The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
"When did that Joe Monteoliveto sneak off the ship?" wondered Mama aloud, not yet going inside. "He never said good-by to me."
This sunset was the last. Gabriella stood at the flagpole and looked off the back of the ship; it moved smoothly now as if by magic.
Once—she couldn't remember how long ago—there had been some country they sailed near—Africa—with mountains like coals, and above, the scimitar and star of evening. The country had vanished like the two black men who got off in the night for Cape Verde. The moon and star tonight looked as though they had never been close together in their lives, to hang one from the tip of the other to go down over the edge of the world.
Was now the time to look forward to the doom of parting, and stop looking back at the doom of meeting? The thought of either made sorrow go leaping and diving, like those dolphins in the water. Gabriella would only have to say "Good-by, Aldo," and while she was saying the words, the time would be flying by; parting would be over with almost before it began, no matter what Aldo had in store for an answer. "Hello, Aldo!" had been just the other way.
"What d'you think you see out there?" came Aldo's voice. "A whale?"
Reflecting the rosy light, a half-denuded stalk of bananas at his feet—for Aldo Scampo had slipped off the boat in Palermo and back on again, without a word to anybody—he was where you could find him still, in the old place, eating away and turning over pages he could hardly see any longer.
She made her way slowly to his chair and sat down on the arm of it, and like a modest confession let out the weight of her side against his shoulder. He offered her a bite of his banana. Tiredly and quietly, in alternation, they ate it. His book dropped to the floor; the toe of her shoe found it and drew it under the chair. Her heel went down, almost without her knowing, on the idealized, dreaming, and predatory face of that Sicilian bandit.
"Almost over now," said Aldo into the evening.
Their thoughts had met. Curtained into her bed that night, and after Mama had fallen silent, Gabriella could go to sleep thinking of those three words. Just now she dropped her head and put a kiss on Aldo somewhere, the way she would upon a little baby.
Near them, there was a patter of applause. Without their noticing, the nightly circle of sitters had gathered outside tonight, on the warm apron of deck—their ranks thinned now, since Palermo, by a number of the solidest. The clapping was for old Papa, who had come forward to sing.
His verses were like little rags that fluttered on the wind from his frail and prancing person. He carried a willowy cane. He had saved his paper hat, which showed against the first stars, jutting like a rooster's crown. So he must have known all along he would sing on the last night.
He stepped back and came forward again, tapped his cane, and sang a verse; retired, and came back with a new one. His voice was old and light, a little cracked. Each time, they gave him back the chorus, sitting in close array, moved in nearer together than ever on the benches and on the floor, a row reclining against billowy knees and another leaning on billowy shoulders behind, as if for some strange, starlit group-photograph, to be found years later in a trunk. A girl went to the well for water, Papa sang, and a traveler jumped out and surprised her, and she dropped her pitcher.
Mama's benchful moved in closer to make room for Gabriella and Aldo. After they sat down, they joined in the chorus with everybody. Whatever the verse, it was the same chorus—in Buffalo, in New York, in California, in Naples, perhaps even in Genoa. As the song went on, Aldo turned his head and on Gabriella's moving lips returned her kiss.
If only that had been good-by! But here they still were. Mama in the next instant rapped Aldo's skull with her knuckle—the crack of her wedding ring went out all over the Mediterranean night. Mama was still not speaking to Aldo for his ruining Gala Night for her. He obediently caught up with the song. Everything was in darkness now—there were only the Pomona's lights and the stars.
Presently Mama called out to ask Poldy the hour by his wristwatch, but Poldy did not reply. He was stretched on a bench nearby, face-down on his sleeve, asleep; his hair had turned to silver.
"Time for my Gabriella to say good night," announced Mama anyway.
"I'm not sleepy!" said Gabriella. "There's lots more songs!"
Old Papa tapped. This is for me, thought Gabriella, and stood up. Mama flew up beside her, boxed her ears, and pulled her out of Papa's way, calling to them all, "My youngest! Look once more my baby Gabriella! Tomorrow she will be in Naples!"
