The Fortunate Pilgrim (27 page)

CHAPTER
21

O
NE MORNING A
week later Lucia Santa woke up sensing that something was wrong. Sal and Lena were still in bed. Sometime in the early morning hours Lucia Santa had heard Gino come home; she knew his careless, noisy undressing. But Vinnie she had not heard. Then she remembered that Monday was his night off, and on those nights he sometimes came home even later than Gino.

Though she knew it was impossible for anyone to enter the house without her waking, she checked Vinnie’s bed. He now used Octavia’s old room, the only private one in the apartment. The bed had not been slept in, but Lucia Santa was not seriously alarmed. Later, when she had sent the children off to school, she leaned on the pillowed window sill and watched for him to appear on the Avenue. Time went by; she saw the early shift of trackwalkers come across the Avenue for lunch and knew it must be nearly noon. For the first time she became worried. She put on a heavy knit wool jacket and went downstairs to see Lorenzo.

She knew her oldest son was always at his worst in the morning, but she was too nervous to wait. She found Larry at his morning coffee, rumpled undershirt draped over with black wiry chest hair. He sipped his coffee and said with real impatience, “Ma, he’s not a baby, for Chrissakes. Whatever he’s doing, he got through too late to come home. When he wakes up he’ll go to work.”

“But what if something happened to him?” Lucia Santa asked anxiously. “How would we know?”

Larry said drily, “Don’t worry, the cops got their nose in everything.”

Louisa poured coffee for the mother. Her beautiful heavy face, usually placid, was also worried. She was fond of Vinnie—she knew him better than anyone except his mother, and she felt the absence strange. “Larry, please go and look,” she said.

This was so unusual for her that Larry gave up. He patted his mother on the shoulder. “I’ll go up to Vinnie’s office, O.K., Ma? Now let me finish my coffee.” And so Lucia Santa had to go back upstairs and wait.

At three o’clock Gino and the children came home from school, and still Larry had not returned. The mother tried to make Gino stay with her, but he seemed not to understand. He fled without even answering, stopping only to grab his football. Sal and Lena did their homework on the round kitchen table and she fixed bread with olive oil and vinegar for them. Finally, at five o’clock, Larry came to tell her that Vinnie was not at work and that nobody had heard from him. She could see that Larry was worried, too, and she began wringing her hands and calling on God in Italian.

LOUISA CAME UPSTAIRS
with her children and tried to quiet the mother. In the turmoil no one heard the other footsteps coming up behind her. Suddenly there was the black uniform of a railroad Bull in the doorway, beside him the gray face of the
Panettiere.
The
Panettiere
stepped in front of the Bull, as if to stop Lucia Santa from seeing and hearing him, unconsciously holding both his hands up, palms toward her, in a gesture of such unutterable pity that Lucia Santa was struck dumb. It was Louisa who suddenly wailed in terror.

GINO WAS SITTING
quietly on the Hudson Guild stoop with his friends when Joey Bianco came by and said to him, “You better go home, Gino, there’s a lot of trouble at your house.”

Gino rarely saw Joey Bianco anymore. They had grown out of their comradeship, as children do, and now they felt embarrassed by each other. So Gino did not try to stop Joey as he kept walking, or ask him what had happened. He almost didn’t even bother to go home, but then decided to see what it was all about.

He short-cutted diagonally across Chelsea Park and ran easily along Tenth Avenue until he reached the corner of 30th Street. Then he saw a crowd in front of his tenement and started walking very slowly.

There was no one from the family in the crowd. Gino ran up the stairs and into the apartment.

It was thronged with neighbors. In the corner by the window Gino saw Sal and Lena standing stiff and alone, faces blank with fright. Part of the crowd eddied away, and he could see his mother seated in a chair. Dr. Barbato was holding a needle in the air. Larry was gripping his mother with all his strength to keep her from bucking up and down in convulsions.

She looked horrible, as if the muscles connecting each feature of her face to the other had been smashed. Her mouth was twisted oddly and she seemed to be trying to speak. Her eyes had the peculiar direct stare of the blind. The lower part of her body was jerking up out of her chair and then Dr. Barbato’s arm flashed as he stabbed the needle into her arm. Then he stood over her and watched.

