CHAPTER 9
THE SMOKY GRAY light of autumn made the city all lines and shadows. The bridge over Tenth Avenue was half obscured, as if it were over some bottomless gorge, not just two stories above a cobblestone street ruled with twin lines of steel. Underneath the bridge, from the direction of 29th Street, came a wagon, flat-bedded, drawn by a heavy brown horse. The wagon was loaded with thin crates made of splintery wood, the crates filled with purple wine-grapes.
The wagon parked midway between 30th and 31st Streets. Driver and helper stacked twenty crates in front of one tenement. The driver leaned back and called up to the city sky, as if singing a note, “Ca-te-rin-a, your grapes are waiting for you.” Four stories up a window opened, children leaned out, men and women. Seconds later, as if they had flown down the stairs, people erupted from the tenement. A man walked around the cases, sniffing like a dog at the clusters between the slats. “They are good this year?” he asked the driver. The driver did not bother to answer. He held out his hand for money. The man paid.
Meanwhile the wife posted two children as guards, while she and the other children each took a crate and carried them into the cellar. The father ripped a slat off a box, partially exposing its contents, and took out a great blue-black cluster of grapes to eat. When the children and wife came back from their load, they and the guards were each given a cluster. In front of each tenement this scene was repeated, the children eating pear-cluster blue-black grapes, the father leaning happily against his stack of crates while other men not so fortunate flocked around to wish him luck with his wine. They licked their lips, thinking of the great jugs, red-black, stacked against the walls of their cellars.
Gino was envious of the other children, those fortunate ones whose fathers made wine. He stood beside Joey Bianco’s father, but Joey was too cheap to give him grapes and so was his father. Joey’s father was too cheap to open a box for sampling even for relatives and close friends.
But now the Panettiere, fat and round, wearing his baker’s white hat, came to receive three towering stacks of crates in front of his shop. He opened two of the crates and handed out great clusters to all the children. Gino jumped in and got his share. The Panettiere said in his great booming voice, “Ragazzi, help carry and there will be pizza for all.” Like ants, the children swarmed over the three stacks of crates and they magically disappeared underground into the cellar. Gino was left without anything to carry.
The Panettiere looked at him reprovingly, “Ah, Gino, figlio mio, what will become of you? Work eludes you, try how you may. You must learn now; those who do not work do not eat. Away.”
The Panettiere started to turn but the angry look in the young boy’s eyes stopped him. “Ah,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You just do not move quickly toward work. If there had been one left you would have carried it, eh?” When Gino nodded, the Panettiere motioned him into the shop. By the time the other children had come up from the cellar to get their reward, Gino was already out on the Avenue eating his pizza, the hot tomato sauce cutting the sweet juice of the grape from his mouth and palate.
In the falling dusk the children, their mouths purple with grape and red with tomato sauce, ran screaming up and down the Avenue, raced up and down the steps of the bridge like howling demons, danced in the steam of the locomotive passing underneath, and reappeared in a shower of sparks. The stone city towered above them black with winter. It was their last frenzy before being called from windows to flee the falling night. They piled empty crates in the gutter, and one of the older boys set a match to the paper around the pile to make a bonfire. Tenth Avenue burst into beacons of orange light, and around them the children made a great circle. The calls from mothers leaning out of windows echoed throughout the cold twilight canyon streets, long and drawn out, shepherds down a mountainside.
Lucia Santa, like God behind a cloud, watched from her window on the top floor of 358 Tenth Avenue, her elbows resting on an unsheeted pillow. She regarded her children and the others eating grapes running over the bridge, halved in the light of orange bonfires, shredded into fluttering shadows by the chilly, windy autumn night. The cold was coming early this year. The summer, blessed season of rest for city people, had come to an end.
Now school would begin. There must be white shirts for the children, trousers mended and pressed. Shoes must be worn instead of sneakers patched with tape. Hair must be cut and combed. Winter’s gloves, always lost, must be bought; hats and coats. The stove must be put up in the living room next to the kitchen; it must be checked and kept filled. Money must be put aside for winter tribute to the doctor. In the back of her mind Lucia Santa thought of saving money by having Sal steal coal from the railroad yards. But Salvatore was too timid; he didn’t enjoy it. With Gino it was no longer possible. He was getting too big; he could be treated like a criminal. This Lucia Santa thought out with the cunning of the poor.
Now in the orange light she could see a small boy go out a little way from the sidewalk into the gutter and then run and jump over the bonfire. Gino. Determined to ruin his clothing. Then an even smaller boy tried it, and this one landed on the edge of the fire, setting up a shower of sparks. When Lucia Santa saw Gino back off for a second try she said aloud, “Mannaggia Gesù Crist.#8221; She ran down the corridor of rooms to the kitchen, grabbed the black Tackeril and rushed down the stairs. Octavia looked up from the book she was reading.
