The Children's Train Read online

  Maddalena says she came from a poor family, too, and she isn’t well-off even now. Being hungry isn’t anything to be ashamed of, she says; it’s an injustice, and women should unite to make things better. Pachiochia says that if all girls cut their hair short and wore pants like Maddalena then the world would go to hell in a handbasket. I say she shouldn’t talk because she’s the one with a mustache! Maddalena doesn’t have a mustache. She has a lovely red mouth and white teeth.

  Maddalena lowers her voice and says she knows Mamma’s story. She knows how she suffered for her tragedy, and says women should help one another. She calls it solidarity. Mamma Antonietta stares at a point on the wall, where there is nothing to look at, for two minutes, and I know she’s thinking about my big brother, Luigino.

  Before Maddalena, there were other ladies coming to the house, but they didn’t have short hair and they didn’t wear pants. They were real signoras with smart clothes and that blond fresh-from-the-hairdresser look. When they came into our street, Zandragliona would always make a face and say: “Here come the charity dames.” At the beginning, we were happy because they brought us food packages, but then, when we opened them, we saw there was no pasta, no meat, no cheese, no nothing. There was rice. Always rice. Nothing but rice. When they came, Mamma would look up at the sky, as if a storm was coming and we were only halfway home, and say: “We’ll kill ourselves laughing tonight with another risible risotto!” The charity dames didn’t get it, but when they realized that nobody wanted the food packages, they said the rice was “Made in Italy” and they were working to promote it. After a while, people stopped opening their doors to them when they knocked. Pachiochia says we know no gratitude, we deserve nothing, and there’s no longer any dig-ni-ty. Zandragliona says the dames come to gloat. Them and their rice. Anytime someone gives away something useless, she says: “The charity dames are here!”

  Maddalena promises we’ll have fun on the train, and that the families up north will treat us like their own children. They’ll take care of us and give us food and new clothes and shoes (two points). I stop my crippled dribbling act when I hear this and say: “Mamma! Sell me to this lady!” Maddalena’s big red mouth opens wide into a laugh, just as Mamma gives me a clout around the ear with the back of her hand. I put my hands up to my face; I don’t know whether it’s burning more from the smack or more from my shame. Maddalena stops laughing and reaches out to touch Mamma’s arm. Mamma pulls away, as if she’d touched a boiling hot pan. She doesn’t like being touched or even stroked. Then Maddalena speaks in a serious voice and says that she doesn’t want to buy me. The Party is organizing something that has never been undertaken before, that will make history, and that people will remember for years to come. “You mean, like the pigeon poop in the casatiello?” I ask her. Mamma Antonietta looks at me, and I look at her. It feels like another spank is on its way but, instead, she says: “And you? What do you want to do?” I say that if they actually give me a pair of brand-new shoes (a star-studded prize), I’ll go up north to the Communists like a shot, on foot if necessary. Maddalena smiles while Mamma’s head moves up and down, which I know means I’m in.

  3

  MAMMA ANTONIETTA STOPS IN FRONT OF THE door where the Communists have their headquarters in Via Medina. Maddalena told us we had to put our name down on the list for the children’s train. On the first floor, there are three young men and two signorinas. As soon as the signorinas see us, they lead us into a room where there is a desk with a red flag behind it. They tell us to sit down and start asking us thousands of questions. One signorina talks while the other writes everything down on a sheet of paper. When we’re done, the one who was talking takes a candy out of a tin and hands it to me. The one who was writing takes the sheet and puts it on the desk in front of Mamma. Mamma doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. The signorina puts a pen in Mamma’s hand and tells her she has to sign. Mamma just sits there. I unwrap the candy and the lemon smell tickles my nose. I don’t get to eat candy every day.

