Crossings

By Anna Aragno

In this impressive debut collection of short stories, we are taken to the heart of the places and times in which these tales are spun. From Sicily to New Mexico, Palestine, the Arctic, and the high seas, each story conjures with almost cinematographic intensity the dilemmas and dramas its characters must face. Knit from kernels of historical truth, these stories explode through fictional imagination that is passionately unwound in a narrative voice that is never less than gripping.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524620790

Anna Aragno

Italian-born Anna Aragno, PhD, came to the US on a Fulbright as a young girl. The mother of two daughters, she is now a practicing psychoanalyst living and working in New York City. Although widely published in her specialized field, this is her first foray into fiction.

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© 2016 Anna Aragno. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/01/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2080-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2079-0 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover illustration created by Rebecca Bird.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The Crossing

El Mesteño

The Triangle

Addio Emilio

The Bride of Palestine

Ayurnamut It Cannot be Otherwise

Jonestown

Isaac

As he lay dying…

Shorter Stories

Phantom Willow

The Flamboyant

The Horse

Foreword

This lovely collection of stories is sometimes historical fiction, sometimes fictionalized history, sometimes fictionalized memoir, sometimes memorialized fiction. It is about different types of transitions.

Anna Aragno writes about connections and disconnections, comings and goings, arrivals and leavings, the exile to a strange land, within one’s own land, or into one’s own mind. Her collection invites us to consider and reconsider our own experiences of attachment and exile, ultimately always in one’s mind

And who better to write on the mind than an analyst who understands that memory is the memory of meaning, attachment and loss, basic themes of the human condition. To this understanding she adds the artist’s touch, weaving evocative detail into narratives that call up the experience within ourselves. She does this especially effectively through her characters, illuminating their personalities through the details of their behavior as only an analyst can observe. This deepens our understanding of her characters showing us how they feel, their conflicts and desires, how they experience meaning in themselves and others, and, most importantly, how profoundly they develop or fail to. In this way we grasp the depth and complexity of their emotions and therefore also our own. All good literature does this, but as an analyst, Aragno can show us the neurotic ways which stifle a progressive emotional working through in life.

Narrative can elicit an emotional experience, binding it with meaning. When it does, narrative is storying that reveals meaning. Analysts and authors are both story tellers and therefore meaning-makers in the sense of revealers of meaning. To understand the meaning of what happens requires a story.

This is quite a lot to ask from a short story format. To do it successfully, in this brief space, details must be evocative, specific and specifically relevant as the storyline progressively unfolds. Similarly in our own lives, those stalemated by conflicts and their delicate balances, must be understood by analyst and author in order to be demonstrated to the reader. Aragno does this admirably and well through the telling details and propelling pace so that her stories grab the reader.

These stories are not only a good read. They enlighten and invite us to think about their relevance in us. This debut collection shows what deep psychological understanding can bring to narrative writing.

Eric Marcus MD

Director

Columbia University Center

for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

Professor of Clinical Psychiatry

Columbia University College

of Physicians and Surgeons

Introduction

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare current. Orazio

They change their sky but not their soul, who cross the ocean. Horace

The theme running through these stories is the experience of displacement. I was inspired to write them not only due to personal experience and that recounted by many people around me, but also by noting what has become a dominant trend, more recently the tragedy, of our time: that of migratory displacement. Whether forced or longed for the psychological implications of leaving ones homeland — even the journey itself— produce a bifurcation of experience and identity that forces one to become a witness to oneself. The threads of this torn core are at the center of each narrative.

At the same time up-rootedness carries the promise of novelty, diversity, opportunity; it whisks us up on the winds of possibility. With mass movements beginning around the turn of the past century, the arrival of the jet age, and now the massive exodus from turmoil in the Middle East, relocation has replaced alienation and isolation as focal experiences of our times. There is no telling from where you start out where you may end up. So the divided rather than the isolated self is the new ailment of our times. Concomitantly, the literature of dislocation has mushroomed, its authors’ voices often quite raw burst through directly, from gut to pen, quickening the narrative progress of a documentary genre that paints memory – visual, emotional, sensory— in all its forms but always from an earlier time, when all experiences were more vibrant, more meaningful, more deeply imprinted, for having now moved into the distance, far away.