As Lucia Santa burst out of the tenement door, Gino was sailing over the bonfire for the third time. In mid-air he saw his mother, then hit the ground, and tried to twist away. The thin black club caught him on the ribs, sharp and stinging. He let out a howl to satisfy his mother and ran up to the house. Then the mother saw Sal sailing over the fire, and when he ran past her, his trousers smelled burnt. She gave him time to duck before she swung the Tackeril but caught him flush just the same. Sal wailed and ran into the house after Gino. By the time Lucia Santa had climbed the stairs they had taken off their jackets and caps and hidden under the beds. They would be quiet, at least for a half hour. A time of day had come to an end, a season, a piece of the fabric of her life.
“Put your book away,” the mother said. “Help with the children.” Octavia sighed and put away her book. She always helped on Sunday night, in atonement for her Sabbath day of rest. She always felt a special kind of peace on Sunday night.
Octavia took down the drying clothes over the bathtub, cleaned the tub, and ran hot water into it. Then she went into her room and called under the bed. “Come on out, you two.” Gino and Sal crawled out. Sal said, “Is Mamma still mad?” Octavia said sternly, “No, but if you don’t behave she will be. Now no fighting in the tub, or you’ll both get killed.”
In the kitchen Lucia Santa prepared supper. Vinnie had come home from the movies and was helping her set the table. He would take his bath later.
When Gino and Sal came out their winter underwear was waiting for them, with its long legs and arms. From some forgotten hiding place their schoolbags appeared, battered but usable. Also waiting for them were meatball sandwiches and glasses of cream soda, for their mother refused to serve milk with food cooked in tomato sauce.
After supper Octavia gave them all a lecture—Sal, Gino, and Vinnie. It was familiar. “Now,” she said, “none of you kids are stupid. I want to see good report cards this term, and in conduct, too. Vinnie, you did all right last year, but you have to do better now you’re in second term high. You want to go to C.C.N.Y., don’t you? If your marks are good enough you can go free.” There could never be any question of paying for college. Vinnie would be lucky if he didn’t have to go to work right after high school. But Octavia had her own plans and her own money on this score. Vinnie would go to college, to C.C.N.Y. She would take care of the family. It was this that had made her at last give up any ideas of teaching.
She went on. “Gino, if you get conduct marks like last term, I’ll put you in the hospital, I’ll beat you black and blue. And your school work could be a lot better. Now behave, or you’ll wind up in reform school and disgrace the whole family.” She was laying it on too thick; Gino had never behaved badly enough to go to reform school, he never failed in conduct, and never got any D’s.
She had her audience. Even Baby Aileen sat up in her crib and climbed out to sit on a chair by the table. Octavia reached over and put the baby on her lap. “Sal,” she said, “you did all right last term. But now school will get harder for you. I’ll help with your homework, so don’t worry. I’m nearly as good a teacher as the ones in school,” she said with almost a little girl’s bragging pride. “One thing. I want everybody upstairs from the street when I come from work. By that time it will be dark and there’s no reason for you to be out anyway. Anybody not in this house by six o’clock will get the hell knocked out of them. And no card playing or fooling around until the homework is done and I check it. And you, Vinnie, Gino, Sal, take a night each helping your mother with the dishes. Give her a break.”
She gave one last warning, blood-chilling in its simplicity and sincerity, delivered without any flourish or preamble. “If you don’t get promoted, if you get left back, I’ll kill you.” Aileen moved uneasily in her lap. “Nobody is going to disgrace this family name, and you’re not growing up ignorant guineas to live on Tenth Avenue the rest of your life.”
Lucia Santa broke in, irritated by her daughter’s phrase. “Bastanza. Enough. They’re not going to a war, after all.” Then, to the kids, “But remember this, mascalzoni that you are. I would give anything to have gone to school, to be able to read and write. Only the sons of the rich went to school in Italy. At your age I was chasing goats and digging vegetables and shoveling manure. I killed chickens and washed dishes and cleaned houses. School to me would have been like movie pictures. If your father could have gone to school he would have had better work, and—who knows—might not have become ill. So: know your good fortune, or you will be taught how lucky you are with the Tackeril.
Sal was wide-eyed. Gino and Vinnie were composed, though a little impressed. Sal said in a scared voice, “But, Ma, what if I can’t learn, what if I’m not smart enough? That ain’t my fault.” He was so serious that the two women smiled.
Octavia said gently, “Don’t worry, everybody in this family is smart enough to pass. You just do your best. I’ll help you, and I was the smartest girl in my graduating class from high school.”
Vinnie and Gino said, “Ha, ha,” together, lured by her gentle, sad tone into teasing her. Octavia’s great dark eyes flashed, but she smiled and said to Lucia Santa, “Well, I was, wasn’t I, Ma?” This wistfulness for some glory unknown to them did more to persuade the children than any of her threats, except the one to kill them if they got left back. That threat they did not doubt for a moment.
