The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (97 page)

"Excuse me," said a new voice. Miss Crosby had unfolded herself and come over on her long legs. Speaking across the sleeping Aldo as though she only called through a window, she asked, "What do you call those birds in Italian?"

"What birds?"

"There! Making all that racket!" Miss Crosby pointed out to sea with her book,
First Lessons in Italian Conversation.
"Ever since we've been passing Sardinia."

"Didn't you ever see seagulls before?"

"I just want to know the Italian."

"
I gabbiani
" said Gabriella.

In a moment, Miss Crosby made a face, as if she were about to grit her teeth, and said "
Grazie.
" She went away then. Gabriella crossed her legs beneath her and sat there, guarding Aldo.

Three members of the crew presently materialized, one raising his gun toward the birds that were flying and calling there, shifting up and down in the light.

"No!" cried Aldo in his sleep.

In two minutes he was up shooting with the sailors, and she was merely waiting on him.

"Terrible responsibility to be coming into property—who knows how soon!" said Mama.

"It's nothing to be sneezed at," said Gabriella. A white triangle of salve—Maria's Harry had tucked that into her suitcase—was laid over her nose; the rest of her face still carried a carnation glow.

Just those three sat propped on the back of the rearmost bench—Gabriella, Aldo Scampo, and Mama. They could see the long blue wake flowing back from them, smooth as a lady's train.

"Look at the dolphins!" cried Aldo.

"Where, where? Wanting their dinner. A terrible responsibility," said Mama. She ran her loving little finger over the brooches settled here and there on her bosom, like St. Sebastian over his arrows. If she had had to slap Gabriella at the lunch table for getting lost on her morning walk, all was
delicato
now. Nice naps had been taken, tea was over with, and real estate in the vicinity of Naples had come up in conversation.

"And tomorrow, Gala Night," said Mama. "Am I right, Mr. Scampo?"

"Yeah, Mrs. Serto, I guess you are," said Aldo.

Mama slipped down from between them to her feet, her fingers threw them a little wave that looked like a pinch of salt, and she began a last march around deck. Her opposite turn was the public room, where her friends would by now be collecting, the
indisposti
propped deadweight among them but able to listen, and the well ones speculating peacefully out of the wind.

When Mama passed the bench again—really her farewell time, and then she would leave the sunset to young sweethearts—all seemed well. With the obsessiveness that characterizes a family man, Aldo was drumming a soft fist into Gabriella's plump young back, which held there unflinchingly, while her words came out in snatches with the breath cut off between.

"Nothing to be sneezed at—We'll have to wear paper caps—and dance—"

The wake of the ship turned to purple and gold. The dolphins, in silhouette, performed a rainbow of leaps. Gabriella screamed and her laugh ran down the scale.

Mama bowed herself into the public room, where the mothers were expecting her, the full congregation; and taking the seat by Mrs. Arpista, she continued with the subject she loved the best—under its own name, now: love.

But the day of Gala Night broke forth with a trick from the Mediterranean. Its blue had darkened and changed, and here and there at the edge of things could be seen a little whitecap. Father did not look too cheerful at Mass, and among other sad messages coming in from either side to Mama was the one that Aldo Scampo himself had not been able to rise. When a wave was seen at the glass of the porthole, looking in the dining room at lunch, Mama retreated upward to the public room, with Gabriella to sit by her side; and through the afternoon she declared herself unanswerable for the night.

But when the dinner gong was sounded, Mrs. Serto found she could raise her head. She believed, if she were helped to dress up a little ... After she had pinned and patted Mama together, Gabriella got out of her skirt, into her blue, and up on her high heels; then she guided Mama down that final flight of stairs.

And when they had crossed the dining room to the Serto table, one of the old, old ladies was sitting in Mama's place. Was it simply a mistake? Was it a visit? She was far too old to be questioned. Every little pin trembling, Mama sat down in Gabriella's place, which left Gabriella the vacant one, with Mr. Ambrogio between them. The first thing the waiter brought was the paper hats.

The old lady put on hers, and so did they all after her. Gabriella's was an open yellow crown, cut in points that tended to fall outward like the petals of a daisy. But poor Mama could not take her eyes away from the old lady who sat in her place.