"Good night!" they said, the women all embracing Gabriella and one another. "The last night—the last!" Mama kissed Mrs. Arpista back, and cried, "In Naples, who knows how soon something will happen?" Gabriella waved her hand at Mr. Ambrogio, who rose speechless from among the men, and then Mama led her away.
"Don't fall down the stairs!" called Aldo after her in a strangely discordant voice, almost as if it came from out over the water.
But old Papa, tapping his cane, brought in his circle closer. He could sing the night to sleep.
When the Pomona came in sight of land, it was sunrise. Sailors were lifting away tarpaulins, and hauling ropes and chains over the feet of a crowd, while joking indecipherably among themselves; for this once-secret, foremost deck had by now been discovered by everyone.
The body of the sea had been cut off. The Pomona sailed among dark, near islands, like shaggy beings asleep on one arm or kneeling now forever. Far ahead, Vesuvius, frail as a tent, almost transparent, lifted up under the morning. Gabriella watched it coming nearer and nearer to her. At last it was exactly like the picture over the dining-room mantel at home, which hung above the row of baby photographs and the yellow one of Nonna with the startled eyes under a mound of black hair.
Tightening her hand to a fist, Gabriella banged herself on the chest three times under Aldo's eyes. Holding his eyes wide open to keep himself awake gave him an expression of black indignation.
"Man Mountain Dean!" she wailed at him. "I'm a big girl now and I want my nourishment!" This had never failed to bring a laugh from the girls in Sacred Heart typewriting class.
But that breakfast was the one Pomona meal Gabriella could never remember afterwards; though she could see the tablecloth stained like a map with old wine. Surely she and Aldo had sat there, where neither had ever sat before, and eaten one meal together, in the hue and cry of what was about to happen.
Arrival in Naples was not so simple as being welcomed to Palermo. Only officials came out on the water to meet them, speeding direct by motor and climbing up on board. "Attenzione!" was broadcast every moment; everybody was being herded somewhere, only where? Mama, who could find the heart of confusion wherever it moved, constantly darted into it, striking her brow. And then, up in First Class as they stood in line to wait, the man who had charge of the S's couldn't find something he needed, his seal. Then Poldy's passport was lost—by the Pomona, not Poldy—and there was much running about, until all at once the spelling of his name, hailed through the room, seemed to clear things up everywhere. The feeling ran strong that landing would be soon. Mr. Ambrogio steered two of the ancient shawled ladies, like old black poodles, one on each arm, outside on deck and started a line at the rail. But Aldo Scampo still reclined in one of the overstuffed chairs, hideously yawning.
Half an hour later, with everybody watching from high on board, the docks of Naples in a bloom of yellow sun slid directly under their side. They could hear the first street sounds—they had awakened them!—the whipping of horses, the creaking of wooden wheels over stones, the cry of a child from somewhere deep in the golden labyrinth.
The gangway was an apparatus of steps and ropes. As it dropped like an elephant's trunk from the height of the ship, streams of Neapolitans came running toward it across a sweep of walled-in yard floored over with sun, with yellow trees stirring their leaves and buildings whose sides danced with light.
"Hey! Naples smells like a kitchen!" cried Gabriella; for all that couldn't be helped in life had stolen over her, swee
"Not the kitchen on this boat!" said Aldo beside her.
"Where's Nonna?" screamed Gabriella. "Where's my Nonna?"
The first passengers, the priests, were already descending, fast as firemen down a pole. Then a shower of nuns went down.
And down rushed Mrs. Serto headlong. She flew from Mr. Ambrogio, who wished to offer her his arm, as if she'd never seen him before. She clopped down the slatted steps like a little black pony, her spangled veil flying. Then all were let loose!
And where was Mama now? Gabriella frowned down over the rail, and could recognize nobody in the spinning crowd but Mr. Fossetta. Looking flattened, taking long steps, he seemed already making for Bari, dressed in a Chicago overcoat, long, thick and green, with a felt hat over his eyes and his lips pushing out a cigar. He did not seem ever to have had a delicate stomach; he looked bent on demonstrating that the most intimate crowd, when the moment came, could tear itself apart, hurry to vanish.
