The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [347]
"Moto perpetuo." The little man who had never been sure where the boat was taking them smiled at Gabriella, stirring the air with his black-nailed finger. He remembered her.
Gabriella nodded to him. She set her shoulders and posed beside her mother, frowning out from under her Buffalo hat, facing the dock.
"Fortunato, he is your brother?" Mama was asking the old woman at her other side. "Your nephew? Cousin? He was not your husband?"
"He is all I have," the old woman replied.
La Zingara managed to be the first from turistica to disembark. She went swaying down the gangway, arms outstretched—secretly for balance, Gabriella felt, but outwardly to extend a tender greeting. Below, with his arms also outflung, waited, alas, a country clown, with red face and yellow shoes. La Zingara had saved for this moment those two thin but brilliant red foxes that bit each other around her neck, both with blue eyes.
"Well, there she goes," said the voice of Aldo, a yawn all through it. He had wandered to the rail where the three for the priesthood stood.
Gabriella did not even look at him. From Maria-Pia she had heard what all the boys called La Zingara among themselves—Il Coda-vere.
"You will see tomorrow," her mother told her with a nod. "It will be much more than this. These are only Sicilians. Why don't we go 'head to Naples?"
Gabriella screamed, "Where's the fire? What's going to happen when we do get there?"
"L'Anno Santo, l'Anno Santo," said Mama. "But listen." She pulled Gabriella to her. "If you don't pay attention, you be like Zingara some day—old maid! You see her neck? Then you cry for somebody to take you even to S¡cilia! But who? I'll be dead then, in cemetery!" Mama gave a cross little laugh and pushed her away.
At last the Sicilians were all off the boat, and all their trunks and boxes and bundles had been flung down behind them, with the electric toasters and irons tied on like Christmas tags. The struggling and shouting and claiming ceased on shore, kissing and embracing fell off, and the final semaphores from the shirtsleeved arms were diminishing away. Once more the Pomona throbbed and moved in blue water.
"When did that Joe Monteoliveto sneak off the ship?" wondered Mama aloud, not yet going inside. "He never said good-by to me."
This sunset was the last. Gabriella stood at the flagpole and looked off the back of the ship; it moved smoothly now as if by magic.
Once—she couldn't remember how long ago—there had been some country they sailed near—Africa—with mountains like coals, and above, the scimitar and star of evening. The country had vanished like the two black men who got off in the night for Cape Verde. The moon and star tonight looked as though they had never been close together in their lives, to hang one from the tip of the other to go down over the edge of the world.
Was now the time to look forward to the doom of parting, and stop looking back at the doom of meeting? The thought of either made sorrow go leaping and diving, like those dolphins in the water. Gabriella would only have to say "Good-by, Aldo," and while she was saying the words, the time would be flying by; parting would be over with almost before it began, no matter what Aldo had in store for an answer. "Hello, Aldo!" had been just the other way.
"What d'you think you see out there?" came Aldo's voice. "A whale?"
Reflecting the rosy light, a half-denuded stalk of bananas at his feet—for Aldo Scampo had slipped off the boat in Palermo and back on again, without a word to anybody—he was where you could find him still, in the old place, eating away and turning over pages he could hardly see any longer.
She made her way slowly to his chair and sat down on the arm of it, and like a modest confession let out the weight of her side against his shoulder. He offered