The Children's Train Read online

  “I think the train has broken down,” I say, holding Mariuccia’s hand tight, to give her courage, and maybe to give myself some, too. I’m actually thinking that the Fascists have blown up the line to stop us leaving, like Pachiochia said they would. Mariuccia starts blubbering again anyway:

  “We’re going to die either of cold or of hunger.”

  I put my hands over my ears, screw up my eyes, and wait for the explosion. But nothing happens. Maybe Maddalena managed to stop them just in time. That’s what she won her medal for, after all. For saving the bridge in the Sanità quarter. In the darkness I feel the icy, bony fingers of the Prince of Sangro’s skeletons at the back of my neck. So I open my eyes and unblock my ears. We hear the door of the compartment open. Nobody says a word. Nobody breathes. We are completely still.

  “Who pulled the alarm?” Maddalena says, just as the lights come back on. Her face is serious, and she’s so nervous her forehead is split down the middle with a deep gray line. “Trains are not a joking matter,” she says, looking annoyed and staring at the blond boy. He understands and acts offended. I think he’s regretting not giving his name, just a little. Because now they’re going to blame him for every single thing. It serves him right.

  “We didn’t pull it!” Tommasino says, getting the toothless smuggler out of trouble, too.

  “We were all asleep,” Mariuccia adds, now that she has stopped crying, because her dress is still as good as new.

  “It doesn’t matter who it was,” Maddalena says. “Whoever it was, you need to keep your hands to yourselves and not touch anything else, or tomorrow you’ll spend the day at the police station.”

  “Which lever stops the train? Is it the red one?” the blond smart-ass smuggler asks.

  “I’m not so stupid that I would tell you!” Maddalena answers.

  The boy realizes she’s kidding him and shuts up.

  “Anyway, I’ll stay here now. We’ll have one of us in every compartment to keep an eye on you. That way, we can avoid any further unplanned stops!”

  Maddalena sits in a corner and smiles. She’s never sad. It’s like she has a light on inside her eyes at all times. Maybe that’s why they gave her a medal.

  9

  EVERYONE IS ASLEEP EXCEPT ME. I DON’T LIKE the silence. In the street where I live, it’s always noon, even at night. Life never stops, even when there’s been a war. Instead, here I am looking through the window and all I can see are ruins. Upside-down tanks, wrecked airplane fuselages, bombed buildings only half standing. I feel sadness welling up in my belly. Like that time when Mamma Antonietta sang me a lullaby that goes “Ninnaò, Ninnaò, questo bimbo a chi lo do . . .” and it sent all my sleepiness away, because the person in the song is giving the baby to a bogeyman, who’s going to keep it for a whole year. But then, even the bogeyman doesn’t want the baby anymore, and he gives it to someone else, and that person gives it to someone else again, and then you never know what happens to the baby in the end.

  The train stops every now and again and more children get on. The screaming, crying, and laughing starts again, but not for long. Then the quiet comes back, and there’s only the chugging of the train and the sad feeling in my belly. When I was sad, back home, I’d usually go to Zandragliona’s apartment. Before leaving, I had put all my precious things in an old tin box that Mamma Antonietta had given me, and she had hidden it under a tile where she keeps her precious stuff, too. Pachiochia says Zandragliona keeps all her money under a tile, but I think she’s just jealous.

  Tommasino turns in his sleep and mutters something I can’t make out. He’s dreaming. He opens his eyes, laughs, and then goes back to sleep. Maybe he’s dreaming of Capajanca’s fruit cart, the Commie ovens, his mother’s lashings when he came home after the hamster fiasco, who knows? Whatever he’s dreaming, lucky him. At least he’s asleep! I’d rather have bad dreams than waking nightmares.

  Zandragliona says that when sleep doesn’t come to you, you shouldn’t go looking for it. So I get up from the train seat and go out of the compartment. The corridor is long and narrow. I start walking up and down and, every now and again, I peek into the other compartments. There are so many faces, so many kids piled on top of one another. They’ve all fallen asleep as if they were home, as if nothing had happened. I think about my mamma. When I go to bed, I put my cold feet between her thighs, and she starts yelling, “What do you take me for? Your personal bed warmer? Get these slabs of stockfish off me!” But then she takes my feet and warms them up with her hands, toe by toe, and I fall asleep with my toes in her fingers.