Slowly, Lucia Santa’s features flowed together in some sort of peace. Her eyelids closed down and the tension went out of her body.

“Put her to bed,” Dr. Barbato said. “She’ll sleep now for an hour. Call me when she wakes up.”

Larry and some of the women carried Lucia Santa into the bedroom. Gino saw he was standing next to Teresina Coccalitti. Very low, the first time he had ever spoken to her, he asked, “What happened to my mother?”

Zia Teresina was glad to tell him. It was her pleasure this black day to set one thing right. “Oh, nothing happened to your mother,” she said, measuring her words. “It is your brother Vincenzo. They found him in the railroad yards run over by an engine. As for your mother, that’s what happens to parents when they grieve for their children. Show a little pity for her now.”

Gino remembered always the look of hatred on her black hawk’s face; he remembered always how little grief he felt at his brother’s death and how shocked he was that anyone, his mother or anyone, could be so destroyed by sorrow.

WHEN LARRY CAME
out of the bedroom he motioned for Gino to follow him. They ran down the stairs together and into Larry’s car. It was growing dark. They drove up to 36th Street and Ninth Avenue and stopped in front of a brownstone tenement. Larry spoke for the first time. “Go up to the third floor and tell Lefty Fay to come downstairs. I wanta talk to him.” But at that moment he saw someone come down the stoop and lowered his window, and called out, “Hey, Lefty.” Then said to Gino, “Let him in your place, go in the back.”

Lefty Fay was a tall, big-shouldered Irishman and Gino remembered he had grown up with Larry—in fact had been the only one on the block who could lick Larry in a fist fight. As both men lit cigarettes, Gino huddled in the back seat. Zia Teresina’s brutal message was still just so many words. He did not feel Vinnie was really dead.

Larry’s voice was calm in the darkness. Weary. “Christ, what a lousy day for everybody.”

“Yeah,” Lefty Fay said. His voice was rough by nature, but now held a note of real sadness. “I was just going out for a drink. I couldn’t even eat supper.”

“How come you didn’t know it was my brother after your engine hit him?” There was no accusation in Larry’s voice, but Lefty Fay said angrily, “Christ, Larry, you ain’t blaming me? It was deep in the yard near 42nd Street.” When Larry didn’t answer he went on more calmly, “I only saw him as a kid when you and me used to hang out together. He changed a lot since then. And he didn’t have any identification.”

“I don’t blame you,” Larry said. His voice was very tired. “But the Bull says you wrote in your report that my brother jumped in front of the engine. How come?”

In the darkness Gino waited for Fay to answer. There was a long silence. Then the rough voice, curiously muted, said, “Larry, I swear to Christ that’s the way it seemed to me. If I’d known it was your brother, I’d never put it in the report, but that’s the way it seemed to me.”

Gino could feel Larry forcing some strength back into his voice. “C’mon, Lefty,” he said. “You know my brother Vinnie wouldn’t do something like that. He was always afraid of his own shadow even when he was a kid. Maybe he was drunk or just got confused. You can change the report.”

Fay said quickly, “Larry, I can’t, you know I can’t. The cops’ll be all over me. Then I lose my job.”

Larry’s voice, decisive, said, “I guarantee you a job.”

There was no answer. Larry went on. “Lefty, I know you’re wrong. But if you stick with the report, you know what happens to my mother? She’ll go off her nut. You used to eat at my house when we were kids. You gonna do that to her?”

Fay’s voice wavered. “I gotta think of my wife and kids.” Larry didn’t answer. “If I change the report, the railroad may have to give your mother compensation. That means they’ll go after my ass, sure as hell. I just can’t do it, Larry. Don’t ask me.”

“You get half the dough,” Larry said, “and I’m asking you.”

Fay laughed with nervous anger. “Just because you work for di Lucca you gonna strong-arm me, Larry?” It was almost a challenge, a reminder of the days when they were kids and Lefty had beat Larry down into the sidewalk.

