Two-Way Ticket

The whirring wheels were music to Immacolato, what did it matter if the villagers considered him mad? He had escaped, he would no longer hear them. They would never change; he thought back to his father and grandfather, one as ignorant as the other. Years ago a few villagers had gone to fight against the Abyssinians but none had returned. That had convinced the others to stay put and deride rash adventures but for Immacolato anything was better than staying and decaying. The villagers hated him because he called them blockheads; “Where’s your degree?” they asked. He promised himself that Filippo would have a degree, perhaps two.

The horses set such a brisk pace that he felt he was flying amid the olive trees lining the road. He credited Filippo’s mother for his fine features and long hands which would never become like blocks of pumice stone from working the fields.

As the carriage crested a hill, Immacolato craned out. Palermo could not be far off. He would always keep in mind Filippo completely absorbed in his books, at the kitchen table because his bedroom was a mere cubby hole. The farm farewell had been painful but he was consoled by Filippo’s trust whereas the others, including Luca, hadn’t understood anything.

The carriage slowed, then stopped at a village. The driver unloaded goods. Then he stood talking with a peasant as if he had all the time in the world. Immacolato grumbled to the only other passenger, a well-dressed old man reading a book, “We’ll arrive late.” As there was no response, Immacolato strained to hear the pair outside. Although the words were indistinct, he recognised the resigned tone which his brother Luca also used. Immacolato imagined the pair’s comments which, he thought, would have been the same twenty years ago in 1890: “That’s life, what can we do about it? Better let things be, we’re not gentlemen.” No, but Filippo would be.

If he did not have that eggplant stomach, the weathered peasant could be Luca, the same shabby clothes and crusty hands. Immacolato recalled Luca’s lost expression when he had told him he was leaving. Just returned from Mass, in his black suit, black tie and holding his black hat, Luca stood at the corner of the farm house. Breathing content, he was basking in the sun, his gaze fixed on the fields which he did not have to work that day. Then he turned and asked, “Why go to America when you don’t know anyone there?”

Luca had not understood anything since Rosetta’s death: not why his younger brother, who he considered a placid dreamer, had fallen silent, then changed into a gambler, a drinker who could become violent. He had not understood again when the drunken gambler had ceased gambling and getting drunk once he found Filippo was a bright boy.

Thank God, the driver had finished yarning and they were under way again.

Immacolato would show the villagers there was more money available in America than they could imagine and not only for young men. How stupid to tell him to wait and then send Filippo. Filippo would be a professional, not a peasant.

He craned out the window again: Palermo stretched away to its harbour and soon they were cutting through ragged outskirts. Occasionally he saw newfangled motor vehicles. His return would be different, the Filippo who would meet him would be a university student or perhaps already a lawyer. They would ride home in style, confounding the nay-sayers.

What if you get into trouble, asked those afraid to put their noses beyond the village. Now the carriage clattered along city streets and Immacolato tried to spot the university. Instead, through the canyon of tall buildings, he saw with shock the bay’s blueness whose sheen stretched to the horizon and, far beyond, to America.

Immacolato tasted petrol and blood. Forehead pressed against the car window to cool his head, blurrily he saw houses and telegraph poles whip past. He moved but every bone ached as when he had regained consciousness on the road with four men standing over him. First he had thought they were responsible for his jagged pains, for his swollen lips and blood-caked mouth. But then he had turned his throbbing head and had seen the two bodies which lay nearby.

He tried to remember: yesterday he had drawn his first pay, intending to send half to Filippo, just to show that more would follow. But, as the banks were closed, he entered a restaurant where by chance he had met another Italian accompanied by an American friend who produced a pack of cards and shuffled them as if playing a concertina. Immacolato had refused to play but they were persistent and a win would enable him to send Filippo a really worthwhile amount.

He had won from the start, they had drunk much wine, but the American and the other Italian had argued until the American … their angry faces kept looming before him. What if you get into trouble in America? The memory of the question broke the dream from which he had been awoken by the four men in the car. He had heard the villagers’ question when the American and the Italian had drawn guns. Like them, in the dark Immacolato had put his watch, wallet, coins, cigarette case in a heap on the footpath and was to gamble for them. There was money galore in America but you had to go for it. The American punched Immacolato who, falling, heard shots.

Again pain jabbed his thigh. He slipped his hand into his pocket and found something spiky. He dragged out watches, rings, wallets … they were not his, they belonged in the dream. He touched his tender mouth as he looked up at the hostile police eyes trained on him.

Immacolato studied his hands. After almost thirty years the palms were no longer the rough loofahs of a peasant, they were almost a gentleman’s hands. He recalled holding up the swollen hands at the trial to prove he was an honest worker. But the court had not believed them. Now he could explain himself better because he spoke half-American. He had so forgotten his own language that he was uncertain of the words to begin his letter. It was years since he had written saying that he was working but was so poorly paid he could not yet send anything, which was better than confessing he was in prison. He had sustained himself with the thought that Filippo’s professional career would be under way, perhaps he already had a bright grandson with a great future. For Immacolato, America was four walls and a barred window but nobody troubled him, he was not lost in a bewildering city where none took time to hear him.

