The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (155 page)

The statue cried for a week. Its precious tears were collected and applied to the sores of the afflicted, the eyes of the blind, the legs of the lame. The miracle became the subject of many theories about past sin and predictions of coming doom. News of the Weeping
Vergine
had kept the village priest at his station by the grotto day and night, saying prayers for the faithful and listening to the emergency confessions of newly repentant
siciliani
! It was only after the statue’s eyes had dried and the number of pilgrims had dwindled that the
padre
was able to have a minute’s peace and to interpret the meaning of the miracle. The good priest visited our home the following Sunday and told Mama and Papa that my discovery of the Virgin’s tears had been a sign from Blessed Mary herself. I had been called to the priesthood, the
padre
said.

Believing, as most
siciliani
believe, that it is dangerous business for a father to educate his sons beyond himself, my father at first resisted the idea of my priestly studies. Papa had already spoken many times of my eventual work in the sulphur mines, first as his
caruso
and later as a miner myself. Papa’s fellow miners shook their heads and warned him against allowing me to be sent away and taught to read and write. Yet my mother supported the priest’s campaign to make me a man of God. Her status in the village had already been elevated because she had given birth to the boy to whom the
Vergine
had revealed her tears. As the mother of a priest, her standing would be raised higher still.

The
padre
wrote a letter to Rome concerning my religious calling and campaigned amongst the villagers to hand over their coins on behalf of the room, board, and travel expenses that would be required to turn me into a priest. When my father protested, my mother resumed once again her screaming fits on behalf of my
education and circulated in the village the news of an ominous dream she had had. In the dream, God Almighty took the form of a black falcon and pecked out the eyes of my father for flouting His will. In the end, Papa surrendered.

And so I was sent on my seventh birthday to the convent school in Nicosia, run by the good Sisters of Humility. There, over a period of six years, I learned first the rudiments and then the subtleties of the Italian language. I learned, too, the hard and bitter lessons of jealousy and snobbery which my fellow students were happy to teach to the school’s poorest but most gifted student, Domenico Onofrio Tempesta! The wealthy city boys would laugh at me as I scratched out my lessons on the cheap slate provided me. They, of course, had been handed the best supplies—quill pens, fine paper, and oceans of India ink with which to do their shoddy work! They, of course, had
famiglia
who paid the extra for confections on Saturday afternoon and musical shows and other distractions and
ricreazioni
while I had only my considerable native talents with which to entertain myself. But if I was the least well provided for amongst the boys at the convent school, I was the best loved by the good Sisters of Humility, who
marveled at my intellectual gifts and only occasionally boxed my ears or yanked my nose for small acts of temper or venial sins of pride—petty transgressions at most. I was, in truth, the sisters’ favorite.

Back at home, my younger brother Pasquale took my place in the mines and became my father’s
caruso
. It was Pasquale’s job to carry the excavated rock up from the shaft and the makeshift stairway to the kiln at the mouth of the mines. There, the rock was melted and the
essenza di solforoso
extracted. It is the
caruso
’s lot in life to do the miner’s dirty work—to work like a mule—and for that, my simple brother was well suited, just as I was well suited to the elevated and intellectual life of a boy destined for greater things.

With Papa, Pasquale, and me away from home, my youngest brother, Vincenzo, grew wild. Mama could not make him obey or help her, no matter how many blows she visited on his head or his
culo
with her big wooden cooking spoon. Vincenzo’s theft of a lemon cake from the window of old
Signora
Migliaccio became a minor village scandal. “My firstborn serves God, my secondborn serves his father, and my youngest serves the devil!” Mama would lament.

When he turned ten, Vincenzo was apprenticed to Uncle Nardo, a
gumbare
of Papa’s and a fat-bellied pig of a stonemason. May the carcass of that son of a bitch Nardo roast in the fires of Hell forever and ever and longer than that! On weekends, when our family reunited, my brother Pasquale was often bruised and swollen in the face because of accidents at the mine or because of his failings as Papa’s
caruso
. Papa’s stern hand often caught up with young Vincenzo on Sunday mornings after Uncle Nardo visited with his weekly report. Vincenzo was lazy, Nardo complained, and had fallen in with a band of young toughs who laughed and traveled together after work and committed acts of hooliganism. Sometimes my father beat both brothers, one after the other, Vincenzo for what he had done and Pasquale for what he had failed to do. My own behavior was beyond reproach, and I escaped my father’s blows and received only his praise. Sons of Italy, take notice! Industry and seriousness of purpose will assure
your success. Work hard! Honor
famiglia
, and follow the virtuous path!

