In this slender novel, recently translated to English, French author Gaëlle Josse channels the voice of Ellis Island’s longtime guardian as he shutters the entrance to America in 1954. It is a poignant tale of reminiscence, as well as a subtle commentary on current issues.
Protagonist John Mitchell, a Bureau of Immigration officer who rose steadily through the ranks, will retire to a small apartment in Brooklyn inherited from his parents. He has experienced little of the greater world, having become almost a prisoner himself during the 45 years he has resided on that island in New York Harbor. Now that the government is discontinuing the station, the past starts to flash through his mind. Nine days before the closure, Mitchell feels compelled to capture those bygone days in his diary: “All I have now is this surprisingly urgent need to write down my story.“ For, sans family, memories are all he has left.
He makes clear that the tale he wants to tell is not that of Ellis Island but rather his life alone: “It’s some events specific to me that I wish to tell here, however difficult it may be. For the rest, I’ll leave it up to the historians.”
Always one to guard his feelings, Mitchell at this point simply can’t seem to stop them from spewing forth — particularly during daily visits to his wife’s grave in the Ellis cemetery. Liz was the sister of his best childhood friend, Brian. She became a nurse at Ellis, where through her eyes Mitchell discovered the meaning of all the “abject misery, separation, and hope” landing around them. They enjoyed five years of marital bliss before tragedy docked in 1920 on the Germania, a typhus epidemic on board. Liz had been on duty in the isolation ward hurriedly set up in the infirmary. How quickly she succumbed. That’s when he stopped going to Manhattan: “The city without her was without purpose.”
Josse’s portrayal of the typhus era is eerily prescient in its similarities to the coronavirus pandemic. Mitchell had buried his pain until the writing of his memoir digs it up:
“Immediately after the funeral, two orderlies came to collect Liz’s soiled bed linen and laundry for burning. I found that more unbearable than the funeral. I was stunned, devastated, in shock. The infirmary witnessed three further deaths in the days that followed. I had to log everything, including Liz’s death, in my daily reports. I would not wish such suffering on anyone. At just twenty-seven she was gone. I had never thought such a thing possible. I know that it was just one injustice among many, one tragic event among so many others, but it was mine.”
They used to go over together to visit Brian and his wife, Daisy, but after Liz died it became too painful for Mitchell to continue to see the couple — especially after their baby was born, and Mitchell had no children. After Brian and Daisy’s son, Harry, grew up, D-Day brought the old friends back together. Harry died at Omaha Beach, and Mitchell finally returned to Brooklyn to share their grief.
Mitchell’s most distressing recollection, however, is of Nella Casarini, an immigrant from Sardinia with whom he fell in love — and took advantage of her. He has rued his behavior ever since. She and her teenage brother, Paolo, arrived on the Cincinnati in 1923. Paolo received a circled “X” chalked on his coat indicating “mental deficiency” and was led away: “The worst that could befall anyone: America slamming the door shut in their face.” The tragic result of this sibling separation haunts Mitchell. He always avoids Paolo’s grave at the Ellis cemetery. Does time heal? Mitchell doesn’t think so.
Josse devotes several pages to a foreshadowing incident between Mitchell and Nella involving “a large gray seagull” flying into a window, evoking Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull with its themes of freedom, desire, rejection, and unrequited love. A bit of magical realism even sneaks in as Nella’s otherworldly powers slowly become known.
Mitchell doesn’t hear the full story of her abilities until years later, long after Nella has left the island and disappeared into the city. Francesco Lazzarini, an anarchist involved in a labor protest in Naples, crossed the Atlantic on the same ship as Nella and her brother. Mitchell becomes frantic to pick Lazzarini’s memories by any means, so he holds Lazzarini on Ellis for quite a while awaiting clarification of his status from Italy. What Mitchell actually seeks during that time are scraps of information about Nella — anything — as he tries to understand this woman with whom he is still obsessed:
“The final night. Tomorrow I am leaving. Last night, I had the same recurring dream I have had for many years. I dread it, for every time I wake up from it I am undone, as if I had spent the entire night battling something terrifying; but I look forward to it, too, for Nella’s face appears to me with such clarity and precision that I am convinced I can take her in my arms and beg her forgiveness; the vision fades at dawn, when I greet the day’s dull colors and sharp contours with utter despondency.”
The book is a master study in emotion sans wordiness. Josse’s selection of the medium of journal writing for her anguished storyteller allows him to express these “deeply troubling” memories in a safe space as they bubble up at the end of his Ellis tenure:
“I guess words sometimes dig mysterious chambers deep inside you, and what you thought was buried, forgotten, or lost forever insists on resurfacing out of the blue.”
There’s subtle wit at play here, too, as in the characterization of a Manhattan bookseller when Mitchell goes to buy his quarterly Ellis reading pile. One title, Fragments of Exile, is by an important Hungarian author who found asylum in Brazil after America denied him entry. We peek over Mitchell’s shoulder to read, as Josse inventively presents a four-page excerpt speaking in a new voice — that of a would-be immigrant who found America’s “golden door” to be a “portcullis of steel.” Mitchell closes the volume and weeps, as did I.
Continually relevant over the decades, Ellis Island appears in many nonfiction volumes with a history focus, or guidebooks for tracing ancestors. A fair number of novels typically follow a protagonist’s journey across the Atlantic or perhaps one family’s assimilation into a new culture.
November 2020 marked 66 years since the immigration station closed, a fitting time for a new framing of the Ellis Island tale. Mitchell’s viewpoint is particularly interesting since it is that of an author from the other side of the Atlantic who chose to focus not on the immigrants themselves but rather on a character observing the passing tide of humanity. In an afterword, Josse describes her visit to Ellis Island in 2012, noting that all characters except three are fictitious.
In 2015, the European Union Prize for Literature recognizing Europe’s best emerging authors went to Le dernier gardien d’Ellis Island, the French edition of this book published the year before — thus reflecting on the growing refugee crisis in Europe. By the end of 2015, over one million migrants and refugees had entered Europe without documentation, with many drowning during dangerous sea crossings. The book also won the Grand Livre du Mois Literary Prize. This is Josse’s first work to be translated for anglophones.
In my mind, the novel evokes the familiar French saying “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” — the more things change, the more they stay the same. In light of the continuing turmoil over borders and human migration, The Last Days of Ellis Island is not only a meditation on memory, but also a timely narrative on an unending condition.
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/actions/literature-prize_en
[Published by World Editions USA on November 24, 2020, 208 pages, $15.99 paperback. Also available as ebook. To purchase from Bookshop.org, click here.]
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