Smorfia’s Pictures

The cage rolled out in Naples, outside a café with green shutters, where a girl of eleven with a cloud of curly hair sat at a table shuffling a fat pack of picture cards. Her shirt had little numbers sewn all over it.

“Tombola,” she said when she saw the brass cage under Ama’s arm. “You’ve come to the right place. Sit.”

Her name was Smorfia. Every Christmas her whole family played tombola around one long table, she said, and every number had a picture. Her nonno had taught her all ninety, from a battered old book called the smorfia. She had been teased with the name ever since, because she knew every picture by heart.

“One,” she said, and laid down a card. It showed a map of Italy. “One is Italy. Everybody knows.”

“Why?” said Tam.

Smorfia shrugged happily. “Because it is. Five is the hand.” She held up her hand, fingers spread, and waved. “Twenty-five is Christmas. Ninety is fear.” She pulled a scary face and Ama laughed.

“Now,” said Smorfia. “I’m going to say ten numbers. Don’t write them down. Just remember them.”

She said them fast: “Seven, thirty-three, eighteen, four, sixty, twelve, forty-one, nine, two, fifty.”

Ama tried to hold them in her head, but by the end the first ones had slipped away like fish. She could only remember four.

“Again,” said Smorfia. “But this time, I’ll give you the pictures.”

She said the same numbers, and with each one she gave a picture, and some of the pictures were very silly. Thirty-three was a set of steps. Eighteen was a scraped knee. Four was a pig. Sixty was someone crying. Twelve was a soldier marching.

As she went, Ama made the pictures into a little story in her head. A soldier marched up thirty-three steps, tripped over a pig, scraped his knee and cried…

When Smorfia stopped, Ama closed her eyes and walked back through the story. Steps, pig, knee, crying, soldier. She got nine out of ten.

Ama stared at her. “How did that work?”

“Your head is bad at bare numbers,” Smorfia said, tapping her forehead. “Everybody’s is. But it loves pictures, and it loves stories. If you hang each number on a picture, the picture carries the number for you.”

“Does it matter which picture?” Tam asked.

“It matters that it’s always the same one,” said Smorfia. “If four is a pig today and a chair tomorrow, you’ll get muddled. One number, one picture. Every time.”

She gave Ama a postcard with the first ten pictures on it. On the back she wrote, in loopy handwriting: Five is the hand. Wave to me.

On the walk back, Ama felt a warm tug in her chest. She had only known Smorfia for an afternoon, but she knew that whenever she saw the number five now, she would think of a curly-haired girl in Naples, waving.

In the call book she wrote: Tombola. One number, one picture. The picture holds the number.