Meeting at the Train Station

Two trains traveled under a September Italian sun, one heading south and the other heading north. Giovanni’s journey began at dawn as he boarded the train in his small village of Marcellinarain Calabria on the brief ride to St. Eufemia where he changed trains for the seven-hour ride to Salerno. Leonora also left before the sun peeked through with her five-year old daughter, Angela. They boarded in Chivasso in Piermonte and changed trains in Milano for their lengthy southern journey.

The steam engine hissed and belched, struggling like a pack animal to reach the inclines and rushing down declines. Brakes shrieked at every stop, causing Angela to cover her ears. Soot spewed from the smokestack. The engineer yanked a chain to sound the whistle before entering tunnels, forcing Leonara to jump up to shut the windows to keep the black grit from coming into the car. She folded and refolded her hands incessantly then wiped away a furtive tear before her daughter would see it. She adjusted her long skirt and ruffled collar tirelessly. Between the windows hung heavy short-cropped drapery panels in beige/black print tied back with threadbare ropes that Leonora untied when the afternoon sun turned the car into a heat box.

Angela played with the colorful ribbons on her frock. She even sang a nursery rhyme until the constant rocking of the train put her to sleep. Leonora watched the countryside slip by between stations. Her ivory skin, dark eyebrows and soft lips were reflected in the glass as the cloudy steam evaporated quickly on that sun-filled day of 1896 when Leonora would meet the man who committed a lie of omission.

She lowered the window further when pulling out of the Rome train station at high noon, six hours into her eight-hour journey. Her dark brown wisps of hair fluttered near her temples but her tight bun never released a single strand. On the other train Giovanni’s window was open from the start as he brought the stifling heat of Calabria with him. He had placed his suit jacket and felt hat on the overhead baggage rack. Loosening his tie, he unbuttoned his stiff collar and wiped his brow repeatedly with his linen handkerchief. The wooden bench seat for two was all his and he leaned his head against the window, allowing the rumbling metal wheels to lull him to sleep. The couple had made a joint decision that would impact Angela for a lifetime. It would fuel a haunting question that dwelled on the edges of her mind well into her graying years.

Two years earlier in 1894 the couple had lived as man and wife in Brazil. Both had emigrated from Italy in 1888, she with her parents and brother; he had arrived alone. Their port of entry was Santos where countless Italians had come, seeking work. Most of the passengers came from northern Italy with their families to start a new life. At the port of Santos these weary immigrants boarded a train to Sao Paolo where their name, age, departing port, and name of the ship they sailed were entered into a registry. Each person was given an identification number. This hostelry was a meeting place for employers to match up with workers. The lines were long and the process, trying. Body odor from the crowd mingled with the smell of cheeses and salamis. Children were restless, circling their parents and babies cried. The sounds and smells ascended to the peak of a warehouse roof only to crash onto the concrete floor. Brazil had subsidized the journey for these immigrant workers. Giovanni had been one of them.

The sea winds had filled his lungs and blew his hair, sometimes stinging his cheeks. The journey from Naples to Santos, the port of Sao Paolo, took over two weeks of rocking then dipping through an ocean storm. He shared a cabin with three other men all from the Veneto region of Italy. They sought each other out for meals and often gathered at the ship’s stern to smoke and compete in topping each other’s stories. Giovanni was not as gregarious as the others, but held their attention when he recounted his experience in the mines of South Africa. Their camaraderie made the sea voyage tolerable. On his lone train ride to meet Leonora in Salernothe many hours of swaying, slowing, and stopping reminded him of the ship voyage on the Napoli. At one of the train stations he bought a panini and agassosa, dismissing the basket of food Dora had prepared for him at home. He craved the salami sandwichesand fizzy lemon soda the vendors were selling. This meeting with Leonora and Angela didn’t include Dora, but its outcome would change her life forever. Giovanni had a firm mindset.

Leonora and Giovanni greeted each other on the train platform with only a polite handshake. The time for love at first sight was over. This meeting was to fulfill an agreement. Angela was happy to see her dad but reticent to run into his arms. They’d been separated for nearly two years. The last time she saw him was at their home on the plantation (fazenda) in Brazil. Foremen were given small homes apart from the barrack housing where workers and their families lived. These long low buildings were former slave quarters when Sao Paolo had become one of the major producers of coffee beans in the international trade. Immigrants filled them when slavery was abolished in 1888. Standing barefoot by her mother’s side, Angela waved goodbye as Giovanni boarded the wagon that would take him to the train for Santos and his return to Italy. His departure was a mystery, but the downcast faces on those around her were unmistakable. The stranger from Italy, who had come to get him, took him away.

Stretching from her nap, Angela whined: “Are we there yet?”

“Be patient, “ her mother offered, “It won’t be much longer.” Vendors hawked the train in Naples as Angela stood in front of the window of their cabin.

“Mommy, can i have a gassosa?”

“Not now,” her mother whispered. “Here, have a plum and a bottle of water I brought from home.” Leonora flipped the wire that held the small round white porcelain top that sealed the sweating bottle and poured it into a small glass.