She was a Sicilian. With her pierced ears and mosaic eardrops, the skin of her face around eyes and mouth like water where stones have dropped in, her body wrapped around in shawls and her head in a black silk rag—and now the paper hat of Gala Night atop that, looking no more foolish there than a little cloud hanging to a mountain—their guest was so old that her chin perpetually sank nearly to the level of the table. She treated their waiter like dirt.

He was bringing every course tonight to the old lady first, instead of to Mama, and with a croak and a flick of the hand the old lady was sending it back—not only the
antipasto,
but now the soup. She wanted to see something better. Their waiter treated her dismissals with respect—with more than respect; some deeper, more everlasting relationship was implied.

And suddenly, as the
pasta
was coming in, their long-missing tablemate chose to make his appearance. Another chair had to be wedged between the old lady's and Mr. Fossetta's, where he sat down, with pale cheeks, snow-white hair, and mustaches that were black as night. He looked at them all in their paper caps. His first words were to demand, "Is it true? There is no one for Genoa but me?"

Mama looked back at him, in a little soldier hat with a tassel on top, and said, "This boat is
Pomona,
going to
Napoli.
"

"And after
Napoli,
" said he, "Genoa." A paper cap was put in his hand by the waiter, and he put it on—it was a chef's cap—and lowered his head at Mama. "Genoa I leave only on holiday. Only for pleasure I travel. Now I return to Genoa."

"Please," said Mr. Ambrogio politely, "what is there beautiful in Genoa?"

He was handed a calling card. Mama's little hand asked for it, and she read to them in English: "C. C. Ugone. The man to see is Ugone. Genoa."

"For one thing, is in Genoa most beautiful cemetery in world," said Mr. Ugone—and did well to speak in English; otherwise who could have understood this voice from the north tonight? "You have never seen? No one? Ah, the statues—you could find nowhere in
Italia
more beautiful, more sad, more real. Envision with me now, I will take you there gladly. Ah! See here—a mama, how she hold high the little daughter to kiss picture of Papa—all lifesize. See here! You see angel flying out the tomb—lifesize! See here! You see family of ten, eleven, twelve, all kneeling lifesize at deathbed. You would marvel how splendid is Genoa with the physical. Oh, I tell you here tonight, you making a mistake to leave this boat at Naples."

Mama returned Mr. Ugone's card.

"I go to Rome," Mr. Ambrogio said.

"Say, mister," said Poldy. "What you say sounds worth coming all the way to Italy to see."

"
Signore,
" said Mr. Ugone, turning toward Poldy—he had to lean across Mr. Fossetta and his
pasta
—"you will see this and more. Oh, I guarantee, you will find it sad! You want to see tear on little child's cheek? Solid tear?" Mr. Ugone made a gesture of silence at the waiter coming with the fish. "
Ecco!
Bringing the news! Is turned over, the little boat. Look how hand holds tight the hat. Mmm!"

"No sardine!" said Mama, ahead of the old lady, but there was no need of warning. The waiter had dropped his tray on the floor.

But Mr. Ugone, with his untoward respect for Poldy, went on above all confusion. "
Signore,
we have in Genoa a sculptor who is a special for angels. See this tomb! Don't you see that soul look glad to be reaching Heaven? Oh! Here a sister die young. See her dress—the fold is caught in the tomb-door—
delicato,
you accord? How she enjoin the other sister she die too, before her wedding day. Sad, mmm?"

"Say!" said Poldy.

"Gabriella, you please listen to me, hold tight that hat!" said Mama. "You shake your head and it goes round and round."

"I show you," said Mr. Ugone to all, "the tomb my blessed mother."

Back in the corner, old Papa had been fixing his eye on Mr. Ugone for some time. Now he blew his whistle.

"Go ahead," said Poldy. Mr. Ugone had stopped with his napkin over his heart. "He does that all the time—we're used to it."

"Of course," said Mr. Ugone, "other beautiful things I show to you in Genoa. I enjoin you direct your attention to back of old wall where Paganini born."

"Say, what are you?" Gabriella asked him, holding her crown on straight.

"Who's Paganini?" said Poldy.