Living in New York for over fifty years I have encountered many compatriots: musicians, shoe repair men, artists, tailors, scientists, chefs, owners of restaurants and pizzerias, professors, singers, dancers, and authors. We all came to America under very different circumstances and each life has followed its own distinct path. Yet the dominant chord and resonant subject of conversation, typically, is the shared experience of displacement and the ardent dream of return.

Santo’s story, in particular, touched me. Santo was my local shoe repair man. He came to America from Sicily where he owned a limoneto, a lemon grove. I know this because he kept a picture of its trees in his pocket which he took out and showed me each time I dropped by, for years, as if he had forgotten he had shown it to me the time before. He was convinced that he would soon be returning to his land. I used to stop by on my way home to have a chat with him. One day he was not there. He had sold his shoe repair shop to a Korean family. Later I heard that he had died suddenly of a heart attack somewhere in mid-town Manhattan. He never did return home. A similar fate befell Pasquale, the venetian-blinds man from Abruzzi, whose taciturn scowl and brusque manner always softened when I spoke to him in Italian. He too had dreams of rimpatriare, returning to the homeland, but he too died tragically from a fall down the stairs of his house.

The particular circumstances of my own crossing (every crossing is unique) need not be detailed here since they are amply woven through these stories. Yet the distinct feeling that crossings are dangerous, that they split us in two, are not always survived or survived very well, is distinctly mine. There’s danger in the journey itself: the shadow face of voyages are shipwrecks strewn on ocean beds. Not everyone makes it through. I salute those thousands of immigrants who created this new world, whose lives have been a triumph of survival and regeneration. Many of them were compelled to land on these shores for survival. It is only fitting that their adaptation be tinted with gratitude. But this is not my story or my experience. On the contrary, my life has been weighted by the enduring experience of not belonging, expatriation, of lost possibilities and rupture.

I have been interested in exploring the transitional experience of dislodgement itself. For regardless how much it was longed for, the actual trip entails the physical hardship of leaving behind one’s natural shores, ones country and culture; the topography of its landscape, the texture and taste of familiar foods, the smells, sounds, colors, and unique rhythms of its daily routines; its particular seasonal shifts and play of light; its characteristic trees and meadows, streets and monuments, rivers and bridges; ones place, where all voices speak the mother tongue and familiar customs cushion every day in a comfortable communal embrace. From all of this, one is uprooted. The fissure creates a deep fault-line at the center of the self. Though not tragic for everyone, this schism is tragic for some. And it is particularly painful for those who came exiled. For those, like me, who were sent away. For them, each day of their ‘new life’ is the life condemned to, not the life chosen.

The stories in this collection deal with problems of the lingering split created by exile and its deeper effects on the human psyche. They touch on how the migratory journey impacts on identity and the version of the life-story that can be woven out of such torn cloth. By entering into emotions, motives, experiences, and endings of crossings, I would like to de-mythologize the facile, idealized vision of migration as an unblemished horizon of rosy options and new possibilities in freedom, exposing the private face of displacement to shed some light on its inherent consequences, particularly on the discontinuous split it generates as a life-motif.

We are, after all, most of us, creatures of habit, our roots imprinted at a very early age. Feelings of security grow surreptitiously, effortlessly, through the monotonous continuity of daily sounds and traditions, the mundane customs of family and culture. These sensory markers become emblems for our feeling special, unique, our sense of belonging, just as our loved one’s faces stand out instantly in a crowd. Our identities are in some crucial way influenced, created even, by familiarity, belonging, and national pride, and are irrevocably marked by events that shatter our continuity of place and time. Once these external signposts are removed we huddle inward forced to strengthen an inner core without ligaments to the outside environment. The residues of such traumas are found in lingering emotions, frequently sad, filled with longing and remembrance, and deep nostalgia.

