A Bandit's Tale Read online

  Anna grasped my free hand with both of hers, pressing a pair of knit socks into it. She was clever, good at knitting, at cooking, at everything she did. Leaning forward, she whispered urgently, “Come back for us someday, Rocco. Come back for me.”

  I nodded, but that wasn’t good enough for her. Anna squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. “You must promise. Will you do that, little brother?”

  “Sì, I promise,” I croaked.

  Papa and the padrone emerged into the sunshine. The padrone took the donkey’s rope from me and said, “Time to go, Rocco. You will do fine—if you listen and follow the rules.”

  He started off, leaving my family huddled in our doorway. I began to follow, then Vito started wailing, “Rocco, Rocco!”

  I ran back and hugged Anna and Emilia. Even Anna was crying now. I swept up little Vito, who wrapped himself, spider-like, around my neck. He was only two, and as I tickled his warm belly, I wondered if he would even remember me.

  Mama folded me in her thin, strong arms. “I’ll pray to the saints for you. Saint Rocco will keep you well.” That was always her biggest fear: that we would get sick.

  I gave Papa a quick hug. He kept his face a mask. I almost whispered the truth then, all of it. But I swallowed the words. I had made a promise. Besides, it was too late.

  I looked back once before we turned the corner, half hoping Papa would change his mind and call me back. He was patting his pocket, probably already thinking about the money. If he had other feelings, they were buried much deeper than a pocket.

  —

  A few streets away, we stopped to pick up two other boys. They were pathetic-looking creatures, ten-year-old cousins who didn’t seem strong enough to walk to Naples, more than a hundred miles away, let alone embark on a perilous boat trip across a stormy ocean.

  I didn’t know them well. Their mothers were twins, which might be why I had trouble telling them apart at first. They had shaggy black hair and dark round eyes. Marco was slight, Luigi slender as a reed.

  “Call me Padrone. If anyone asks, I’m your uncle,” Padrone told us. He would repeat this instruction many times.

  “You don’t look like us,” I murmured under my breath, though I knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out.

  Ever since I can remember, Mama had warned me about speaking without thinking first. “Your words shouldn’t rush out of you like a hasty stream,” she would say. “You must try to be more like Papa.”

  I understood what she meant; I just had a hard time doing it. Often, as soon as a thought dropped into my head, it popped out of my mouth.

  Padrone did not appreciate my comment. He gave me a quick cuff on the side of my head. “When I give you orders, you don’t talk back. That goes for all of you. Understand?”

  “Sì, sì, signore,” we all chimed in unison.

  “Here, Rocco,” said Signor Ancarola, tossing the donkey’s rope to me. “Take charge of your friend.”

  And so we set out.

  CHAPTER 2

  Giving an account of a dusty journey by foot; another goodbye

  Marco and Luigi wouldn’t stop crying. It was plain to see they’d never left home before. Their parents must have been desperate, because the two had the look of chicks pushed out of the nest too soon. Snot dripped from their noses. Rivulets of grimy tears stained their cheeks.

  In short, it was disgusting.

  “Wipe your noses,” I hissed as we snaked down to the valley floor. “Stay behind the donkey and stop sniveling. No one wants to hear you.”

  Without a word of protest, they did exactly as I ordered, falling silently into place behind Old Biter like pocket-sized soldiers heading off to war. I was glad. If they’d kept up their whimpering and sniffling, I was afraid I might start too. Their tears reminded me that every mile took me away from the only home I had.

  Still, even on that first, bewildering day, as each twist and turn of a dusty mule path brought the sight of something new, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny shiver of excitement. I was off on an adventure, even if I was leading a bad-tempered donkey. Who could tell what might happen next?

  Now, you might think that even a donkey might also be a little excited, in a donkeyish sort of way, about being on a journey and seeing new things. Well, you would be wrong. In fact, it was as if Old Biter blamed me that he was plodding along a dusty road instead of munching hay contentedly at home.

  The night before we’d set off, while I’d tossed and turned with fear about what lay ahead, I’d fingered the scar on my arm. The only good thing about being sent away, I’d decided, was that I’d never have to look at Old Biter’s ugly yellow teeth or feel them tear into my flesh again.

