by Mario Puzo
Four sons working, she collected home relief. When she bought a dozen fruit she reached out after paying and took an extra piece. She browbeat the butcher for the left-over scraps of veal, for the fat from a cut roast. Her hand was against the world.
It was Zia Coccalitti who taught Lucia Santa how to stretch a dollar. Eggs were bought from a fine young fellow who stole crates out of the backs of poultry trucks and sometimes even had fresh chickens. Suits and bananas came from those bold longshoremen who unloaded ships, though what suits were doing on a ship who could know. Dress material, good silks, genuine wool were sold door-to-door by polite and eloquent hijackers, neighborhood youths who kidnapped them by the trailerful. And all of these people dealt more honestly with you than the shopkeepers from Northern Italy who roosted on Ninth Avenue like Roman vultures.
Who lived otherwise? No one in their world.
And so the years passed. Only five? Seeming more, yet so quickly gone. Only death could mark off time.
The Panettiere one day found his wife dead like the dragon she was, talons buried deep in a pail of heavy silver, on her face the peaceful look of one who had found the true Jesus. Then what a change came over the Panettiere. That horse of work left everything to his son, Guido, who grew thin over the hot ovens. He closed the bakery early, no longer made lemon ice or kept the glass-walled stand clean for pizza. Day and night he roistered with his old cronies in the back of the barber shop, losing those buckets of silver and copper his dragon-wife had so faithfully guarded. And he took the air regularly, strolling along Tenth Avenue like a duke, fat American cigars smoking in his mouth.
And so it was the Panettiere who first spied Octavia towing her future husband around the corner of 31st Street onto Tenth Avenue. He watched them with interest and compassion as they approached Lucia Santa, who was seated innocently on her backless chair before the tenement. One look at the young man was enough. The Angeluzzi-Corbo family was about to suffer another misfortune.
This macaroni carried a stack of books—a grown man—and with high pompadour black hair, his horn-rimmed spectacles, thin sliced features curved like a bow, proclaimed himself a Jew. Not only a Jew, but a Jew not in the best of health.
At once it became known that Octavia Angeluzzi was to marry a heathen. A scandal. Not because the man was a Jew, but because he was not an Italian. Worse than that was the girl’s sheer contrariness. Where did she find a Jew, in Christ’s name? For blocks uptown and downtown, east side and on the western wall of Tenth Avenue, there were only Catholic Irish, Polish, and Italians. But then, what could be expected of an Italian girl who wore business suits to cover her breasts?
There was no prejudice or ill-feeling. The old crones, uncles, aunts, and godparents were happy that a relative had found a breadwinner so late in life. She must be at least twenty-five years of age, ripe for trouble.
Now, thanks to the good Jesus, she would be married, know life: in short, she would open wide her legs. She would never have to bear that tactful deference given to old maids, the crippled, and the deformed. They rejoiced that Octavia would not go rotten like uneaten fruit. And remember—Jews were moneymakers of the finest feather. Octavia Angeluzzi would lack for nothing, and, good Italian daughter that she was, she would not let her mother, little brothers, and sister go free of luxury. So said the neighbors, the Panettiere, Zia Coccalitti, and the mad jealous barber, who eyed the Jew’s high pompadour with an inflamed covetous eye.
Lucia Santa did not share these optimistic views. True, this young man was handsome, fair, slender of build, and gentle as a girl. As for his being a Jew, it was not that she had no prejudice, it was merely that her distrust was so great that it included Christians, Irish, Turks, and Jews alike. But this particular fellow carried a stigma. Wherever he went, there was a book under his arm or open in his hands.
It is easy to laugh at the prejudices of the poor, their reasoning springs from a special experience. How irritating to hear some thieving Sicilian rascal say, “If you seek justice, put a gift in the scale.” How insulting to a noble profession when the sly Teresina Coccalitti whispered, “When you say lawyer, you say thief.” Lucia Santa had a saying of her own. “They who read books will let their families starve.”