Lucia Santa watched her daughter. She remembered how Octavia had loved to go to school, and it was this that made Lucia Santa tolerate such American airs, making education so important. She distrusted high ambition, high aims. For, the greater the reward, it followed, the greater the risks. You could become helpless in a shattering defeat. Better a modest safety. But Lucia Santa paid this deference to her daughter.
The mother said gravely to her children, “Yes, your sister could have been a schoolteacher if it had not been for your father.” She saw Gino looking directly into her eyes, intent. “Yes,” she said, speaking to him. “If your father had done his duty, supported his family, Octavia could have stopped work. But he never thought of anyone else, and you, figlio de puttana that you are, take after him. Tonight you jump over the fire. You spoil your good clothes and make your little brother a bad example. Now I have to buy new pants for school. Animale that you are. You never think of anyone. But I warn you—”
Octavia broke in quickly, “All right, Ma, that’s something else. The big thing is that they know how important school is to their life. If you learn something at school you can be somebody. Otherwise you’ll be just a slob down on the docks or in the railroad like Larry.”
When the children were in bed the mother became very busy ironing the wash for the next week, sewing up holes in clothing. She had a basket piled so high that she had only to reach out without stooping. Octavia propped her book against the big sugar bowl. There was absolute quiet, except for the creak of bedsprings from the bedroom whenever one of the children turned over restlessly in sleep. The women were in perfect ease and contentment, chiefs of an obedient tribe. Everything was running smoothly; they were both in rapport—the daughter a faithful but powerful underling; the mother undisputed chief, but showing her respect and admiration for a clever and faithful daughter’s help. It was never said, but the father’s banishment had relieved them of a great deal of tension and worry. They were almost happy he was gone, and their rule now absolute.
The mother rose to put coffee on the fire, for Octavia in her book would forget about everything. The mother wondered, What could be in these books that stunned her daughter into some magic oblivion? It was something she would never know, and if she had been younger she would have felt some envy or regret. But she was a busy woman with important work to be done for many years and could not make herself unhappy over pleasures of which she did not know the taste. She had enough regrets about pleasures whose taste she had known. But there was nothing to be done about that, either. She grimaced from the steam and her thoughts.
She had to go down to the other end of the hall to get the milk from the icebox again, and some good Italian peppered ham to tempt Octavia, who was getting too thin. Lucia Santa heard someone coming slowly up the steps, but whoever it was could only be on the second floor. She left the door of the apartment open, to get a little air from the ironing. Anyway, no one could go past their door to the icebox and bureau and then up the roof and escape. She sat at the table with her daughter, both of them drinking coffee, eating the prosciutto and coarse bread. They could both hear the steps coming up close, and then the shawled head of Zia Louche rose slowly and cautiously over the last step of the stairs and the old lady hobbled into the apartment, cursing terribly in Italian.
They were too intimate with her to give the usual greetings of formal courtesy. Lucia Santa rose to set another cup and slice more bread, though she knew the old dame never ate before other people. Octavia said pleasantly in Italian and with respect, “How are you feeling, Zia Louche?”
The old woman made a gesture of angry impatience, the gesture of a person who waits for a death that is in the present and therefore finds such a question not polite, in poor taste. They sat in silence.
“Work, work,” Lucia Santa said. “This school, what miracles they make over it. The children must dress like the President himself, and I must wash and iron like a slave.”
Zia Louche said, “Eh, eh,” and made another impatient gesture as if to brush away all people who expected life to run smooth. She took off her shabby black coat and then the long knitted sweater with its buttons down to her knees.
Under those gimlet eyes Octavia felt she could no longer read; it would not be respectful. She rose and began to iron slowly. The mother reached out and closed the book, which was lying open on the table, so the daughter could not look down at it and read while ironing. Then Octavia was aware that she was being accorded the rare honor of a direct address from Zia Louche.
“Young lady of mine,” Zia Louche said, with the rough familiarity of the old, “your handsome brother, has he appeared at all today?”
“No, Zia Louche,” Octavia replied demurely. If anyone else had used this tone with her she would have spat in her face, especially the smug fat matrons, those guineas who always spoke to young girls with voices filled with sly pity because they had never tasted the pleasures of a marriage bed.
“And you, Lucia Santa?” Zia Louche asked. When the mother shook her head the old woman continued sharply, “Then you have no concern for this beautiful son of yours, a boy of seventeen years, in a country like this? You have no fears for him?” Octavia saw her mother’s face contort in a frown of anxiety.
Lucia Santa shrugged helplessly. “What is now with that disgrazia? Saturday nights he never sleeps at home. Nothing has happened?”
