The Shoemaker's Wife(49)

Ciro stayed put and looked out over the crowd. The Zanettis were supposed to be there to greet him, holding up a sign with his name on it. He scanned the crowd but did not see his name anywhere. After a few minutes, he began to worry.

From the ship, the welcome on the ground seemed grand, but upon close inspection, the revelers greeting the immigrants were shabby. The band’s red-and-blue uniforms were ill-fitting and missing buttons; their brass horns, an unpolished greenish gold, were dented and scratched. The women’s dresses were dingy, the parasols they twirled, frayed. Ciro realized that the hoopla was manufactured, a theatrical show for naive eyes and nothing more.

A slim young woman in an organza dress and straw hat with silk daisies spilling from the crown approached him.

“Hello, handsome,” she said in English.

“I don’t understand,” Ciro mumbled in Italian, keeping his eyes on the crowd for the Zanettis.

“I said, hello and welcome.” She leaned in and whispered, again in English, grazing his cheek with her lips, “Do you need a place to stay?”

She wore a sweet perfume of gardenias and musk that soothed Ciro, who had been shoveling coal for days in a hot tomb. The machinations of Ellis Island had left him exhausted. She was soft and pretty and seemed taken with him. Her attention reassured him.

“Come with me,” she said.

Ciro didn’t need to understand her words to know he would follow her to the ends of the earth. She was around his age, her long red hair loosely braided, with red satin ribbons woven into the plaits. She had a few freckles on her creamy skin, and dark brown eyes. She wore a bright pink lip rouge, a color unlike any Ciro had ever seen.

“Do you need a job?” she said.

Ciro looked at her blankly.

“Job. Work. Lavoro. Job,” she repeated, then took his hand and led him through the crowd. She pulled a single yellow rose from the bouquet Ciro carried, and touched the petals to her lips.

Suddenly Ciro saw his name on a sign. The man holding it was pushing anxiously through the crowd. Ciro let go of the girl’s hand and waved. “Signor Zanetti!” Ciro shouted.

The girl tugged on his sleeve, motioning him toward a nearby group of men on the dock, but Ciro saw a red parasol moving through the crowd like a periscope.

“No, no, come with me,” the young woman insisted, placing her calfskin-covered hand on Ciro’s forearm. He remembered the soft touch of his mother’s gloved hand.

“Leave him alone!” Signora Zanetti’s voice cut through the din from under her parasol. “Shoo! Shoo! Puttana!” she said to the girl.

Carla Zanetti, stout, gray-haired, five feet tall, and sixty, burst forward from the crowd. She was followed by her husband, Remo, who was only slightly taller than she. He had a thick white mustache and a smooth bald head with a fringe of white hair above his collar.

Ciro turned to apologize to the red-haired girl, but she was gone.

“She almost got you,” Remo said.

“Like a spider in a web,” Carla agreed.

“Who was she?” Ciro asked, still turning his head from side to side, searching for the pretty young woman.

“It’s a racket. You go with her and sign up to work in the quarries in Pennsylvania for low wages,” Carla said. “She gets a cut, and you get a life of misery.”

Reeling at this news, Ciro handed her the flowers. “These are for you.”

Carla Zanetti smiled and took the bouquet. She cradled the flowers appreciatively.

“Well, you’ve won her over already, son,” Remo said. “We’ll take a carriage over to Mulberry Street.”

Carla walked in front of the men, leading them through the crowd. Ciro looked back and caught a glimpse of the girl talking with another passenger from steerage. She leaned in and touched his arm, just as she had Ciro’s. He remembered Iggy warning him about women who were too nice too soon.

The carriage careened through the streets, dodging pedestrians, carts, and motorcars. The streets of Little Italy were as narrow as shoelaces. The modest buildings, mostly three-floor structures made of wood, were potchkied together like a pair of patchwork pants. Open seams in walls were sealed with odd ends of metal, drainpipes trailed down the sides of houses in different widths, welded together with flaps of mismatched tin. Some houses were freshly whitewashed, others showed weathered layers of old paint.

The cobblestone streets were crowded with people, and when Ciro looked up, the windows were also filled with faces. Women leaned out of second-story windows to holler for their children or gossip with the neighbors. Stoops spilled over with southern Italians gathered in small groups. It was as if the belly of the ship had been sliced open and docked on the streets of Little Italy. Curls of black smoke from cheap wood puffed out of the chimneys, and the only green was the occasional tufts of treetops, scattered among the tarpaper roofs like random bouquets.

The sounds of city life were a deafening mix of whistles, horns, arguments, and music. Unaccustomed to the clatter, Ciro wondered if he could get used to it. When they arrived on Mulberry Street, he offered to pay the driver, but Remo wouldn’t allow it. Ciro jumped out of the carriage and held his hand out to help Carla. Signora Zanetti nodded at her husband, impressed with Ciro’s fine manners.

A barefoot boy in ragged shorts and a torn shirt approached Ciro and held out his hand. His black hair was chopped off, leaving uneven layers. His thick black eyebrows were expressive triangles, his brown eyes wide and alert.