Cuore (Heart), Edmondo De Amicis [best books to read ever .txt] 📗

dead!” And then he awoke, stifling a shriek.

Nevertheless, after passing the Straits of Gibraltar, at the first sight of the Atlantic Ocean he recovered his spirits a little, and his hope. But it was only a brief respite. That vast but always smooth sea, the increasing heat, the misery of all those poor people who surrounded him, the consciousness of his own solitude, overwhelmed him once more. The empty and monotonous days which succeeded each other became confounded in his memory, as is the case with sick people. It seemed to him that he had been at sea a year. And every morning, on waking, he felt surprised afresh at finding himself there alone on that vast watery expanse, on his way to America. The beautiful flying fish which fell on deck every now and then, the marvellous sunsets of the tropics, with their enormous clouds colored like flame and blood, and those nocturnal phosphorescences which make the ocean seem all on fire like a sea of lava, did not produce on him the effect of real things, but of marvels beheld in a dream. There were days of bad weather, during which he remained constantly in the dormitory, where everything was rolling and crashing, in the midst of a terrible chorus of lamentations and imprecations, and he thought that his last hour had come. There were other days, when the sea was calm and yellowish, of insupportable heat, of infinite tediousness; interminable and wretched hours, during which the enervated passengers, stretched motionless on the planks, seemed all dead. And the voyage was endless: sea and sky, sky and sea; to-day the same as yesterday, to-morrow like to-day, and so on, always, eternally.

And for long hours he stood leaning on the bulwarks, gazing at that interminable sea in amazement, thinking vaguely of his mother, until his eyes closed and his head was drooping with sleep; and then again he beheld that unknown face which gazed upon him with an air of compassion, and repeated in his ear, “Your mother is dead!” and at the sound of that voice he awoke with a start, to resume his dreaming with wide-open eyes, and to gaze at the unchanging horizon.

The voyage lasted twenty-seven days. But the last days were the best. The weather was fine, and the air cool. He had made the acquaintance of a good old man, a Lombard, who was going to America to find his son, an agriculturist in the vicinity of the town of Rosario; he had told him his whole story, and the old man kept repeating every little while, as he tapped him on the nape of the neck with his hand, “Courage, my lad; you will find your mother well and happy.”

This companionship comforted him; his sad presentiments were turned into joyous ones. Seated on the bow, beside the aged peasant, who was smoking his pipe, beneath the beautiful starry heaven, in the midst of a group of singing peasants, he imagined to himself in his own mind a hundred times his arrival at Buenos Ayres; he saw himself in a certain street; he found the shop, he flew to his cousin. “How is my mother? Come, let us go at once! Let us go at once!” They hurried on together; they ascended a staircase; a door opened. And here his mute soliloquy came to an end; his imagination was swallowed up in a feeling of inexpressible tenderness, which made him secretly pull forth a little medal that he wore on his neck, and murmur his prayers as he kissed it.

On the twenty-seventh day after their departure they arrived. It was a beautiful, rosy May morning, when the steamer cast anchor in the immense river of the Plata, near the shore along which stretches the vast city of Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine Republic. This splendid weather seemed to him to be a good augury. He was beside himself with joy and impatience. His mother was only a few miles from him! In a few hours more he would have seen her! He was in America, in the new world, and he had had the daring to come alone! The whole of that extremely long voyage now seemed to him to have passed in an instant. It seemed to him that he had flown hither in a dream, and that he had that moment waked. And he was so happy, that he hardly experienced any surprise or distress when he felt in his pockets and found only one of the two little heaps into which he had divided his little treasure, in order to be the more sure of not losing the whole of it. He had been robbed; he had only a few lire left; but what mattered that to him, when he was near his mother? With his bag in his hand, he descended, in company with many other Italians, to the tug-boat which carried him within a short distance of the shore; clambered down from the tug into a boat which bore the name of Andrea Doria; was landed on the wharf; saluted his old Lombard friend, and directed his course, in long strides, towards the city.

On arriving at the entrance of the first street, he stopped a man who was passing by, and begged him to show him in what direction he should go in order to reach the street of los Artes. He chanced to have stopped an Italian workingman. The latter surveyed him with curiosity, and inquired if he knew how to read. The lad nodded, “Yes.”

“Well, then,” said the laborer, pointing to the street from which he had just emerged, “keep straight on through there, reading the names of all the streets on the corners; you will end by finding the one you want.”

The boy thanked him, and turned into the street which opened before him.