Zia Louche gave a short harsh laugh. “Oh, yes, something has happened. A whole comedy has been played. And, as usual in America, the mother is the last to know. Calm, Lucia Santa, your beautiful son is safe, alive. The Lady Killer—” she said this last in American, with incredible relish—“has finally met a girl who is very much alive. Congratulations, Lucia Santa, on your son’s marriage and your new daughter-in-law—American style.”
The stunning effect of this was such that Octavia and her mother could only stare. The old lady, in her taunting way, hoped to draw some of their rage on herself, but now she had to give way to gales and gales of laughter that shook her old skeleton in its flesh of black cloth, gasping out, “No, no, Lucia Santa, you must forgive me, you have all my love in this, but oh, what a villain your Lorenzo is, cue mascalzone. It’s too much, it’s really too much.” But then she saw the stony face of her friend, the tight lips, the almost mortal insult that she had given. She composed herself. She held the wrinkled bones of her face in a gravity suitable to her years. But she could not hide a certain contempt for their anxiety.
“Again forgive me,” Zia Louche said. “But with a son who is such a whoremaster, what did you expect, after all? Would you rather see him beaten or dead? Your son is not stupid, Lucia Santa. Signora Le Cinglata, twenty years barren, and Signor Le Cinglata, married twice, forty years a husband and never a father, finally they are blessed.” She bowed her head mockingly. “Thanks be to the good God. But the man Le Cinglata thinks he owes his thanks to someone nearer and sharpens his knife to repay this debt. And the shameless woman Le Cinglata had a dream of marrying your son. Is this possible of a woman born and raised in Italy? Oh America—shameless land.” At this Lucia Santa raised a threatening hand to heaven in a wordless curse on the brazen Le Cinglata, but she leaned forward to hear more.
Zia Louche went on. “Your son finally is trapped by the tigers he has so thoughtlessly tamed. A word from the Le Cinglata to her husband and he is a dead man. But if he gives hope to the old whore, what may happen? What disgrace? She may even poison the old man and bring them both to the electric chair. But you know your son, he is clever and will do anything to avoid saying ‘No’ to anyone. So away he scampers to City Hall and marries a young innocent Italian girl who has watched him ride his horse on Tenth Avenue since she was in pigtails, without ever speaking to him. No one even knew he was acquainted with this bride, they had never even spoke together in public. Her people live on 31st Street, the family of Marconozzi, respectable, but the poorest of the poor. Oh, he is sly, your son, he will be a priest.”
The mother asked quietly, “Has the girl a good reputation?”
Zia Louche grinned lewdly. “Men like your son marry only those girls who are irreproachable. That is their philosophy. Who values the virgin more than the whoremaster? But she is a stick.” The old dame held up a bony skeleton forefinger, the gnarled bones lewder than any rounded flesh. “Dear God of mine, he’ll split her in two like a piece of kindling.” She crossed herself.
Octavia was furious, shamed by this marriage so typical of the poor, at the scandal, the sordidness of her brother’s life. The disgusting sex madness they were all infected with. She saw with surprise that her mother was now in no way disturbed and was even smiling faintly. Octavia did not understand that this news, while surprising, disconcerting, something that it was better should not have happened, was not really bad news. How could it be for a woman who waited for more terrible dreams to become a reality? The fear of mysterious illness, murderous deeds of passion, prison, the electric chair—all were perfectly possible, all discernible. Lorenzo could have married a whore, or a slattern, or even one of the Irish. So he had married in haste, a common occurrence with the sons of the poor and no disgrace; the disgrace lay with the parents of the girl. “Everyone will think the worst,” Octavia said aloud. “The rotten bastard.”
But Lucia Santa was laughing outright now, at the thwarting of the Le Cinglatas, at her son’s slyness. “Where is he now, this beautiful son of mine?” she asked Zia Louche.
Zia Louche said, “Let me finish. The man Le Cinglata now believes himself the father. A woman has only to hold a man on his knees by both ears and then she can lead him anywhere. But there is another question. The girl’s mother, ah, the mother of the bride, she must be told. There is the problem. They are as proud as they are poor. They will consider their daughter shamed.”
Lucia Santa made an impatient gesture. “I will go and tell them. We are as proud, and certainly as poor. We will understand each other. But now, where are they?”
The old woman rose, groaning as her bones creaked. She hobbled out the door and shouted down the stairwell, “Lorenzo, Louisa, come up.”
As the three women waited for the bridal pair to ascend the stairs, they pondered on this new change in fortune. The mother suddenly realized that the loss of her son’s income would be a serious blow to the family. But until he had children, he would be made to contribute something to his fatherless brothers and sisters. She was determined on that. Next, the second-floor apartment would be vacant soon; they could move into it, so she could watch her new daughter-in-law, help the couple in their early troubles, and with the babies to come—for she had no doubt she would soon be a grandmother. And then she had a great curiosity to see the looks of the girl her handsome son had finally chosen, the one who had finally put the bit in his mouth.