Suddenly a voice spoke that Gino did not recognize and that made his blood chill with animal fear. It was a voice deliberately saturated with all the venom and cruelty and hate that a human creature can summon from the depths of his being. The voice was Larry’s. “I’ll crucify you,” he said. It was beyond a threat. It was a deadly promise, and it was inhuman.

The fear that filled the car made Gino feel physically ill. He swung the door open and got out into the fresh air. He wanted to walk away, but he was afraid that if he did so Larry might do something to Fay. But then he saw Fay get out of the car and Larry reaching out the open window to hand over some folded bills. When Fay walked away Gino got into the front seat. He couldn’t look at his brother. As they drove home, Larry said in a tired voice, “Don’t believe that guy’s crap, Gino. Every time there’s an accident, everybody lies. Nobody wants to get blamed. And the Bull told me Vinnie was drunk—he smelled the booze. It was his fault, all right, but he never jumped in front of no engine.” He paused, and then, as if he had to explain, he said, “I worry about the old lady, Christ, I worry about the old lady.” Neither one of them could speak of Vinnie.

CHAPTER
22

E
VEN DEATH BRINGS
labor and toil: coffee to be made for intimate mourners, wine served, gratitude and affection shown for the dutifully presented sorrow of relatives and friends.

Without fail, everyone must be notified officially by the closest blood relative of the deceased. There were the godparents who lived in New Jersey, the prickly cousins in their castles on Long Island, the old friends in Tuckahoe; and all these must be treated this one day like dukes, for the bereaved are in the public eye, and their manners must be faultless.

Then, too, since only greenhorns mourned in their own homes, the wake must be held in a funeral parlor and a member of the family must always be on hand to greet the mourners. The body of poor Vincenzo must never be left alone on this earth. He would have more companions in death than he ever had in life.

Early on the first evening of Vincenzo’s wake, the Angeluzzi-Corbo family gathered in the kitchen on Tenth Avenue. The room was cold. Since no one would be back until very late, the kerosene stove had been put out.

Lucia Santa sat at the table, straight, heavy, and squat in black, her eyes thick-lidded and narrowed. She drank coffee, not looking at anyone, her sallow face almost yellow. Octavia sat beside her, half-turned toward her, ready to touch her and ready to do her bidding in any way. The mother’s strange immobility frightened her daughter.

Lucia Santa looked around the room as if seeing them all for the first time. Finally she said, “Give Salvatore and Lena something to eat.”

“I’ll do it,” Gino said instantly. He was in a black suit, with a black silk band on his left arm. He had been standing behind his mother, out of her sight, leaning against the window sill. Now he moved quickly through the door to the icebox in the hall. He was glad to be out of the room even for a moment.

All that day he had stayed in the house to help his mother. He had served coffee, washed dishes, greeted visitors, taken care of the kids. All that day his mother had not spoken one word to him. Once he had asked her if she wished something to eat. She had given him a long, cool look and turned away from him without speaking. He had not spoken to her again, and had tried to stay out of her sight.

“Anybody else want something?” he asked nervously. His mother looked up, directly into his eyes, two spots flushing mysteriously high on her cheeks.

“Give Mamma some more coffee,” Octavia said. She spoke softly, as they all did, almost in a whisper.

Gino got the coffee pot and poured his mother’s cup full. Doing so, he touched her body and she leaned away from him, looking up at him in such a way that he froze, stupidly holding the great brown pot high over the table.

Larry said, “We’d better get started.” He looked startlingly handsome in his black suit and black tie and snow white shirt. The mourning band on his arm was flapping loose. Lucia Santa leaned over to pin it shut.

Octavia asked, “What about Zia Coccalitti?”

“I’ll come back for her later,” Larry said. “Her and the
Panettiere
and Louisa’s mother and father.”

Octavia said nervously, “I hope there aren’t too many little kids running around the funeral parlor. I hope they have enough sense to leave the kids home.”

No one answered. They were all waiting for Lucia Santa to make the first move. Gino leaned back against the window sill, slouched, head down, not looking at anyone, out of his mother’s sight.