More tomorrow if these goddamned hemorrhoids will let me sit and tell.

10 July 1949

At the age of sixteen, I was enrolled at the seminary school in
Roma
where I began my priestly studies. Meanwhile, at home in Giuliana, another scandal erupted that set my mother to screaming and caused my father such shame that he threatened to travel to the
Mediterraneo
and throw his gold medallion into the sea as an act of contrition for having sired such a delinquent son as Vincenzo!

That season, Uncle Nardo had been hired by the
magistrato
to
build an elaborate new courtyard and vineyard wall. One hot afternoon in the midst of this project, Nardo fell asleep in a shady spot after his noon meal. Vincenzo, unsupervised, seized his opportunity and scampered away from his afternoon work. The
magistrato
, who was entertaining a visiting
monsignore
from Calabria, had invited his guest to stroll the grounds of his estate. The two officials heard a strange groaning coming from the arbor and hurried to help whoever was hurt or wounded.

Shamefully, the groans had come from Vincenzo. What the
magistrato
and the
monsignore
found that afternoon among the twisting grapevines was my youngest brother, standing with his pants at his ankles and involved in a lewd act with the magistrate’s spinster of a daughter who was twice my brother’s age! The visiting monsignor nearly fainted from the shocking sight of that lunatic woman’s head between my brother’s legs. The shouting and screaming emitting from the mouth of the
magistrato
awoke Uncle Nardo, who came stumbling onto the scene before Vincenzo could even calm himself and button his britches. Nardo was fired on the spot. The
magistrato
banished both the disgraced mason and his lascivious apprentice from his property, uttering the wish that he, the
magistrato
, hoped to drown in the molten spew of Mount Etna before he laid eyes on either of those two again!

Uncle Nardo did not wait until Saturday to give Papa his weekly report about Vincenzo. Instead, he stormed the road that led from the village to the mines and shouted Papa’s name into the gorge. What happened next was told to me by my brother Pasquale, who witnessed the whole thing.

Nardo told my father that he, Giacomo Tempesta, was liable for the sum of money Nardo had lost on the big job at the home of the
magistrato
as a result of Vincenzo’s shameful behavior. Papa told Uncle Nardo that he could not hand over money he did not have. He promised, instead, that he would beat Vincenzo until the blood flowed and that Vincenzo would repent and reform. He would work so diligently from then on that the unfortunate
incident would be bricked over by his youngest son’s industry.

Uncle Fat-Belly shouted back that he had no use at all for a lazy billygoat with a frozen pipe in his pants. He demanded again the money he had lost. Again, my father assured Nardo that he could not pay such a sum as that to which Nardo laid claim.

“I see that a fancy golden
medaglia
cannot by itself make a man honorable,” Nardo retorted. Those were his miserable words exactly. My brother Pasquale stood beside Papa and heard the slander himself!

To my father—to any
siciliano
!
—
an accusation against one’s honor is more painful than a blow to those loins that sire sons. Yet what could Papa do—perform an act of magic and make money spill from the sky? Pay off Uncle Nardo with bolts of my mother’s lace?

That weekend, Papa went to the home of the
magistrato
with a jug of his best Malaga and his precious golden
medaglia. Signore
Big Shot had already sunk his buck teeth once into my father’s
medaglia
; now Papa was going to allow him to gobble it up. By the time the wine jug was empty, my father’s prized possession had been handed over to the
magistrato
so that Nardo could be reinstated as the
magistrato
’s mason. But there was a problem, still. Nardo would not take Vincenzo back! The next week, against the howls of my mother and the protests of the village
padre
, I was plucked from my priestly studies and sent back to Giuliana to work alongside Uncle Nardo in the unfinished courtyard. There, reluctantly, I began my apprenticeship under that fat-bellied son of the devil whom I soon grew to despise. I had no choice but to obey and honor the arrangement my father had made.