It was a straight and endless but narrow street, bordered by low white houses, which looked like so many little villas, filled with people, with carriages, with carts which made a deafening noise; here and there floated enormous banners of various hues, with announcements as to the departure of steamers for strange cities inscribed upon them in large letters. At every little distance along the street, on the right and left, he perceived two other streets which ran straight away as far as he could see, also bordered by low white houses, filled with people and vehicles, and bounded at their extremity by the level line of the measureless plains of America, like the horizon at sea. The city seemed infinite to him; it seemed to him that he might wander for days or weeks, seeing other streets like these, on one hand and on the other, and that all America must be covered with them. He looked attentively at the names of the streets: strange names which cost him an effort to read. At every fresh street, he felt his heart beat, at the thought that it was the one he was in search of. He stared at all the women, with the thought that he might meet his mother. He caught sight of one in front of him who made his blood leap; he overtook her: she was a negro. And accelerating his pace, he walked on and on. On arriving at the cross-street, he read, and stood as though rooted to the sidewalk. It was the street del los Artes. He turned into it, and saw the number 117; his cousin’s shop was No. 175. He quickened his pace still more, and almost ran; at No. 171 he had to pause to regain his breath. And he said to himself, “O my mother! my mother! It is really true that I shall see you in another moment!” He ran on; he arrived at a little haberdasher’s shop. This was it. He stepped up close to it. He saw a woman with gray hair and spectacles.

“What do you want, boy?” she asked him in Spanish.

“Is not this,” said the boy, making an effort to utter a sound, “the shop of Francesco Merelli?”

“Francesco Merelli is dead,” replied the woman in Italian.

The boy felt as though he had received a blow on his breast.

“When did he die?”

“Eh? quite a while ago,” replied the woman. “Months ago. His affairs were in a bad state, and he ran away. They say he went to Bahia Blanca, very far from here. And he died just after he reached there. The shop is mine.”

The boy turned pale.

Then he said quickly, “Merelli knew my mother; my mother who was at service with Signor Mequinez. He alone could tell me where she is. I have come to America to find my mother. Merelli sent her our letters. I must find my mother.”

“Poor boy!” said the woman; “I don’t know. I can ask the boy in the courtyard. He knew the young man who did Merelli’s errands. He may be able to tell us something.”

She went to the end of the shop and called the lad, who came instantly. “Tell me,” asked the shopwoman, “do you remember whether Merelli’s young man went occasionally to carry letters to a woman in service, in the house of the son of the country?”

“To Signor Mequinez,” replied the lad; “yes, signora, sometimes he did. At the end of the street del los Artes.”

“Ah! thanks, signora!” cried Marco. “Tell me the number; don’t you know it? Send some one with me; come with me instantly, my boy; I have still a few soldi.”

And he said this with so much warmth, that without waiting for the woman to request him, the boy replied, “Come,” and at once set out at a rapid pace.

They proceeded almost at a run, without uttering a word, to the end of the extremely long street, made their way into the entrance of a little white house, and halted in front of a handsome iron gate, through which they could see a small yard, filled with vases of flowers. Marco gave a tug at the bell.

A young lady made her appearance.

“The Mequinez family lives here, does it not?” demanded the lad anxiously.

“They did live here,” replied the young lady, pronouncing her Italian in Spanish fashion. “Now we, the Zeballos, live here.”

“And where have the Mequinez gone?” asked Marco, his heart palpitating.

“They have gone to Cordova.”

“Cordova!” exclaimed Marco. “Where is Cordova? And the person whom they had in their service? The woman, my mother! Their servant was my mother! Have they taken my mother away, too?”

The young lady looked at him and said: “I do not know. Perhaps my father may know, for he knew them when they went away. Wait a moment.”

She ran away, and soon returned with her father, a tall gentleman, with a gray beard. He looked intently for a minute at this sympathetic type of a little Genoese sailor, with his golden hair and his aquiline nose, and asked him in broken Italian, “Is your mother a Genoese?”

Marco replied that she was.

“Well then, the Genoese maid went with them; that I know for certain.”

“And where have they gone?”

“To Cordova, a city.”

The boy gave vent to a sigh; then he said with resignation, “Then I will go to Cordova.”

“Ah, poor child!” exclaimed the gentleman in Spanish; “poor boy! Cordova is hundreds of miles from here.”

Marco turned as white as a corpse, and clung with one hand to the railings.

“Let us see, let us see,” said the gentleman, moved to pity, and opening the door; “come inside a moment; let us see if anything can be done.” He sat down, gave the boy a seat, and made him tell his story, listened to it very attentively, meditated a little, then said resolutely, “You have no money, have you?”

“I still have some, a little,” answered Marco.

The gentleman reflected for five minutes more; then seated himself at a desk, wrote