For many, then, the immigrant experience is accompanied by a constant, partially buried but always lingering, psychic longing: the idea of ‘return’. For better or worse, the adaptive requirement is never completely successful. That is for the next generation to enjoy. No matter how well the language is learned, how gratifying the new life, how glossy the veneer, there was another, there will always have been, another place, time, experience, that was deeper, richer, more colorful, more meaningful, closer to the heart, more truly oneself than this one…..

Yet, despite the nostalgia, there is another face to migration, one that is acquired by those who make it through the crossing, who take on the challenge and fulfill its potential promise. This is the face of individuation, of personal accountability and independence, the face of self-reliance, upon which the philosophical pillars of the new world were fashioned. For habit and familiarity are also regressive and provincial; the static enclave breeds stagnation. And those who lean heavily on what is handed down through ancestral privilege often implode becoming tired facsimiles of those that came before. The life lived off the benefits of unearned goods is filled with unfounded presumption and paltry deeds. Up-rootedness inflicts the pain of separation, the demands of going it alone, on one’s own steam. But it also generates movement and momentum, the very thrust of the life force itself, where merit is rewarded just as the pulsating muscle of the migratory wing must persist unyielding as it pushes on for sheer survival. The stamina and spirit thus engendered potentially sprout shoots of progress, passion, and perseverance.

Not all crossings in these stories have to do with displacement or migration per se: other conflictual themes resulting from crossing borders, whether geographical, generational, or ideological, that reignite ancestral enmity or rekindle tribal kinships, disrupting the delicate tissue of emotional attachments, also illustrate problems arising from breeched boundaries. Sailing seas, crossbreeding cultures, and disturbing identities formed through the firm fabric of family, friends, and community, morphs familiar souls into newly shaped individuals. The new selves thereby created are hybrid versions, cross-pollinated by language, custom, adaptation.

What all these stories have in common is that each is fictionalized from the seeds of a true event. All names have been altered and characterizations bear no resemblance, as far as I know, to any of the real people from whom they derive the bare facts. The storied accounts are completely fictitious and have been embroidered purely through imagination although imagination, also, is knit from the yarn of the personal. I dedicate this collection to all those migrants around the world, to those first generation parents whose daily efforts become the scaffolding for bridges to better the lives of their offspring.

The Crossing

As she finally withdrew from the railing, her face moist with sea mist and tears, they were already heading to high seas. Long after other passengers had stopped waiving, after her Mother and sister, the port of Genova, and the familiar Italian coastline, had faded out of sight, she had stood there, gripping the damp balustrade to steady herself against a swell of overwhelming emotions. Despair hit as the great ship heaved westward out of port waters. By then turning back was impossible. Useless to scream, her pleas had all gone unheeded. To fight the course set irrevocably by her Mother was now impossible. Steadying herself as she adjusted to the ship’s gentle sway, she looked out at the receding coastline of the French Riviera shrouded in haze. All trace of her homeland had disappeared. The familiar topography of the Mediterranean landscape with its terraced hills and chiseled cliffs precipitating into blue bays was melting into a foggy horizon. Ripped away midsummer from her vacation paradise she pictured her friends on the beach, swimming, boating, joking around…they would all be going dancing later that evening… Quite still, she stood alone by the railing as the ship glided silently away from the coastline and her mind detached from her body.

Filling the air with diaphanous chill and steadily thickening, the fog now obscured any sight of land. She turned around to find her bearings. At a respectful distance stood an older woman who must have noticed the young girl alone at the railings. Perhaps she wanted to offer some comfort. Embarrassed at having been watched yet relieved at being seen, touched yet caught off guard and unable to find anything to say, the girl let the ballerina in her come to the rescue. Straightening her spine and lifting her eyes she met the woman’s gentle expression with a polite smile, and said Thank you, I’m quite alright. With that she found her sea legs and made her way down the stairwell to B Deck, cabin 437, where her cabin mate was waiting.

