Stone of Heaven

By Lucille Bellucci

Mai-yeen and Rafaella Bardini emigrate from Rome, Italy, and plunge into life in America. It is a new life, new environment, with surprises.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucille Bellucci
• Release date: Jul 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465743336

Lucille Bellucci

I was born in Shanghai, China, exiled by the commies in 1952, went to Italy with my family. After five years we emigrated to the U.S. Ten years after that, I moved to Brazil with my husband, Renato. Back in California in 1980, I began writing. I have five novels: The Year of the Rat, Journey from Shanghai, Stone of Heaven, The Snake Woman of Ipanema, A Rare Passion; and two story/essay collections, Pastiche: Stories and Such and Farrago: More Stories. Eight short stories and essays earned first-place awards. One story, "Cicadas," was nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Book preview

Chapter 1

At the rail of the S.S. Constitution, Rafaella Bardini and her mother, Mai-yeen, watched Naples slip away. Family and friends, waving and weeping on the dock, dwindled to colored dots. Stefano was not among them. They had said their farewells the day before the Bardinis departed Rome.

In the dimness of his room, he had held her as she wept.

Her grief was worse than any she had experienced. I’ll never see you again, I know it. You have a way of disappearing from me. Don’t change, don’t change.

Don’t be a dope. You always were a dope. He kissed her eyes, licked her tears away, rocked her, kissed her nose. His voice sounded locked in his throat.

This will be a test, he said. No promises on either side. You’ll have your American boyfriends, live life, stay free. We either come through, or we don’t.

No promises. How like him. It panicked Rafaella to contemplate the meaning of his words. Which one of them would be tested the more? She wept harder at the final loss she might have to face.

He rose to turn out the one small light and they made love tender beyond speech. Would it be for the last time?

The ship was outside the Bay of Naples. Rafaella and Mai-yeen stood at the rail. Mai-yeen had not uttered a word since boarding.

Daddy is going with us. He knows everything, and he will be in America with us, Rafaella told her mother. Not quite confident in a heaven, she herself did not quite believe it; probably her mother did not believe at all. One told untruths or half-truths to comfort the bereaved.

Mai-yeen linked their arms more tightly, and without another word, they went below.

They had two bunkmates, Sicilian women who had husbands waiting for them in New York City. Both were excited, though that night Rafaella heard them crying softly. Worn out by emotion, she slept soundly in her top bunk bed.

At some hour she awoke and started up, afraid she was late for work.

Just in time, she stopped from swinging her legs to find her slippers and give herself a six-foot fall to the floor. The faint light shining through the porthole reminded her where she was. How strange. She no longer worked for U.S. Film Distributors in Rome, where James Millspott hired her four years ago, a green eighteen-year-old fresh off the boat from Shanghai.

I’ve written a pretty good reference for you, Millspott had said.

Their hands at the door to his office were still clasped. His hand giving her the envelope trembled a little. You’re to let me know if there is anything you need. I’m from the Midwest, but you can’t tell, I might be able to find somebody I know in California, especially in Hollywood.

She kissed his cheek and removed her hand from his. He responded with a harsh clearing of his throat.

Well, in the ship’s dining room they were as good as in America now, being served American coffee, orange juice, and scrambled eggs with bacon.

Mai-yeen said, It is very odd to be served by Americans. She nodded at the Italian immigrants at their round table. The Italians think so, too.

The women giggled as the white-coated waiter put their plates in front of them. All the Italians or Sicilians stared, as was their way, at the Bardinis, until Rafaella stated clearly that, yes, her mother was Chinese and had bound feet, and that her father had been Italian and that was why she did not have bound feet. This had been a tiresome routine in Italy.

One passenger was clearly not Sicilian. Nicolai Valentin Katcharovsky, who stood well over seven feet tall, spoke English with a rolling Russian accent, omitting the articles with carefree aplomb, and had a hundred stories to tell of his life in Russia as the personal palace guard of the Czarina.

On an overcast day they stood at the rail together and stared at the blue-black sea.

Can you see children of these people (pipple, he pronounced it)? One day they will go to Italy to see where they came from, and they will speak bad Italian and be proud.

