Chapter 25
venticinque
The next day Alessio chose a lazy sleep-in until ten, followed by a video call with his parents over WhatsApp and coffee.
‘Not at all surprised by this news, Less. Congrats.’ Joe fiddled with his glasses as Silvana nudged him aside and claimed some space in the call window.
‘Bravo. And how did it feel to be cooking again?’ Silvana scoured Alessio’s face for any sign of trouble or distress.
Alessio rubbed the sleep from his eyes. ‘Amazing, actually. The rhythm and energy of the festa was really distracting. It helped me just focus on my hands and the steps ahead of me.’
Silvana beamed. ‘Ah! So wonderful! Just go slow, darling.’
Alessio nodded. ‘I will. While the stakes are obviously high, it felt really settling to just be cooking, to be able to focus on the creativity. The ingredients. The plate. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that.’
‘Great,’ said Joe with what sounded like relief. ‘And when’s the next round?’
‘In a month. Sorry I haven’t had the chance to call sooner. I’ve really just been trying to take everything in. The town’s busy. Feels like all of Italy has infiltrated the south for the summer.’
‘Catch your breath when you can, mate. All you can do. And what’s going on with the Nonna search? Anything come up yet?’
‘Nothing. I’ve pulled the comune records room apart a number of times. I’ve spoken to some locals. Checked the cemetery for names and possible connections. But I swear, there’s no trace of Immacolata Mazzotta ever having existed in Impastino.’
Joe’s eyes widened. ‘Mazzotta? Less, you’ve got this all wrong.’
Alessio leaned in. ‘Wrong?’
‘You’re confused, love. Have you forgotten?’ Silvana chimed in. ‘My mum was a Mazzotta.’
‘Fuck.’ Alessio drew a blank. ‘What was Nonna Immacolata’s maiden name?’
‘Martino.’
Alessio and Francesca strode across the piazza in the direction of the comune with renewed hope. Everything was now in limbo, hanging somewhere between potential and desperation.
‘How many Martino families are there in Impastino?’ he asked.
‘Just the one,’ said Francesca grimly.
‘So my nonna was one of—’
‘Eh, sì.’
Rounding the bend by Lu Ientu, they made a beeline for the comune office.
Alessio and Francesca entered the welcome hall, catching Elisa off guard at the desk. ‘Buongiorno!’ she said. ‘Tutto bene?’
‘Ask me once we’re done in there!’ Alessio said, gesturing towards the records room, and Elisa tossed him the key.
Alessio pushed the door open and flicked on the light as Elisa cast a blessing upon them both. ‘Che Dio vi benedica.’
Alessio closed the door behind them and they stood there a moment, unsure where to start. The thrum of this new knowledge, the uncertainty of what they’d find, left him feeling torn.
Francesca caught his clammy cheeks between her hands. ‘I’m here, no? Whatever happens. If we find something. If we don’t find something. All we can say is that we tried. Ok?’
Alessio nodded into her palms and relinquished some of his worry and fear.
A dead end to this point, but he had been looking in the wrong places.
It was just that with what he knew now about the family she’d been born into, he wondered if he would stumble on a history perhaps Nonna Immacolata had wished no one to find.
‘Thank you. I needed that.’ He returned his attention to the shelves of bound documents. ‘Because we don’t have her definitive birth date, should we just start looking for an Immacolata Martino in the immigration records? Wouldn’t that capture all those personal details anyway?’
Francesca’s eyes rolled over the bookcases of ledgers and folders. ‘We can only try.’
Alessio rubbed his hands over his face, then shook out his limbs. ‘Ok, let’s do this.’
This was why he had come to Impastino. This was the reason everything else that had happened had fallen into place. Because of Immacolata.
Nonna, wherever you are, let me find you. Help me make sense of you. I just know there’s more to your story. Please.
Alessio accepted the pair of white gloves Francesca passed him, and together they returned to the stretch of shelves labelled Immigrazioni and then the subsections grouped by year.
The dates ranged from the late nineteenth century, through the First World War period, the twenties and thirties, and eventually, the post–World War Two era.
‘And she definitely emigrated in 1946?’ Francesca ran her gloved hand across the yellowing date stickers.
‘That’s what we think. Dad says she married Nonno in 1946 when she arrived in Melbourne. Nonno emigrated first.’
One by one they withdrew each of the document catalogues, setting them on the table between them as they took a seat. With great care they scanned each of the binders which were divided into months, flipping to the ‘M’ section.
Gennaio, 1945 . . . Martino, Paolo.
Marzo, 1945 . . . Martino, Arcangelo. Martino, Orazio.
For the most part, the Martino immigrants in 1945 had been men.
By the time they reached the end of the 1945 records, Alessio’s nerve was beginning to fray. He grunted, slipping the final Dicembre, 1945 binder back into its original place on the shelf.
‘Tranquillo,’ Francesca murmured with a placating hand on his back. ‘We look to 1946. You said it yourself, that’s when you believe she left.’
Alessio pulled the Gennaio, 1946 binder from the shelf, and with a heavy sigh, carefully opened it to the first name.
Together they gently turned each page until they found the Martino entries – of which there were two, Adelina and Elisabetta.