Jeannie, a nurse from New York, was on vacation. She had occupied the cabin coming across the Atlantic and was occupying it going back. Claiming the berth by the porthole, she had spread herself out messily all around the cabin. As the girl walked in Jeannie was painting her toe nails. She glanced up throwing a disparaging look as if to say ‘Oh no, what am I going to do with this prissy schoolgirl’ and after they had introduced themselves, settled back silently into her toes. Not a single word was exchanged thereafter because the two had absolutely nothing in common. They were like birds of different species’ awkwardly thrown into the same cage, completely incompatible. A hostile uneasiness hovered in the air of their very close quarters. Each kept her distrustful distance.

Accustomed to communal living the girl adjusted rapidly to her relegated space, unpacked and settled in. All the while she was registering bits and pieces of information pouring in through her keen young senses. She sized up her cabin-mate’s appearance: short dyed-black, bouffant hairstyle with exaggerated bangs descending almost to her eye lids; a chunky pear shaped flaccid body, lounging under a flimsy, multi-patterned, loose-fitting polyester shift; thick, almost theatrical, eye makeup; total indifference to her arrival, a complete lack of curiosity or any inclination to make room for her… a confusion of lipsticks, coke bottles, and cigarette butts, in a non smoking cabin, lay strewn about… the portrait was none too pretty.

Was this a preview of the modern American girl’s way of life? These first impressions became emblematic of a culture she knew nothing about. Such is the danger of premature exposure! The inexperienced mind, unable to accommodate novelty or allow for variety un-prejudicially, swallows impressions whole then draws from them hasty, often damning, over-generalizations. She had grown up in a boarding school in the English countryside without television or much interaction with the outside world. Shielded from everything except the arts, education, and concentrated ballet training, the girl could recite poetry and Shakespeare by heart, distinguish Davide from Ingres, dance a three act ballet, but she was ill prepared for the ways of the world, especially those of her cabin-mate. Boarding with little luggage and fewer vices, she was naïve and unprepared, and was in for an accelerated education…

August, 18th, 1964: Barely nineteen, fresh from a year at the Bolshoi in Moscow and headed toward ballet stardom from an early age, the girl found herself aboard the SS Constitution, on her way across the Atlantic to the New World. The reticent recipient of a prestigious scholarship applied for and won on her merit by her mother to study modern dance, for which she had absolutely no interest, the young girl was in shock. After glowing debuts in principal roles on London and Moscow stages, and after the demanding year in Russia, her heart had been set on returning to England to join the ballet company into which she had already been invited. Years of hard work all build up to this next big step in a ballet career. So after her year behind the iron curtain she was eager to embark on this new phase of life. But on her return, she had been informed of what her Mother had planned for her, and no amount of crying, outright refusal, no objection or reasoning, could penetrate the unmovable maternal will. The battle had been fierce but brief for lack of defenses; moreover, the household majority turned it around to make it appear that she was ungrateful for what had been done for her; she didn’t know what was good for her. Humiliated and enraged, the girl had felt herself hurtle down a familiar black abyss starting in the pit of her stomach and ending in wrenching sobs…..there had never been a way of countering the formidable force of her mother’s irrational, capricious willfulness. There was no way out except to submit; leave or be left.

Only through total obedience would she receive that glimmer of approval she had mistaken for love. But this time obedience meant self destruction. And at her age, the budding self was just building its scaffolding. The blow was like putting a demolition crew to a new construction. She already anticipated the culture shock, the strain of another major adjustment she would have to make swiftly since it detracted focus and energy from her ballet training. How could she save herself from an inner catastrophe and transform a tragedy into a triumph? So clear in her mind was the error of this voyage that she could look back at its consequences from some future point in time and foresee its repercussions. Isolation was one of them; she had been lonely in Moscow, but at least she had really wanted to be there. And as the youngest member was the darling of the theatre. In America she knew no one and was not drawn to the modernity of the new world. She had grown up in a country with distinct traditions and values, a society she loved and was familiar with, one that had recognized her talent, where she was already known. Another cultural dislocation, particularly at this time, was the last thing her young psyche needed. Now she faced expatriation… the loss of all that she held in place of family, home, kin. The girls cry for her right to make her own choices in forging her destiny had been stymied with one reckless blow, her wings singed at the outset. A great iron ball was now chained to her ankles; the burden of obedience. It would be years before she would rid herself of its weight.