Finally Octavia could wait no longer. She got up and put on her coat. Then she fastened black silk mourning bands on Sal and Lena. Louisa got up and put on her coat. Larry waited impatiently at the door. Still Lucia Santa did not move. They were all a little frightened by her calm. Octavia said, “Gino, get Mom’s coat.” Gino went to the bedroom, put on his own and then came back to stand beside his mother’s chair. He held her coat wide open so that she could rise easily into it. His mother took no notice of him. “Come on, Ma,” he said softly, and in his voice for the first time was all the pity he felt for her.

It was only then she turned in her chair, looked up at him with a face so merciless and cold that Gino stepped back. Finally she said, quite calmly, “Oh, you’re going to this funeral, are you?”

For a moment they were all stunned, unbelieving, not understanding what she had said out of sheer disbelief in its cruelty, until they saw Gino’s face go white and stricken. He held the coat between himself and his mother as if to shield himself. His eyes had a sick fascination.

The mother continued to look at him with a terrible, merciless stare. She spoke again quite calmly. “But why the honor? You never went to see your father in his coffin. And while your brother was alive, you never helped him, you never had time to spare from your precious friends to comfort your own flesh and blood. You never had any pity for him, you never gave him anything.” She paused to let an insulting forgiving contempt enter her voice. “You want to show how sorry you are now? You pour coffee, you hold my coat. Then maybe you’re not an animal, after all. Then even you must know how your brother loved you, how good he was.” She waited, as if for a reply, then said quite simply, “Go away. I don’t want to see your face.”

Everything she had said, he had known she was going to say. Without knowing he did so, he looked around the room for someone to help him, but on their faces he saw the sick horror of people watching some terribly mangled victim of an accident. Then it was as if he had gone blind and he could see nothing. He let the coat drop to the floor and stepped back, until he touched the window sill.

He never knew whether he closed his eyes or simply refused to see his mother’s face as she began to shout at him, “I don’t want you to go. Take off your coat. Stay home and hide again like the animal that you are.” And then Octavia’s voice rose against hers, angry yet pleading. “Ma, are you crazy? Shut up, for Chrissake.” He could hear Lena begin to whimper with terror. And then finally there were sounds of people leaving the room and going down the stairs. Gino recognized a strange laugh as his mother’s, mingled with the rustle of stiff new clothes. Then he heard Octavia’s voice whisper, “Don’t pay any attention to Mom. Wait a while, then come to the funeral parlor. She wants you to come.” There was a pause, then she said, “Gino, are you all right?” He nodded his head toward her voice.

It was very still. Slowly he could see again. The electric bulb threw a dirty yellow circle of light, and floating in it was the great round table littered with coffee cups and little spills of muddy liquid caught in the folds of scarred oilcloth. Since he had to wait before going to the funeral parlor he cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dishes. Then he put on his jacket with the black arm band and went out of the house. He locked the door with the big brass key and put the key under the icebox. When he went out the tenement door downstairs, he brushed against the tailed funeral wreath nailed to it. The flowers were black with night.

Gino walked downtown on Tenth Avenue, past where the bridge used to be, following the elevated track until it was swallowed up by an enormous building. Suddenly he saw a street sign that said St. John’s Park, but there were no trees. He remembered his brother Larry had always said he rode the dummy horse from St. John’s Park, and as a kid Gino had thought it was a real park, a grove of trees with grass and flowers.

The funeral parlor was on Mulberry Street and he knew he must walk east. Going crosstown, he dropped into a lunch counter to buy some cigarettes.

The men sitting at the counter were all night workers, even the clerks dressed in rough clothes. There was a terrible loneliness in the smoky air, as if nothing could bring these people together. Gino left.

Outside, the streets were dark, except for small circles of light cast by the street lamps. Far down the block he saw a small neon cross. Suddenly Gino felt a strange trembling weakness in his legs and he sat on a stoop to smoke a cigarette. For the first time he realized that he would see Vinnie’s dead face. He remembered himself and Vinnie late at night alone in the house sit-sleeping on the childhood window sill, counting the stars above the Jersey shore.

He put his hands over his face, surprised by tears. A band of little children came swirling down the street through circles of yellow light. They stopped and watched him, laughing. They were fearless. Finally he got up and quickly walked away.

