When all the kids and mothers have been given their numbers, Maddalena picks up the metal funnel again and starts talking, her head turning one way then the other so that everyone can hear.
“Ladies, ladies! Don’t go away yet. Wait a moment. Stand in a line everyone, each mother with her children in front of her, so we can take a photograph.”
The mothers are so stunned by this idea that they all start milling around again, breaking up the line that took God Almighty himself to form. One of them straightens her hair, another pinches her cheeks to make them rosy, yet another bites her lips to make them look like she’s got lipstick on: she’s seen it in the portraits of the ladies in the photographer’s window on the Corso. Mamma Antonietta licks her hand and wets my hair, which is growing fast after my melon crew cut, to make a parting. Maddalena walks through the crowd and divides the mothers and children into groups. She’s holding a big piece of card with writing on it.
“What does it say, Amerì?” my mother asks. I look at the letters. I can read some of them, but not all of them. I get muddled up when I try and put them together. I like numbers better.
“What did I send you to school for? To warm up the chair?”
Luckily, Maddalena picks up the funnel and reads it out to all of us. It says that we’re the children of the south whom northern Italians are waiting to host, and that this is called solidarity. I wanted to ask her what solidarity meant, but a big boy in a jacket and slightly worn-out gray pants tells us to get ready for the photograph. When everyone is in position, Mamma Antonietta puts a hand on my shoulder. I turn around to look at her. It almost looks as though she’s smiling, but at the last minute, she changes her mind and pulls her same old face.
Finally, we get to go inside the long, long building. We all look smaller without our mammas next to us, even the boys who were acting tough while we were waiting outside. The signorinas put us into rows of three and leave us in the dark corridor.
I GO AND STAND RIGHT NEXT TO TOMMASINO, whose legs are shaking worse than the drenched hamsters when they were turning back into sewer rats. I wanted to give him some courage. The third kid in our row is a thin little girl with short hair called Mariuccia. She’s the cobbler’s little girl, the one who resoles shoes up on Pizzofalcone. I recognize her, because Mamma Antonietta had once taken me to her father to ask whether he could teach me the trade, since I was so obsessed with shoes. The shoe mender had looked at me, then at my mother, and finally he had pointed behind the counter: there were four kids of different ages with shoes, nails, and glue in their hands. They were the four kids his wife, bless her soul, had had the courage to burden him with before disappearing to the other world. Mariuccia was the only girl, and one day, when she was a little older, she would keep house and look after her brothers. Anyway, at that time, the father was keeping all four kids in the shop as apprentice shoe-menders, so his answer to Mamma had been no.
Zandragliona had told me that when Maddalena and the others went and talked to him about the trains, the cobbler decided to send Mariuccia, since the others were boys and could be useful in the shop. Mariuccia was a girl, but she didn’t even know how to heat up leftover macaroni, so she wasn’t good for anything. When we were told to get into a line, Mariuccia’s face was white and her eyes wild. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to! They’ll cut off my hands and put me in the oven!”
There were other kids who were so desperate to leave, they were calling out: “I have an eye infection,” “I have trachoma,” as if they had hit the jackpot rather than caught a disease. And then all the others started acting important and yelling, “We have trachoma, we have trachoma,” because they thought that they would only let you get on the train if you had trachoma.
Me, Mariuccia, and Tommasino sit next to one another. Every now and again, Mariuccia sniffs the air. But she can’t smell any burning or cooked flesh and she can’t see any smoke. So, for now, they’re not putting us in a gas oven. All we see are signorinas running up and down and stopping in front of a tall young man holding a big ledger, where every now and again he jots something down with a pencil. They call him Comrade Maurizio. He walks up and down, too. He listens to everyone and has an answer to every question. When he comes up to us, he stops and looks at us.
“And you? What are your names?”
We’re too embarrassed to answer.
“Hey, I’m talking to you. Don’t you have any tongues?” he asks, laughing. “Did they cut them off or something?”
“Well, not yet,” Tommasino says, scared to death.
“Why? Are they going to cut them off?” Mariuccia asks. “So, Pachiochia was right after all.”
Comrade Maurizio laughs again. Then he gives us each a pat on the head.
“Come on, show me. Stick them out!”
We all three look at one another and then stick our tongues out.
“If it were up to me, I’d cut the tips off because they’re a bit too long for my taste . . .”
Mariuccia pulls her tongue back in and crosses her hands in an X over her mouth.
“. . . but the regulations don’t allow it . . .”
Comrade Maurizio flicks through the pages of the ledger he’s holding.
“. . . you see, it’s written here. Can you read? No? What a pity. If you could, I would show you. It says here in the regulations of the Committee for Children’s Salvation, Article 103: It is forbidden to cut children’s tongues off . . .” and off he goes, laughing again.
Then he turns the book around and shows us a blank page.
“Comrade Maurizio likes joking!” Tommasino says, some color coming back to his cheeks.
“Bravo! That’s exactly right!” Comrade Maurizio says. “And there’s something else I like doing too. Sit still for five minutes.”
He starts drawing with his pencil on the blank page he showed us. He looks at us and then draws, stops, looks at us again, and draws a little more. He looks at the page, looks back at us, and then rips the page out of the ledger. Our faces are on the sheet of paper. Spitting images. He gives the sheet to Tommasino, who puts it in his pocket.
From the end of the corridor, two signorinas in white coats and white gloves tell us to take our clothes and shoes off. Tommasino, Mariuccia, and I look at one another and start crying. Tommasino because he’s scared they’ll take away his old shoes full of holes, Mariuccia because she’s embarrassed to strip naked in front of everyone, and me because my underpants are patched up and my socks are dirty. So I go up to one of the signorinas in a white coat and gloves and I tell her I can’t take my clothes off, because I’m cold, and my two friends follow my example.
Luckily, Maddalena comes along.
“Let’s play a new game, okay?” she says. “A game you’ve never played before!”
Tommasino stops blubbering and stares at her.
“But if we’re going to play this game, you need to take your clothes off. Then we’ll give you some new clothes that are nice and warm.”
“Shoes, too?” I chip in.
“New shoes for everyone!” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears.
The three of us strip off, and Maddalena takes us into another room with some pipes that spray water from the ceiling. It’s kind of like rain, but it’s hot.