Unto the Sons (65 page)

Joseph was eventually escorted by an interpreter toward a row of desks. The same interpreter, a slightly stooped man in his forties, with a moustache and steel-rimmed glasses, who had introduced himself as Professor Carlino, helped Joseph through the medical stations. He said he had come to America as a two-year-old from Naples. He now taught engineering at a city university, and he worked on weekends and holidays as one of the Italian interpreters on the island. “You could not have arrived at a better time,” he told Joseph. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, and the staff here wants to leave early this afternoon to complete their shopping, including the deportation officers. Only the extreme cases should be detained, the terminally ill and any Bolsheviks carrying arms.”

“Who paid your ship’s fare?” an official asked Joseph, not looking up but flipping through papers on his desk, where he noted that Joseph had traveled cabin class.

“I did, sir,” Joseph responded in Italian, then listened to the translation by Professor Carlino. The benign-looking interpreter stood behind the chairs of the two uniformed interrogators, a hopeful tutor supporting his pupil. The interrogators were both gray-haired and stout, but one appeared much older than the other. Both had gold insignia on their lapels bearing the letters “U.S.”

“What is your occupation?” the younger official asked.

“I am a tailor,” Joseph replied.

The officials looked at how Joseph was dressed, and neither showed signs of disapproval. His white shirt was clean, he wore a bow tie, and he had polished his shoes before leaving the boat in the morning. He carried his topcoat over one arm, his cap in hand, and wore the new suit that he had left hanging over the portal in his cabin, where it not only masked the sight of the moving sea but also avoided becoming wrinkled in his suitcase or in the cabin’s dank cubbyhole closet.

“So tailors can achieve prosperity even at your age,” the older official remarked with a smile, while the other added: “And I assume you have a job waiting for you in this country?”

“Yes, sir,” Joseph said forthrightly, hiding his uneasiness about the fabrication. Antonio had told him that in front of immigration officials it was wiser to be very positive than very truthful.

“And where will you work?” the same official asked.

“In Philadelphia.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “it seems that every Italian tailor who passes through here is heading for Philadelphia.”

“Can you read and write?” the older man asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you ever been in prison?”

“
No
, sir.”

“How much money are you carrying?”

Hearing the translation, Joseph looked with concern toward the professor. Professor Carlino had witnessed the rejection of even some well-dressed people because they were discovered to be destitute, but the financial question was unexpected for someone who had traveled cabin class. Now the professor himself had no reason
not
to wonder if this young man, traveling alone, carried at least the required minimum of ten
dollars in foreign coins or currency that most inspectors demanded prior to validating an applicant’s entry into the United States.

“I have a hundred forty dollars in lire,” Joseph said, and the professor, who seemed quite pleased, was about to relay the figure to the officials, when Joseph interrupted to explain that it was hidden in a money bag strapped around his waist inside his trousers. He added that it was locked, and that opening it would necessitate his lowering his pants practically to his thighs, for the lock was affixed to a lower part of the bag.

“I hope I won’t have to show them the money,” Joseph said, aware of the fact that he was standing within view of hundreds of people; there were very few walls and partitions in this great hall of Ellis Island—symbolic of an open society perhaps, but potentially embarrassing to an individual who might be asked to lower his pants. In fact the great hall was now jammed, as several ferries had unloaded passengers since Joseph’s midmorning arrival. Worse, a disproportionate number of these were female.

“Do not concern yourself,” the professor reassured Joseph, while at the same time he nodded toward the inspector, who had turned around to express impatience at the delay in the translation. As Joseph stood waiting, he heard the interpreter using the word “dollars” and saw the younger official, with a raised eyebrow, saying something that made the professor frown. After more discussion, the professor shook his head, lowered his eyes, and announced softly:

“Joseph, they insist on seeing your money.”

Joseph blushed. He looked pleadingly at the officials. The older one was looking at his wristwatch, the younger one tapping a pencil on the desk. The professor, looking pale, was staring absently around the room. Joseph wondered if the professor had made it clear to them that the money was hidden inside his pants, and that to retrieve it here would be undignified.

