When We Were Strangers (29 page)

“Sh, sh now, sleep.” Dr. Bucknell came, took my pulse and temperature and said the curtains might be opened in the morning. “It’s late May, Irma,” she said. “The poppies are blooming. You’ve been sick more than a month.” I struggled to sit. “No, not yet, perhaps tomorrow. Look.” When she held up my arm I gasped, for it was as thin as a rake and as pale as milk. “You’ve had good nurses, but now you must eat, get strong again and come back to us.”

The next day I did sit, propped on pillows, and fed myself a little barley soup. When I tried my voice it creaked like an old tool long unused, but it was good to see a smile cross Molly’s ruddy face. “There’s my peasant girl again. Go on, another bit of broth.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “So, Irma, that night in Chicago when you didn’t come back, you were raped in a burned-out house by a man named Jake who claimed he was a copper.
That’s
what you wouldn’t say all these months?”

The spoon fell from my fumbling fingers. “How do you know?”

“Because you told us or as much as did, when you were out of your head. I’m your friend, lass. There was no call for such secrets.”

“Told
us
?”

“Me and Niko the carpenter. He got this address from your friend Susanna and came every night after work. Don’t worry, I had him out of the room when I cleaned you.”

“So he knows?” Shame washed over me like fever coming back.

“He’s a good man, Irma, not a child. A bit of life won’t scare him off.”

“What did he say?”

“What any decent soul would say: that the man who hurt you was a beast, that
any
man who hurts a woman is a beast.”

“But why would Niko do so much for me? I only stitched his arm. And after the cable car, he must have thought I was crazy.”

Molly laughed. “And who’s to blame him if he did? So you must have stitched him well. Anyway, he kept coming and kept asking questions.”

“About me? And you told him?”

“Of course.” She held up a warning finger. “So next time, lass, don’t get sick and delirious. He has some drat foolish Greek notions about curing folks, but since you’re too weak to go running off again, you’ll see him this evening and decide for yourself what sort of man he is.” She helped me into a fresh nightshirt. “And listen to me, Irma, there’s no call to talk about what he already knows, about that house in Chicago, I mean. Just be easy, like he’s one of the lads from your village.”

“I never talked to them.”

“Right, no talking to lads in Opi. Well then, like he’s your old ragman, Jacob—or that sailor friend from the ship. Get under the sheets. We don’t want you catching cold now.”

“But Daisy said—”

“Who?” Molly demanded.

I explained who Daisy was and what she said—that no good, decent man would want a woman with humps or scars if he had his pick of those without. So a man who did would have some flaw himself.

“So your Daisy said that, did she? Well, I’m not smart like you and your Dr. Bucknell, but I know some things. First, every decent man knows there’s far worse a girl can have besides humps and scars and some of that bad can be inside her. Second, if you’re wanting a man that’s perfect, you’d better be a holy sister married to Our Lord. But if you’re wanting to see who’s a good man and who’s a beast, well you can use your eyes and ears and find that out yourself.”

“Perhaps.”

“You and your ‘perhaps.’ Go to sleep now.” I slept and woke and washed myself in the morning and took my first steps since the sickness.

Chapter Eighteen
Alessandro’s Bread

Niko came that evening with lemons.
He cut and squeezed them into a cup and had me drink the juice although Molly rolled her eyes. He showed me his arm. The cut was healing well. “Miss Miller took out the stitches,” he said, “but lemon juice helped the healing. My partner Carl was jealous when he heard that a fine dressmaker had sewn me.” Niko’s smile was as warm and wide as sunrise. He touched his cheek. “Molly said you were hurt on the ship.”

His voice was so calm and the question so frank that I told him as I had told no one else of the Serbian girls, the shouts and accusations, how I was pushed, fell and torn on the face, and how Teresa held the jagged edges together all night long.

“So the scar came of friendship, then. You can wear it proudly.”

My face flushed hot and I turned to the window. Gaslights glimmered from the street. “Do you like San Francisco?” I asked.

“The hills remind me of home.”

I spoke of Cleveland and Chicago and how their flatness seemed so foreign. He nodded. “As if the hand of God could wipe you off the earth?” Yes, exactly so.