Angela ate the fruit while her mother wiped its juice from dripping down her arm onto her pretty dress. Staring at the vendors with wooden trays strapped around their necks containing paper-wrapped sandwiches, she laughed to see their antics. The vendors avoided the doors where passengers were getting on and off the train and focused on those in the cars. Arms waved from the windows, holding money to catch the eye of the sellers. The humming of the idling engine and commotion of people kissing and hugging forced the vendors to shout louder, Panini, Panini. Angela’s eyes were wide as if watching a performance and her broad smile reached across her fair-skinned face. As they pulled out of the station, she exchanged waves with the people on the platform who were motioning their goodbyes to their loved ones. Her mother offered her another plum from the worn carry bag she’d brought with them. Their luggage consisted of one small suitcase.

When Giovanni had left his family on the plantation in Brazil two years earlier for the train to take him to the port of Santos, his wagon held a steamer trunk and a carpet bag filled with items he’d brought with him, plus photos of his life in Brazil. His journey from Italy had not been motivated by hunger and desperation for work. He was an only child raised in a family of property owners in the hills of Calabria. They were fortunate to have their staterooms filled with flour to make pasta, fruits and vegetables from their farm, eggs daily, and chicken always available, plus olive oil to share. They crushed grapes to make robust wines from local vineyards. The lower the vine the stronger the wine was a common phrase among the Calabrese, but the grapes’ high sugar content fortified its strength. Each year his family raised a pig until it was full grown, feeding it chestnuts and figs plush the scraps from their table until the annual January slaughter to make the soppressata, sausage, roasts, and blood pudding. Giovanni’s shoulders were broad and his hands were so large someone had to clean his ears for him. Muscular, he could do the work of two men. All this land would be his one day. According to his mother his future had been planned, including an arranged marriage with a homely petite woman, Dora, who spoke and Albanian dialect. Her family owned property as well.

Leonora’s passport showed a woman with dark eyes, lovely features, and fair skin, an Italian beauty. Her wavy collar-length hair matched her eyes and sat gently on her high-neck dress. The sepia photo made it impossible to see the dress’s deep color. She appeared a young woman of marriageable age, with a kind and subtle smile. Whatever attention she elicited from Giovanni, it was enough to halt his letter writing to his mother after one year of his departure.

In another telling photo in Giovanni’s possessions from Brazil, showed him standing tall and handsome. His hands rests on the high back of a chair. He must have whistled while putting on that cravat tied under the bent tips of a stiff collar in his fine suit and weskit, the same her wore years later on the train to Salerno. Smiling for the camera must have come easy since photos taken at a studio were reserved to mark a celebration. His straight fine nose and high cheekbones were repeated on Angela’s sweet face. They shared similar light-colored eyes explained by their translucency in his sepia photo. An attractive man, clean shaven, except for a moustache, appears alone because the person seated in the chair next to him had been cut out. His hand is visible, resting on the back of the chair. The photo speaks volumes of this neatly dressed man on a special day, but the person who vanished suggests so much more, possibly a wedding in Brazil.

Absence had made Angela reticent when she saw her father in the waiting room of the airless Salerno train station. She was not aware of the agreement her parents had made. Hiding behind her mother’s skirts, she smiled sheepishly until Giovanni picked her up and kissed her, tickling her cheeks with his mustache. Giving into his charm and affection, she giggled, ultimately wrapping her arms around his neck for her biggest hug. The only people missing from this reunion were the nearly two-year old twins who Leonora left with her aunt in Chivasso, a small village in Piemonte. Leonora and her children had returned from Brazil a few months earlier and settled in with her aunt. From there she exchanged letters with Giovanni, ironing out the details of this meeting.

“You are looking so well, “ Giovanni greeted Leonora with a smile reflecting joy.

“So do you, “ was all she could say.

He guided them to a corner of the room where two empty benched faced each other. The station corralled a large group of travelers who boarded a waiting train. Giovanni’s train had arrived an hour earlier. Angela sat next to her mother across from her father. Leonora played with her daughter’s hair, petting her head as she spoke to Giovanni.

“The babies are doing well. They are with my aunt.”

“How are your parents and your brother?”

“They are doing well, thank you.”

“You know we could have continued our life in Brazil.

“Not after that young man knocked on our door.”

When Giovanni had stopped writing to his mother, she had feared the worst. After three years she convinced a young man, Saverio, to journey to Brazil to trace Giovanni’s steps in hopes of finding him or at the very least to find out what may have happened to him. Brazil was rugged country and Giovanni was a fearless journeyman. It was his second adventure. His first one took him to South Africa to work as a foreman at the mines. He stayed only one year before returning to Italy and succumbing to his mother’s formidable will and the arranged marriage she’d contracted. Within six months he left for Brazil, the second adventure that had very nearly turned into an escape.