But Mr. Ugone, who had never really taken his eyes off Papa, waiting there still in that red engineer's cap with his whistle raised, now rose to his feet. With the words, "Also well-known skyscraper!" flung to them all, he suddenly left them—almost as though he hadn't ever come.

Mr. Fossetta brushed off his hands, and poured more wine around. Under cover of Mr. Ugone's departure, the old lady stole a roll from Mama's plate, and Mama watched it disappearing into that old, old mouth. But Mama remained throughout the evening just as nice to the old lady as Gabriella was nice to Mama. Even when the old lady described the Cathedral of Monreale from front to back, and more than one time said, "First church in the world for beauty, Saint Peter second," Mama only closed her eyes and gave a brief click of the tongue.

"Mama," said Gabriella," are we coming back home on this boat too?"

"No more
Pomona!
" said Mama. "We come home
Colomba.
By grace of Holy Mother it will not rock—beautiful white boat,
Colomba.
"

"You are full of thoughts too." Mr. Ambrogio turned to Gabriella. "I am still missing my tiepin. Do you feel I will ever find it?"

"Who knows?" said Mama. "You never know when you find something. That's what I tell my poor daughter every morning she wants to sleep late the nice bed."

"Ah, it could have been lost into the sea—before we start, who knows? Standing to wave at friends, from the rail—'Good-by! Good-by!'" and Mr. Ambrogio half rose from his chair to wave at them now.

"But you're
wearing
a tiepin!" said Poldy, and laughed loudly at poor Mr. Ambrogio, who sat down; and it was true that he was doing so, and true too that he had been showing them from the first night out the way he had said good-by to all those friends he had in America.

"It is my second pin, not my first. Only a cameo." Mr. Ambrogio's feelings were hurt now. He was going eventually home to Sicily but certainly he wanted his first pin for his audience with the Pope. He asked not to be given any of the fish, which the waiter now brought in for the second time.

The boat lurched. A black wave could be felt looking in at the nearest porthole, out of the night.

"Ah, the Captain this boat—has he anywhere a wife?" cried Mama, and rolled her head toward the old lady, who gave no answer.

Poldy at once took out his papers. Hadn't Mr. Ugone's card at the table been enough?—even supposing it had not been Gala Night, with
gelati
somewhere on the way. Now Poldy was finding an envelope he had never brought out before, with an address written on it in purple ink—a long one.

"What town in Italy is that?" he demanded, and passed the envelope back and forth in front of Mr. Fossetta's eyes. Mr. Fossetta, with one sharp gesture of the hand and a shake of the head, went on taking fish-bones out of his mouth.

"Can't read? That's the town they're taking me to to get married." Poldy beamed. "My sweetheart and her brother, or cousin, or whoever comes with her to meet the boat in Naples, they'll take me there. How about you, can you read?" he asked Mr. Ambrogio, but on the way to him the envelope had reached the old lady, who deposited it in her lap.

Poldy only shouted to the waiter, "Gee, I'll take another plate of that!," pulling him back by the coat. It was not only Gala Night that Poldy asked for second plates—it was every night. He enjoyed the food.

"If," Mr. Fossetta remarked ostensibly to Mama, with something a little ominous in his voice, "if she has a brother, then it will be her brother come to meet him."

"Only daughters have I ever been sent!" cried Mama—then gave an even sharper cry.

Through the dining-room door, arriving at the same time as the veal course, Aldo Scampo had entered like a ghost. Tentatively, not seeming to see with his eyes at all, he made his way through the dining room with all its caps, past the Serto table without a sign. Even after he had sat down safely in his own chair, who could speak to him? He was so white.

Papa, however, blew his whistle. This time he stood up to do it.

And instantly, another old man—the old man in the red knit cap who slept in the day by the ship's engines and had not exchanged for a paper cap tonight—rose up from the other side of the room and answered Papa, with mumbled words and the vague waving of an arm. He thought somebody had been insulted. Papa blew the whistle back at him, and then, carried away at meeting opposition at last, blew without stopping—"
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
" The argument filled the dining room to its now gently creaking walls.

The head steward himself came to Papa's table—his first visit to the back of the room. Everybody but the other old man, and the old lady, who was crushing a crust, like a bone, between her teeth, grew hushed.

"What is the meaning of this whistle?" asked the steward.