  From the next room we can hear the three young men shouting. The signorinas look at each other without saying anything, because you can see they’re used to it and they know they can’t do anything about it. In the meantime, Mamma Antonietta sits there with the sheet in front of her and the pen in her hand, which is hanging by her side. I ask why they’re fighting like that in the other room. The one who was writing before says nothing. The other signorina who was talking before says that they’re not fighting, they’re just deciding what needs to be done, so that everyone can be better off, which she says is what politics is all about. So I say: “Excuse me, don’t you all agree up here?” She pulls a face, like when you put an unripe walnut in your mouth and you don’t expect it to be bitter, and then she says that even among themselves not everyone agrees with everyone else, there are currents and movements . . . at this point, the one who was writing before gives her a dig with her elbow, as if she’s saying too much, and then turns to Mamma and tells her that if she doesn’t know how to sign her name, she can put a cross on the dotted line, because they can both be witnesses. Mamma Antonietta blushes bright red and, without lifting her eyes from the paper, draws a slightly crooked X on the page. After everything I’d heard about the currents and movements, I’m feeling a little scared, because Zandragliona always says air currents and movements are what give kids colds and coughs, and I’ve heard that the sick kids don’t get to go on the trains. And that’s not fair either, because it’s the sick kids who need to go and get taken care of, right? It’s easy to talk about solidarity with the healthy kids, as Pachiochia would quite rightly say, since—apart from her mustache and brown gums—she’s a nice lady underneath, and every now and again she even gives me two lire coins to spend.

  The signorinas write a few more things in a big ledger and then walk with us to the door. When we go through to the other room, the three young men are still arguing about politics. Every two or three exchanges, the thin blond one yells something about “the problem of the south” or “national integration.” I watch Mamma closely to see whether she’s understood, but she looks straight ahead and keeps on walking. The blond guy turns to me just as I’m passing, as if to say: “You say something. Tell him, will you?” I want to say that it’s none of my business and that Mamma Antonietta is the one who brought me here for my own good, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but, before I can open my mouth, Mamma Antonietta yanks my arm and hisses: “You little show-off. Now you want to stick your nose into this stuff, too? Shut your mouth and get out of here!”

  So we walk on, the blond guy following us with his eyes until we are out the door.

  4

  BAD WEATHER HAS COME ALL OF A SUDDEN. Mamma hasn’t sent me out looking for rags, partly because it’s raining and starting to be cold. She hasn’t bought me any other fried pizzas, but she once made me a meat-and-onion pasta alla genovese I go crazy for. The nun hasn’t showed her face recently, and in the neighborhood they’ve gotten bored of talking about the train thing.

  Since we weren’t doing so well at home these days, me and Tommasino went into business together. He wasn’t that keen to begin with. Part of him was disgusted and part of him was scared his mother would find out and send him on the train as a punishment. I told him that if Capa ’e Fierro managed to make money with stuff we found in the garbage, we would be stupid not to try. So that is how we started with the sewer rats. Our deal was that I would catch them and he would paint them. We had an upturned box as a stall at the market, in the corner where they sell parrots and goldfinches. Our specialty was hamsters. I had gotten the idea because I’d seen an American officer breeding them and selling them to rich ladies who weren’t so rich anymore. They would skin them and make fur collars for their coats, showing off and saving money at the same time. If we cut the tail off the sewer rats I caught and painted them brown and white with shoe polish, they looked just like the American officer’s hamsters. Business was going well, and me and Tommasino had built up a good clien
tele. We would be rich by now if one terrible day it hadn’t rained.

  “Amerì,” Tommasino had said that morning, “if we make enough money, you won’t have to go up north with the Communists.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked. “It’ll be like a vacation.”

  “A vacation for the chicken shit of this world, you mean. Guess where we’re going this summer? To the island of Ischia.”

  At that very moment, the sky went black, and it started pouring with rain like I’d never seen before.

  “Tommasino,” I said. “The next time you tell a whopper like that, bring an umbrella.”

  We ran for cover under the cornice of a building, but the stall with the painted sewer rats was still there. Before we even realized, the shoe polish had been washed away, and the hamsters had been transformed back into rats. The ladies around the cages started screaming.

  “Ew! They’ll give us cholera!”