Molly brought us tea and worked quietly on her calendar. I asked Niko how he came to America.

He stared out the window. “Did your family have olive trees, Irma?”

“Everyone in Opi had at least a few, except for the goat boy and the beggars.”

“Yes, exactly, the beggars. My father gambled away our olive trees one by one. For a time, when the French vineyards were failing, we had a market for our wine, but when the French got new grape stock, they wanted their own, of course. My father left us and my older brothers went to sea and sent money home to our mother. There was no work in Kos except day labor in our neighbors’ orchards. I couldn’t stay. You understand, Irma, loving a place where you can’t stay?”

I nodded and in her corner Molly bit her lip and nodded too.

“An uncle with a merchant ship hired me to help his carpenter.”

“Why did you come to America?”

“I was curious about the trees. The old carpenter talked about American forests full of cherry, maple, and every kind of oak, ash and beech. I wanted to see them. So I saved money for a ship to New York, where I learned English and apprenticed myself to a German cabinetmaker, a good man, a very good man. He wanted to see the redwoods, so we took the train to California last summer.”

“Did he like them?”

Niko’s hand followed the wood grain of my night table. “Ernst died on the train in Iowa. I kissed his two eyes and took him to an undertaker who let me build the coffin. After the funeral I kept going west. So now I’m here.”

“Do you miss Kos?”

“Everyone’s gone. My father sold our fields. There’s nothing in Kos for me now. Perhaps it’s like that for you in Opi?”

“Perhaps, yes. But still—”

“Yes, I know—still. I miss our honey flavored with wild thyme. I miss the wind and the sound of our windmills. There are sandy beaches in the north of our island where I swam with my brothers, and an old Roman mosaic of Europa being carried over the sea on a bull. I miss the taste of our food and the sound of my people talking, the songs from our village. Is it like that for you?”

“Yes.” I told him of Francesca, who had come from so close to Opi but died before we could talk of home.

Molly put down her calendar. “It’s late, Niko,” she said. “And Irma has to sleep.”

Niko left, promising to return, and Molly helped me bind my hair for sleeping. I grasped her hand. “Thank you, Molly. You did so much for me when I was sick.”

“Well, yes, there
was
a lot to do, and not all of it pretty. I’d never do it for a stranger. But you’d do the same for me, no, even if you weren’t a nurse?”

“Of course.”

“So then,” she said briskly, “we won’t talk about it. Sleep and get well and go back to your dispensary. You know, we’ve got nineteen boarders now and more coming from the Levi factory. ”

“That’s good, that’s very good,” I said, half asleep already.

Three days later I was well enough to go to the dispensary. The students, Dr. Bucknell and even Mrs. Robbins welcomed me back. All the typhoid cases had died or recovered and we had a quiet week of study. Niko came every evening and walked me home. As I grew stronger we took longer and longer routes, at first avoiding the hills and then seeking them out. My appetite returned and once we stopped at a North Beach trattoria where a cook from Genoa brought us deep bowls of cioppino. Niko described his mother’s fish stews and her soups made with greens he gathered from the fields. We had bread and it was good, but not like our bread from home. I spoke of Assunta, the tang of her dough and the warmth of her loaves in winter. I described how Zia Carmela and I had pushed my father to court her. “I was making an altar cloth,” I began. Then memories of my father stopped my mouth.

In the silence, Niko took a lemon from his pocket. “When I was a boy,” he said casually, “we used to cut lemons in quarters like this, close our eyes and try to taste the sweetness inside the sour. Here, Irma, you try.” He put a lemon quarter in my hand. “Close your eyes.” I sucked and found the curl of sweetness, like the first layer of spring warmth inside the chill of a late winter day. He sat quietly stacking lemon peels and then easing our talk to my work in the dispensary and the furniture he dreamed of making.

When the trattoria closed, we walked a long time through the quiet streets up Nob Hill and then Pacific Heights, watching moonlight graze the city as we shared stories. He told me of the tree, in whose shade Hippocrates taught, that now was so big that fifty men could not girdle it with their outstretched arms.

“Fifty men?” I repeated.

He smiled. “Well, fifty small men.”

