The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [344]
Mr. Ambrogio leaned over his fork, which waited with a bite of veal the shape of a little ship itself, and spoke as quietly as Father to the Serto table at large. "I think on this ship there are people lower than us. This morning, alone on my way, I have seen other steps going down." And staring down over his shoulder, between himself and Mama, he suddenly sent his hand, fork and all, in a plumb line toward the floor. Consternation rose around the table, led by Mama's cry.
"Am I in wrong place?" A little old man got up from the nearest table and tottering with the roll of the ship began to turn himself around in the aisle. "Why nobody tell me?" That little man always thought he was in the wrong place, on the wrong ship, going the wrong way for Foggia; it always took many to reassure him. But tonight his cone-shaped hat came down nearly over his eyes.
Mr. Fossetta pushed back his chair.
"Looka my hand," he said. He held it up squarely, a small dark hand still burnished with the grease of America, as the little lost man drew near and bent his face over it, standing in Mama's way. Everybody who was near enough to the Serto table watched the hand; a few stood up. Mr. Fossetta rolled his wrist like a magician; then, with the knife from his plate, began to count off the fingers.
"Firsta class... Seconda class... Us."
But a finger was left, dangling below the knife. That was seen. Mr. Fossetta got to his feet, drew silence again, and started over, this time counting from the middle finger and in Italian. When he finished, he flicked both hands apart on the empty air.
"Now you believe?" he said, but his own face had gone desperately white. "Nobody below us but the fishes." And poor Mr. Fossetta departed the way Aldo had gone, only it was to unfeeling choruses of "Champagne! Gelati!" For here came out the trays, sparkling all over, radiating to every table. Jumping up, Poldy raised his glass. "To my wedding!" he cried to the room, then swallowed the champagne without a stop.
Mama first pulled him down, then rose herself with her own arms stretched empty, like a prophetess.
"Mama! It's Gala Night," said Gabriella, joining her hands and looking into her mother's face.
Mrs. Serto, with a tragic look for all, toppled upon her daughter. Gabriella, struggling up just in time, caught her beneath the arms and then bore her, leaning, from the dining room. As they passed table after table, people who were eating gelati rose spoon in hand, paper hats a-bob on their heads, to make way.
It was thought an anticlimax, showing lack of appreciation of the night's feelings, that Gabriella came straight back. The frutti was just appearing. Crowned a little nearer to the ears, as though by one last sweep of a failing hand, she took back her real place at the table, where she ate her own gelati and then her mother's, and drank both glasses of champagne.
The old lady—as though she were the waiter's own mother, or the V.M., thought Gabriella—finally accepted his bowl of fruit, and Gabriella was allotted, from her fork, a little brown-skinned pear.
It was this old lady who remained last at the Serto table. When the others excused themselves, she was still dropping grapes into her mouth, like a goddess sacrificing a few extra tribes. Scarcely an eyelid flickered from above.
Upstairs in the public room, when the three-piece band began playing "Deep in the Heart of Texas" to start