In the forty years since his mistress the Czarina had been arrested, he had wandered from Siberia to Manchuria to Shanghai, then on to Belgium, France, Austria, Italy, where the desire to keep moving overtook him and he applied to migrate to America.

America is last frontier, he said. Maybe is big enough and I will not get tired of same place all time. Too bad I can’t sell black-market American cigarettes in America. Was good money in China.

In their stateroom Mai-yeen said to Rafella, I cannot decide if he is a rascal or a good man. I think perhaps he is both.

At the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, the Constitution anchored off the Strait of Gibralter. Next day they would leave the mild Mediterranean Sea and, as Katcharovsky worded it, "Atlantic is very angry in autumn.

Many passengers will stop eating until they arrive in New York Harbor."

They had the day to visit either Gibralter or the seaport of Algeciras, on the southern tip of Spain.

I want to see Spain! exclaimed Rafaella. Who knew when she could afford to come this way again?

I will go with you, Katcharovsky said. We will walk one thousand miles to Seville and catch another ship there. Or maybe I will stay in Spain. I have not been to Spain.

Was he serious? Rafaella hoped he would not leave her to explain his absence when the launch returned for them.

Mai-yeen chose to stay aboard and, later, asked her what he had been howling in her ear in the launch.

Oh Mother. Rafaella laughed. "He told me a joke about General Francisco Franco because it was safer to tell on the launch. He said people get shot for making fun of the regime.

"There’d been predictions about Franco’s dying twenty years from now, in 1976, and when the twenty years were up and he had died and was lying on his deathbed, his ministers started arguing among themselves.

None of them had the courage to inform General Franco he was dead."

Even in the far southern reaches of Spain, Rafaella saw the grip Franco had on the country. In the center of Algeciras’ cobbled streets they had to stop and stand as a column of soldiers marched by. Rather than a rhythmic pounding of boots, the men created an eerie clopping sound in their rubber-soled white canvas shoes. Their puttees glared whitely, like the white-washed houses facing the street, like the robes of the many Arabs. But why did the women wear black? Perhaps white was considered too good for them. It’s all very clean, anyway, thought Rafaella. Mindful of Communist parades in the Shanghai of her teenaged years, she kept her face impassive.

When the column had passed, Katcharovsky guided her to a sidewalk cafe for coffee and pastries, which he cheerfully allowed her to pay for.

Then they walked leisurely around the cobbled streets, bought an unfamiliar fruit with a hairy skin called sapote, and peeled and ate it.

She felt like a child beside him; he bent his skinny dry-boned frame to listen or speak to her, and she found herself straining upward at the same time. Still, it was nicer to have his company than to be wandering about alone. Later that afternoon she added to the letter to Stefano she had been writing since the ship departed Naples: I suppose I expected Flamenco dancing and fantastic guitar-playing and wine and song but it’s like an outpost of Africa and almost as white as Siberia, except not with snow and ice. Everything was awfully quiet, and I actually enjoyed hearing a donkey braying. I miss you all the time, but while I keep moving, being without you feels like time is suspended.

When the ship set sail again, west from the shelter of the Strait, the rough gray waters of the Atlantic made her stagger about on deck while her mother stayed in her bunk. Finally, a headache sent Rafaella below to the infirmary to ask for aspirin. She had just stepped out of the elevator when a heavyset woman reeled out of the nurse’s office and clutched at her.

My son is dead! she choked out in the Sicilian dialect, sobbing and beating at Rafaella’s shoulder. A nurse surged after her with some pills in her hand.

I am so sorry. How did he die? Rafaella held her and looked at the nurse for help.

He was sick only a day with a high fever, and then he was gone! A man in working clothes came from behind and put his hands on her shoulders. She tore away from him and ran down the corridor, the nurse behind.

How terrible, Rafaella said to the man. He gave her a blank look and followed the two women.

At dinner, the woman, her face a ruin, sat beside her husband but would not eat. The others at their table looked sorrowful and made sounds of sympathy. One woman wiped her eyes though she did not stop forking food to her mouth. Everyone took small, steady bites. At the end, not a speck of food remained on their plates.

Katcharovsky knew the story. The child had had an infectious disease, perhaps meningitis, had been ill since boarding the ship, and been taken to the infirmary too late to be treated.