The macabre events leading up to embarkation had had a dreamlike, surreal quality. It was as though she were participating in a grim saga that hurried her along an irrevocable course. Just ten days earlier she and her mother had travelled to Rome to complete the bureaucratic protocols that would seal her acceptance of her unwanted award to America. As always, they stayed in their midtown Hotel, not far from the Spanish Steps, occupying their usual top floor rooms. Here, in the quiet of this genteel setting, overlaid with so many happy memories, a final scene had exploded. Summoning every cell in her indignant, desperate, adolescent heart, the girl mounted powerful loud opposition to this forced extradition — what else is exile? -- a punishment rather than the reward she deserved for her accomplishments in Moscow. That evening, before the morning they were expected at the US Consulate, she tried once more. But once again, she barely reached the moat around the stone fortress of her Mother’s determination. A doctor was summoned to deal with the girl’s hysteria. After a short time he emerged to say curtly, Signora, she doesn’t want to go,… was ignored, paid, and dismissed.

A tiny, timid, signature, like a false confession, marks the document of acceptance of August 8th 1964, in which the girl signed away her will and better judgment. She had been made a pawn of her mother’s vision, forced to become an accomplice in her own banishment. From that moment on the ballerina in her had had to take over as the crushed spirit of this spirited girl was gone, fled deep within her, where no one could touch or tamper with her volition ever again. The obstinate force with which her mother had overridden her wishes at this fateful juncture was fuelled by darker motives than her daughter’s well being, and this was clearly felt. Never before had her beloved native city appeared so mundane, or the sweltering heat in its ancient streets more oppressive. Everything got on her nerves: the crowds of noisy tourists, the flies, the fountains, the smells, the noise, the stupid cars pressing on pedestrians in tiny narrow cobble stone alleys. There was no turning back. Everything she had worked toward for years, everything she had dreamed of, desired, and deserved, drifted farther and farther behind her while everything she did not want, had no interest in, and, in fact, had rejected outright, lay ahead. The mother had appropriated her talent, merit, and choice, and, unbeknownst to her, without discussion or permission, had used it against her, to realize a plan of her own contrivance, a plan more like a plot; to send her to the other side of the earth.

How ironic, she thought, looking out at sea through the porthole. Traditionally ships to America carried jubilant immigrants seeking refuge and freedom, people for whom the voyage is a liberation filled with hope and anticipation. For her the ship was a floating jail. She was trapped like a caged bird, with all the trappings of privilege, in a gilded cage, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless. It was all she could do to hold back the explosion of sobs that would have burst through had she not continuously held herself in check. She was a dedicated classical ballerina, schooled in discipline, trained to walk, act, and breathe the part, to control every muscle, coordinate every movement and expressive gesture, in a world of form and mastery. She was an artist, someone who molds themselves as they are molding their skills. She must be able to contain, endure, and overcome whatever obstacles were placed before her. Anything short of perfect restraint would have been an intolerable embarrassment to her.

After a long fitful nap she freshened up, put on her yellow eyelet dress and new heels, straightened her spine, and headed to the chief purser’s desk where she was assigned the second meal seating, table nine. It was only six o’clock. Two hours before dinner. With the ship’s map in hand, rolling from side to side while dodging other passengers finding their sea legs, she made her way around the Bridge deck, past the Sundance Club, to look around.

