Page - 41 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Arnd Schneider | An anthropology of sea voyage 41 travels rapidly to the U. S. , England, france or anywhere. But bear in mind that my mother travelled with very little money, just the little bit she had been able to save. from the moment she decided to emigrate, she started saving money, also with the help of her other broth- ers and sisters. But she did everything hidden from Giuseppe Lombardo, the application at the Argentine consulate, medical tests etc. There were many bureaucratic prerequisites, but she did everything silently. Even her uncles and aunts in Genoa didn’t know anything. Eventually, she embarked on the ship, which was a real drama, because my grandmother could not even come to say good-bye, because she didn’t want to arouse my uncle’s sus- picion. So my mother came of age on the ship. She had her 21st birthday on the ship. When, that night, my uncle came home and found out that my mother had left, you can imagine what a confusion started. he sent a telegram to the captain of the ship – I can’t remember which ship it was -, saying that he should force my mother to disembark in Bar- celona [Spain], which was the first port of call. What happened? My mother had thought about everything: she just departed at the right moment, coming of age on the ship. Thus the captain sent another telegram to my uncle [laughing at this stage, Marta Zanone, gave the telegram text in Italian, in what was otherwise a Spanish account]: “La signo- rina Lombardo non poteva essere sbarcata perché già maggiorenne. ”(‘Miss Lombardo could not be made to disembark, because she is already of age’). You understand? So my uncle had to stay [in Genoa] and couldn’t do anything to get my mother back. It seems that God helped my mother, because on the same ship she got to know my father, who was returning from business travel. My father was 11 years older than my mother. On the ship, they got to know each other and it was love at first sight. They liked each other immediately. And my father, who was about 31 or 32 years was already a ‘self-made’ man (hombre hecho), returning from a business visit to Italy. And during the whole cross- ing, he had the opportunity to get to know my mother, make friends and sympathize with her. So that when the ship reached Buenos Aires, they were already engaged. And he promised to help her, and do everything so that she would feel comfortable here. And when she arrived, she first stayed with her relatives in La Boca. But my father immediately tried to get a better place for her in a more central location. And after a few months they married. I think, it must have been in 1925.” (Schneider 2000: 185 – 187). Whilst idiosyncratic and singular, these are also archetypical immigrant experiences, each standing for paradigmatic cases of the sea voyage and how it is framed within the life history. In the first account, Enrique Gerardi’s sea voyage stands at the beginning of a life history in Argentina, characterized by hard work, astute business decisions, and later success as industrial- ist and achievement of relative wealth. It is not the rupture with the old that sea travel signifies here, but the onset of the new, setting already the themes of a later life (the antithesis between children diving for money, and his own work for money as a young boy and adolescent in Argentina). What we get with Enrique Gerardi then is an extremely hermetic, short story of his sea travel encapsulated by its limitations of time (in transit, and in the distant past) and space (the ship on the sea), and his own working life (coins not thrown but earned).