“We are not traders,” said Bruno Saccà, always ready to jump to the attack, hotheaded like all his family. “We are emigrants and these are our belongings.”

“Yes, the treasures you are taking to America,” said an officer sarcastically, and the others, bored with their ridiculous job of searching poor peasants and claiming a few miserable coins off each bunch of onions or grapes to be traded in the marketplace, started laughing.

“Will we find pigs of tax collectors over there in America?” Saccà asked Serafino.

“No, you can move from place to place without being stopped and searched,” he answered. “But you have to beware of the padroni—our countrymen from the cities who can read and write and have learned enough English to serve the American bosses and make their fortunes off our ignorance. There are some good padroni, but mostly bad ones. Watch out for the napoletani and siciliani.”

Umbertina’s eyes, the colors of water mixing with the strand of sandy beach, took in the new wonders of the sea, the thick orange groves, the olive trees banked up the hillside, the flowering cactus and bougainvillea that splashed gaudily over the whitewashed houses on the hill. Vendors started coming down to the beach, approaching their group and other groups, and waiting for travelers who might arrive in that unlikely place on the Messina boat. Serafino saw Umbertina’s eyes taking everything in as she sat nursing the baby. The two little boys, Giacomo and Benedetto, played in the sand near her.

Serafino walked toward a vendor, took some money from his pocket, and came back with oranges. He peeled one and gave her and the boys some sections of the fruit. “Eat this,” he said, “it’s an orange.”

“You shouldn’t have wasted our money,” she said shortly, as was her way. “It wasn’t necessary.”

“Not because it’s necessary,” he replied. “Because you’ve never had an orange and they are good.”

She blushed with shame. He had done her a kindness and she had answered him like a shrew. As she bit into the juicy section and savored its sweetness, she looked up at him and said, “Yes, it is good. Will they have oranges in America?”

“Yes, yes. There is everything there,” he said.

For a moment she who was so practical, so resolute and realistic, joined his fantasy—because it was fearful leaving a known place and having only one person to depend upon in all the world; because the long journey lay ahead; because they were gambling on the future without knowing what was there. Her thoughts went to Giosuè. What had happened to him? Where did he live? What was his life? If she had accepted him years ago she might not be sitting on this shore now. Stupida! she chided herself. She had no time in her life for romance and daydreams. She had made the right choice.

The small steamer arrived and was anchored offshore while the fishermen’s boats went out and discharged the freight and the few passengers. There were other emigrant groups on the beach besides the one from Soveria Mannelli. The others had come from villages in the plains or from along the coast. Their dialect had a somewhat different intonation from that of the hills. But they were all emigrants, all homeless now, with the men dressed as if in mourning in the dark clothes that were their best, the short jacket and trousers they had been married in. The women wore the aprons and bodices of that time, and shawls, some very beautiful and colorful. Umbertina’s treasure of color, the matrimonial spread, was in the bundle Serafino carried with the few other possessions they had. She carried the sack of their food and water.