Octavia, too, was thinking now about money. That bastard Larry, deserting the family just when they needed the money most. And suddenly she was convinced that this was the real reason for his marriage, that the mother had ruled with too iron a hand, taking most of his pay check, restricting his freedom, so he had chosen this means of shedding his bonds. And now that the family was in trouble, Larry could see no future in it. Octavia prepared to welcome him as a brazen traitor and let his floozy have no doubts about her position with this family.
Zia Louche waited. Without a shred of malice, she was delighted to witness such a fine comedy.
Larry’s handsome dark head rose first above the stairs. The girl was almost invisible behind him. Larry had an embarrassed grin that was charming; its usual confidence was touched by an alien bit of shyness. His mother waited for him with a smile of welcome touched with forgiving contempt.
Larry said quickly, “Mom, Sis, I want you to meet my wife.” He brought the thin girl out from behind him. “Lou, this is my mother and sister Octavia.”
The mother embraced the young girl and made her sit down. At the sight of the beautiful, pale, thin face with the great haunting brown eyes, the immature figure, Octavia felt an overwhelming pity for the girl. This was just a kid, she would never be able to handle Larry, she didn’t know the life she would lead. Octavia, looking at her brother, his strong body, sleek black hair, knowing his romantic belief in himself, felt pity for him too; that this would be the end of his dreams; that his life had come to an end. She remembered him riding up Tenth Avenue on his black horse, sparks flying from cobblestones and steel tracks; the way he talked about himself as if he alone saw some great destiny. She understood that his goodness—his going early to work to help his mother, his leaving school and not preparing his mind for the life struggle—had left him without weapons to fight his fate. Now he would have children, the years would fly by as swiftly as the horse passed under the bridge, and he would be middle-aged. And since he was Larry, still dreaming. She had loved him once when they were children together, and now her pity made her kind to his child wife. She kissed Larry on the cheek and hugged her new sister-in-law, feeling the other’s body stiff with fright.
They all sat down to a wedding feast of coffee and dry buns and arranged that the newly married couple would sleep there until the apartment on the second floor was vacant. Larry became animated, talking cheerfully; everything was going well. He was perfectly at ease. But suddenly Louisa buried her face in her hands and began to weep, saying between low, choking sobs, “I’ve got to go home and tell my mother.”
Lucia Santa rose and said with determination, “We will all go. We should know each other, all of us, since we are related.”
Larry said tentatively, “Gee, Ma, I gotta go on the night shift. You go over with Lou, and then I’ll go over tomorrow.”
The young bride looked at him with fearful surprise. Octavia burst out angrily, “Like hell you will, Larry. Your wedding night is a good excuse for a day off from work. You go with Mom and Louisa to her house and stick up for your wife.”
Louisa looked at her wide-eyed, as if she had committed some blasphemy. Larry laughed and said, “Sis, come on, stop making a big deal out of the whole thing. You want me to go, Lou?” The girl nodded her head. He put a hand on her back protectively and said, “Then I’ll come.”
When the girl said, “Thanks, Larry,” Octavia laughed loudly. She was surprised that her mother gave her such a threatening look, surprised that her mother had not forced Larry to do what was right. But when Lucia Santa said courteously to her son, “I think it better if you come with us, Lorenzo,” she realized that her mother had accepted a new role; that she no longer considered herself the master of this particular child, and in some chilling way she was casting him out of her heart—not with anger or malice or lack of love, but as a burden to be dropped, to leave more strength for other burdens. When they all left, Octavia was so depressed that she ironed all the wash and did not reopen her book.
LIFE IS SO full of surprises for small boys that Gino was not surprised the next morning to see the long black hair of a girl in his brother Larry’s bed. Standing in his modest winter underwear, Gino studied them. Larry looked different, and the girl didn’t look right, either. The two pale faces, dead white with sleep in the chilly apartment, defenseless in a terribly deep unconsciousness, a tragic exhaustion, held the drawn purity of death. Both had jet-black hair, all scattered and untidy and flowing into each other as if it were a single silky mass of black grown together over both their faces. Then Larry stirred; strength and power and life came flowing back, blood rose from his body and tinged his cheeks. The heavy straight black eyebrows moved, his eyes opened, and the dark eyes flashed. Larry jerked his head away from the girl’s so that now their hair did not intermingle and he was separate. He saw Gino watching them and grinned.
Vinnie had already taken the top of the milk bottle, the first inch of frozen icy cream that was a prize for the early bird. Gino tried to open another milk bottle, but his mother made his hand sting with the flat of a knife.