Saverio had a slight build and wore round glasses, carrying himself like a professor. He wasn’t, but he was a notary with an office job. He sailed to Brazil on the same ship Giovanni had taken years before, hoping to find someone, anyone in the crew who might have remembered him. The well-dressed young man, suit, cravat, and hat, showed Giovanni’s photo to many of the stewards, crewmen, and waiters, but with so many faces coming and going, no one recognized him. Saverio thought that Giovanni’s impressive size might have lingered in someone’s memory. In their Italian village everyone knew Giovanni. Even the mayor and the council approached him shortly after he returned from South Africa to discuss the problems the villagers were having with the highway men who robbed them when they the village at the crossroads. Giovanni agreed to meet with these brigands. Alone with his rifle he met up with the leader of the group. No one knows exactly what transpired, but the villagers were no longer held up by these criminals. Giovanni’s reputation was impressive.

At the port of Santos mild mannered Saverio took a train to the hostel where Italian immigrants were housed until they found employment. There he asked a worker to guide him to the address of the last letter Giovanni had written to his mother. Saverio took a bus across town to a multi-family building where he met a bent-over old man who recognized Giovanni’s photo. The old timer couldn’t verify if Giovanni was alive or not, only that he’d moved a distance away a long time ago to San Jose, a city north of Sao Paolo in the heart of one of the oldest coffee plantations. Here was the first clue Saverio had gotten that he was on Giovanni’s trail. Wiping his brow, he made plans to leave the next day via a bus instead of a train. He cleverly decided he could descend the bus at every stop and flash Giovanni’s picture to any vendor he saw. When he reached San Jose, a laborer who was meeting someone on the bus, recognized Giovanni, his foreman, and directed Saverio to the house with the gate across from the barracks.

With his small satchel he walked the dusty dirt road for nearly a mile. Parched and exhausted, he knocked on the door. Leonora greeted him, carrying an infant. An older woman at the other end of the room was carrying another infant. In a corner off from the fireplace, a little girl was playing with a teapot on a bench below the small curtained window. The rustic room was inviting and Saverio wanted nothing more than a glass of water and a chair. Holding up Giovanni’s photo, he greeted the woman.

“Hello, Signora,” he graciously asked after removing his hat, “Does this man live here?”

“Yes, he does.”

“I am, Saverio DeLisa, a friend from his village in Italy.”

“Please come in,” she urged. “You can wait for him here.” She rushed to get him some water and offered him a seat in the and hewed wooden rocker by the fireplace. After taking a long drink of water, he sighed.

“Thank the Lord. His mother and wife will be so relieved to hear that he is still alive.”

His words fell to the floor in silence of the cabin. Not even the babies cried. The older woman’s hand flew to her mouth a rushed intake of breath, and the little girl studied him with a curiosity that left her still, even though she did not understand the heavy meaning in those words. Yes, two women in Italy would be greatly relieved, but Leonora in Brazil was shaken to her core. She felt her breast milk turn sour as Saverio rested in the rocker near the fire, closing his eyes in relief that his persistent and arduous journey had ended successfully. He could not know that his discovery suddenly hurled this woman and her three children into an abyss.

At the train station in Salerno, Leonora bent her knees to be face to face with Angela. Holding the child’s face in her two hands and holding back her tears, she told her daughter, “You will be going home with your father to Calabria.”

Bewildered, Angela asked, “Aren’t you coming?”

“No, I must return to the babies.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to go home with you.”

“Your father wants you to come live with him.”

“I don’t want to go,” Angela stammered.

‍ ‍Crying, she hugged her mother, hiding her face into Leonora’s shoulder. Giovanni stood quiet as Leonora picked up and held her daughter, tears seeping into Angela’s hair. They rocked back and forth for some time then Giovanni spoke.

“Come, Angela, the train is here.” Pulling his sobbing daughter from her mother, he quickly exited the station and boarded the train. Angela’s arm was outstretched, beckoning to her mother, “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” Leonora stood on the station holding her handkerchief to her face. The whistle blew and the engine released its steam as it labored onto its destination. Angela’s eyes grew weary with the rocking of the train. It beckoned sleep in her father’s arms, her face still wet with tears. Angela never saw her mother again and the question she still raised well into her eighties, “Why did she give me away?”

Rumors flew for years that Leonora with her son and daughter, the twins, had returned to Brazil, claiming she was a widow. There she allegedly remarried. Angela never wanted to pursue a search for Leonora while Dora was alive for fear of offending her. Instead, Angela traveled to Italy in 1953 from her new home in the United States and ten years after Dora’s death. Angela was in her sixties. She went to Chivasso and knocked on the door of the only address she had from childhood, holding her mother’s photo, just as Saverio had done with Giovanni’s photo in Brazil. She asked the elderly woman who answered, “Do you know this woman? She’s my mother.” Startled, the woman claimed Leonora left Italy many many years ago and she know nothing further about her. The woman’s rigid posture and her tightened lips hinted she wouldn’t share any information, and she didn’t. Angela parted as bewildered as the little girl whose parents made a plan to meet at a train station.