Had she not seen with her own eyes how Octavia devoured books long into the night (she had never dared say it, but could not this be the reason for her daughter’s illness and visit to the sanitarium?) when she could have been sewing dresses for the budding daughters of the Santini, the Panettiere, and that maniac barber, earning God knows what sums of dollars? Her sons, too—Vinnie, Gino, and now even little Sal—went to the library for books of nonsense, insensible to the outside world and its duties. And for what? To numb their brains with stories that were not true, to enter worlds in which they could never live. What foolishness.
Illiterate, she was safe from corruption and could have no idea of the magic of books. Still, she sensed their power and rarely protested. But she had seen too many people, finding life painful, evade battle duty. As a poor man should not waste time and money on drink and cards, as a woman should not waste her strength and will on dreams of happiness, so youth, with a great struggle ahead, should not poison its will with fairy tales and dreams that enchanted them from paper pages they turned and turned and turned into the night.
If Lucia Santa had known how right she would prove to be, she would have chased Norman Bergeron out of her tene-ment with the Tackeril. A true renegade, he refused to battle for his bread against his fellow man. Foolishly, innocently kind, he wasted his college degree to become a social worker; but he was not capable of that stern force of character so necessary to those who administer charity. He was like a butcher who faints at the sight of blood. An uncle gave him a minor clerical post in his garment business, and it was there he met Octavia.
Like all weak men, Norman Bergeron had a secret vice. He was a poet. Not only in English, but—much more terrible—in Yiddish. Worse, he knew only one thing thoroughly: Yiddish literature—a talent he himself said was less in demand than any other on earth.
But all this was yet to be known. And despite her many misgivings, Lucia Santa seemed (to Octavia’s amazement) to take some pleasure in her daughter’s not marrying an Italian.
Now it was true that Lucia Santa wanted each of her sons to marry a good Italian girl who knew from the cradle that man ruled, must be waited on like a duke, fed good food that took hours to prepare; who cared for the children and the house without whining for help. Yes, yes, all her sons should marry good Italian girls. Her son Lorenzo had found his fortune with Louisa, and that was the proof.
On the other hand, what mother who had suffered under the masculine tyranny could wish on her tender daughter those guinea tyrants, those despotic greenhorns, who locked up their wives at home, never took them out except to a wedding or funeral; who made an uproar fit for wild goats if spaghetti was not steaming on the table at the precise moment their baronial boots crossed the doorsill; who never raised a finger to help their pregnant wives, and sat calmly smoking stinking De Nobili cigars while their big-bellied women stood on window sills, so top-heavy as they washed dirty glass that they were in danger of tumbling like balloons to the pavement of Tenth Avenue.
Thank God Octavia was marrying a man who was not an Italian and therefore might show mercy to womankind. Only once did Lucia Santa make an insulting remark about her daughter’s choice, and that was years later. One day, in the course of gossip, cursing her children one by one for their ingratitude and pigheadedness and finding no fit crime for Octavia, she said with withering scorn, “And she, my most intelligent child, picked for a husband the only Jew who does not know how to make money.”
But all in all this marriage was the fitting crown to five years of good fortune. Lucia Santa insisted on a big wedding, properly in church. There was no trouble with Norman Bergeron. His reading of books was a virtue here. He made no objection to being married as a Christian or to bringing up his children as Christians. T
here were no objections from his family. He explained to Lucia Santa that they had declared him dead and outcast because of his marriage. Lucia Santa was pleased to hear this good news. It would simplify everything. Octavia and Norman would belong to her.
CHAPTER 16
LUCIA SANTA SPARED no expense. The wedding party in the tenement was done in the finest style. Great purple jugs of wine from the Panettiere’s cellar lined the outside hall of the apartment, mountains of succulent prosciutto and logs of the strongest cheeses covered the table and waited on linen-sheeted beds, brightly colored wedding cookies and long candy-covered almonds filled borrowed silver trays. In the kitchen there were tiers of soda boxes—orange, cream, and strawberry—stacked to the ceiling.
Everyone on Tenth Avenue came to pay respects, and even those proud relatives who owned their own homes on Long Island to gossip and lord it over the poor peasants they had left so far behind. For who could resist such a wedding and what for some was the first intimate sight of a heathen bridegroom?