When Gino went back through the bedroom to finish dressing, his brother Larry was sitting up, head resting on the bedspread, smoking a cigarette, and the girl was sleeping with her face to the wall, her back small and hunched against the world. The straps of a white slip showed, framing the shoulder bones that protruded like chicken wings from the skin. As Gino went by, Larry reached out and pulled up the blanket to cover his wife from the cold, showing his own hairy chest over the long, heavy underwear as he did so.
GINO NEVER FORGOT that year. So many things happened, starting with Larry’s marriage.
One day coming home from school he saw Joey Bianco sitting on Runkel’s platform, all his schoolbooks scattered on the sidewalk. To his astonishment, Joey was crying; but under his tears his face was set in a brooding rage. Gino approached cautiously and asked, “What’s the matter, Joey? Something happen to your father or mother?”
Joey shook his head, still crying. Gino sat down beside him hoisting himself up onto the platform. “You wanta play Seven-and-a-half?” Gino asked. “I got sixteen cents.”
“I got no money to play,” Joey said roughly. Then he wailed aloud. “I lost all my money. My father told me to put it in the bank and now the bank lost all my money. The lousy bastards. And my father doesn’t even care, he laughs at me. They all said I could have the money for myself when I get big, and then they stole it off me. And now they all laugh at me.” He was crying and cursing, heartbroken.
Gino was shaken. He, more than anyone else, knew what a terrible blow this was. How many times had Gino bought lemon ice and given Joey a lick because Joey wanted to save the two cents? How many times had Joey stayed home on Sunday afternoons to save the movie money and put it in the bank? How many times had Joey turned away from the hot dog vendor and his three-wheeled cart with the orange-striped umbrella, clutching a nickel firmly in his pocket, while Gino bit into the soft long bun, the juicy red hot dog, the white greasy sauerkraut and gobs of yellow mustard, all in one soul-filling mouthful? Gino felt the loss, too, for in some way it was his money. Though the other kids laughed at Joey, Gino had always respected him and given him at least one bite of hot dog, one taste of pizza, one lick of lemon ice to help him past temptation. And even at Easter, when everybody bought pink and white sugar eggs for a dime, even then Joey held fast, though Easter came but once a year. Gino was proud that his friend was the richest kid in Chelsea maybe, and certainly the richest kid on Tenth Avenue. So he asked slowly and fearfully, “Joey, how much did you lose?”
Joey said with desperate, dignified calmness, almost awestricken, “Two hundred and thirteen dollars.”
The two of them looked at each other absolutely aghast. Gino had never dreamed it would be so much. For the first time Joey realized the extent and finality of his tragedy. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. Gino said, “Come on, Joey, pick up your books. Joey, let’s go home.”
Joey jumped off the platform and kicked all the books savagely, kicked them until they were scattered yards apart in the gutter. He screamed, “Fuck the books. Fuck school. I’ll get even with everybody. I’m never going home.” He ran up toward Ninth Avenue and disappeared among the gray iron winter shadows of the El.
Gino picked up the schoolbooks. They were torn and dirty and smeared with grains of horse manure. He cleaned them against his pants and then went down to Tenth Avenue and up to Joey’s house at 356.
The Biancos lived on the third floor. After Gino knocked he heard a woman weeping and wanted to run down the stairs, but the door opened too quickly. Joey’s squat little mother, all in black, motioned him in.
Gino was surprised to see Joey’s father home already and sitting at the kitchen table. He was a little hunched-up man with enormous mustaches, who always wore a crumpled gray fedora in the street and for some reason was wearing it now at table. Before him stood a jug of dark red wine, and a glass half full beside it.
“I brought Joey’s books home,” Gino said. “He’s coming home after he helps the teacher.”
He put the books on the table. The little man looked up and said with drunken kindness, “Buono giovanetto, good boy. You’re the son of Lucia Santa and Joey’s friend, a good boy. You never listen to anyone, eh? You go your own way. Very good. Very good. Have a glass of wine with me. And thank God you have no father.”
“I don’t drink, Zi’ Pasquale,” Gino said. “Thanks anyway.” He was sorry for Mr. Bianco’s feeling so bad over his son’s loss. The mother sat at the table watching her husband.
“Drink, drink,” said Zi’ Pasquale Bianco. The woman produced a small wineglass and the man filled it. “To America,” the little man said. “To those American presidents of the banks, may they one day eat the guts of their mothers.”
“Quiet, quiet,” Mrs. Bianco said soothingly.
In earlier days Gino had seen Zi’ Pasquale in his daily resurrection, his glory and his triumph.
First the little bent man, gnarled, a body of lumps and knots, trudged wearily from the railroad yard over the sunken steel rails embedded in Tenth Avenue. How tired he was, how dusty and dirty, the sweat drying and sealing the pores. The round fedora, dirty gray and rimmed with black, repelled the dangerous rays of the sun; the empty lunch pail swung on the right side of his body as he came up the dark stairs of the tenement and into the apartment.