In Febbraio, 1946, there were another two, and again in Marzo.
Another one in Aprile. They too were all women.
In fact, looking across all the names of immigrants whose names were printed in the 1946 binders to that point, nearly all were women.
They reached Settembre, 1946 and opened to ‘M’.
MAN . . . MAP . . . MAR . . .
Eventually arriving at Martino, they found Giuseppina and Rosa. And there, nestled between the two women’s pages, was a roughly torn edge where an entry must have been removed from the tight paper binding.
Alessio’s breath caught. ‘A Martino is missing.’ He flicked between Giuseppina and Rosa, both Martino and in alphabetical order per the rest of the catalogues. ‘Immacolata. I. That would fit the alphabetical order. Could she have been removed?’
‘It’s possible.’
Alessio traced his finger down the roughly torn paper edge. ‘I can’t believe this. Fuck.’
‘Stop.’ Francesca pulled the binder from him. ‘We put this aside and keep going. Don’t just assume the worst. We check the rest of the year, and 1947 to be sure. And we go back to 1944, and check there too.’
‘She is in death as she was in life. Stubborn!’
He hadn’t intended the comment to be humorous, but it drew a kind laugh from Francesca. ‘She is probably looking down on us and laughing at our misfortune.’
With his head in his hands, he said, ‘That would have been like her.’
‘Allora . . .’ Francesca sighed, as if that were explanation enough. ‘We carry on.’
And so they did, binder after binder, catching the years and months, checking them all, drawing only the same conclusion. No sign of Immacolata Martino.
The pair eventually slumped in unison over the desk, having returned all the binders and catalogues to the shelves.
Alessio reached across to take Francesca’s gloved hand in thanks, but saw that she was peering at something on a shelf across the little room.
Alessio turned and looked in the same direction. ‘What have you seen?’ he asked.
‘Partenze, navi,’ she read at a distance. ‘“Departures, ships”.’
Francesca rose and led him to the shelf she was looking at. She reached out and thumbed the spines of the catalogues.
‘You said she left in 1946 . . .’
‘We think. She married Nonno when she arrived. It was late in the year.’
She took the 1946 catalogue to the table and opened it, noting that it was arranged a little differently from the others. There was an index, outlining each departure by passenger. Surname, then Christian name. Date of birth. Port of departure. Intended port of arrival. Ship. Date of departure.
The pair flicked through the index pages, arriving at M.
They scanned down the rows. There were the same Martino names they had found in the 1946 catalogues. But there was no Immacolata Martino in the list.
‘Maybe we have the dates wrong. Let’s check the 1947 one,’ Alessio started. But Francesca had caught his arm and pulled him back to the desk.
Her voice broke. ‘Ale, guarda . . .’
Alessio’s eyes met the name Francesca’s finger indicated and his hands moved to his temples.
‘Ranieri, Immacolata. Data di nascita: 2 febbraio 1925. Porto di partenza: Bari. Porto di arrivo: Melbourne, Australia. Data di partenza: 14 settembre 1946.’ His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
‘What the fuck? Ranieri? But her maiden name was Martino.’
His eyes flicked to Francesca, who was staring into space as she thought.
‘How could this even—?’
In a slow whisper, as if still needing to process the revelation, Francesca said, ‘She lied to you all. They lied to you.’
‘Who?’
Francesca rose suddenly and bolted out the door to the reception desk. Bewildered, Alessio followed.
Alessio watched Francesca rattle off something to Elisa in Italian, the vast majority of which he couldn’t catch. But whatever it was she said, Elisa’s eyebrows rose ever higher as her pen met the corner of her lips.
Eventually Elisa pulled away from her desk and craned her head so she could see into the records room. She gestured that something could be found down low and to the right, and before Alessio knew it, Francesca had bounded back into the room.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
She didn’t turn to look at him but instead tugged out a folder which hit the parquetry floor with a thud. Francesca flinched at her clumsiness. ‘Cazzo!’ she said, scooping it up.
‘Here, let me help you.’ The folder was the largest of all they had looked through and easily four or five times the weight. He took it from her and set it down on the desk. ‘What’s this?’
‘I think the answers to all your questions lie in here,’ she said, and Alessio could see the whites of her eyes redden. ‘Just give me a moment and I’ll explain everything.’
Alessio watched as she opened the folder.
It took her a moment to get her bearings, scanning dates and names.
‘It’s not like the other folders. It’s all in one.
It’s in order, but not marked or categorised by dates .
. .’ She continued to trace her fingers across pages, saying the odd word aloud.
‘1945 . . . Gennaio . . . Cantuccio. Rossi . . . Agosto . . . No. Ah! 1946 . . .’ Then her checking slowed.
Page by page she read, turning, scanning, flipping, until finally she exhaled.
Swallowing, she turned the page around so she could translate the entry for him.
‘Martino, Immacolata, Impastino, Province of Foggia, Italy. Married Antonio Ranieri, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, the fifth of May, 1946.’
Alessio stood frozen to the spot, his mouth agape. ‘How is that even possible? She emigrated in September!’
Francesca whispered, ‘Because she was a proxy bride.’