  And here he was—teeth and all. That spiteful creature lit into me as soon as Padrone called a halt to our first day’s walk. I’d begun to unload the bags from his back when he whipped his neck around. In the blink of an eye, he went for my left arm, no doubt hoping to add another half-moon scar to the one he’d already given me.

  I should have been more careful, I suppose. I should have talked to him gently and moved more slowly. I was just so tired, inside and out. My feet were sore. My heart was sore. Luckily, I was able to jump back in time to get just a nip, not a bite. I yelped and stamped my feet. I almost kicked him, then thought better of it. Old Biter would definitely kick back.

  “I thought you were supposed to know about this beast,” said Padrone. “I hope the skin isn’t broken. I can’t afford for you to get sick from a wound.

  “Leave the old boy to me,” he added, taking the rope from my hand. “Go collect firewood.”

  It occurred to me that Giovanni Ancarola might be as vicious as my ill-tempered four-legged friend, but he wouldn’t trample us entirely. Marco, Luigi, and I were, after all, valuable property.

  Our journey soon settled into a pattern. We followed rugged shepherds’ paths and well-worn mule tracks, winding our way up and down hills, through villages, and onto the main road to Naples. Padrone had warned that it might take us at least a week, and that we had no time to lose.

  “We will walk all night if we have to,” he told us. “We cannot be late.”

  Luigi and Marco continued to sob themselves to sleep each night, though where they got the energy, I have no idea. Still, they walked—I’ll say that for them. We all did, from early light until it was too dark to see. We carried bread, cheese, and water and ate outside, sitting on the ground. On occasion our padrone would plant us outside of a little tavern so he could drink some wine. There was no danger of us running away. Where would we go in a strange town with no friends or family?

  Padrone pushed us. It couldn’t have been easy with his limp, but he never slowed down. He never mentioned his leg or why it dragged. Whatever else he was, Signor Ancarola wasn’t a complainer. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t stand grumbling in others. We learned to hold our tongues no matter how hungry or thirsty we were, or how big the ugly blisters blossoming on our feet became.

  “Come on, the ship will not wait,” Padrone would bark at Luigi whenever he began to lag behind, which was often. Luigi seemed to live in a world of his own, a dreamy place where he might stop for a minute to stare up at a cloud, mouth open, or bend down to count ants in the dirt. Sometimes I wondered if he truly grasped what was happening to him or where we were heading.

  Marco understood, though. One night, he asked Signor Ancarola, “What’s it like, New York City?”

  I was surprised. Marco usually kept to himself. I leaned forward, eager to hear the answer. Padrone only grunted and said, “Big.”

  It wasn’t until we stood on the busy dock in Naples and were about to board the Anchor Line steamship Elysia that I also got the nerve to ask a question. It was what I wanted to know most. “Padrone, what will we do in America? What is the business we will help you with?”

  You may think it strange I didn’t know, but if Papa knew, he hadn’t told me. I waited almost breathlessly for the answer, as if my whole future depended on it. And I suppose i
n a way it did, for I had begun to form a plan.

  It had come to me as I walked, mile after mile. With each step it had grown clearer, almost the way you can walk closer to a tree and begin to make out the pattern of the bark on its trunk. The plan was this: Perhaps going to America might not be a bad thing after all. America might be the answer. There, I could become a work boss like Giovanni Ancarola.

  Then, someday, I would return to stand before Papa, triumphant. I’d have a pouch full of coins and shoes so shiny you could see the sky in them. Papa would see that I had become as wealthy and important as Signor Ferri. In an instant, I would wipe out the dishonor I had brought to him.

  Papa would meet my eyes, shake my hand, and look at me with pride. He would bring me to the piazza and say to the men, Here is my son Rocco, back from America, where he has become a prosperous young man.

  Maybe if Anna still wanted to go to America, she and I would set off again, back to the golden land.

  As I waited to find out what business held the key to this grand scheme, I was shocked to hear Padrone chortle, a strange, unsettling sound that startled Luigi so much he flinched.