He had not believed the talk of a release for good conduct, however apparently they wanted his cell. He sensed paralysed Time was rushing towards him. There was not enough of it for a reply to his letter before the sailing date.

He had rarely written home and had never received a reply because, to hide his imprisonment, he said he had no forwarding address as he was trekking to another city to find work. Now his first impulse was to write to Filippo, but what would Filippo think of a voice from the past, he probably had a wife, a signora, and his children at the best schools. How could he find Filippo in Palermo, Naples or Rome? He would visit him even if it meant going to Milan.

Luca was a poor alternative—he would merely ask him to be at the wharf.

Immacolato looked back at Palermo as the bus climbed the last hill because he longed for the bay and the open sea. He could not get beyond the embarrassing scene at the wharf. From the ship’s rail he had immediately spotted Luca and, when the gangplank was lowered, was among the first to descend.

“Luca!” he had called.

“Papà!”

What a fool: he had not recognised his own son. Somehow he had always imagined an unchanged Filippo and an unchanged Luca—they had merged. On the wharf Filippo had tried to make light of his mistake, then said Luca had been buried two years ago. Immacolato lost his son and brother within seconds.

Despite the heat in the bus, Immacolato was still shivering from shock. Filippo, although a bit taller than Luca, had his same resigned tone, the same earthy look, the same gestures, and his fine features had thickened. In Filippo’s talk, Immacolato sought a hint of disappointment that he was stuck in the village but there was only complacency. Filippo had been nearer when he was distant.

As the bus entered the village, a fear seized Immacolato as when first in America. That had been fear of the new, this was a dread of the old. He did not greet the few onlookers when Filippo helped him leave the bus.

The white-haired old man recoiled at a faint stench of animal droppings, the eternal smell of the village, whereas in Palermo he had welcomed the pervasive, rich coffee aroma.

As Filippo now occupied his room, he had been assigned the cubby hole Filippo had as a boy. He stood in it, wondering why he preferred it to his own room.

He joined Filippo, who was standing in the fierce sun although he had not changed out of his black suit. Solid as the house, Filippo gazed proudly at the fields and explained that the share farm was doing well. Immacolato wanted to know only what Filippo thought of him. Finally Filippo stopped talking of crops, prices and animals and stood silent until he turned to ask, “But why did you go so far away?”

Immacolato felt so sick that momentarily he could not see but now knew why the small room had pleased him.

As soon as food was on the table that evening, Filippo came to knock on his father’s door. As there was no reply, he tried the handle, but the door was locked. He thought his father must be sleeping but in the following days learnt that he preferred to be locked away.

Some old hands told stories about Immacolato, now called the “Americano”, from his surly and violent phase. Youngsters who had crept up to spy through the window that was barred to keep thieves out, said he had snarled at them like an wild beast. They must have been playing “let’s pretend” because, after a while, a placid Immacolato occasionally emerged from his room. He asked if Filippo still read books, but he said farm work left him little time to read. He told his father that any villager who wanted to make money now would head not for America but for Abyssinia where Italians were doing great things.

Immacolato asked himself if he was to blame for the way Filippo had turned out. He could not bear the thought but it did not disappear. Would Filippo ever marry? Now he was unsure whether he wanted grandchildren destined for the treadmill.

Immacolato enjoyed again pasta with sardines, oranges blood-red inside, and prickly-pear pulp. Sometimes he left the house but initially almost the only soul he talked to was venerable Vera, the bent, toothless fruit-and-vegetable seller, who lacked a few Fridays but had liked him as a boy, was glad to see him again and did not ask questions about what he had done in recent decades.

Gaining confidence, Immacolato went to the coffee bar where men, in a fog of cigarette smoke, playing endless games of cards, exuded a hint of garlic which now turned his stomach. To his surprise, it triggered a welcome smell of the cinnamon coating on prison muffins which had been provided for special occasions. Some card players questioned him about America. He said not a word about his first-hand knowledge of police and prison, talking instead of the big cars and big bums, the tall buildings and crazy football. Because he had little to go on, as more questions came he began to invent uncertainly and a smart-aleck derided his inconsistencies. He was flummoxed; there were guffaws. Immacolato saw distrust on their faces. Then a numbskull, who he knew was a mate of Filippo, said tauntingly, “If you didn’t make any money, you might as well have sat on your arse here.”

It jolted a saying into Immacolato’s mind: “God rubs salt in our wounds.” The villagers had replaced God. Once Immacolato would have hit back but no longer had the strength. He defended himself with silence and left. Surer in solitude, he preferred his cubby cell.

Villagers calculated that Immacolato must have been Filippo’s age, forty-four, when he left for America. Who would set out for America at that age? Must have thought he was a youngster again after his wife’s death—had always been odd. Nothing could be done about it but the villagers pitied Filippo, who was not as young as he used to be. He took it as well as could be expected, poor Filippo, but a mad father is a heavy burden.

Desmond O’Grady, an Australian who lives in Italy, has published two books of short stories:
A Long Way from Home and Valid for All Countries.