”

  The conductor gives a last whistle, and I go back on board. I put my head out the window, stretching my hand out, but I can’t reach the boy’s hand. I’ve given him my violin. The one you left for me. It’s just the right size for him. Who knows whether he’ll ever want to learn. He could do it right here, without needing to run away, without having to barter his dreams with everything he has.

  Then the doors close, and the train starts moving. Maddalena and Carmine grow smaller and smaller, moving into the distance as the tracks slide under the carriage.

  The city starts to recede, slowly at first, then faster, while tiny drops of rain bounce off the window at increasing speed. I sit in my seat and gaze outside: at the trees and houses running beside me, the tracks slipping past, the clouds.

  A woman in a flowery dress sits opposite me. She opens a book and starts reading. She looks up from the pages every now and again, studying my face. Then she points at the violin case and smiles.

  “Are you a musician? I’m a great fan of orchestral music.”

  “I’m a violinist.”

  “Did you come for a concert?”

  “No, I came back to say hello to my family. I live in another city, but this is my home,” I answer, surprised at how easy the truth is.

  She reaches out her hand and introduces herself. I shake her hand and smile.

  “Pleasure to meet you. Amerigo,” I say, adding after a second, “Speranza.”

  The carriage is the perfect temperature; neither too hot nor too cold. The train glides silently. The voices around me hum and buzz. There’s lots of time, and I’m in no hurry. I’ve already had the longest possible journey, retracing my steps all the way back to you, Mamma.

  My violin is on the rack. The woman opposite is absorbed in her book. Every now and again our gazes meet. I suddenly feel exhausted, like a satisfied child who has everything he needs. I close my eyes, rest my head on the back of the seat, and succumb softly to sleep.

  A Note on the Lyrics

  The lyrics here, here, and here are taken from the popular Socialist song “La Lega” (The League).

  The lyrics here are taken from the song “Marcia Reale” (Royal March). Lyrics and music by Giuseppe Gabetti.

  The lyrics here are taken from the popular Tuscan lullaby “Ninna Nanna, Ninna oh.”

  The lyrics here and here are taken from the popular Italian song “Bella Ciao.”

  The lyrics here are taken from “Nessun Dorma” in the opera Turandot, libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, music by Giacomo Puccini.

  The lyrics here are taken from “Libia
mo ne’ lieti calici” in the opera La Traviata, libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, music by Giuseppe Verdi.

  The lines here are taken from the popular Italian song “Bandiera Rossa” (Red Flag).

  A Note From the Translator

  The name of the central character of the novel, Amerigo (America) Speranza (Hope), signals a search of an identity. Is the father he never knew seeking his fortune in America, as his mother claimed? Hope is his only birthright; his name a talisman against bad luck. As with his shoe-counting game, Amerigo swings precariously between two different fates: spotting a pair of good shoes gives him the points for a star-studded prize, but he has never had any of his own to wear.

  This novel was a challenge to translate, due to the complex forms of fracture embodied by Amerigo Speranza himself: of language (dialect versus Italian, as well as puns and wordplay), class and opportunity (post-war misery versus economic boom), politics (monarchists versus communists), space (south versus north), and time (child versus adult, 1940s Naples and Naples today). How much can the translator “carry across” from the original? A great deal, I hope—hope is our birthright as translators, after all, or we would give up before starting.

  The first word in the novel—and in our own language development—is Mamma. In Amerigo’s perception, her primal name is often mediated and emotionally distanced by referring to her as “Mamma Antonietta,” a protective double that heralds the second mother to come. Nicknames in Naples represent another form of duality: replacing real names for a lifetime—even featuring in death notices—they evoke a personality trait that is often an antithesis. For example, “Zandraglia” comes either from the French entrailles (innards) or the Spanish andrajo (rags); in any case, it means “vulgar” or “stupid,” whereas Zandragliona, Amerigo’s neighbor and safe harbor was anything but that. “Pachiocchia” comes from the Italian pacioccone, meaning someone who is soft and easy-going, which the formidable monarchist in the novel is nothing of the kind. “Capa ’e Fierro” literally means “head of iron.” Capo is also “boss” but the man who ran the rag trade turns out to be far less steely than Amerigo thought as a child. Returning as an adult, the name reels him back to his eternal quest for answers. Is Capa ’e Fierro the missing “head” Amerigo’s heart has always longed for?