  “Didn’t your father tell you anything?” he asked. “You’re to be a street musician.”

  “A street musician?” I repeated. “What is that?”

  “Just what the words say: You’ll play the harp or violin for money on the streets and bring me back your earnings each night.”

  Bring him the money? What about money for me?

  “I don’t know how to play the harp or the violin,” I protested. “Isn’t there something else I could do?”

  “There is nothing else,” he said, picking at his teeth with a twig he’d found on the road. “It’s not hard. You only need to know a few songs.”

  “But—” I began.

  “Enough questions,” he barked. “If you turn out to be as stupid in America as you are now, I’ll give you a triangle to hit. And hit you until you’ve learned it.”

  —

  Before we depart my native land, I have one more goodbye to relate. The donkey is about to pass out of this story and into one of his own. For on that dock in Naples, Signor Ancarola sold Old Biter to a wrinkled shrimp of a man, an ex-sailor who claimed he’d had enough of the sea and wanted to spend the rest of his days on dry land as a peddler.

  I watched the coins change hands, wondering if I should call out a warning to the unsuspecting new owner. Once he had the reins in his callused hands, the sailor leaned over and planted a gigantic kiss almost exactly on the donkey’s lips. I nearly gasped, certain that at any second the sailor’s disembodied nose would go flying through the air.

  “We will be good friends now, amore mio, my sweetheart,” the sailor cooed, stepping back a little, a smile on his face as bright as the sun that danced on the sea just beyond where we stood. “Prepare to be pampered like no other donkey in Naples. From now on, I shall call you Little Dove.”

  I gawked and held my breath. This idiot sailor was in for a sad awakening.

  All at once Old Biter shuffled forward until his head rested against the sailor’s chest. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, as though sinking onto a soft pillow at the end of a long day.

  I was still on dry land. Yet suddenly I felt all wobbly, as if I was already on a swaying deck. I’d blamed this donkey for what had happened, for ruining my life, for turning me into a castaway. I was convinced Old Biter was as much my enemy as the landlord himself. Now, just for a second, I wasn’t sure.

  And when the donkey fixed me with one dark eye before turning away, I could almost have sworn that the fiendish beast winked.

  CHAPTER 3

  Arrival, after a disagreeable (and often disgusting) crossing

  It’s not that I don’t remember crossing the Atlantic in steerage on that stinking tub of a ship. It’s just that I don’t want to talk about it. And you should thank me—I’m skipping this for your sake.

  For I doubt you wish to hear detailed descriptions of how my stomach turned itself inside out like a sock, not just once but over and over again, until I was so weak I was lying in a soup of my own foul-smelling vomit. Or how, when there was nothing else to eject, I retched up some slimy green bile that must have come from parts of my insides peeling away.

  Nor will I subject you to a vivid depiction of my encounters with the rats: enormous, bold, beady-eyed creatures who roamed the ship like they owned it and would have made Old Biter himself turn tail.

  So, let’s just say I made it. We all did. After what seemed an eternity of misery, we arrived in New York Harbor. Our legs shook when we stepped unsteadily off the Elysia at last. That was the first time I heard Luigi laugh.

  “Look at me! I can’t walk straight,” he giggled. He held on to Marco and me, veering giddily as we were bumped along in a crowd of dazed, grateful passengers. Like the rest of us, he was amazed to be on solid ground again and slightly surprised to be alive.

  Padrone had done all the talking on board the ship, and he kept on that way, though his English was never very good. He’d already been through Castle Garden, at the southern tip of Manhattan, where immigrants were processed.

  Luigi, Marco, and I stood openmouthed in the midst of an enormous circular hall, our ears barraged by voices speaking many languages. “So many people! Are they all staying here in New York?” I asked.

  Padrone shook his head. “Some will take trains to other parts of America.”

  We waited with Padrone in line at the registration desk. Padrone reminded us that he would answer the inspector’s questions about who we were.

  “Remember, I am your uncle, bringing you to live with family in New York City,” he told us.

