Ciro heard a variety of Italian dialects. Ciro’s own, the Bergamasque of the Lombardy region, was heavily influenced by the Swiss that bordered them to the north. The Venetians, by contrast, had low, rolling vowels and enunciated clearly, something Ciro was quick to pick up as influenced by the French. He heard all manners of Italian spoken—Barese, Tuscan, Calabrese, and Sicilian. The world was noisy. As Ciro looked around, he was the only person who seemed to be listening.
Sometimes there was no need for words. Ciro watched as young women floated through the crowd. Perhaps it was their lace shift dresses, or the soft sway of the cream-colored tulle on their hats, but they appeared light and airborne, moving like a dizzy constellation of white butterflies that hovered over the fields of Alta Vilminore in the springtime.
Ciro saw people he had only read about in books. Turks wore starched tunics in shades of indigo, the color of the waves of the Adriatic, embroidered with silver thread. Portuguese laborers, squat and muscular, wore overalls, straw hats, and looks of defiance. French nuns, wearing white winged wimples, skimmed down the steps into steerage like a flock of gray pigeons.
The sisters of San Nicola had taught Ciro to seek the nuns dressed like them, le bianconere, the “black-and-whites” who wore a large wooden cross on rosary beads draped from the waist. He had been instructed to approach them and explain his connection. The sisters promised he would never be turned away from any convent of their order, if he ever found himself without a place to stay.
Two old British men wearing rumpled wool suits with plaid vests, the uniforms of il professore, climbed the steps to first class, speaking proper English. An Italian family, with grandmother in tow, headed to second class. She directed her grandsons on the proper technique for hauling the food hampers. It occurred to Ciro that men pretended to run the family, but in truth, the women were in charge. He wondered why this family was emigrating, as it appeared that they were doing well in Italy. It occurred to Ciro that most people were not on the run as he was. Perhaps they were looking for an adventure, just for its own sake. He could not imagine the luxury of that.
“Ciao.”
“Ciao,” Ciro said as he turned to face a man of thirty, with thick brown hair, who wore an immaculate white uniform with colorful bars across the pocket.
“Are you the captain?” Ciro asked.
“The bursar. I’m Massimo Zito.” The man smiled. “I hire the crew here.”
“You speak Italian,” Ciro said, his ears ringing from the circus of sounds around him. “My Italian.”
“And French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. And a little Arabic.”
“The only language I speak is Italian,” Ciro told him. “And Latin, only because my brother insisted I learn it.”
“Why are you going to America?”
“To make money,” Ciro said. “Is there any other reason?”
“Si, Si. America has lovely women. Do you like blondes? The gold in their hair glitters like the gold in the streets. Brunettes? Like chestnuts, they’re everywhere. Redheads? Like apples in trees, available by the bushel. They work in factories and crack their gum.”
“They can do whatever they want, as long as they talk to me.” Ciro laughed.
A lovely young woman wearing an apricot dress with periwinkle calfskin boots glided up the plank into first class. Ciro and Massimo watched her go.
“I hope this trip takes a lifetime if all the girls on board are that beautiful,” Ciro said.
Massimo laughed. “It’s a brief lifetime. We’ll arrive in nine days. Are you alone?”
“Yes, Signore,” Ciro said.
“Are you looking for a job?”
“That depends,” Ciro said. “What position are you offering?”
“I need another man in the boiler room. Shoveling coal.”
“What are you paying?” Ciro looked off in the bustle below and squinted nonchalantly, just as Iggy had taught him. Never show the padrone you want the job.
“I can pay you three dollars American for nine days’ work.”
“Three dollars?” Ciro shook his head. “I’m sorry. Can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“I need ten dollars for that job,” Ciro said. He gazed out over the docks absently, though his heart raced.
“That’s crazy.” Massimo’s voice went up an octave.
Ciro had no idea how hard the job in the belly of the ship would be; he only knew that he was strong, and certainly knew his way around a shovel. If he had dug a grave in a poor village for two lire, surely one American dollar was a fair daily wage for shoveling coal aboard an ocean liner. Ciro talked himself into his firm counteroffer with logic. “Ten dollars, Signor Zito,” Ciro replied evenly.
