After that, there were no more letters. Spring came and summer passed, and she didn’t hear anything more about Vanni. The neighbors said that La Mèrica doesn’t let anyone return, that the best years of youth are eaten up in that unknown land, and that an emigrant never comes home unless he’s got a hundred gold coins to build himself a house.

Maredda believed those disheartening words, and while weaving she sang to forget about the pain of Vanni:

“I saw three roses on a branch

I don’t know which to choose

There is no day that turns to night

When I don’t think of you.”

But Vanni did return the next spring. With him, he had his little gray trunk that had seen its share of roads and strangers and railway smoke, too. He brought nothing back except thirty-five gold coins, a pittance in comparison to the sums he’d dreamed of and planned for under the Sinibbio arbor. But he couldn’t take it any longer over there….

He talked about this right away to his mother who’d come down to Rosario to meet him. Gna’ Nunzia, with her cape around her shoulders, didn’t know what to say; she looked him over from head to toe, that son of hers, and it seemed to her that he’d grown thin and that he’d been lost and that she’d found him again. Opening the door, she let him pass ahead, and she pointed to the little bed with the clean, coarse woolen blanket and the tablecloth spread on the storage chest to show him that she’d waited for him. And while he was still standing, Vanni said to her: “I didn’t make much, but …”

“It doesn’t matter, my son. As long as you’ve come back. I thought I would have to die without seeing you again.”

“Only thirty-five onze. And God alone knows how much I suffered to save that.”

“It doesn’t matter, my son. There’s work here now because last month mastro Nitto died.”

“I’ve got nothing else,” Vanni continued. “But I’ll be happy with a bit of bread here in my own paese. Damn La Mèrica … she’s an old whore that leads you down a bad road with all her flattery. Honest people hardly get rich over there! But I have enough to buy a bit of gold and clothes and some leather so I can work.

“Eat, Vanuzzo,” said gna’ Nunzia, her face darkening, “and don’t think about anything else for now.”

“Why …?” asked Vanni, looking at her suspiciously.

Gna’ Nunzia sighed, and since Vanni narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow, she touched his arm and said, “Vanni, Vanni! So you returned only for her? For your mother you wouldn’t have come back?”

“What are you talking about!” said the young man, shrugging his shoulders. “So why did I leave then?”