There was a long black awning from the door of the funeral parlor to the gutter, a veil for mourners against the sky. Gino went through the door into a little anteroom, from which an archway opened into an enormous cathedral-like hall filled with people.

Even those he knew seemed like strangers. There was the
Panettiere,
lumpy as coal in his old black suit; his son, Guido, sinisterly dark of jowl. The barber himself, that solitary maniac, sat quietly on a chair, his inspecting eyes gentled by death.

The women from Tenth Avenue sat lined against the walls in formal rows, and the billing clerks from Vinnie’s night shift stood around in clusters. There was Piero Santini from Tuckahoe and his daughter Caterina, married now, and her belly swelling, face rosy, and eyes cool and confident with known and satisfied desire. Louisa, her beautiful face peculiarly grief-stricken, sat with her children in a corner and watched her husband.

Larry stood with a group of men from the railroad. Gino was shocked to see them acting quite normally, smiling, gossiping about overtime on the job, buying a house on Long Island. Larry was talking about the bakery business, and his genial smile was setting them all at ease. They could have been sitting over Coffee An in the bakery.

Larry saw Gino and motioned him to come over. He introduced Gino to the men, who shook his hand with solemn firmness to show their respectful sympathy. Then Larry took Gino aside and whispered, “Go in and see Vinnie and talk to your mother.” For a moment Gino was bewildered by his saying “go in and see Vinnie,” as if his brother were alive. Larry led him deep to the far end of the room, where there was another, smaller, archway almost hidden by a group of men gathered in front of it.

Two little boys skittered past Gino on the polished black floor, and an outraged shouted whisper followed from their mother. A young girl not more than fourteen chased after them, cuffed them soundly, and dragged them back to their chairs against the wall. Gino finally made his way through the second archway into another small room. Against the far wall was the coffin.

Vinnie lay on white satin. His bones, his brows, his high, thin nose swelled like hills around his closed, hollowed eyes. The face was remembered, but this was not his brother. Vinnie wasn’t there in any way. It was all gone—the awkward posture of his body, the shielded, hurt eyes, the awareness of defeat, and the gentle, vulnerable kindness. What Gino saw was a soulless, invincible statue, without interest.

And yet he was offended by the women in this small room. They sat against the wall at right angles to the coffin, talking in soft voices but in a general way. His mother spoke little, but in a quite natural tone. To please her, Gino walked to the coffin and stood directly over his brother, looking more at the satin coverlet and feeling nothing because it wasn’t really Vinnie—only some general proof of death.

He turned to go out the archway but Octavia rose and took his arm and led him to his mother. Lucia Santa said to the woman sitting next to her, “This is my son Gino, the oldest after Vincenzo.” It was her way of telling them he was the child of her second husband.

One of the women, face wrinkled like a walnut, said almost angrily, “
Eh, giovanetto,
see how mothers suffer for their sons. Take care you don’t bring grief to her.” She was a blood relative, and could speak with impunity, though Octavia bit her lip with anger.

Gino bowed his head and Lucia Santa said, “Did you eat anything?” Gino nodded. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t look at her. He felt a physical fear that she would strike out at him in front of everyone. But her voice was completely normal. His mother dismissed him. “Go help Lorenzo talk to people, do what he tells you.” And then Gino was amazed to hear her saying to the women around her, in a voice heavy with satisfaction, “There are so many people, Vincenzo had so many friends.” It sickened him. None of these people knew Vinnie or cared about him.

His mother saw that look and understood it. The callow, arrogant contempt the young have for sham because they are ignorant of the terrible need for shields against the blows of fate. She let him go. He would learn.

Time became a shadow in that dark hall. Gino greeted newcomers and led them across the mirror-black floor to where his mother sat and Vinnie waited in his coffin. He saw Lucia Santa draw solace from the people who meant nothing to her or his dead brother. Zia Louche would have truly mourned her godson, but Zia Louche was dead. Even Octavia didn’t seem to care as much as he thought she would.

As if in a dream, Gino showed all these strangers where to sign the registry, where to put their contributions in the box on the wall. Then he turned them loose like pigeons to home their way across the black polished floor to relatives they had not seen since the last funeral.