MEMORY
Aller/Retour: New York
By Marcelline Krafchick
It was the first Atlantic crossing for any of us in an easterly direction. Aunts and cousins assembled at the dock to help my parents see me off and ogle the public rooms of the S.S. “United States. My grandmother, who had made the westerly crossing with four little ones a half-century earlier, stayed home on account of her bunions. When my father told her I’d won a Fulbright scholarship for a year in England, she’d replied, “So? Are you gonna let her go?” Though I’d been financially on my own through college, this was a chance to be really let go.
The consensus was that I needed a steamer trunk, like those one might have seen wheeled onto the Titanic. My wealthiest aunt offered to provide one, under terms so ambiguous as to cause a rift between my father and her for a decade.
But this trunk was worth a family rupture. It was fortified with gleaming brass corners, rivets, and locks with fortress-type keys dangling. A virtual armoire, it held a bank of wallpapered drawers, a brass rod with 12 hangers, and enough space to dispatch a second passenger.
England brought excitement, though without profound change. I conversed with the very old Winston Churchill and the very young W. S. Merwin, waltzed at fancy-dress balls, pondered roped-off blitz-craters, worshiped Olivier and Leigh from third row center, met actual Communists and actual Africans, and fielded queries about the vast country where I knew little more than Philip Roth’s Newark.
The other Americans left when courses ended, but return booking was good for a year, and a series of mishaps and haps led me to Venice for the summer, where I boarded with Signora Zennaro for a dollar-fifty a day.
Even what happened in Piero Spinazzi’s gondola brought excitement without profound change. Piero’s pullover and teeth were exquisitely white, his sister was a movie actress, and he lived in a palazzo. After dinner one night, at the café where the crowd convened for espresso, gossip, and politics, Piero suggested that we go out. I didn’t know, but the lantern under his arm broadcast what the evening held for this American butterfly.
After we pushed off, Piero wanted to stop at his house to get a longer pole. He eased up to the wall, told me he’d return “presto,” and to hold onto the embedded iron ring to keep the boat from drifting off. White purse on my arm matching white dress and pumps, I stood dutifully in the gondola.
Within a minute, a motorboat zoomed by, churning me closer to the wall.
Seconds later, its wake pulled me away. I had either to cling onto the ring or let go and drift away. As my position linking boat and wall went from vertical to horizontal, an image — of Grandma watching this moment — made me burst into choking laughter, and I dropped — kerplunk — into the canal’s slime of lettuce and condoms, white handbag still on my arm.
Piero was angry when he saw I’d let the boat go. He had to get a longer pole to drag it back and in disgust bring a blanket. When Mama Zennaro saw the muck and rotting vegetation on my dress, she shrieked and pulled me into the bathroom as if I were 5 instead of 21.
The dregs of Fulbright stipends exhausted, I had just enough cash to reach Liverpool and the leisure of the Cunard liner “Britannic.” My scheme was to board the ship the night before it sailed. But at the dock, with two shillings and nowhere to stay, I learned it was still at Southampton and would not arrive till morning. The local YWCA was “full-up,” but the staff was sure I’d be well cared for at a certain nearby address.
The woman at the door seemed to expect me and ushered me to an office to sign in, ran me a hot bath, handed me a “boiled nightie” and assigned me a room, with orders, “Lights out, nine sharp” and “You’re to serve porridge at seven.” At 9 someone rapped on each door and asked whether the occupant had removed her undies—as bizarre a welcome as the bars on the windows. But I was weary and grateful for the clean bed.
Serving morning porridge was an agreeable way to meet the other girls, who were star-struck over my nationality — “Do you know Betty Grable?” But an attendant interrupted and steered me toward the warden’s office. The warden, considerably older than Betty Grable, with straight, too-black hair, explained the place I’d come to.
“Magistrates,” she said, “direct wayward young women here from the streets to begin a correct life.” She saw me wince at “wayward” and apologized for the misunderstanding made evident by the discovery of my passport, which seemed to disqualify me as wayward. Handing it across the desk, she began a pitch for overseas donations and passed along three fund-raising brochures.
The noble trunk having been sent ahead, the next day’s departure was less celebratory than the one coming over the year before, but it was a chance to prepare my return as a changed person. The slight British accent was a start.
Two days out, on my birthday, we smacked into the rage of Hurricane Hazel, one of the most massive storms recorded in the Atlantic. While the 35,000-ton vessel lurched wildly, we heard galley trays and dishes crashing. Bundled up, I pushed open a door into the deafening storm. Hawsers the girth of a man’s arm were fixed along the railings, and I clung on to peer over the side. What I saw astonished me—and still does. The screws under the ship were made visible by the sea’s monstrous sucking away from it.
Tossed around, I’d imagined the sea pummeling us, but it was vacuuming support from underneath. I saw that we were a speck within a vastness. Passengers who’d been frequenting the ship’s dining rooms, beauty parlors, and souvenir shops had been bobbing around on a fragile toy.
How I loved that moment! It was a release into Fate. And my all-consuming puzzle — “What do people see when they think they’re seeing me?” — broadened to the seeing of anything.
Someone was shouting. An officer in yellow slicker and fierce expression gestured below deck, and I scurried down like the guilty happy-birthday brat I was.
Marcelline Krafchick, a professor for 40 years, has published widely, acted on television, exhibited photos of Nepal, and lectured internationally. Her memoir will be part of a travel-adventure book.