Off came his upper garments, out came warm water and soap, and Zia Bianco wiped his broad knotted back with a wet cloth. Then on with a clean blue shirt, a quick glass of wine as he took the jug from beneath the sink, and then to table.
First Zi’ Pasquale would look them all in the eye, almost accusingly, even Gino, and then he would give a little shake of his head to show he did not blame them for some mysterious woe. Then a sip of wine from his glass. Slowly, carefully, his spine straightened as if the strength were pouring back into his body. Then his wife bent over him with a great deep plate of beans and pasta cloudy with a steam of garlic and brown bean sauce. Zi’ Pasquale picked up a spoon as he would a shovel, scooped in, and with an expert laborer’s flip the mound of beans and pasta disappeared behind that enormous mustached mouth, and after three such thrusts he put down his spoon and tore off a great chunk from the loaf of bread.
Spoon in one hand, bread in the other, he poured life and energy into his very soul. With each mouthful he grew visibly stronger, more powerful. He grew taller in his chair, over them all. The skin of his face became pink, there was a flash of white teeth and even a trace of the black-red lips as the mustache soaked flat with sauce. The brown crusty bread crackled like gunfire between his teeth, the great metal spoon flashed like a sword around their heads. He drained his glass of wine. And as if he had crushed everything on the table to its primal state, there was the smell of grape and flour and raw bean roots in earth.
Finally Zi’ Pasquale took a knife from his wife and cut off a hunk of crumbly grainy cheese from the black-skinned wheel. He held it up to the light so all could fall under the spell of its aroma. His other hand plucked the remainder of the bread loaf from the table and then, powerful, serene, almost with holy authority, he actually smiled at them all and asked in his rough southern Italian, “Who’s better than me?”
His wife would give out a short “Eh” of agreement as if he were confirming a belief of her own that he himself had denied. But the two boys would always stare at him very thoughtfully, trying to understand.
They saw. Whose food tasted sweeter this night, whose wine coursed more strongly through the blood? Whose flesh and bones and nerves became at peace with such merciful repose? Zi’ Pasquale groaned with comfort as the pain of fatigue eased out of him. He raised himself a little to fart and a sigh of serious relief softly followed. At this very moment, who in all the world tasted more bliss?
Tonight Gino tried to say something comforting. “It’s all right, Zi’ Pasquale, Joey can save up again. I’ll help sell coal from the railroad and next summer we can sell ice. It won’t take long.”
The great mustaches began to quiver and the face wrinkled into laughter. “My son and his money. Ah, figlio mio, if that were all. Do you know what I lost, does my son know what I lost? Five thousand dollars. Twenty years of rising in the dark, working in the bitter cold and this terrible American heat. Insulted by the boss, my very name changed, a name existing a thousand years in Italy, the name of Baccalona”—his voice thundered the name—“from the town of Salerno, Italy. I gave it all up. And my son is crying in the street.” He drank another full glass of wine. “Five thousand dollars, twenty years of my life. My bones hurt with that money sweated out of their marrow. Damn heaven and Jesus Christ! They stole it from me without a gun, without a knife, in broad daylight. How is it possible?”
The woman said, “Pasquale, stop drinking. You have to go to work tomorrow, you did not work today. Many are losing their jobs in this Depression. Eat a little and go to sleep. Come now.”
Zi’ Pasquale said gently, “Don’t worry, woman, I’ll go to work tomorrow. Never fear. Didn’t I go to work when our little daughter died? Eh? Didn’t I go to work when you had the babies? When you were sick and the children sick? I’ll go to work, never fear. But you, poor woman, who never put on the electricity until it was too dark to see, just to save a penny! The times you ate spinach without meat and wore sweaters in the house to save coal. This means nothing to you? Ah, woman, you are made of iron. Hear me, little Gino, fear them.” Zi’ Pasquale drained one full glass of wine and fell unconscious to the floor without another word.
The woman, sure her husband could not hear now, let out lamentations. Gino helped her drag Mr. Bianco to the bedroom as she wept and cried out her woes. He watched her undress her husband until he was just a pathetic, huddled figure in long yellow-white underwear snoring drunkenly through his mustaches, funny enough for the comics.
The woman made Gino sit in the kitchen with her. Where was Joey? she asked. Then went on. Her poor husband, he was their hope, their salvation, he must not bend to the Furies. The money was lost—terrible, but not death.
