The Shoemaker's Wife(57)

Once a day, the passengers in the belly of the ship were encouraged to go up to the deck for fresh air and sun. Many chose to sleep on the deck through the night, to avoid the overcrowded conditions in the accommodations below. The cold night air and ocean storms, it turned out, could be as perilous to their health as the cramped conditions in the cabins below. Many contracted coughs they could not shake, influenza, and fevers, for which there was nothing but mustard plasters and weak tea.

While on the deck below, the passengers in steerage could hear the tinkling of champagne glasses, the strings of the orchestra, and the sandy shuffle of feet as the first-class passengers danced through the night above them. In the morning, they were awakened by the heady scent of fresh coffee and cinnamon rolls drenched in butter baking in the ovens in the upper-class kitchen. When the steerage passengers went below for their own breakfast, there were vats of scorched black coffee, cups of cold milk, and heels of day-old bread with butter.

The elegance and easy living of first class seemed so close. The passengers imagined what it must be like. The young girls dreamed of dancing in chiffon dresses and eating cake in the ballroom. The boys imagined vendor carts serving caramel peanuts while they played shuffleboard on the polished wood floors in the game room.

As the men below gathered on the deck to smoke, they compared plans and schemes, promising themselves that when they returned to Italy, they would return on this boat, traveling in first class as rich Americans. Their wives would have their hair done, wear peacock plumes, and douse themselves in perfume. They would stay in large suites with soft beds, a butler in attendance to steam their suits, press their shirts, and polish their shoes. French maids would turn down their beds at night.

The women, wives, mothers, and grandmothers saved their dreams for their new lives on the other side of the Atlantic. They imagined wide American streets, lush gardens, sumptuous fabrics, and large rooms in clean houses awaiting their touch. They had received the letters, they had been told the stories, and they believed domestic bliss awaited them.

The trick, it seemed, was to make it across the ocean without incident. It was simple: avoid the crooks and stay healthy. Enza Ravanelli was not so lucky.

The hospital aboard the Rochambeau consisted of three small rooms with bright red crosses painted on the doors. They were outfitted with clean beds on stationary lifts and well attended by a nursing staff. The porthole windows made the accommodations seem lavish compared to the dark cells in steerage.

Dr. Pierre Brissot, a lanky Frenchman with blue eyes and a permanent slope in his posture, ducked his head and left Enza in the room, to meet Marco in the hallway.

“Your daughter is very ill,” Dr. Brissot said in halting Italian.

Marco could hear his heart pound in his chest.

Dr. Brissot continued, “She was brought here from her cell. Was she ill before the ship left Le Havre?”

“No, Signore.”

“Has she been ill on a ship before?”

“This is the first time she has been on the sea.”

“Have you traveled by motorcar?”

“Never. She drives our horse carriage. She has always been very strong.” Waves of panic washed over Marco. What if he lost her, as he had lost Stella?

He barely listened to Dr. Brissot when he said, “I cannot order the ship back to Le Havre for one sick passenger in third class. I’m very sorry.”

“May I see her?”

Dr. Brissot opened the door to the hospital room. Enza was curled up in the bed in a fetal position, holding her head. Marco walked over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

Enza tried to look up at her father, but her eyes filled with terror as she was unable to lift her head or focus her gaze.

“Oh, Enza.” Marco tried to soothe her, hoping his voice didn’t give away his fear.

Enza searched for the strength to tell her father she felt like a spoke in the wheel of a runaway carriage. Nausea rolled through her in waves. Sounds were deafening, each wave against the ship’s hull shattering within her ear like explosions of dynamite, rock smashing against rock without reprieve.

Enza opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“I’m here,” Marco said. “Don’t be afraid.”

Night after night, Marco lay on the cold metal floor beside Enza. He slept only briefly, awakened by nurses, the clank of the engines, and Enza’s agonized moans. Utter exhaustion gave way to brief nightmares as the terrible days crept by. Dr. Brissot’s reports offered little encouragement. The medicines he usually prescribed for extreme motion sickness failed to have any effect on Enza. She became weaker and weaker, dangerously dehydrated. Soon her blood pressure began to plummet. Tinctures of codeine, a syrup of black cohosh, seemed to only make Enza worse.

Toward the end of the nine-day journey, Marco finally fell into a deep sleep, where he dreamed he was back in Schilpario, but instead of the green cliffs, the hillsides had been torched by fire, and the gorge was filled with black water. Marco had gathered his family to safety on a precipice, but below he saw Stella drowning in the floodwaters. Enza jumped in to save her, and she too began to flail in the black water. Marco dived into the gorge headfirst, hearing his wife and children on the cliff screaming to stop him, but it was too late.

Marco awoke in the hospital cell, feverish and disheveled. A nurse gently tapped him. “We’re in the harbor, sir.”

Marco could hear the muffled sounds of the cheers from the Rochambeau’s passengers above, gathered on deck as the ship docked in lower Manhattan.