  I walk back along the corridor to our compartment, but I don’t open the door. I pull out the folding seat in the corridor and sit with my forehead against the window. It’s dark outside. I can’t see a thing. Who knows where we are, how far we are from home, and how long it will take to arrive, nobody even knows where. The window is cold and wet, and my face is dripping. It’s a good thing, because at least no one will know I am crying. But Maddalena notices. She sits next to me and gives me a pat. Maybe sleep didn’t come to her either.

  “Why are you crying?” she asks. “Do you miss your mamma?”

  I hide my tears, but accept her caresses.

  “No, no, not a bit. I’m not crying for my mamma. It’s my shoes. They’re too tight.”

  “Why don’t you take them off now that it’s nighttime? That way you’ll be more comfortable. There’s still a long way to go.”

  “Signorina, thank you, but I’m scared someone will steal them, and I will have to wear someone else’s shoes again. I don’t want to wear other people’s shoes ever again.”

  10

  ALL OF A SUDDEN, THERE IS A DAZZLINGLY bright light after all the darkness. The train has come out of a tunnel, and a big moon lights up the sky. Everything is white: the streets, the trees, the mountains, the houses. There are lots of white bread crumbs falling, some big and some small.

  “It’s snowing!” I say out loud to convince myself. “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” I say again, louder this time. But nobody wakes up. Not even the boy with the straw-colored hair, who said they were taking us to live in ice houses. I’d like to see his face now, him and his Russia! I rest my head against the window again and follow the snowflakes as they flutter down. That is how my eyes finally close.

  Mariuccia wakes me up, screaming like crazy.

  “There’s ricotta cheese everywhere!”

  She runs up to me and shakes me.

  “Amerigo, Amerì . . . wake up! There’s ricotta all over the ground. On the streets. On the trees. On the mountains! It’s raining ricotta . . .”

  The night is over, and a pale ray of sunlight shines through the window.

  “Mariù, it’s not cream or ricotta cheese. It’s snow . . .”

  “Snow?”

  “Frozen water.”

  “Like the one Don Mimmì sells from his cart?”

  “Kind of, but without the black-cherry syrup on top.”

  My eyes are still sticky with sleep, and they burn when I try to open them. The white snow shines through the window, and I can’t see anything else. It’s cold in the train. All the kids’ faces are glued to the windows, staring at the white outside.

  “Have you never seen snow?” Maddalena asks.

  Mariuccia shakes her head, a little ashamed for mistaking snow for ricotta cheese.

  “Signorì,” she says. “When we get there, are they going to give us something to eat? I’m dying of hunger, worse than at home . . .”

  Maddalena laughs. It’s her way of answering questions. First, she laughs; then she speaks. She says Mariuccia is right, and that when we get there, all the comrades of central Italy will be waiting for us. There will be a big party, with a brass band, banners, and lots of things to eat.

  “Are they happy we’re going there, then?” I ask her.

  “Weren’t they forced to take us?” Mariuccia adds.

  Maddalena says they weren’t. They’re happy to have us.

&n
bsp; “But why are they happy that we are coming to eat all their food?”

  “Because it is their way of expressing sol-i-dar-i-ty,” Maddalena says.

  “You mean like dig-ni-ty?” I ask.

  Maddalena says solidarity is like dignity toward other people. She says we need to help one another. “If I have two salami today, I should give one to you, so that if you have two caciotta cheeses tomorrow, you can give one to me.”

  I think this sounds like a good idea. But I also think that if people in northern Italy have two salami today, and they give one to me, how am I supposed to give them a caciotta tomorrow when, until yesterday, I didn’t even have any shoes?

  “I tasted salami once,” Tommasino mumbles, still half asleep. “A grocer in Foria gave me a slice . . .”

  “Did he really give it to you?” Mariuccia says, digging her elbows into Tommasino’s side, signaling with her hand that maybe he stole it.

