Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [38]
“They won’t let you smoke hashish in America.”
“Who says?”
And Desdemona announced with certitude:
“It’s not that kind of country.”
They spent what remained of their honeymoon on deck, learning how to finagle their way through Ellis Island. It wasn’t so easy anymore. The Immigration Restriction League had been formed in 1894. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge thumped a copy of On the Origin of Species, warning that the influx of inferior peoples from southern and eastern Europe threatened “the very fabric of our race.” The Immigration Act of 1917 barred thirty-three kinds of undesirables from entering the United States, and so, in 1922, on the deck of the Giulia, passengers discussed how to escape the categories. In nervous cram sessions, illiterates learned to pretend to read; bigamists to admit to only one wife; anarchists to deny having read Proudhon; heart patients to simulate vigor; epileptics to deny their fits; and carriers of hereditary diseases to neglect mentioning them. My grandparents, unaware of their genetic mutation, concentrated on the more blatant disqualifications. Another category of restriction: “persons convicted of a crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude.” And a subset of this group: “Incestuous relations.”
They avoided passengers who seemed to be suffering from trachoma or favus. They fled anyone with a hacking cough. Occasionally, for reassurance, Lefty took out the certificate that declared:
ELEUTHERIOS STEPHANIDES
HAS BEEN VACCINATED AND
UNLOUSED
AND IS PASSED AS VERMIN-FREE THIS DATE
SEPT. 23, 1922
DISINFECTION MARITIME PIRAEUS
Literate, married to only one person (albeit a sibling), democratically inclined, mentally stable, and authoritatively deloused, my grandparents saw no reason why they would have trouble getting through. They each had the requisite twenty-five dollars apiece. They also had a sponsor: their cousin Sourmelina. Just the year before, the Quota Act had reduced the annual numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants from 783,000 to 155,000. It was nearly impossible to get into the country without either a sponsor or stunning professional recommendations. To help their own chances, Lefty put away his French phrase book and began memorizing four lines of the King James New Testament. The Giulia was full of inside sources familiar with the English literacy test. Different nationalities were asked to translate different bits of Scripture. For Greeks, it was Matthew 19:12: “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
“Eunuchs?” Desdemona quailed. “Who told you this?”
“This is a passage from the Bible.”
“What Bible? Not the Greek Bible. Go ask somebody else what’s on that test.”
But Lefty showed her the Greek at the top of the card and the English below. He repeated the passage word by word, making her memorize it, whether or not she understood it.
“We didn’t have enough eunuchs in Turkey? Now we have to talk about them at Ellis Island?”
“The Americans let in everyone,” Lefty joked. “Eunuchs included.”
“They should let us speak Greek if they’re so accepting,” Desdemona grumbled.
Summer was abandoning the ocean. One night it grew too cold in the lifeboat to crack the corset’s combination. Instead they huddled under blankets, talking.
“Is Sourmelina meeting us in New York?” Desdemona asked.
“No. We have to take a train to Detroit.”
“Why can’t she meet us?”
“It’s too far.”
“Just as well. She wouldn’t be on time anyway.”
The ceaseless sea wind made the tarp’s edges flap. Frost formed on the lifeboat’s gunwales. They could see the top of the Giulia’s smokestack, the smoke itself discernible only as a starless patch of night sky. (Though they didn’t know it, that striped, canted smokestack was already informing them about their new home; it was whispering about River Rouge and the Uniroyal plant, and the Seven Sisters and Two Brothers, but they