“Bonna Fortuna! Bonna Fortuna!” Everyone waved.
Clutching her precious hat, Giovanna leaned out of the window to catch a last look of her childhood friends. She hung there, searching for their faces, long after coal smoke had enveloped them in ghostly shrouds.
Her great adventure had begun. The fledgling dream she had given her pride for was about to become her reality. Now, suddenly this frightened her. Marriage vows parroted, not felt, a barrier of mutual embarrassment, they sat facing each other like strangers waiting to alight at separate stations.
“Close the window, Giovanna.”
She did, giving its broad leather strap an extra tug to make certain it would hold. Her knees shook; sitting, she pressed her palms against them hoping he wouldn’t notice. Ashamed at her loss of courage, hiding her eyes, she focused on the tops of descending pines as they slowly passed by the window. She wished she could unbutton the high collar of her shirtwaist, but that would be an unladylike thing to do. She hoped the sweat beginning to form on her face would not be considered equally unladylike. It startled her, this sudden concern for propriety. It was not like her at all. Could a few sanctimonious incantations have such a radical effect? And so quickly? Better not to dwell on it. The deed was done. No turning back—besides, nothing to turn back to.
“Your face is covered in soot. Here …” Giovanni offered his handkerchief.
Shaking her head, Giovanna took from her jacket pocket one of the ones she had made for herself. Using the dim reflection of herself in the window to wipe her face, she acknowledged, as she often did, that she was truly plain. A reality accepted long ago—then learned to live with. Turning to him, her eyes questioned if her face was now clean.
“Yes, Giovanna. You must be more careful. You cannot lean out when a train is in motion. You could have gotten cinders in your eyes, and that can be serious. When they examine you, if the doctors find anything wrong with your eyes, you won’t be allowed to enter America. I’ll go on, of course, but you? You will be sent back, alone!”
Giovanni fingered the pockets of his vest, searching for a match to light one of the thin cheroots he seemed to have an endless supply of.
She was going to be examined? By strange men in a strange land—maybe then abandoned? Whatever had possessed her to want to leave Cirié, marry, journey across half the world with a man who, though he didn’t love her, could at least like her enough to not leave her like a sack of weeviled potatoes just because her eyes might be judged unsuitable? And what else would those strange doctors do to her, want to examine? She decided to ask.
“Giovanni, I am very healthy, so what—”
He interrupted her. “I know. I checked with the nuns.”
“You … did?” Giovanna barely contained her outrage.
“Of course. Camilla too! ‘Good family health is most important,’ Mr. Ford says.”
“Oh, your Mr. Ford is interested in health? Not only with the making of motorcars?”
“Mr. Henry Ford takes care of his workers in everything!” bristled Giovanni.
Giovanna remained silent. Giovanni dozed; it had been an exasperating week.
Hesitant, as though afraid to slip, the small train rattled on towards the city below.
Later, whenever Giovanna tried to describe their arrival in Turin’s opulent station, she could never quite manage to convey the enormity of that vast canvas of people in motion engulfed by smoke and turmoil. The indescribable noise, the shouts, clanging bells, trains in motion, hissing steam streaming upwards towards the vaulted glass ceiling, amplifying itself as it ricocheted back down to shatter eardrums and composure. And how it stood, mighty, its own majesty, as though no human effort could have created it. Its visual impact of power so overwhelming that Giovanna, standing rooted below, looking up at it, caught her breath in fearful awe.
Intent on finding a pump to refill their water bottles, Giovanni lost sight of his wife. She, mesmerized by the first true locomotive she had ever seen, didn’t even miss him. His anger when he finally found her didn’t penetrate either. He shouted above the din, “I had to look for you! Don’t you ever make me do that again! Understand? Where I go, you follow!”
Trance broken, Giovanna switched her rapt gaze to him, asking, “This? This will pull our train?”
“Yes, it’s a locomotive. Now take the water and food.” Handing her the laden string bags, he turned and barked, “Come on!” over his shoulder, and hurried along the platform. Bottles and bags bumping against her legs, Giovanna stumbled after him.
Inside the crowded third-class carriage, people slid over, making room for them to sit together. Giovanni got organized. On the roped rack above, he stacked their two suitcases, on top of which he placed their overcoats, neatly folded inside out. As hats needed to be worn for propriety as well as station, they represented no problem of storage. The string bags holding their bottles of water he placed on the floor behind his legs; the one with their provisions, behind Giovanna’s. Removing his jacket carefully, reversing its sleeves, he instructed his wife to observe, follow his example, explaining that in this way, folded twice, a comfortable padding could be arrived at, making the sitting on wooden slats for long periods of time at least bearable. Following his instruction, Giovanna saw some of their fellow travelers, on hearing this advice, doing the same. On entering, she had noticed the way the men looked at her husband. They, in their workman’s clothes and cloth caps, sizing up the stranger in a store-bought suit, sporting a boss’s derby.
Giovanni pulled the tasseled curtain across the open window. It swayed with the undulation of the train, but no breeze made it flutter. Women unknotted their headscarves, wiped their faces before folding the cloths into damp triangles. Their men fanned themselves—those who could read—with their folded newspapers, others using their caps. One, sweat-stained, addressed Giovanni in Piedmontese, the dialect of the region. If he had done so in any of the hundreds of dialects passing for Italian within the country, neither Giovanni nor Giovanna would have understood him. Italians actually became Italians only outside their country’s borders. Within, their language was shaped by the region they came from, their identity by the former kingdoms—the duchies they lived in. So, a Neapolitan introduced himself as such to a Venetian, a Milanese to a Florentine, a Roman to a Genovese. Shakespeare’s Juliet was a Veronesa. If Romeo had called her an Italian, he would probably never have been allowed up that balcony vine.