But the officials were waiting, and Joseph knew that he had no choice, so he bent down and placed his topcoat and cap on the floor in front of him. He unbuttoned the jacket of his suit, trying not to imagine the people who might be watching him, especially the young woman he had noticed standing in line nearby, her flaxen braids dangling behind her bonnet.

He unhitched his trouser belt. One of the officials coughed, but said nothing as Joseph placed two fingers behind his bow tie and pulled out the chain that hung around his neck; on it were his Saint Francis medal
and the silver key to his money bag. Discreetly he unbuttoned the top three buttons of his fly front and tried to untie the money bag around his waist. But the knot was too tight—it was now necessary to undo a fourth button and reach down to try to unlock the money bag with the key.

The officials now suddenly seemed confused and aghast, and the older man turned around to the interpreter and asked: “What the
hell
is he doing?”

The professor had apparently not explained how complicated it would be to fulfill their request; or perhaps he had underestimated the difficulty Joseph might have in reaching into the internal pocket.

“This isn’t burlesque,” the official went on huffily to the professor, who stood speechless and flustered behind the chairs. “Tell him to button up. We’ll take his word that he has the money.”

After the professor had communicated the message, and Joseph had rearranged himself, the professor instructed him to express his gratitude in English.

“Thank you very much,” Joseph said, picking up his coat and cap from the floor and following the professor out of the area.

“You’re welcome,” the older official said, “and welcome to America.”

Joseph walked into a large reception room that was noisy and crowded with people waiting to greet their newly arrived relatives and friends. He looked around, moving from group to group, but saw no sign of his uncles. After searching for almost a half-hour, he became worried. The professor, who fortunately had stayed with him, suggested that they go to the Western Union counter; and there, among stacks of yellow envelopes, the clerk discovered one addressed to Joseph.

The professor translated:

“SORRY YOUR UNCLES CANNOT COME. ENTRAIN TO PHILADELPHIA, THIRTIETH STREET STATION. CALL ARRIVAL TIME NUMBER BELOW. WILL MEET YOU. YOUR FATHER’S GOOD FRIEND. CARLO DONATO.”

Joseph had never heard of Donato, and did not know how to get on the train. But the professor said: “Come, I owe you a favor for all that embarrassment. I’ll see that you get there. We can buy the ticket here, and the terminal is just across the water in New Jersey, where we’ll go together by launch.”

After the professor had helped Joseph convert his lire into dollars at the exchange office—Joseph had visited a washroom beforehand, and discreetly
laid claim to his funds—a card bearing the number 6 was pinned to the side of his cap by a transportation guide helping to process passengers after they had purchased their rail tickets. The numbered card would remind the train conductor that Joseph’s destination was Philadelphia.

Carrying his suitcase and escorting Joseph to the track of the Philadelphia-bound express, the professor reminded him: “Stay on until it no longer moves and everybody is off. That’ll be Thirtieth Street Station, the final stop. Mr. Donato will find you. I’ll phone him to tell him when you’re scheduled to arrive. Good luck. And Merry Christmas.”

32.

I
T was after seven p.m. as the train headed across the swamplands of northern New Jersey toward the Pennsylvania border, and Joseph saw nothing through the window except his own reflection and that of an elderly fur-coated woman who sat next to him on the aisle reading a book. Several people were standing, a few carrying brightly wrapped packages. The railcar was not so well appointed and clean as the one he had ridden several months earlier through Italy and France, but he was more excited now than he had been when en route to Paris; Philadelphia had been his father’s favorite city, and Joseph sensed within himself for the first time some of his father’s spirit of adventure and independence.