  Tommasino flushes, and I change the subject, because I know him only too well. Maddalena luckily doesn’t hear a thing, because all the kids have started shrieking again. I look out the window and see what all the fuss is about. On the other side of the beach, covered in snow, there’s the sea. But it’s different from the sea I know. It’s as still and smooth as a cat’s fur.

  “What now? You’ve never seen the sea before?” Maddalena asks.

  “I know the sea,” Tommasino says.

  “Mamma Antonietta says that the sea has no purpose, except to give us cholera and weak lungs.”

  “Is that true, signorina?” Mariuccia, who never trusts anyone, asks.

  “The sea is for swimming in,” Maddalena answers. “For diving and having fun.”

  “Will the Communists up in northern Italy let us dive?” Mariuccia asks.

  “Yes, they will!” Maddalena says. “But not now. It’s too cold. When it’s the right season.”

  “I can’t swim,” Tommasino says.

  “What?” I tease him. “You were going to have a vacation on Ischia, don’t you remember?”

  He crosses his arms and turns the other way.

  “They’re only taking us to the sea so they can drown us,” the blond boy says, without actually believing it. He’s just trying to stir Mariuccia up.

  “They’re tongue waggers, that’s all,” Maddalena says. “You shouldn’t take any notice.”

  “Excuse me, do you have any children?” Mariuccia asks, doubtful as ever.

  Maddalena, for the first time since I met her, makes a sad face.

  “Why would she have kids?” I say, to get on Maddalena’s good side. “She’s far too young!”

  “But if you had kids, would you put them on the train or not?” the blond boy asks.

  “You don’t get it!” I cut in. “Only the needy kids get to go on the train, not the ones who are doing okay. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be solidarity, would it?”

  Maddalena nods, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Tell me something, signorina,” Mariuccia says with a mischievous grin. “That blond man at the station who was helping you count us kids. . . . Is he your sweetheart?”

  “What sweetheart? Sweetheart indeed!” I say, since Maddalena is not speaking anymore. “He’s a Communist, too. I saw him at the Party headquarters before leaving.”

  “So what? What does that mean?” Mariuccia insists. “Just because you’re a Communist doesn’t mean you can’t be a sweetheart, right?”

  “That Communist?” I answer. “He has the ‘problem of the south’ to deal with; he’s not going to be thinking about love.”

  “Love has many different faces,” Maddalena says. “Not just the ones you’re thinking about. For example, isn’t being here, with all you disobedient pests, love? And your mothers, who let you come on the train to go far away to Bologna and Rimini and Modena . . . isn’t that love, too?”

  “Why? Does somebody who sends you away love you, then?”

  “Amerigo, sometimes letting you go shows greater love than keeping you.”

  I don’t understand but I don’t answer back, either. Maddalena says she has to go check on the kids in the other compartments to make sure everyone is okay, and so she leaves. Me, Tommasino, and Mariuccia start playing rock, paper, scissors to pass the time. After a while, the train slows down and finally stops. The signorinas tell us to hold hands and form a line, two by two; to be good, and to wait quietly until it is our turn to go out. Once we are out in the street, we need to stay put, otherwise we will get lost, and then where would the solidarity go if we were all in different places?

  When we pull into the station, there’s a band playing, and a white banner that one of the signorinas reads us. It says, “Welcome to the children from the Mezzogiorno.” They have come all the way here to welcome us. It’s like the festival of Our Lady of the Arch, except there are no people dressed in white, throwing themselves on the ground in convulsions, shouting “Madonna dell’Arco” because they’ve received a miracle.

  The musicians are playing a song all the signorinas know, because they keep shouting “bella ciao ciao ciao” and, when the song finishes, they hold their fists up to the sky. The sky is gray and full of long, thin clouds. Mariuccia and Tommasino think they are making fists because they are fighting, but I know it is the Communist salute, because Zandragliona has taught me. It’s different from the Fascist salute, which I know, because Pachiochia has taught me. In fact, when crossing paths in our alleyway, Zandragliona and Pachiochia greeted each other with their own salutes, and it looked just like they were playing rock, paper, scissors.