The young people danced in the front room amidst colored streamers and to the music of a gramophone borrowed from the mad barber. In the dining room and kitchen at the other end of the flat, the old Italians gossiped on rows of borrowed chairs that stood against the blue-painted plaster walls. Octavia gave the great ceremonial silken pouch for presents of money envelopes to Lucia Santa, who clutched it lovingly against her hip. With dignity, she pulled at its silvery strings to open its jaws and let it gulp proffered treasure.
For Lucia Santa it was a day of glory. But there is no day so fine that it does not hold some displeasure.
An old schoolmate of Octavia’s high school days, an Italian girl whose family lived in their own house with a telephone, by name of Angelina Lambecora, dropped in for a short time to wish Octavia well and bring an expensive, patronizing present. But this slut proceeded to turn the heads of all the young men and even some of the old. Her beautifully planed face was made up as by a professional, rouge, even eye-shadow and some delicate lipstick that hid the sluttishness of her wide mouth and made it as inviting as those deep red grapes of Italy. She was dressed in the fashion of who-knows-what—half-suit, half-dress, with the top half of her pushed-up breasts plumped high for the eyes to feast on. Every man danced with her. Larry deserted his wife for her, until poor Louisa wept. He trailed the hussy, thrusting himself before those painted eyes, giving off clouds of his dazzling charm, showing those white square teeth in his most disarming and flattering smile. Angelina flirted with them all, waggled her tail in dance as the Panettiere, his son Guido, the narrow-eyed barber, and the white-haired Angelo of seventy-five years, whose life was his candy store, all deserted the gossip and the wine to stand like dogs, tongues hanging, knees bent to relieve pressure on the groin, eating her up with their hot glances. Until Angelina, feeling her mascara melting in the stuffy apartment, announced she must leave and catch her train to Long Island. Octavia kissed her quickly to speed her on her way, for even Norman Bergeron, shorn of his books this one night, had fixed Angelina with his horn-rimmed poet’s eye.
All very well. The world was never made without its proper number of sluts. One day she too would have children, grow fat and old, and gossip in the kitchen as others took her place. But this finicky morsel, coolly rejecting the flower of Tenth Avenue, old and new, went into the kitchen to say good-bye to Lucia Santa, cooing in the best American style, as if she were an equal because she was young and beautiful. Lucia Santa smiled as coolly and distantly as any baroness and accepted the honeyed words with pleasure, thinking meanwhile that if little Lena grew up like this one in that house they would buy on Long Island, little Lena would be a young American lady whose strapped ass matched the colors on her face.
Angelina turned to take her leave and then the misfortune fell. Her eyes lighted on Gino, barely sixteen, but tall and dark and strong, handsome in the new gray suit bought from the hijacking longshoreman just for this occasion.
Gino had made himself useful opening bottles of soda and jugs of wine to serve the Italians in the kitchen. He was quiet and distant, he moved with a quick fluidity that had a strange attractiveness. All this made him seem respectful, in the old Italian tradition, a servant to his elders. Only Lucia Santa knew it meant the people here in this room were completely meaningless to him. He did not see their faces, he did not hear their speech, he did not care if they thought well or ill of him, and he did not care if they lived or died. He moved in a world that did not exist but in which he had been trapped and jailed for this one night. He served them to make time pass.
But since the relatives had no way of knowing all this, they were impressed—especially a distant cousin from Tuckahoe, Piero Santini, dark-bearded, thin as a rail from work, who owned four trucks. He had a fat and foolish wife, bedecked with false jewels, at present gobbling cookies by the ton, and a shy daughter of seventeen, who sat between her father and mother and could not take her eyes off Gino.
Piero Santini noticed his daughter’s heated glance, which was no surprise since he guarded her like a dragon. At first he was displeased, then reflected. His little Caterina had been brought up very strictly, in the old Italian style. Never mind “boy friends this” and “go on dates that” or dance outside the family circle. “Ha, ha, ha! Damma the dance,” Piero Santini would say as he did an obscene little jig.
He drummed into Caterina’s noodle what men wanted: to stick something between her legs and blow her belly up, then off, leaving her to shame, misery and the suicide of her parents. But she was ripe. How long could this go on? His wife was a numbskull and he himself was ready to buy two more trucks. He would be busy far into the night counting his money and spying on his help so that they did not steal the very balls from between his legs.
