The Fortunate Pilgrim (17 page)

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.”