One day at the end of November, the stoker Giovanni Colombo of Genoa was finishing up the modest meal his wife Silvana had cooked him. Out of the window he could see the grey winter sky spread uniformly above the houses that huddled below and spilled down to the port as far as the sea.
He finished the last two spoonfuls of soup and then wiped the bowl clean with a piece of bread. When he was done he laid the cutlery on the plate and sat back, leaning against the chair. His wife stood next to the table, looking at him sadly. The stoker Giovanni Colombo drew a deep breath and lit a cigarette.
“Are you going to be here for Christmas this year?”
He didn’t answer. How could he know? And then, he didn’t want to talk about it: thinking about it made a knot come to his throat, so he remained silent. He pushed the thought as far away as possible, in the back of his head and didn’t look at it. He lowered his eyes so that she couldn’t see the struggle and the effort, because he didn’t want her to read the thoughts crowding his mind.
Holding the cigarette in his fingers, he got out of the chair and went over to the window. He looked out on the city, on the roofs sloping down to the port, the view of the port visible from his house ...
He finished the cigarette. There were no further excuses to stay any longer. So he went over to Silvana, hugged her tight and gave her a kiss. Then, without looking back, he went straight to the front door and unhooked the sack that hung ready from a nail beside the doorway, threw it over his shoulder and crossed the threshold.
Down the stairs stepping slowly, then out into the alleyway, in the cold almost-Christmas air. And from there he directed himself towards the port.
* * *
For every two weeks he could stay with his wife, the stoker Giovanni Colombo passed two months on the ship between Genoa and New York: three weeks going, two weeks in America and three weeks on the voyage home. Who knew how it would go next year? If he’d be in Genoa for Christmas or in New York? He didn’t feel up to the calculations. He didn’t even want to see his children when he left each time. Not so much for them, small as they were they probably didn’t even understand. He was the one who sunk into a sort of voluntary apnea, so he wouldn’t feel any emotion, so he could control himself and manage to keep on going.
There were times when he’d have like to find a different job. But in Italy, at the end of the century, having gone only as far as the third year of primary school, he wasn’t able to find anything else. When he’d applied to the Italian-American Shipping Company, two workers were taken on for the only two free positions: one as stoker and the other as boarding registrar. He and a certain Giorgio Trabucchi had been hired. And Giorgio Trabucchi, young like him but without family or parents or any real ties, except for an uncle who worked for the same Company, had been assigned to the job of registering names. He -- the one who could very well have sailed back and forth all year long with no problems at all! And instead they’d given Giovanni Colombo the job of stoker, “because he was stronger”, they’d said. No doubt, his shoulders were broad and robust, and his arms were large. But Trabucchi wasn’t exactly puny, and the stoker Giovanni Colombo knew he’d been helped by his uncle. And as if that wasn’t enough, it was Trabucchi who stamped his boarding pass at each departure and arrival in Genoa, every two months. If only he had never seen him again after the personnel office had assigned both of them to their jobs. But no: he had to meet him again each time he embarked or disembarked, coming and going, like a continuous sneer of destiny, a constant warning that life gives you what it gives you and leaves you with that… unless you know how to grab what you want.
And the stoker Giovanni Colombo was too naive to snatch more from life than the few pennies the Company put into his palm as his wage for the services he rendered in the hold of his steamers in the three weeks of sailing back and forth across the Atlantic.
* * *
The three weeks passed as usual, slowly and quickly at the same time. The stoker Giovanni Colombo was new on the job and so he always had to take the night shift. Down in the dark of the night shovelling coal, down in the dark in the daytime, too, sleeping in his berth. He went up onto the deck only rarely, jut before starting his shift or just after. He hardly ever saw the sun or breathed fresh air into his lungs. The three weeks on the sea were weeks of coal, heat, sweat and sleep. Every once in a while, before he lay down in his bed, he would take out of his wallet the snapshot of his wedding, with Silvana and him just outside the church. He would look at it in the dim yellowish light shed by the cabin lamp. Why he did it even he didn’t know. It wasn’t to sigh, because he’d decided to shut the door on his feelings when he’d boarded. And it wasn’t to remember the good times, because that would only bring to the surface the unhappiness he kept carefully stored in the hold of his heart. Probably it was so he wouldn’t forget his wife’s sweet face, her straight hair and plump cheeks and large eyes.
* * *
Finally he arrived in New York. The ship always arrived in the morning, which meant he didn’t get any rest after he finished his shift. Instead, immediately after the ship docked he had to go down to the cabin to pick up his few belongings before getting off.
It was almost Christmas. The sky was grey, the grey that announces snow. Manhattan’s high buildings rose tall and dark behind the docks in the port. His house was a few miles away (of course, in America distances were measured in miles) and it took a good hour to walk there. Spending money on a carriage or the elevated train was out of the question.
He got off the steamer and went into the Shipping Company’s office. Here the American equivalent of Trabucchi stamped his pass, noting down the time and date of his disembarkment. He passed the immigration gate and threw himself into the jaws of the enormous city.
Walking tiredly down the cold sidewalks of the metropolis, with his sack thrown over his shoulder and his four pieces of grey wool, the stoker Giovanni Colombo of Genoa didn’t think about anything. If it hadn’t been that New Yorkers then, like now, paid precious little attention to what was happening around them, his presence, his gait and his empty expression would have aroused the curiosity – or maybe the fear – of more than one person.
But the stoker Giovanni Colombo wasn’t abnormal. He wasn’t crazy. He was only a stoker who every two weeks went on board to spend three weeks at sea, and who would go on doing that for who knew how long.
And so he arrived at his house, a large, working-class coal-blackened brick building. Of course, he lived on the highest floor, where it cost less. His dug his keys out of his pocket, opened the front door and climbed up. His step were slow and steady: up one floor, then another. Then still another. And there he was, in front of the door.
He turned the key in the lock, pulled down the handle and went inside.
The smell of hot soup met his nostrils… He heard a chair being moved… the patter of light footsteps…
“Jeovani!” shouted his Mary, throwing her arms around his neck. And finally tears filled the eyes of the stoker Giovanni Colombo of Genoa, as two small children, shouted “Daddy! Daddy!”, hugging his knees.
* * *
The two weeks were up. The stoker Giovanni Colombo of Genoa, standing on the dock with his wife Mary, spent his last minutes in America before boarding in the freezing wind. He’d left the children at home, he didn’t want them to come. Not so much for them, small as they were they probably didn’t understand. It was for himself. Beyond those few, last seconds next to Mary there loomed two months far from home, far from his family …
“Will you be here for Valentine, Jeovani?”
translated by Brenda Porster
Vico Terzi was born in 1966 in Cles, a town in the Trentino region, but he was raised and educated in Como. In 1985, after graduating from a classical lyceum, he moved to Denmark, where he worked in the field of human resources for the first ten years, before becoming a translator and editor of texts for the following eight years. He has been back in Italy since 2004.