Young men of Sicily, remember this: a father’s command is a son’s law!

Over the months that I transformed myself from scholar to laborer in service to my father’s honor, my hands coarsened and the muscles in my arms and chest grew strong from heavy lifting. With all my heart, I hated the trade of masonry and ached to be back
among my books and words and religious icons, but that was not to be. With each stone I hoisted into place, with each tier of brick I laid, I honored my father’s good name and good word. And as for the magistrate’s filthy daughter, all her flirtations and lewd whisperings to me went unanswered. I upheld the good name of Tempesta and looked at stone and mortar and trowel, not at the hairy privates of that deranged pest of a
puttana
who kept lifting her skirts to entice me!

12 July 1949

In March of 1898, Mount Etna once again showed Sicily her wrath.

For three days and nights, steam leaked from the cracked southern rim. Next day, quiet as
la morte
. Day after that, the earth itself trembled and broke the town apart. In the hills, the section of the sulphur mine where my father and brother were working shuddered and collapsed. Pasquale, who was at the kiln when the shaking began, was spared. But Papa and eleven other miners and
carusi
perished in the mine.

Papa, Papa, I weep to remember your loving guidance! I curse the cruel earth that swallowed your life too soon!

Can talk no more today.

15 July 1949

As my father’s eldest son, I was now the
sostegno del famiglia
. I took seriously my duties as both the family’s main provider and its chief disciplinarian. I did not spare either of my brothers the beatings for which their actions or inactions cried out. With Vincenzo, especially, I was firm. His shameful behavior had cost me my priestly studies and cost the Tempesta family its ownership of
our father’s valuable gold
medaglia
. Though the
medaglia
had passed from my father to the
magistrato
, I, Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, was still allowed to wear it at village celebrations and at Easter and
vigilia di Natale
. I sat on the platform with the
padre
and the
magistrato
during parades with that medallion resting close to my heart—not only as the eldest son of a village hero, but also as the man to whom the Weeping
Vergine
had once shown her tears. It is not exaggeration to say that I was, even as a humble laborer, the most distinguished young man in Giuliana.

Sadly, as head of my
famiglia
, I sometimes was forced to raise a hand to my beloved mother. Mama had adjusted poorly to widowhood and to the reduced income and status my father’s death had pressed upon us. Sometimes, crazy with grief, she would awaken screaming in the night or threatening that she would follow her mother’s example and take poison rather than live this wretched life of toil and denial with three such terrible sons as Pasquale, Vincenzo, and me. She resumed her conversations with the moths. They comforted her, she said, and brought her news about her departed husband. Although I forbade these crazy, one-sided conversations of hers, she sometimes disobeyed me. The blows it was my sad duty to deliver for this and other reasons sometimes quieted Mama’s screaming fits and sometimes began them.

In all things I learn quickly, and so my talents for masonry soon matched my talents for language and holy study. Within a matter of months, I had far surpassed that idiot Nardo in both artistry and industry and he knew it and was jealous. It is fair to say that I, Domenico Tempesta, carried most of Nardo’s business on my strong and capable back. When I made that simple observation one afternoon as we worked side by side, Uncle Pig-Face laughed and cursed me and spat on my boot.

I reminded him that, in addition to being a superior mason, I was also the son of a hero and, unlike Nardo himself, an educated man. I demanded an apology.

Fat-Face laughed and let fly, instead,
sputa
from his mouth
that landed on my other boot. My honor thus insulted, I was forced to spit into his
faccia di porco
. He spat back into my
faccia.
Fisticuffs followed and I delivered to Uncle Nardo the worst end of
that
bargain—a blackened eye and a nose that spouted blood like the Fountain of Trevi! Ha! I would have given him even worse, too, if he had not reached for his trowel and sunk it into the back of my left hand. I wear the small scar to this day—the mark of that son of a bitch of a stonemason who was so threatened by my natural superiority that he sought my ruin.