“You’re out of your mind. Eight dollars,” Massimo countered.
Ciro turned to face Massimo. “I suppose it would be difficile to find someone to shovel the coal at this point. I mean, we’re about to shove off here. You don’t have time to go and empty the local jail, or pick up an ambitious boy on the street who wants to take a ride to America. From the looks of the French boys, you’d be hard pressed to find one strong enough to do the work. They’re as lean as the overpriced baguettes they sell on the pier. I can appreciate the bind you’re in. How about this—I’ll take the eight dollars, if you’ll also refund the fare I paid to ride this boat.”
“You expect one hundred lire plus eight dollars?”
“I’m sure the rest of the crew gets their room and board for free. Including you.” Ciro leaned over the railing and studied the middle distance, awaiting Massimo’s counteroffer.
Finally, Massimo sighed. “You’re going to do very well in America.”
Waves of blistering heat greeted Ciro as Massimo Zito unhinged the entrance door to the furnace room. When the good sisters of Vilminore had taught Ciro about hell, he imagined an open pit with flames. The belly of the SS Chicago came close to their description.
The massive boiler room extended the length of the ship under a low steel-beamed ceiling. It held the mechanics for the coal ovens that heated the water that fed the steam engine. The storage bins for the coal were as deep as the ship, funneled through a large chute that led to the coal pit in the boiler room. From there, the crew shoveled the coal into the furnace. It would take 570 tons of coal to produce enough steam for the SS Chicago's transatlantic voyage, shoveled round the clock by thirty men in twelve-hour shifts. Ciro was the thirtieth hire.
Massimo Zito pulled the overseer off the job to meet Ciro. Christie Benet, a Frenchman and the boss of the operation, was covered in coal dust. The deep furrows of his brow seemed engraved in black ink, making the whites of his eyes look bright and menacing in contrast.
“He’ll do,” Benet told Massimo. He turned to Ciro. “There’s a pair of overalls in the pump room.” Benet turned back to the open mouth of the pit. Ciro was in awe of the mighty furnace, but more so of his good fortune. He had secured his first job, and he hadn’t yet set foot in America.
Massimo Zito took good care of the workers. Occasionally the men received the leftovers from first class, so Ciro sampled his first croissant, steamed asparagus, and boiled shrimp.
The men were allowed to bathe at the shift change before dawn. They climbed up to the second tier of the ship and, in an area cordoned off by bamboo screens, used one of the fire hoses as a showerhead and lye soap to scour off the coal dust. By the end of the week, Ciro noticed that the lye soap could not strip all of the coal-dust residue off his skin. His hands, face, and ears had a gray pallor where the dust had embedded itself in his pores. He understood why his fellow workers looked far older than he, when they were actually close in age. This was brutal work that took a toll on the body immediately.
Ciro pulled on a clean jumpsuit in the deck changing area before returning down to the pit. He took a moment to look out over the water. As the sun rose over the Atlantic, the sea took on a glistening coral patina. The distant horizon appeared fringed in gold. Ciro lit a cigarette and
took a long, slow drag off it. It was his sixteenth birthday that morning, and he took a quiet moment to celebrate it.
“Two more days,” said Luigi Latini, who had worked beside Ciro in the pit from the first day. Luigi was from the south, the province of Foggia on the Adriatic. He was of medium height, and built like a sturdy square box. At twenty, he looked out for Ciro like a reliable older brother. Luigi had a small nose and large brown eyes, which gave him the appearance of a thoughtful rabbit.
“It’s almost over, Luigi.” Ciro handed him the cigarette.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m meeting a family who has sponsored me. They live in Manhattan. How about you?”
“I’m going to Mingo Junction, Ohio. My parents made a match. I’m going to marry Alberta Patenza,” Luigi said as he handed the cigarette back to Ciro.
“Have you met her?”
