The American Lady(109)

And it went on from there. What had started as a one-time favor for a worried father developed into human trafficking on a grand scale. Young men who had run into trouble with the law, men who wanted to emigrate but had been refused an American visa because of their health—all of a sudden anyone could reach the promised land as part of the cargo of de Lucca wine. Of course it only worked if the customs men on either side of the Atlantic got their slice of the “fare.” A family had to pay four hundred dollars a head for such an illegal crossing—and the ones who stayed behind often had to spend years working off their debt to the count. Twenty percent of the sum went to the “harbor fees” in Genoa and New York. One of Franco’s tasks was to look for shipping clerks, customs officers, and longshoremen who could be relied upon to shut their eyes at the right moment—for a price.

But the crossing fees alone were not enough to wipe the slate clean for the stowaways. Once they got to New York, Franco made sure that they found jobs in Italian restaurants or building skyscrapers—for wages that no legal immigrant would ever accept, of course. Which was why ordinarily the de Luccas only took men no older than forty. Anybody older would hardly have survived the hardship of the crossing and the backbreaking labor that followed.

“We worked out our system down to the last detail,” Franco said, giving Marie a tired smile. Then he began to weep.

The fares for the crossing, the money he handed out at the docks, the cheap illegal labor—there was a code word for everything. Marie shuddered. She was leaning up against the headboard in bed with a blanket over her, but shivering all the same. She had no words of comfort to offer. Not to Franco, and not to herself. Franco dried his tears and went on.

There had been incidents and small problems of all kinds. Once a stowaway had almost died from a severe case of diarrhea. Another time a fight had started and one of the men had his arm broken. But in all these years, nobody’s life had ever truly been in danger—until the crossing of the Firenze. Nobody knew what had happened. Twelve bodies had been found when the cargo was unloaded. All the evidence seemed to point to suffocation.

Marie did not stop asking questions until she knew every detail. Who the dead men were. Whether Franco knew their families. Whether the authorities in New York knew about what had happened. What was going to happen to the bodies. Every answer simply increased her torment, and Marie hated Franco for what he told her.

In the end she had to face the truth: She had married a liar. A slaver. And a murderer.

If anybody had asked her what she felt at that moment, she would not have known what to say. There was a gaping hole where her heart had been. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing was important in this life, nothing was as it should be. Marie felt a creeping fear that she might be going mad. She felt afraid for her child as well, wondering whether the little one was holding its hands over its ears in the womb to try to block out the dreadful truth.

“And now?” Franco’s voice was tired. She looked up.

All her illusions had been shattered. She felt hatred, mixed with the painful knowledge that she had lost everything. She fought in vain against this certainty. Why did you do this to me? she shouted silently in her mind. Then she looked at Franco.

“Am I supposed to tell you what to do next?” She laughed bitterly. “All I know is that I was a stupid cow for believing anything you ever said about the honor of the de Luccas. About your traditions, about how much you love your wine. You were lying to me the whole time!” She buried her face in her hands. If only some magic would make everything right again! But when she looked up, Franco was still sitting there, silent, distraught. Suddenly she felt nothing but disgust for him.

“You must have been laughing up your sleeve when I gave you that book about vine selection! You and your father had a far easier way to make the money you wanted so much.”

“Marie, please . . .”

“Oh, so suddenly the truth hurts?” It was only for the child’s sake that she didn’t fly at him with her fists. Instead she swung her legs over the side of the bed and put her feet in her slippers. Her gaze wandered around the room as though to get her bearings. Then she went to the wardrobe.

“What are you doing? Marie! What can I say? I’m so sorry, so dreadfully sorry! I didn’t want any of this to happen! You wouldn’t believe how much I was against the whole business! I tried a thousand times to show Father how wrong it was, believe me. But you know how stubborn he is. What choice did I have but to go along with it?”

His voice was tearful, which only made Marie angrier. Now he was upset? Of course he was! But what had he been doing all these months and years?