This means, he said, we may all be placed in quarantine when we reach port. We had outbreak of cholera in camp in Trieste, and always I was boiling water and clothes. He took out an enormous handkerchief and blew his nose. "Now coffin in hold going to America. Byedni zhenshchina.

Poor woman. What sad beginning of new life."

Coffin in hold, traveling with the family to America. The image was upsetting. Rafella and her mother went over afterward and took the mother’s hands and patted them. The woman cried hysterically; her husband looked wordlessly at his hard workman’s palms as though just noticing their emptiness.

God in heaven, Rafaella thought, I have nothing to whine about. I’m young and strong, and Mother is well.

After that, she was impatient for the voyage to end. It was a waste of time, while she was cut off from everything that mattered, on either side of the ocean. When Bill Rudlund had stomped into her office two years ago, a tobacco-chewing, sun-wrinkled image of every European’s idea of a Texan, she had thought he was clownish, then shrewd, then—at the last—powerful. He was, indeed, that, she discovered. He had interjected the prospect of her moving to the United States; the die was cast when she applied. With him as sponsor, their visas were assured.

You and your ma belong there, he’d kept saying. If it takes longer than a year to get your visas, I’ll send the President a nasty note.

She had laughed.

His glance was sly. You don’t think I can?

Go! Go! Go!

Rafaella scanned the horizon like some shipwrecked sailor. How slowly the ship moved!

Two days later, before dawn, she left her bunk, dressed in the semidark and went above to stand at the rail. She had forgotten a coat, but then forgot about that as she spotted the form ahead. It took shape and towered to the sky as the ship glided past. In awe, gazing at the Statue of Liberty, she felt tears come to her eyes.

I’m here, Stefano, she thought. Who would have believed it?

Chapter 2

It was early to close the antiques shop, but Stefano could not stand its closeness another minute. All day he had been thinking of the Bardinis arriving in New York Harbor and had exasperated himself by continually looking at his watch and calculating the time difference from Rome.

New York was six hours back; the West Coast would be three hours further.

For God’s sake, he told himself, stop figuring the half-hours.

He had sent Rodney home because today his partner’s older son’s appearance particularly grated on him. Many times, in different ways, he had tried to tell him he should wear a well-tailored suit with a good tie, and to comb his hair. But He continued to wear his black leather jacket or a worse brown one, and his hair retained its wild spikes.

Stefano had taken to sending him to the back room on a made-up errand whenever an important client dropped in. Rodney’s main function was to guard the exhibits while Stefano was diverted with someone. If two or three separate clients dropped in, Stefano gritted his teeth and allowed him to stay in the showroom.

Once Rodney had told a client rudely, Wait a minute, while Stefano was in the back room. He had come out itching to smack him in the head and later spent an exasperating five minutes giving him lessons in etiquette. He could not be as forceful as he wished, for the boy’s mother was easily offended in anything that concerned her sons. Rodney was nineteen to Stefano’s twemty-five; the difference felt like a light-year or two; Stefano could not remember having been a boy.

He pulled down the ornate iron grating over the door and show window, not that there was much merchandise left to protect anymore, of WEI & CHANG, ART OF ANCIENT CHINA. Wei had been surprised the sign was to be in English. We have to be different, to be exclusive, Stefano explained. If a connoisseur cannot read English he is no connoisseur.

In a way, a Chinese surname was an advantage. Had it been Cipio, the name his Italian father had not given him or his mother, the sign would have lacked purity. Rafaella had suggested he change his name to M. Polo, and insisted that any fool would stop and think about such a sign.

Rafaella, Raf, he thought.

He contemplated dropping in at Wei’s restaurant on Via Frattina and decided he did not want to face more discussions on the dwindling stocks from Hong Kong. On brighter days, the irony of their changed positions amused him. Wei’s dismal restaurant trade had bounded upward after Stefano’s first important sale at the shop. Their joint venture had enabled Wei to upgrade the decor, improve the menu, and advertise. For a year, Stefano’s sales had fueled Wei’s expenses. In time, Wei came to believe that mortgaging the restaurant in order to finance Stefano’s enterprise had been his own idea. Wei no longer depended upon income from him, which was as well, for Wei & Chang no longer had much income anymore to share.