  When we were free to go, we went to the baggage room for Signor Ancarola’s bags. Marco and Luigi had brought nothing; I had only a small pillowcase, which I’d kept with me. Then he hired a cart to take us to our new home. I may as well tell you the address now: 45 Crosby Street, near Broome and Broadway in Lower Manhattan. (The building is still there, by the way, so if you’re ever in the neighborhood, you may want to go see it for yourself.)

  It wasn’t a long ride, but I was soon shivering as we rumbled along. I hadn’t realized how much colder it would be here. Being high, Calvello gets cool in winter, but Mama made sure we had plenty of firewood. I’d never felt anything like this biting, badgering wind. As I would soon find out, March is changeable. If you ask me, March doesn’t know whether it belongs to winter or spring, so it ends up torn between them, like a bone being fought over by two hungry dogs.

  Marco, Luigi, and I huddled together, trying to take in our unfamiliar surroundings. This new place seemed so alive it hummed. Night had just fallen, yet the streets were still busy, full of people hurrying to and fro. Horses drawing cabs and carts sped by us, their iron-shod hooves clanging and clopping.

  “It’s loud here!” cried Luigi, blocking his ears with his hands.

  What would happen to us next? Surely, Signor Ancarola wouldn’t send us out into this vast, confusing maze on our own. I shivered some more, only partly from the cold, and even let Luigi tuck himself under neath my arm like a small bird. My teeth chattered. My stomach hurt from tensing my muscles against the wind. The cart turned a corner and bumped along narrow side streets for a while. Then it stopped.

  “Here,” Padrone grunted.

  We scrambled down on stiff legs. Luigi clung to me, and I didn’t shake him off. Signor Ancarola led us around to the back of a building, perhaps three stories high. Without knocking, he opened a wooden door. A man appeared with a kerosene lamp. Padrone took it and stepped inside, the three of us close on his heels.

  The staircase was dark as a moonless night in Calvello, where everyone went to bed with the sun. I reached out to hold on to something, afraid I might topple into the gloom below. There was no handle to grab, just a clammy, damp wall against my fingers. It felt as if we were descending back into the bowels of the ship. The raw cold was the same, the stench almost as bad.
/>   Our shadows in the lamplight loomed like monsters in the closed space; the shapes reminded me of the evening when the padrone had come to our door. That night had brought me here.

  “Sleep there.” Padrone gestured to a corner piled with straw. Some dark lumps were scattered in the middle. The lamp caught a foot, a shock of dark hair, a tangle of arms and legs.

  “Don’t we get a blanket?” I blurted, and got a push instead.

  I stumbled over to claim a spot on the edge, leaving Marco and Luigi to try to squeeze in among the other bodies on the straw. Almost at once I realized I’d made a mistake. Luigi and Marco were soon burrowed in, getting at least a little warmth from the others. I shivered. By staying apart, I’d missed my chance at that.

  A few minutes later, I heard a soft rustling. At first, I assumed it was rats. Not this time. A shape detached itself from the nest behind me and crept closer. I felt a pawing at the little pillowcase I’d put by my side. The loaf of bread Mama had packed for me was long gone, but I still had one extra shirt and the pair of socks Anna had knit.

  I waited, choosing my moment with care. Then I shot up and hissed, “Off!”

  The would-be thief gave a low giggle and slunk away. I watched where he went so I could mark him in the morning. Then I put the pillowcase under my head, where it should have been from the beginning. Another mistake I wouldn’t make again.

  Only once, I told myself. It’s all right to make a mistake, but only once.

  —

  The next morning, Padrone banged a spoon on a kettle, startling me out of a fitful dream of being at home with Vito curled next to me. The image slipped away before I was even on my feet, shaking straw out of my hair. I’d been gone several weeks now, and every day my memories of Calvello faded a little. Soon they would be as far away as a wisp of cloud.

  I looked around. There were about twenty boys here, filthy and covered with sores. They wore odds and ends of clothes. This was no home, just a vile, rank hovel of a place. I’d kept the landlord’s stable cleaner than this. It smelled a lot better too, I thought.