First she looked in to the two Main deck lounges, all maroon and burnished brown leathers, elegant, airy, favored by the older generation. She peeked in to the adjacent popular Tirrenio Bar, off to one side and then went down the main stairs to look at the two imposing restaurants at the center of the Promenade Deck. Climbing an outer stairwell she circled the Main Deck outside, looking in. Sounds of clinking glasses, the clatter of cutlery against dinner plates and excited chatter of cocktail conversation punctuated by bursts of flirtatious laughter, floated about from various quarters. People were becoming acquainted with each other. Oblivious to the world, honeymooners wrapped around each other snuggling into the curves of secluded sofas; elderly couples, drinks in hand, sat sedately close by, looking around in silence: rowdy family groups wandered around the decks dangling toddlers, disciplining rowdy children: single men and women mingled uneasily scouting around searching for company. No one of the girl’s age was traveling alone.

A dense fog continued to hang over that region of the Mediterranean and as the evening wore on the lack of visibility added mystery and enchantment to the first night on board. The girl stood looking out into the thick grey air gripping the balustrade to steady moods that swung from deep despondency to a determined commitment to see herself through this. Every now and then the fog horn let out a few desperate hoarse hoots. Otherwise everything was eerily still, the only sound, the steady swoosh of water rushing from the ships flanks in frothy pathways forming a great white trail of foam behind for seagulls to follow. Standing by the railing she lost herself in that sound….

At that moment the muted sing song of the dinner gong echoed around the ship and she headed down to the restaurant. But on the threshold of the dining room, as the maître’d approached poised to usher her in, she was overcome by a wave of self consciousness. Starting in the pit of her stomach and ending in a deep flush that settled on her soft round cheeks, a tidal wave of shyness sent her spinning into self deprecation. Just a year or two out of school uniform, she suddenly doubted everything about herself, falling into an agony of insecurity. Her dress was old fashioned, it wasn’t grown up enough…yellow was a baby color, the style was stupid, everything about it was wrong… a favorite now seemed completely inappropriate…and why had she worn that silly headband…it made her look prissy… she looked childish, felt awkward, was out of place… she didn’t belong, wasn’t ready, wasn’t hungry….everyone was noticing her blushing….and… oh.!.. whoops….a delicate slip. Momentarily losing her balance, she wobbled on her first high heels, tripped and stumbled. Mortified, she wanted to snatch her shoes off and run away as the maître’d graciously steadied her, but just then, out of the corner of her eye, in a flash, she noticed a table of three at the far end of the dining room. An elderly couple with a handsome fair-haired young man… must be their son, she thought…but they had already arrived at her table and introductions were under way….

Even a little wine has a potent effect on a virgin palate. After the ‘welcome on board’ champagne toast and perusal of the menu, a delicate Pinot Grigio was served with the dinner. It took only a few sips for her to drop her self-consciousness and be swept away by a sumptuous meal served by solicitous white gloved waiters against the backdrop of empty pleasantries and fluffy, superficial conversation. After a year of near malnutrition in the Soviet Union, perpetually hungry, subsisting on kasha, cabbage soups, chocolate, and the legendary ice cream sold under the chandeliers of the Moscow subway, she considered the extravagant meals on board fair compensation for having to endure the journey. Furthermore, once wine had taken the edge off her painful self-consciousness, she had to admit, the evening had been quite enjoyable. Well fed, light headed, and just tipsy enough for her sense of humor to return, somehow, she made it down the stairwells back to her cabin…into the dungeons, she mused….

As she drifted into sleep, cradled by the ships gentle roll, she noticed the nurse had not returned. All night her berth lay empty.

Despite the previous night’s merriment the girl awoke despondent. She was miserable. She missed her morning routine stretching on the floor with other dancers, warming up before class, hearing the familiar piano chords announcing plies`. Accustomed to channeling her energy into a discipline that demands daily fine-tunings, her body yearned to do what it had done for years. She longed to rejoin that communal, almost sacred, space where dancers come together for their morning class…this was where she knew she belonged, at this gathering of bodies, bodies of joint minds, following the music, sweating together, deeply concentrated, working independently yet in unison, joined by shared passion and purpose, by the same standards of execution and precision. How she loved it! All she ever wanted to do was dance…. all day long and