Molly pulled open the boardinghouse door as I fumbled for my key. “You’re late, I was worried,” she fussed, until she caught sight of Niko’s red hair gleaming in the gaslight. “Ah, I see. It’s midnight, you know, Irma.”

“We had dinner and then we were—talking about Hippocrates.”

“Were you now? And such a valuable subject
that
was. There’s a dance at my church next Saturday night,” she called to Niko. “Instead of keeping her out in the night air, you two might come along with me.”

We did go with Molly and managed a waltz, but when we tried to follow the caller for a contra dance, my feet tangled with Niko’s. I stumbled and as he caught me, his lips brushed my scar. “Shall we wait for a waltz?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, and we stood outside in the warm night, arms entwined, barely speaking. Back at the boardinghouse, Molly watched me slowly brush out my hair and observed: “You enjoyed the dance, didn’t you, Irma? Was I right to have you come?”

“Yes, Molly,” I admitted. “You were right.”

Everything was right. Spring eased into a summer of soaring blue skies. The hills sparkled with wildflowers. I often helped Dr. Bucknell with her surgeries and studied for a diploma from an American high school. Zia Carmela would have been proud. Niko found work with a fine cabinetmaker from Boston. I floated in those days, filled with bright air.

Early in July, Niko met me at the dispensary after classes. “Come with me to North Beach,” he said, “I have something to show you.” We wound past peddlers on Columbus Avenue and then turned onto Union. “Now close your eyes and smell,” he ordered as he led me past what was surely a poultry shop, then a fishmonger’s and next a café. “Almost,” he said, “here on the left,” he said, and now I knew we had entered a bakery.

“Welcome. Please sit down, Signorina Irma Vitale of Opi. We have been waiting for you,” said a warm voice in my own Abruzzo dialect. My eyes flew open. A stocky, wide-mouthed baker stood before me, beaming.

“This is Alessandro Mancini,” said Niko proudly. “I had him make your bread.” Alessandro put a loaf in my hands, round and warm. Yes, here was the same satisfying weight of the loaf and gentle crackle of crust. I wiped my eyes and broke off a piece, filling my hand.

“Taste it, Irma,” urged Alessandro. I did, slowly savoring the spongy warm tang, rich with the salty sweetness of home. I closed my eyes again, remembering our table, my mother’s thick lentil soup and the slice of bread she put at my place. “When bread is fresh like this,” she used to say, “and you close your eyes, you can taste the sun on the grain that made it.”

“This Greek of yours wanted it warm when he brought you,” the baker was saying. “I make bread as my father did; even my oven’s exactly the same.”

“It’s good, Alessandro. It’s so good.”

Niko took my hand. “Shall we go now, Irma? You can take the loaf.”

We walked out to the bay and sat watching the waves in a cradling wedge of rock, our hands laced together, as close as if there were no seam between us. As the first bands of violet streaked the hills, Niko took my other hand and asked, “Irma, should we go back again for more of Alessandro’s bread?”

“Yes.”

“Should we go often? And go walking and even to dances sometimes?”

“Yes,” I said, “we should do that.”

“For the rest of our lives, Irma?” He laid his hand on my face.

“Yes,” I whispered, “for the rest of our lives.”

“Perhaps, then, we should be married.”

“Yes, Niko, we should do that.”

We kissed. It was the bright sweetness of lemons, the warmth of fresh bread and the comfort of home after a long voyage. As the first stars glimmered over the bay, joy filled my chest, more joy than seemed possible in this world.

We were married four months later in the parlor of Molly’s new boardinghouse. It was a bright clear day in the fall of 1884. Hélène, Simone and Lune sent a damask wedding dress. “Come visit us soon in Chicago,” they wrote, “and show us your Greek.” Jacob and his sisters sent ribbons for my hair and a fine velvet vest for Niko. From Vittorio and Claudia came a pair of crystal goblets. Assunta and my father sent a letter wishing us joy and a cameo brooch that had been my mother’s. Alessandro baked the sweet lemon wedding cake and trays of rich biscotti. With Molly’s Irish friends, Niko’s Greeks, all our boarders and students from the dispensary, dozens of raised glasses toasted our joy.