Death 4 Drowning （Immigration） #12
“No,” Stella said, the fire roiling in her belly.
“He cheated me again. I knew I gave him six, but he must have switched the coin really fast, and he tricked me into giving him another five.” She was so furious—with the man as well as with herself—that her vision clouded with a silver fog.
She blinked to clear her eyes and saw that Assunta and Cettina were looking at her blankly.
“So altogether,” she explained, “I gave him a one-lira coin, a five-lira, and another five-lira. Even considering I took one lira back, I still paid ten lire for what should have been a one-lira journey.”
Having wrapped her head around the tragedy now, Cettina gasped. Assunta clucked her tongue and said, “Madonn’.” Cicciu was intent on his suppressata, or perhaps on not meeting Stella’s eye.
Stella took in a lungful of air. She needed to calm herself down. “How can a man be that evil? Stealing from people who can’t protect themselves?”
“The world is full of evil people, my little mouse,” Assunta said.
Her eyes were red from crying about her mother, but now she was focused on her daughter.
Stella tried to swallow, but her mistake was caught in her throat.
“You can’t trust anyone in this world, no one but yourself.
You have to know exactly what you believe, so you can stick to it.
Otherwise people will always try to cheat you or confuse you.
” Assunta patted the bed beside her. “Come sit, Stella, and have some bread.”
Stella turned to the wall to gather herself, but regarded her mother from the corner of her eye.
Assunta’s advice to trust no one was an adage everyone repeated without thinking about what it meant.
But Stella was thinking about what it meant.
About knowing what you believe—she had believed she had given the driver six lire, and he convinced her her beliefs were wrong.
It was her fault for being weak of mind and will.
That night, Stella lay in the uncomfortable bed, head to foot with her mother and sister, and polished the crystal of rage and shame in her heart.
She would not be weak. She would know what was what—she would never allow self-doubt again.
She would be ready for every situation; she would never, ever let anyone take advantage of her.
If they did, it would be because she deserved it.
A BOY ONLY A FEW YEARS OLDER than Stella met the Fortunas at the hotel at eight o’clock the next morning to bring them to Signor Martinelli, the emigration agent.
He checked to make sure they had brought their passport photos, then led them on a short walk through the stony streets, down a wide boulevard and into the agency office.
There were fifteen other people already waiting.
There was room on one of the benches for Assunta, but not for anyone else.
“It’s a busy day, with the boat leaving tomorrow,” the boy explained. “Wait here and Signor Martinelli will call you.” Their escort left, Stella guessed to pick up other families at other hotels.
They waited for perhaps an hour. Periodically the door to the private office opened, emitting a family, and Signor Martinelli would read another name from a list. The crowd in the waiting room ebbed and replenished itself with new arrivals.
Assunta, who had cheered up a bit, sang songs to little Luigi.
Cicciu taught Giuseppe the rules to a new card game.
Cettina was mostly quiet. Stella didn’t broach conversation with her sister, though; she was beset by a distracting anxiety that overwhelmed even her exhaustion.
Stella had begun to grow hungry by the time Signor Martinelli called them into his office. He sat behind a beautiful shining wooden desk and Assunta and Cicciu took the two stools before it. The children stood, Cettina holding Luigi, who was really too big for it, on her hip.
Signor Martinelli, a balding man whose face was dominated by a fluffy gray mustache, examined a sheaf of papers. For Stella, the bad feeling had already set in—the conviction that something was wrong. His expression was confirmation.
“You’re the Signora Fortuna,” he said at last. He had the same Napolitano accent they had been hearing since they arrived, but he spoke slowly and clearly. He must have been used to emigrants speaking dialects from all over the southern provinces. “Assunta Mascaro, yes?”
“She is,” Cicciu answered.
“And you must be Mario?” Signor Martinelli asked.
There were several beats of silence. “No,” Cicciu said finally. “I’m their cousin Francesco. I’m just their chaperone.”
“You’re not traveling.”
“No, signore.”
Signor Martinelli raised his eyes to examine each of the standing children. “All right. Which of you is Mario?”
Another silence descended on the room. Stella was the one to reply, finally, when Cicciu did not. “There is no Mario, signore. We are Stella, Concettina, Giuseppe, and Luigi.” She indicated each Fortuna as she spoke their names.