He walked in a haze of despair along Via Condotti; at the intersection he almost stepped into the path of a car. Stronzo! the driver yelled at him. Well, he might be a shithead and other worse things, one of which was to be fool enough to lose Rafaella. Should he have gone to her wealthy friend Bill Rudlund and asked him to sponsor him, as well?

He had told her, I’m glad your visa is taking so long.

Sometimes I’m glad, too, she said. In the twilight of the Pincio, she looked at him. Not sometimes. Often. No, always, really.

They came to the Pincio several times a week for its coolness and quiet, where the crunch of gravel was louder than the buzz of the city below. They had been meeting at the Borghese Gardens since they first became friends. They came now for its unchanging peace.

But you’re going to emigrate too, aren’t you?

It was a touchy matter between them. He had got to Italy by virtue of his Italian citizenship; to immigrate to the United States required a sponsor.

Only professionals such as engineers or doctors received preference on the waiting lists.

Perhaps. But I won’t even apply if you ask Rudlund to help me.

Without a personal sponsor, you’re going to be stuck in the regular quota for a hundred years. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder in protest. I can only try not to ask him.

He said harshly, You will do better than try.

All right, I won’t ask.

She had sighed and collected her light sweater, and together they walked down the stone steps to Piazza del Popolo, populous with sidewalk cafes, taxicabs, motor scooters, walkers like themselves crossing any way they could.

A stronzo’s pride, he thought, wandering in the general direction of his apartment, weighed less than air, and wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread.

He still could not bring himself to do what she asked. But he would inquire at the consulate in Naples.

He had crossed the Tiber, but instead of his flat on Via Castaldi, he found himself standing in front of the Bardinis’ imposing double gate.

Their little corner of the mansion must have been re-rented already.

Tacito, the caretaker, wouldn’t have lost a moment finding another tenant.

Stefano quickly walked away, afraid to see the gate open and a stranger come through.

Chapter 3

The medical officers came aboard before the immigration people.

Everyone of immigrant status had to wait in the dining hall to be processed. Through the porthole Rafaella saw the cabin and first-class passengers descend the ramp. One day she and her mother would be among such a group, perhaps arriving home after a visit to England. Was it a promise to herself or merely a wish?

Toward the rear, Nicolai Katcharovksy towered above the heads. He nodded at her and mouthed, Will see you. There was to be no quarantine.

Her name was called. Startled, she peered over heads and saw an immigration official at the table looking around for the Bardinis and repeating the call.

She made her way forward. A young blond man in a suit, standing at the official’s shoulder, glanced at her and away, then returned for another look. You’re Miss Rafaella Bardini? He had difficulty pronouncing Rafaella, coming out with Ray-falla.

I am Rafaella Bardini.

He smiled and nodded at the official, who held their passports open.

Seems you found a shortcut, Miss, he said. You’re being met.

Of course Bill Rudlund’s hand was in this. Well, she didn’t mind at all.

She went to fetch her mother.

Their transfer by limousine to Hoboken, New Jersey, was so swift that the Bardinis caught only a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline.

At the wheel, Henry Persons had asked, Would you ladies like to spend a couple of nights in New York City before I take you to the train?

Rafaella conveyed the question to her mother.

Mai-yeen shook her head. I feel…it looks very…complicated. She seemed smaller, sunk in the vast couch of the back seat.

Thanks, Mr. Persons, but maybe next time. Next time? Obviously she was raving, her tongue separated from her brain. Was she expecting Rudlund to be responsible for her the rest of her life?

Sure, Persons said cheerfully. "Call me Hank. I aim to please.

Maybe a drive along the Hudson on the Jersey side? We can always cross back to New York and visit the Cloisters. It’s a beautiful museum. You get a great view of the river from there, too. In maybe another month it will be frozen over."

She had never felt less like sightseeing. This man seemed to think nothing of their departing one country, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and being inducted into a new country a few days after that. Politely, she declined the offer and asked if perhaps they could go to the railroad station even though they would be hours early.

We’ll sit and wait until train time. My mother is rather tired. When she made the reservation in Rome, the names Hoboken, New Jersey, held a mystical connotation; it was to be their jumping-off place enroute to the West.

At the station, Hank Persons pointed out