After several stops, the train moved through a tunnel, then slowed down as it rolled into a steel-girdered enclosure, yellowishly lit by hanging lamps; then it came to a halt. The passengers stood and gathered their belongings from the overhead racks, and Joseph followed the others out of the car and up a long ramp that led to the marble floor of a huge hall that seemed to be larger, and certainly more festive, than the one on Ellis Island. A chorus of women dressed in blue capes and bonnets sang Christmas carols near the information booth, accompanied by uniformed men playing trumpets and trombones. Someone dressed as Santa Claus was ringing a bell and soliciting donations next to a thirty-foot-high Christmas tree in the center of the rotunda, and everywhere Joseph looked he saw people greeting each other with embraces and handshakes. Behind him he heard a voice asking somewhat tentatively, in Italian, “You are Gaetano’s son?” Turning, Joseph saw a tall gray-haired man examining
him with much curiosity. He wore a black homburg and a black overcoat with a white carnation in the lapel. Before Joseph could reply, the man said: “But of course you are.” He stepped forward, introduced himself as Carlo Donato, and kissed Joseph on both cheeks.

“I’m sorry there was no one to meet you at Ellis Island,” Mr. Donato said. “Your letter arrived only a few days ago, and your uncles could not get away from their jobs in Ambler today. Tomorrow the plant is closed, and they’ll come and bring you back with them. But tonight you are
my
guest.” He took the suitcase out of Joseph’s hand. “And many people are waiting to greet you. Come, we must get a taxi while we can.”

He escorted Joseph outside toward a taxi stand under the porte cochère of the building. A driver waved to them and opened a door, but just as Joseph was about to step in he was delayed momentarily by Donato’s hand on his shoulder. Donato then unpinned the number 6 tag from Joseph’s cap, crumpled it, and tossed it into a curbside trashcan. “Now nobody will notice that you’re not an American,” he announced, smiling as he waved Joseph into the backseat of the vehicle.

It was a thirty-minute ride through the traffic downtown to the Italian area of South Philadelphia. Along the way, in addition to pointing out a few unlit landmarks and statues that Joseph had difficulty seeing through the smudgy side windows of the cab, Donato spoke about his old-time friendship with Joseph’s father.

“We shared a little apartment before your father got married,” he said. “He didn’t want to live among the Italians, he wanted to live close to the train station we just left, because he was always on the go. He made many trips back and forth to Italy, as you know, and before one of these trips I sent along a letter that arranged for him to meet a cousin of mine, Marian Rocchino. That’s how she became your mother.” Joseph thought that Donato would probably inquire about his mother’s health and welfare, or about Sebastian’s condition, but he did not, and Joseph was relieved and pleased as Mr. Donato went on about his father. “We’d first met as stonemasons on a big job in Ambler, and we lived in a boardinghouse there for a while. When the job ended we moved here to an apartment I’ll show you someday. I know the old couple who now live in it. Your father liked working with stone, but I hated it. He liked moving from job to job, and not staying very long in one place. I liked regularity. He traveled all the time, as I said, and once, I remember, he went out to California or Mexico. I don’t know what for. Me, I’ve never been farther away from Philadelphia than Delaware since I came here off the boat, back in 1888. I was a
foreman on a job in Delaware when your father got married in Maida, and then he came back alone to Philadelphia, and stayed in the apartment by himself …” Donato paused. Something seemed to be troubling him, and he remained silent for a few moments, squinting as he tried to see through the rain-streaked windows. Then he said something in English to the driver.

With the windshield wipers on, Joseph had a clearer view of the street. The driver had just circled around a tall granite building that had flags in front, and across the street he saw a large store whose display windows blazed with light, and a theater marquee nearby with an illustration of a woman painted on the signboard. It was after eleven p.m.; motor vehicles and horse carriages were moving everywhere, and the sidewalks were filled with pedestrians. This was obviously an important avenue—not wide and elegant like most boulevards in Paris, but zestful in the way of the streets in the center of Naples.

“Finally I quit working outdoors and found something easier to do,” Donato went on in Italian, as the cabbie took a right turn and soon entered a narrow street that was lined on both sides by brick houses with white stone steps, all looking exactly the same. “I became an embalmer’s assistant. I started this about twenty years ago, a few blocks from here. We’re in the Italian area now, and these people never move. They live here and die here. They are thrifty all their lives and then spend fortunes on funerals. I should know. I have my own funeral business now. I also have relatives in the business.”