Where was Aldo? He was still behind her, breathing on first one side of her, then the other—breathing as he took the coats both out of her arms, hers and Mama's. She was left at the head of the ladder with only her purse and the pasteboard box for the hat she had fastened on her head.
"Now?" she asked him.
"See Naples and die!" he said loudly in her face, as if he had been preparing the best thing to say.
She took a step down, and the gangway all but swung free. Everything moved below, travelers and relatives running in and out of each other's arms, as if rendered by the Devil unrecognizable; a band of ragged boys with a ball; a family of dogs, another of blind and crippled people; and what looked like generations of guides and porters, in hereditary caps; and now moving in through the big arched gate (an outer rim of carriages, horn-blowing taxis, streetcars and cars reached around the Piazza beyond) a school of nuns with outstretched plates, all but late for the boat. Loudest of all, a crowd of little girls all dressed in black were jumping up and down shaking noisy boxes and singing like a flock of birds, "Orfanelli, orfanelli, orfanelli—" Then she felt Aldo's step behind her shake the whole scene again, as if they were treading the spokes of a wheel, and now it began to turn steadily beneath them.
"Poldy!" Aldo hailed him from the air. "See Naples and die, Poldy! Where's your girl?"
Poldy was running up and down the dock pitching a ball with some little boys of Naples. He wore the feathered hat, the bright yellowish coat with the big buttons that had galvanized them all so on the first day at sea, before they knew all about him. He shouted back, "Oh, she'll find me! I sent her a whole dozen poses!"
Poldy's and Aldo's laughs met like clapped hands over Gabriella's head, and she could hardly take another step down for anger at that girl, and outrage for her, as if she were her dearest friend, her little sister. Even now, the girl probably languished in tears because the little country train she was coming on, from her unknown town, was late. Perhaps, even more foolishly, she had come early, and was languishing just beyond that gate, not knowing if she were allowed inside the wall or not—how would she know? No matter—they would meet. The Pomona had landed, and that was enough. Poor girl, whose name Poldy had not even bothered to tell them, her future was about to begin.
"Watch me!" Poldy, just below, was shouting to the little boys: "I'll teach you how to throw a ball!"
But he turned his shining face upward and threw the ball at Gabriella. It only struck the Pomona's side and bounced back; all the same, she dodged and swayed, and Poldy covered his head with his sleeve in imitation shame, while the little urchins stamped up and down beside him, laughing in a contagious-sounding joy like the orfanelli's.
"Rock-a-bye baby!" she yelled down over their heads. "On the tree top! When the wind blows—"
Aldo, coming out of the family coats, put a grip around her neck for the last time. But even while he did it, instinct, too, told her she could not scream that way any longer. She was here.
"Ecco! Ecco!" came Mama's own voice, wildly excited. "Mamma mia!" There she was, halfway across the yard.
And where she pointed, almost in the center of everything, was a little, low, black figure waiting. It was the quietest and most substantial figure there, unagitated as a little settee, a black horsehair settee, in a room where people are dancing.
"But she doesn't look like her picture!" cried Gabriella. And her foot came down and touched something hard, the hard ground of Naples. Out of it came a strange, rocking response—as if the earth were shocked on its part, to be meeting their feet. Then the coats were bundled in her arms.
"O.K.," said Aldo. "Got to line up my stuff and try for a train. Good-by, Mr. Ambrogio!" he shouted. "Don't let 'em try to keep you over here!" And off he went, at an odd trot.
"We shall never meet again!" Mr. Ambrogio, standing at the foot of the gangway now with his arm raised like a gladiator, had found words. Then, raising the other arm too, he half ran through the moving game of ball, to be gathered in by some old ladies—just like the ones he'd been escorting across the ocean. But in his consideration he did not even knock down Poldy's stack of suitcases and cardboard boxes, neat as a little house in the thick of the disembarkation.
"Gabriella Serto! You want to stay on ship?" Mama had seized her and was taking her through the crowd. "Think who you keep waiting! You want to go to Genoa?" Mama was first pushing her ahead, then pulling her back and shoving herself in front.