  We couldn’t run away because the ladies’ husbands were threatening to beat us up. Luckily, Capa ’e Fierro came along. He grabbed both of us by the collar and yelled, “Make that filthy shit go away right now. You and me will be having a good talk later.”

  I was sure I’d get a good dressing down when I got home, but he didn’t mention the sewer rats at all. Then one day, when he came to the door to get down to work with Mamma, he took me aside before going in. He pulled on his cigarette so that all the smoke was inside his mouth and, before letting it out, he said, “It was a good idea. But the stall should have been in the covered market!” He laughed, and the smoke rings grew wider as they rose up into the air. “If you want to go into business, you need to come with me to the market. I’ll teach you.” He put his hand on my cheek, in what could have been a slap or a caress. It was impossible to tell. Then he left.

  I was tempted by the idea of going to Capa ’e Fierro. If only to improve my business skills. But the police came and took him away. I think because of the contraband coffee. People in the neighborhood stopped talking about the painted hamsters, because they were too busy gossiping about Capa ’e Fierro in jail. I’d like to see him saying he’ll always be free now!

  As soon as Mamma heard the news, she moved all the stuff away but for days, every time she heard a noise behind the door, she hid her face in her hands as if she wanted to disappear underground. Anyway, the police didn’t come to our house, and after a few days people had gotten bored of that, too. People always talk up a storm, and then they forget everything. Except Mamma, who hardly ever talks, but remembers everything.

  One morning, when I’ve stopped even thinking about the trains, she wakes me before the sun is out and it is still dark outside the window, puts on her best dress, and combs her hair in front of the mirror. She lays out a set of clothes that are a little less worn-out than usual for me and says: “Let’s go, or we’ll be late.” That’s when I get it.

  We start walking. Mamma in front; me behind. In the meantime, it has started raining. I play around leaping over the puddles, and Mamma boxes me around the ears, but my feet are already wet, and there’s still a long way to go. I look around to see if I can play my shoe game and win some more points, but today I don’t feel like it. I’d like to hide my face in my hands, too, and disappear for a bit. There are lots of other mammas with their children walking alongside us. There are some papas too, but you can see they don’t want to be there. One of them has written on a sheet of paper a list of instructions: what time his little boy gets up, what time he goes to bed, what he likes and doesn’t like to eat, how many times he poops, remember to use a waterproof bed sheet because he wets his bed. He reads the list to his wife, the kid dying of embarrassment in front of all the others, folds it in four, and puts it in the boy’s pocket. Then he has second thoughts, takes it out again, and jots down a quick “thank you” to the family that will be taking his son in, saying that, thank God, they are not in need, they would just like their kid to have a nice little vacation.

  The ladies stride ahead defiantly, each with two, three, or four children tagging along behind. I’m an only child, since I didn’t make it in time to meet my big brother, Luigi. I didn’t make it in time to meet my father, either. I was born too late for everyone. It’s better this way, though, because this way my father doesn’t need to feel ashamed about putting me on the train.

  We get to a long, long building. Mamma Antonietta calls it the Reclusorio. She says it’s a hospice for the poor. “What?” I say. “Weren’t they taking us up north so we could eat and drink? Now we’re at the hospice for the poor. Things are getting worse instead of better! Wouldn’t it be better if we just stayed home, on our street?” Mamma Antonietta says we’re here because, before they can take us north, they need to check us out to see whether we’re healthy or sick, whether we’re contagious . . .

  “And then,” Mamma Antonietta says, “they have to give us some warm clothes, coats, and shoes, because up north it’s not like down here. They have real winters up there!”

  “Brand-new shoes?” I ask.

  “Brand-new, or used but new,” she says.

  “Two points!” I yell.

  Forgetting for a moment that I’m about to leave, I start jumping around and around until Mamma grabs me by the arm.