  I hold hands with Mariuccia in one row and Tommasino is behind, holding a slightly bigger girl’s hand. We walk through the crowd of people waving white, red, and green flags and smiling, clapping, and shouting hello. It feels like we have won a prize, and we have come to northern Italy as a favor to them, not vice versa. Some men in hats with thick mustaches wave red flags with a yellow half-circle in the middle, singing a song I don’t know. Every now and again I hear the word in-ter-na-zio-nale.

  After a while, the ladies start singing, too. They are the wives of the men in hats with thick mustaches carrying the red flags with the yellow half-circle in the middle. I know the song they are singing, because it’s the one Maddalena sang through the metal funnel to send Pachiochia away. The one about the women who are not afraid, even if they are women. Or maybe because they are women; I’m not sure. Their voices are getting louder, and many of them look like they are crying as they are singing. I can’t understand all the words, because they must be in the language of the north, but I know it’s about mothers and children, for one thing, because the signorinas from the train and the Communist ladies from northern Italy look at us and smile as if we were all their own children.

  We are led into the big room full of Italian flags and red flags. There’s a long, long table in the middle full of good things to eat: cheese, ham, salami, bread, pasta . . . Us kids were desperate to throw ourselves on the food, but a signorina shouts into the metal funnel.

  “Children, there’s enough for everyone. Don’t move. You will each get a plate, a napkin, tableware, and a glass of water. As long as you are here, you will never suffer hunger.”

  The kids look around wide-eyed and dig one another in the ribs as if to say, “Today’s our lucky day; what was that about Communists eating babies?”

  Gradually, we get closer to the food, and you could hear a pin drop. Mariuccia, Tommasino, and I sit next to one another. On our plates, there’s a slice of pink ham full of white spots, one soft cheese, one as hard as a rock, and one that stinks of smelly feet. We look at one another, but none of us starts eating, even though we are starving. You can read it in our eyes. Luckily, Maddalena soon arrives.

  “What’s up now? Aren’t you hungry any longer?”

  “Signorina . . .” Mariuccia says, “are you sure these northerners haven’t given us their old food? The ham is full of white spots and the cheese is soft and moldy.”

  “Of course
, they want to poison us,” the blond boy with no teeth says.

  “If I wanted to get cholera, I’d prefer to eat the mussels down at the port, with all due respect,” Tommasino says.

  Maddalena picks up a slice of the ham with white spots on it and puts it in her mouth. She says we have to get used to these new specialties: Bologna ham, Parmesan, and Gorgonzola . . .

  I pluck up courage and try a little piece of the ham with spots on it. Mariuccia and Tommasino gape at me. They can see from my face, though, that it’s delicious, and so they tuck in, too. And then there is no stopping us. We polish off everything, including the soft cheese, the one with the green mold in it, and even the rock-hard, salty one that prickles your taste buds.

  “Don’t they have mozzarella cheese here?” Tommasino asks.

  “You can eat mozzarella back home in Mondragone,” Maddalena jokes.

  Then a Communist signorina comes around with a trolley full of little cups with white foam inside.

  “It’s ricotta, it’s ricotta,” Mariuccia says.

  “It’s snow, it’s snow,” Tommasino says.

  I pick up a teaspoon and stick a blob of white foam into my mouth: it’s freezing and it tastes of milk and sugar. It’s soft, iced milk.

  “It’s ricotta with sugar!” Mariuccia insists.

  “It’s grated ice with milk!” Tommasino answers.

  Mariuccia eats it slowly, leaving a tiny bit in the cup.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you like ice cream?” Maddalena asks.

  “Not really,” Mariuccia says, but we all know it’s a fib.

  “Well, if you really don’t like it,” Maddalena goes on, “we can give what you’ve left over to Tommasino and Amerigo, okay?”

  “No!” Mariuccia bursts out, tears squeezing out of her eyes. Then she looks down at the ground and blushes. “Actually, I wanted to save a little for my brothers, when I get back home, and I wanted to hide it in the pocket of my dress.”

  “But you can’t save ice cream; it melts!” Maddalena says.