"Mamma mia!"
"Crocefissa!"
Mama threw herself forward and arms came up and embraced her.
Then Mama herself was set to one side by a small brown hand with a thin gold ring on it. And there was Nonna, her big, upturned, dia- mond-shaped face shimmering with wrinkles under its cap of white hair and its second little cap of black silk. So low and so full of weight in all her shawls, she not only looked to be seated there—she was. Amply, her skirts covered whatever she was resting on.
Nonna drew Gabriella down toward all her blackness, which the sun must have drenched through and through until light and color yielded to it together, and to which the very essence of that smell in the air—of cinnamon and cloves, bananas and coffee—clung. Raising Gabriella's chin, Nonna set a kiss on one of her cheeks, then the other. Nonna's own cheek, held waiting, was brown as a nut and dainty as a rose. She gave Gabriella an ancient, inviting smile.
"Si," she said. "Si."
As Nonna began to address Gabriella, the very first words were so beautiful and without reproach, that they seemed to leave her out. Nothing had prepared Gabriella for the sound of Nonna. She couldn't understand a word. Her gaze wavered and fell. A little way off in the crowd she saw the feet of Miss Crosby, raised on tiptoe beside a suitcase. She had learned only one thing the whole way over, i gabbiani. And there, poor Maria-Pia Arpista, rigid as though bound and gagged, was being carried off by a large and shouting family, who were proudest of all of the baby's coming to meet her. But Nonna had not finished, already? Here was Mama rushing her off to the Customs.
Afterwards, there was Nonna watching for them in her same place, as they came out of the shed with their baggage behind them. The porter in a kind of madness—he was an old man—had thrown their trunk over his back, taken their suitcases, and then had seized the coats as well, and even the little hatbox that had been swinging since early morning on its string from Gabriella's finger, like a reminder. Now she had nothing but her purse.
And there apart stood Papa. Nobody had come to meet Papa. Even as Gabriella saw him, he was deciding not to wait. Bearing on his cane, still in the same old olive-colored sweater—why should she have expected that hole to be sewed up by this morning?—he walked, with nothing to carry, away into the widening sunlight as if he had blinders on. He's only come home to die, thought Gabriella. All the way over, he might have been the oldest and the poorest one. Mama pretended not to see him go. Her curiosity about Papa had long ago been satisfied; he had nobody: she knew it. It was the punishment for marrying twice.
Mama crossed herself, and laid her instant, tender hand to Nonna's cheek. The porter just as instantly shed every bit of the baggage to the ground
"Are you seventy-six too, Signora?" he asked. But he had meant it not disrespectfully, but respectfully, for he stood inclined, with a musing finger against his cheek, against a pillar he had made of the trunk dressed with the coats. She raised her eyes to the empty Pomona standing over them still—not empty, for Mr. Ugone still rode aboard, with Genoa yet to come. She could actually see him at that minute, standing at the rail with his cigar in his hand; but he did not see her. His gaze was bent and seemed lost on Poldy—still playing there with some of the little urchins, so that the dock took on the echoing sound of a playground just before dark. Maybe the surest people, thought Gabriella, are also the most forgetful of what comes next. All around was the smell of yellow leaves.
"Look what I see!" cried Mama, without ceasing to pat Nonna's cheek. "Mr. Scampo! Ah, I thought we had seen the last of him. On board ship—poor mamma mia!—he was passionately running after our Gabriella. It was necessary to keep an eye on her every minute."
"Her fatefulness is inherited from you, Crocefissa, my child," said Nonna.
"All my girls have been so afflicted, but five, like me, married by eighteen," Mama said—pat, pat, pat.
Aldo was coming toward them slowly, with his strange new walk of today, almost hidden by a large number of hopeful porters attacking him like flies from all sides. He did not wave; but how could he? He was loaded down. Gabriella did not wave herself, but suddenly missing the old, known world of the Pomona, she gave one brief scream. Nonna bent a considering head her way, as though to place the pitch.