  There’s a crowd forming in front of the long building. There are mothers with children of all ages: tiny, small, middle-sized, and big. I’m middle-sized. Standing in front of the gate, there’s a signorina, but it’s not Maddalena. It’s not even one of the rice dames. She tells us we need to stand in line, as they’re going to check us out and then, she says, they’re going to stitch a number on us, so they know who we are. If not, I reckon, when we come back, they’ll end up giving every mamma the wrong child. Mamma is the only thing I have, and I don’t want to be mistaken for another child, so I cling to her bag and tell her I really don’t need new shoes in the end and, if it’s for my own good, we can go home immediately. I feel sad in my tummy and I think that if I had carried on dribbling and stuttering, I wouldn’t have had to leave.

  I turn around, because I don’t want her to see me crying, but then I almost burst out laughing. Two rows behind me there’s Tommasino.

  “Hey, Tommasì,” I call out. “Are you waiting for the ferry to Ischia?”

  He glares at me, his face as white as a sheet. He’s scared stiff, I can see it. In the end, even his mother had to ask for charity! Pachiochia told me Donna Armida was once rich, very rich. She lived in a fancy building on the Corso and had servants. She used to make clothes for the finest ladies in the city and knew all the people that counted. Her husband, Don Gioacchino Saporito, was nearly, nearly going to buy a car.

  Zandragliona, on the other hand, said Donna Armida had gotten ahead, no disrespect, by licking the feet of the Fascists. Then, when fascism went away, she went back to being a rag trader, which was in her nature, and her husband, who had been a big shot under fascism, was arrested and interrogated. Everybody expected some kind of example to be made of him. I don’t know, something like a punishment, a conviction, prison. But nobody did anything. Zandragliona said there’d been an armistice, which is like, for example, when Mamma found out I’d broken the casserole dish we used for macaroni which her mamma, Filomena, bless her soul, had left her, she said: “Get out of my sight or I’ll beat the living daylights out of you.” And I ran away and stayed at Zandragliona’s, and didn’t show my face back home for two days. Donna Armida’s Fascist husband was released and went home, and nothing was ever said again. Now the two of them run their rag trade from a ground-floor tenement apartment in the alley right next to ours.

  Tommasino, Donna Armida’s little boy, had brand-new shoes (a star-studded prize!) when his mamma was a seamstress. Then, when she went back to being a rag trader and moved to our neighborhood, he still had the same shoes as before, but by that time they were old and full of holes (one point).

  When she sees Tommasino, Mamma squeezes my hand to remind me of my promise. I squeeze hers ba
ck and turn to Tommasino, winking at him. Sometimes, Tommasino would come to look for rags with me. Donna Armida was not happy because she said her son should be keeping company with his betters, not with people like me who are worse off than him. When Mamma found out, she made me promise not to be friends with Tommasino, because he was the son of ignorant peasants who had made money and then lost it again, and anyhow, they were Fascists, as Zandragliona had said. I promised Mamma and Tommasino promised his. So every afternoon we would meet, but in secret.

  More and more children are pouring in, some on foot and others jumping off the free buses that a lady next to us says the bus company has brought in specially. There are even some kids arriving in police jeeps. The jeeps with no soldiers in them, and all those kids carrying colored banners and waving to us, look like carnival floats in the Piedigrotta Festival. I ask Mamma if I can join them in the jeeps. She grips my hand even tighter and tells me to stick right by her side or I’ll get lost. And if I really want to get lost, I should wait until they stitch a number on me. The crowd is getting thicker. The signorina tries to get us in line but the line moves all the time, like an eel in the fishmonger’s hand.

  A little blond girl, who until today has been badgering her mother because she wanted to go on the train trip, is now crying her eyes out, saying she doesn’t want to go anymore. A boy, just a little older than me, in a brown hat, who came to see his brother off, is saying it’s not fair that he has to stay here when his brother is leaving for the good life, and he starts blubbering, too. There is scolding and tongue-lashing all around but the kids go on wailing, and the mammas don’t know which way to turn. In the end, one of the signorinas arrives with the lists and solves the problem. She crosses out the little blond girl’s name and puts the name of the boy in the brown hat down instead, making everyone happy. Except the little blond girl’s mamma, who storms off saying: “We’ll settle this when we get home.”