The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [353]
"Hey, Aldo. Want to see our trunk real quick?" asked Gabriella gently. She moved over to it, and the porter swept off the coats, unveiling it. The Serto trunk stood there—its size, shape, and weight all apparent, also the rope that went around it and the original lock that nobody trusted, and the name "Serto" painted on the lid in the confident lettering of a pharmacist. It did not matter that the hand of Customs had gone romping through it—it was restored now to the miracle of ownership.
"It's full of presents, I can tell you," said Gabriella.
Advice arrived almost like gratitude upon Aldo's face, as pride had come upon hers. "Then keep your eye on it till you get it home," he told her. "A fellow in New York told me they'll steal them even from over your head, in Naples. With a kind of tongs, very nifty. Running around over the rafters of the Customs shed, or even hanging over the gate as you go out. Everybody here knows about it, and don't even try to stop it."
"Shame," said Mama. "That's not talking nice about Naples."
And again, as Nonna spoke to him too, he was pulled around in a daze.
"My mother is telling you, Mr. Scampo, the human voice alone is divine," said Mama with her little chin up. "Not the screeching of cats. She is telling you there still may be time to set right your mistake—she sees you so young. Of course, in Napoli, she once sang with Caruso."
Nonna was looking up at Aldo. No two smiles were the same in her face. Aldo had now turned dark red, and his head hung.
"Well, good-by, Aldo," said Gabriella in English, and he looked up already startled, as if to see someone he had never expected to see again.
"Be good," he replied formally, and momentarily setting the suitcases down, he shook hands with them all, even their porter, who joined the circle.
"Good-by, Mr. Scampo! Maybe we all meet at St. Peter's Ognissanti—who knows?" said Mama. That was what she'd said to everybody.
As Aldo staggered away, Gabriella reached out her hand and with her fingertips touched his cello—or rather its wrinkled outer covering, at once soft and imperious. It was like touching the forehead of an animal, from which horns might even start; but indeed, the old lady's withered and feminine cheek had felt just as mysterious to Gabriella's kiss. Aldo's back grew less and less familiar with every step, while the porters like a family of acrobats were leaping and crying in chorus, "Stazione! Stazione!" all around him. They all saw him pass, unrobbed and unaided, through the archway into the big Piazzf md away into the sliding life of the streets, and then Mama brought her handkerchief up to her face like a little nosegay of tears. She was being the daughter—the better daughter.
But Nonna was still the mother. Her brown face might be creased like a fig-skin, but her eyes were brighter now. Surely they knew everything. They had taken Gabriella for granted.
"Come now," Nonna said.
She stood up. She was smaller than Mama, she came only to Gabriella's shoulder. But as she turned around, a motion of her hand, folding shut the little fan and pointing away with it, told them they were none of them any too soon. She stood perfectly straight, and could have walked by herself, though Mama, with a cry of remembrance, seized hold of her. Gabriella took her place a step behind. The porter once more—he, one man, all alone, and possibly for nothing—shouldered the backbreaking luggage of women, to which now something extra was added—the little rush-bottomed fireside stool on which the old lady had been sitting. They all set off toward the gate.
Only for the space of a breath did Gabriella feel she would rather lie down on that melon cart pulled by a donkey, that she could see just disappearing around the corner ahead. Then the melons and the arch of the gate, the grandmother's folding of the fan and Mama's tears, the volcano of early morning, and even the long, dangerous voyage behind her—all seemed caught up and held in something: the golden moment of touch, just given, just taken, in saying good-by.