“Ah!” ventured a fourth member of the group, with a glance of scorn at his more obtuse companions, “You are a Frenchman?”
“No.”
The geographical knowledge of the party was exhausted. There ensued a long, wrinkle-browed silence. The landlady wandered in with a pot, looked me over out of a corner of her eye, and retreated slowly. The suspense grew unendurable. A native opened his mouth twice or thrice, swallowed his breath with a gulp, and purred, meekly:
“Er—well—what country does the signore come from?”
“Sono americano.”
A chorus of exclamations aroused the cat dozing under the fire-place. The hostess ran in, open-mouthed, from the back room. The landlord dropped his pipe on the floor and emitted the Italian variation of “dew tell!” The most phlegmatic of the party abandoned their games and stories and crowded closely around me.
My advent seemed to two of the habitués to be providential. Some time before, a wager had been laid between them which, till now, there had seemed small chance of deciding. One man had wagered that the railway trains of America run high up in the air above the houses, a tenet which he sought to defend against all comers by an unprecedented amount of lusty bellowing, and one which his opponent pooh-poohed with equal vehemence. For a time I was at a loss to account for his claim that he had read the information in a newspaper. In the course of his vociferations, however, he mentioned “Nuova York,” and inquired if it were not also true that its buildings were higher than the steeple of the village church, and whether the railways were not thus built to enable the people to get into such high houses; implying, evidently, his conviction that Americans never come down to earth. Only then was the source of his mental picture of an aërial railway system clear. He had read somewhere of the New York Elevated and had applied the article to the whole country.
Moreover “Nuova York” was synonymous with America to the entire party. Not a man of them knew that there were two Americas, not one had ever heard the term “United States.” America represents to the Italian of the masses a country somewhere far away, how far or in what direction he has no idea, where wages are higher than in Italy. Countless times I have heard questions such as these from Italians who were not without education:—
“Is America further away than Switzerland?”
“Did you walk all the way from America?”