The Long Voyage

Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell

It was a night that seemed made for it, shrouded in a darkness you could almost feel the weight of as you moved. And it was frightening, the breathing of that beast of a world, the sound of the sea: a breathing that came right up and expired at their feet.

They stood, with their cardboard suitcases and their bundles, on a stony stretch of beach, protected by the hills, between Gela and Licata: they had reached there at nightfall, they had left their villages at daybreak; villages of the interior far removed from the sea, clustered in the arid plague of feudal lands. For some, it was the first time they had seen the sea: the thought of having to cross the whole of it from that deserted beach in Sicily, at night, to get to another deserted beach in America, also at night, was deeply disconcerting. Because the deal was this: ‘I take you on board at night,’ the man had said, a kind of travelling salesman, judging by the style of his patter, though with a serious and honest face, ‘and I land you at night: you’ll land on the beach in Nugiorsi. I’ll put you ashore a short walk from Nuovaiorche … Those who have relatives in America can write and tell them to go wait for you at Trenton Station, twelve days after we set sail … You do the calculation … Of course, I can’t guarantee the exact date you’ll get there: let’s suppose that the sea might be rough, let’s suppose that the coastguards might be on the lookout … One day here or there will make no difference to you. The important thing is to land in America.’

To land in America really was the important thing: how or when hardly mattered, in the end. If their letters had succeeded in reaching their relatives, with those confused and scrawled addresses that they’d managed to inscribe on the envelopes, then they would make it too. Whoever has a tongue shall cross the sea, as the proverb rightly had it. And they would have crossed the sea, that great dark ocean; and they would have reached the stori and the farme – the stores and farms – of America, the welcoming circle of brothers uncles nephews cousins, the warm luxurious spacious houses, the automobiles that were as big as houses.

Two hundred and fifty thousand lire: half on departure, half on arrival. They kept the money, in the style of scapularies, between their skin and shirts. They had sold everything they had in order to scrape it together: the house, the land the mule the donkey that year’s provisions the chest of drawers the blankets. The craftier ones had resorted to moneylenders, with the secret intention of cheating them at least this once, after years of harassment. They relished the thought of how the faces of those moneylenders would look when they received the news that they’d gone. ‘Come and find me in America, bloodsucker, and maybe you’ll get your money back. But without interest, even if you do manage to track me down.’ The dream of America was awash with dollars, with cash no longer clutched in a shabby wallet or hidden beneath their shirts, but stuffed casually into trouser pockets and pulled out by the handful the way they’d seen their relatives do it – relatives who had left half starved, thin as rakes and scorched by the sun, then returned after twenty or thirty years, though only for a short vacation, with their round rosy-cheeked faces handsomely contrasting with their white hair.