So Piero Santini, with that adaptability which had proven his success in business, switching his trucks from hauling produce to hauling garbage, sometimes even to carrying whisky when the price was right, turned his thoughts another way. Perhaps the time had come. He watched Gino and was impressed. What a quiet boy, and not lazy by any means. The way he moved showed a strong quick body; no doubt he could load a truck in half the time it took two lazy helpers and driver. He would be worth his weight in gold. (How Lucia Santa and all her friends and neighbors would have laughed at his thinking so of Gino—the champion job-loser on Tenth Avenue, an absolutely hopeless case.) Santini kept watching Gino. When his wife moved nearer a fresh pile of cookies and Gino served him a glass of wine, he patted the empty chair beside him and said in Italian, “Come sit here a minute, let me talk to you.”
This mark of favor drew the attention of everyone. Piero Santini, the rich cousin from Tuckahoe, so charming to this starving, poverty-stricken youth? All eyes devoured them. Teresina Coccalitti nudged Lucia Santa, who, despite her lack of cunning, understood what was afoot.
For like a magnet all glances must shift from the two males to the young maiden. Caterina Santini was a legend, a myth, an Italian flower who bloomed in the evil American soil without being corrupted. A credit to her parents, and at a tender age, skilled in all the secrets of cookery, she prepared for her father at the Sunday feast handmade macaroni; she did not use paint, did not wear high heels to weaken her pelvic bones.
But now her day had come, as it comes even to saints. Sin and desire were stamped on her face. Flushed red, her breast rising and falling, she was bursting out of her skin. You could feel the heat coming off her, and her eyes, demurely cast down to her twitching lap, fooled no one.
What a stroke for Lucia Santa, and for her son with the ugliest face, though true, he was a magnificent young animal, as why shouldn’t he be, playing in the sun all day instead of working after school? What a blessing to the nuptial feast. Lucia Santa, eager as a wolf scenting blood, leaned forward to catch what the sly Santini spoke to her son, but the cursed music from the front room drowned those words she lusted to hear.
And now this saturnine Piero in oily Italian inquired after Gino, “So, young ma
n, what do you do, what do you plan for your life, eh, still at school?” But strangely enough this young man regarded him with grave eyes as if he did not understand good Italian. Then he gave a little smile, and Piero understood: the lad was overcome by this attention from majesty and too shy to answer. To put him at his ease and get nearer the subject, Piero clapped Gino on the shoulder and said, “My dear daughter is dying of thirst. Bring her a glass of cream soda like a good chap. Caterina, isn’t it true, you’re dying of thirst?”
Caterina did not raise her eyes. She was terrified at what was happening to her. She nodded her head.
Gino caught the word “soda” and the girl’s nod. He rose to serve her. He understood nothing of what was happening, and how could he, since these people did not exist. When he brought the soda, he turned away quickly and did not see Piero Santini pat the chair again. Piero Santini, astounded at this insult, grimaced and shrugged his shoulders for all to see, as if to ask, “With such ill-mannered starving wretches, what use to show a kindly courtesy?” Everyone snickered at the humiliation of the proud close-fisted rich Santini and sighed for his poor daughter, who dipped her red unpowdered nose into a fizzing cream soda, mortified. And it was like a play to see the look of rage on Lucia Santa’s face at the behavior of her son Gino, who everyone knew was as mad as his father and would end up in the same fashion, and wasn’t this the proof?
It was at the end of this comedy that the beautiful Angelina appeared and made her farewells; and, to the astonishment of all, Gino made his second conquest. The second was more logical than the first. For one thing, Gino was the only male who did not see Angelina when he looked at her, and this immediately demanded her interest. Then, too, she sensed the general disapproval of the role she played, and in defiance she played it to the hilt. She caught hold of Gino, swayed toward him, and said to Lucia Santa, “What handsome sons you have.” And Gino was shocked awake; he smelled her perfume, felt the warmth of her arm, saw those wide, perfectly painted lips pouted up at him. He didn’t know what was happening, but he was perfectly willing to stay still and find out. When Angelina asked for her coat, all the men volunteered and, what’s more, like gallant cavaliers, offered to walk her to the subway, but she said very prettily, “Gino will take me to the station—he’s too young to be wicked.”