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.
“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?”