“Only her picture. Che bella.”
“Have you written to her?”
“Oh, yes, many times.” Luigi said.
“You seem worried for a man who has a beautiful girl waiting for him.”
“What if she’s brutta? You know, there are stories. Parents make a match through letters, and they switch the pictures. Suddenly Philomena is replaced by Graciela. That sort of thing. You could end up with a faccia di bow wow when you thought you were getting a princess.”
“I hope that doesn’t happen to you.”
Luigi shrugged. “If it does, I run.”
Ciro laughed. “If you can run as fast as you shovel coal, you’ll do all right.”
“In photographs, Alberta’s nose is small, like mine.” Luigi rubbed the ridge of his nose with his fingers. “I need to keep this nose in the family. If I marry a girl with a big nose, then I have big-nosed babies, and I don’t want that.”
Ciro laughed. Luigi wasn’t the only man with a list of what he wanted in a wife. Ciro had been amending his list since he first noticed girls. He didn’t much care about her nose, but he did want a girl who was sweet, kind, and moved through the world with grace. She had to be beautiful, because like any work of art, beauty reveals new aspects over time. “You will have your small-nosed babies, Luigi,” Ciro said, taking the last drag off the cigarette before flicking it into the ocean. The orange tip flashed then went out in midair. “Everyone should have what they want.” Ciro leaned against the railing and remembered who had given him that bit of wisdom. Enza Ravanelli of Schilpario. The sky was cobalt blue the night he kissed her. He had been carrying a shovel exactly like the one he used to load coal into the pit of the SS Chicago.
Ciro had begun to notice the overlapping themes of his life. The seemingly disparate pieces of his experience weren’t so separate after all. Happenstance and accidents didn’t seem so random. The mystery of the connections intrigued him, but he wasn’t going to agonize about them, and he had not yet reached an age where he was interested in analyzing them either. He figured that all the threads of his experience would eventually be sewn together, taking shape in harmony and form to create a glorious work of art. But who would sew those pieces together? Who would make him whole? That was something Ciro thought about a lot.
Before he went to sleep, Ciro thought about girls instead of praying. Girls were a kind of religion to him. He visualized their sweet charms and the haunting details of their beauty, black eyes obscured by a tulle veil, a graceful hand on the stem of a parasol, or Concetta Martocci’s small ankles the night he caught her with the priest. These fleeting memories soothed him, but lately, as he drifted into sleep, his thoughts had gone to Enza Ravanelli, whose kiss he remembered with particular delight. When he thought of Enza, he didn’t imagine her lips, her eyes, or her hands. Rather, he saw her in full, standing before him in the blue night air, every aspect of her beauty revealed in the light.
Chapter 10
A GREEN TREE
Un Albero Verde
The morning the SS Chicago pulled into the docks of lower Manhattan, it felt to Ciro as if a champagne cork had been popped over New York City, drenching the harbor in gold confetti as sprays of sea foam showered the decks. Even the tugboats conspired to make a smooth transition as they nudged the ocean liner deftly into position without lurching or grinding against the pilings. The bellows of the horn and the cheers of the passengers lined up on deck seemed to give the ship its last shot of steam as it docked in the harbor.
Ciro and Luigi took in the splendor from the third-tier balcony. The island of Manhattan, shaped like a leaf, was staggered with stone buildings, pink in the morning light. The slate blue waves of the Hudson River rolled up to the shoreline in inky folds. The city skyline seemed to move, shifting and swaying under construction, as cranes and pulleys filled the air like marionette strings. Cables hauled slabs of granite, suspended thick steel beams, and lifted planks. Grand smokestacks chuffed billows of gray into the blue sky, where it dissolved like puffs from a gentleman’s pipe. Windows, too many to count, reflected prisms of light as the tracks of elevated trains circled in and around the buildings like black zippers.
