And since the immigrant must have a passport from the chief of his local police district;
And since every criminal’s record is kept in the district in which he was born, and he must go there to get the birth-certificate on which he gets his passport,—
Then these thousands of passports issued annually to criminals are given by chiefs of police who know the records of the men who are receiving them, and are thus deliberately ridding their districts of them to save themselves trouble and increase their reputation for efficiency.
That those secret instructions which are issued from Rome to the chief of each district advise any such procedure I do not believe. They do advise, so I have been reliably informed, that passports be not issued to prostitutes easy of detection, or to persons over forty-five not accompanied by sons, inasmuch as both classes are very nearly sure to be turned back and to become a matter of expense to the government. That is the bugaboo of Italian statesmen,—expense.
In my own case I knew I would have no difficulty concerning my passport until I came to the gate in the police-office in Naples; then I must have a passport either American or Italian. Any chance of getting an Italian one had been quickly shattered; and yet, if I went on the ship’s manifest as an American I would not be entering the United States in the desired rôle. The solution of the difficulty was not reached till we were in Naples.
When Antonio and the others had their passports, then the tickets were issued to them by the agents, and not before, the lot being returned to Gualtieri by post. Now there was no turning back. Camela began to waver, and hourly there was some new dread to suffuse her eyes with tears.
One day Antonio Nastasia’s father went to Messina, taking some of the money which he had labored hard as a tinsmith and sheet-iron worker to accumulate, and spent nearly all of it in buying clothes for little Antonio to wear. Curro spent a month’s wages on a new suit. Giunta’s relatives prepared him a considerable wardrobe, and altogether nearly half as much as was needed to pay the passage of the entire party was spent in buying Italian clothes to wear to America. The senselessness of this proceeding is plain when it is said that few of these new clothes were worn after the first day or two in the States.
Something else equally ill-advised was the making of huge trunks by Nicola Squadrito and others, in which the families of the departing ones packed quantities of every conceivable sort of supply, just as if the voyagers were going to a new, wild land to begin life as best they could. Despite the protestations of Antonio, my wife and myself, Camela, crammed into huge boxes two sets of heavy mattresses with all the accompanying bedding; large cans of pomidoro; olive oil; sticks on which dried figs were impaled; flasks of wine; forms of cheese; old clothes; and cooking-utensils, many of which were new; and Concetta Fomica’s mother repeated the performance. Enough excess baggage, freight and customs duty were paid, before we were through, on these big encumbrances to replace the whole lot twice over in America.
The last days were at hand. We were to leave on Tuesday before dawn. On Saturday afternoon a request came from an old woman up the valley that we see her—she being unable to come to us—before we departed. As we followed the stony torrente path to her home, her story was told to us. Twenty-three years ago, when she was a bride of little more than a year and a mother but a month, her husband had gone to America, the first man to emigrate from all that region, nearly eighteen years before Antonio Squadrito and the others had started the flood. She had received one letter in which he said he had changed his name to Frank Smith, as nobody had any patience with his Italian name. She never heard from him after that, and after her one boy died she continued to live alone in the little house Francesco had built for her and waited for Francesco’s return. For a living she worked in the fields in summer, and in the early autumn in the vineyards and the lemon, olive, and orange orchards.
We found her spinning with the old distaff in the sunshine before her door. She set before us such humble hospitality as her hut afforded, and then told us she wanted us to begin a search in America for a Frank Smith, and she desired to turn over her savings, thirty-two lire ($6), to defray the expenses. She could not understand why we would not take it. It may be that these lines will fall beneath the eye of a man who long since left all his Italianism behind him and is now a thoroughgoing American and no longer Francesco. If so, I bid him remember that there is a faithful woman waiting for him in the Sicilian hills.