“Stella?” Signore Martinelli repeated. “Stella who?”
Stella blinked, the anxiety humming in her ears. “Mariastella Fortuna,” she said. “That’s me.”
Signor Martinelli sighed loudly. “A problem, my friends. A big problem.” He turned the papers as if for them to see, not that most of them could read what was written there.
“Your visa is for the wife of Antonio Fortuna, Assunta Mascaro, and her four minor children: son Mario, age sixteen; daughter Concettina, age fourteen; son Giuseppe, age thirteen; and son Luigi, age five. It seems to me someone replaced you, Signorina Stella, with a son with a different name. The whole visa is incorrect. I’m sorry to say you’re not going to be able to travel. ”
This time, the silence was a long one. Stella felt Cettina shivering beside her. Finally, Stella said, “What?”
Signor Martinelli repeated himself. It took him many words’ worth of repeating to explain.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cicciu said. Stella was relieved he was speaking up at last. “This has been planned for a long time. Zu Antonio paid to have all this paperwork taken care of. They have left everything behind. Za Assunta and the children must be on the boat tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” the agent said. “It’s very unfortunate, but the rules are strict.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Cicciu was saying again. “This doesn’t—”
“How can we fix it?” Stella interrupted. Cicciu was trapped on the problem; she needed a solution, and fast, before Signor Martinelli kicked them out of his office.
“You can’t fix it,” Signor Martinelli said, addressing Cicciu, as if he had been the one who’d spoken. “This visa is no good. I can’t do anything because the visa is issued by the American government. Antonio Fortuna must reapply for a visa.”
Stella’s mind was frantically turning through options. She remembered what she had heard about telegrams, which could deliver a letter far away in only hours. Maybe she could still contact her father in America in time? “If he can fix the passport today, we can come back tonight with our—”
“Signorina,” the agent said, curt but kind, “this will take many months to fix. Maybe years. Your father must reapply for the passport with the United States government, and they have strict quotas about how many passports they issue.”
“Quotas,” Stella repeated. The word sounded familiar, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. Her mind was numb. “It was one small accident that made this mistake.” She thought she might explode into delirious laughter. “One tiny, tiny change, which no one noticed. Can’t you just change it back?”
Martinelli’s mustache flared as he sighed.
“I’m sorry, signorina. They are very strict about visas.
They can turn your whole family away if there is any discrepancy, and then you and I are both in very big trouble.
” His face was sympathetic, rueful—but then so had been the face of that swindling carriage driver. “I cannot let you on that boat.”
“What do we do?” Cicciu asked Signor Martinelli. Assunta, beside him, was crying.
“Go home to your village,” the agent said. “You go home to your village, signore.”
WHAT WAS THERE TO DO?
The Fortunas turned around and went home.
At the Napoli station, Stella counted coins for the return fare.
She’d had mixed feelings about going to America, but now that they weren’t going anymore she was subdued by a sense of futility.
Dumping all their earnings into that dirty ticket man’s palm just to go back to where they had started—what was the point?
Cettina, whose face was glinting with nervous sweat, was thinking the same thing. “So many things we could have bought instead,” she whispered to Stella, in that whisper that could be heard ten paces away. “So many pairs of shoes.”
“We don’t need shoes,” Stella said darkly. “We have nowhere to wear them.”
* * *
THE WORST PART OF BAD NEWS is sometimes not the bad news itself but having to explain the bad news over and over again, to have to endure the reactions of people who are sometimes well-meaning and sometimes only pretending to be well-meaning, and sometimes not even that.
A big mistake. Whose mistake? And no one could fix it? Did you try everything? Why didn’t you do this, or that? All that money. What a waste. What is your husband going to say? He’s going to be so angry, what will you do?
Yes, other people are sometimes the worst thing in the world.
At least the Fortunas had somewhere to live, since they had been unable to sell the house on such short notice.
But being back was strange. They had only been gone for a few days, but Ievoli now seemed small and pitiful.
Stella had seen a train, a sea, a city; she had encountered businessmen, whores, and thieves.
Ievoli was both the only safe spot in a maelstrom of disparate fates and also no longer enough to keep her safe from it.