Bergamo, with its bustling train station, did not compare; nor did Venice, with its crowded harbors, or Le Havre, with its frenzied ports. Big American noise surrounded them as crowds gathered on the docks below to cheer the arrival. A drum and bugle corps played, and girls twirled striped parasols like giant wheels. Despite the fanfare, Ciro’s heart was heavy. Eduardo was not there to share any of it. The louder the noise, the more shrill the din, the more lonely Ciro felt.
The metal gangplank of the Chicago hit the ground with a thud. The first-class passengers processed off the ship, moving slowly, preening themselves in their fresh costumes and hats without a thought to the passengers in steerage, who longed to disembark and move out of their cramped quarters into open space. The wealthy never seem to be in a hurry. Shiny black motorcars lined up to take the first-class passengers to their destinations. As the ladies climbed into the open cars in their spring hats decorated with white feathers and crystal sparkles, they resembled a box of French pastries dusted in powdered sugar.
Massimo Zito stood at the bottom of the plank with three attendants. Each émigré was instructed to pin a copy of the ship’s manifest to his chest, standard procedure for all who entered from a foreign country. They were directed to a line for the ferry that would take them to Ellis Island. After a handshake of gratitude for the bursar who had given him his first job, Ciro’s feet touched the ground of New York City at last.
Ciro and Luigi leaned against the railing on the ferry to Ellis Island and took in the fresh breeze as it skimmed across the Hudson, leaving a streamer of white foam on the gray river. Ciro was grateful for the company, as the ferry plowed closer to the shore of Ellis Island. On land, in the middle distance, a long gray line of immigrants filed into an enormous building, which seemed to occupy the entirety of the small island. The Statue of Liberty loomed over them like a schoolmarm herding children at her feet.
Suddenly the ferry lurched into place against the pilings of the docks, throwing the people onboard off their feet. Ciro grabbed the railing, steadied himself, and looped his duffel through his arms. Ciro and Luigi followed signs with red arrows into the reception hall of the main building, weaving in and out of the crowd with nothing to slow them down, as they were not tending to children, or herding grandparents, or keeping a family together.
The guard at the door, a brusque, heavyset woman in a gray uniform with a long plait of white hair down her back, glanced down at their papers. Ciro reached into his duffel and handed her a sealed envelope from Sister Ercolina. She ripped open the envelope, scanned the letter, and snapped it on to her clipboard.
“You”—the guard pointed to Luigi—“go there.” Luigi followed her finger and joined a line. “And you”—she pointed to Ciro—“there.” Ciro got in line next to Luigi. The lines were long and didn’t move.
“Welcome to America,” Luigi said as he surveyed the hundreds on line. “At this rate, I won’t see Mingo Junction
till next week.”
A deafening chatter reverberated throughout the massive hall. Ciro was in awe of the building, an architectural wonder. No cathedral ever stood so tall, with vaulted ceilings so high. The arched windows were so close to the sun, they filled the atrium with bright natural light. Ciro looked up at the windows and wondered how they were washed. Under his feet, a polished terra-cotta brick floor glistened, the golden hue of the bricks reminding him of the convent floor he’d polished as a boy.
Ciro observed hundreds of people standing in twelve long single-file lines, separated by waist-high iron bars, their duffels stacked around them like sandbags in a gulley. There were Hungarians, Russians, the French, and many Greeks, all waiting patiently on their best behavior. Mostly he saw Italians, perhaps because he was looking for them.
Ciro couldn’t imagine that there was a single person left in southern Italy. Surely they were all here under this massive roof—Calabrese, Sicilian, Barese, and Neopolitan, old, young, newborn. Beyond the lines, he saw doctors examining one immigrant after another, tapping their backs, checking their tonsils, grazing their fingertips across their necks. A peasant mother cried out when a nurse took her baby, swaddled in flannel. An officer who spoke Italian quickly came to her aid, and allowed the woman off the line to accompany her child.
“There’s a nursery in the back,” Ciro heard a woman explain as she mopped her face with a bandana. “All the babies go there. They have milk.”
Ciro took off his coat and undid his scarf to prepare for his examination. His line had begun to move. He looked back at Luigi, who had barely budged. A nurse motioned Ciro forward.