America, America, what dreams are dreamed in your name? What sacrilegious thoughts of happiness do you give birth to? There is a price to be paid, yet one dreams that happiness can come without the terrible payments. Here there was hope, in Italy none. They would start again, he was only a man of forty-eight. He still had twenty years of work in his body. For each human body is a gold mine. The ore of labor yields mountains of food, shelter from the cold, wedding feasts, and funeral wreaths to hang on the tenement door. That comical little gnarled body in long winter underwear and gray mustaches still held a treasure to yield up, and with a woman’s practical sense Mrs. Bianco was worried more about her husband than about the money they had lost.
After a long time, Gino made his escape.
He was late arriving home; everyone was already at the table. How good it was to come into that warm kitchen that smelled of garlic and olive oil and tomato sauce bubbling like dark hot wine in the pot.
They all filled their dishes from the central bowl heaped high with spaghetti. There were no meatballs for the Thursday pasta, just a piece of cheap chuck beef, so tender from simmering in the sauce that you could lift out shredded pieces with a fork. As they were eating, Larry and his wife came from the apartment below to join them at table.
They were all glad to see Larry, especially the young boys. He always made things lively with jokes and stories about the railroad, he knew all the gossip about the families on the Avenue. Octavia and Lucia Santa were always cheerful and animated when he was there and would not scold the children.
Gino noticed that Louisa was getting fat, but her head was getting smaller.
“Yeah,” Larry was saying, “the Panettiere lost ten thousand dollars in the stock market and some more money in the bank, but he doesn’t have to worry with his store. A lot of people on the Avenue lost money. Thank God you’re poor, Mom.”
Octavia and her mother smiled at each other. The money was a secret from everyone, and it was in postal savings besides. Lucia Santa said to Louisa, “Eat more, you have to keep up your strength.” She took a great chunk of beef from Larry’s plate and put it on Louisa’s. She said to Larry, “You animale, you are strong enough. Eat spaghetti, your wife needs meat.”
A strange look of pleasure came over the young girl’s face. She was very quiet, she seldom spoke, but now she said timidly, “Thank you, Mom.” Gino and Vincent looked at each other; something struck them both as not quite right. They knew their mother inside out. She had not been sincere, she did not really like the girl, and the girl had been too woebegone in her thanks.
Larry grinned at the boys and winked. He took up a spoonful of sauce and said in great astonishment, “Look at the cockroaches on the wall.” It was the old, old game he played to steal their roast potatoes on Saturday nights. Vinnie and Gino refused to turn their heads, but Louisa looked around quickly, and in that moment Larry speared the piece of beef on her dish and took a bite out of it before putting it back. The children laughed, but Louisa, realizing she had been tricked, burst into tears. Everybody was astounded.
Larry said, “Ah, come on, that’s an old joke in our family. I was only kidding.” The mother and Octavia made sounds of sympathy, Octavia saying, “Leave her alone when she’s like that, Larry.” The mother said, “Louisa, your animal of a husband plays like the beast he is. Next time—the hot sauce in his face.”
But Louisa rose from the table and ran down the stairs to her apartment on the second floor.
“Lorenzo, go after her, bring her down something to eat,” Lucia Santa said.
Larry had folded his arms. “Like hell I will,” he said. He started to eat his spaghetti again. No one said anything. Finally Gino said, “Joey Bianco lost two hundred and thirteen dollars in the bank and his father lost five thousand dollars.”
He saw his mother’s face take on a grim light of triumph. It was the same look she had when she heard about the Panettiere’s losing money. But when Gino told how Zi’ Pasquale had got drunk, his mother’s face changed and she said wearily, “Even clever people aren’t safe in this world, that’s how it is.” She and Octavia exchanged another glance of satisfaction. It had been the merest chance, pure luck, that they had put their money in postal savings. When they had opened the account they had been too shy to go through the white-pillared entrance and the great marble lobby of the bank with their little money.
The mother said, with impersonal sadness, as if her malicious triumph made her feel guilty, “Poor man, he loved money so much, he married a miser out of true affection. They were happy. A perfect marriage. But then nothing goes right, no matter what you do.”
No one paid attention to Lucia Santa. They knew her. In her speech and in her thinking she was pessimistic about life. Yet she lived like a true believer in good fortune. She rose in the morning with gladness, she bit into bread knowing it would be sweet. Her hope was a physical energy, replenished by her love for her children and the necessity to do battle for them. They all believed that she could never be afraid. So her words meant little, they were merely superstition. They ate in peace. When they finished, Larry lolled back with a cigarette and Octavia and the mother talked with him, telling stories about his escapades as a youth. Vinnie took Louisa’s plate of spaghetti and put the piece of beef in the hot sauce for a moment. Then he covered it with another plate.
Lucia Santa said, “Good boy, bring something to eat to your sister-in-law.” Vinnie went down the stairs with the two plates and a half-full bottle of cream soda. A few minutes later he came back empty-handed and sat at the table.
Larry looked at him for a moment and asked, “Is she O.K.?” When Vinnie nodded, Larry went on with the story he was telling.