Morning came at last. Rosa dressed and went into the kitchen. Some morning, she promised herself, she'd get up before Mrs. Gerbati, surprise her by starting the fire in the stove. Not today, however. Mrs. Gerbati had the stove roaring and coffee bubbling on the back of it. The bread for the day had risen and was already baking in the hot oven. She gave Rosa a big smile, though her eyes were pained as they searched the girl's face. "You sleep okay?"
Rosa shrugged in answer.
"Me, too." The woman sighed. "So much worry for Mamma and sister and baby. But it be all right, yes? We get good news soon, you see. Mr. Broggi find out soon, fix everything."
"I got to go home, Mrs. Gerbati."
"No! You can't go. Your mamma not even there."
"The Jarusalises—the people who live in our apartment—they are there—at least Granny will be. She won't be in jail. I have to go and find out about Mamma and Anna, and especially Ricci. I don't even know where Ricci is! He'll be scared to death. He doesn't like strangers at all. He won't know what happened to him."
"Shh, shh. Hush. We talk to Mr. Broggi. We find out everything soon, yes? Now, come to Mass like good girl and we pray to Virgin, okay? We light special candle—one for Mamma, one for Anna, and one for baby Ricci, yes?"
What else could she do? She had no money for train fare. She fetched her coat and hat and put them on. Mrs. Gerbati hung up her apron and threw her great wool shawl over her head and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Salvatore not go, yes?"
Rosa shook her head. He was probably sleeping like a baby. He wasn't worried about anything.
She couldn't know that at that moment Jake was lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling. It was all going to explode soon. The police had arrested Rosa's ma. There would be questions, if not from the police, from the stinking union committee. It wouldn't be more than a day or so before ... He was actually sweating. It was a cold sweat but sweat nonetheless. He had to get that money today before everything blew sky high. There was a safe in the office. He had seen customers come to the office and give Mr. Gerbati money, which he had locked up in a little metal safe under his desk once they were gone. The key was on Mr. Gerbati's watch fob. Not much chance of pinching that. But how tough could that lock be? With one of their precious points and a hammer, couldn't he jimmy it? Make it look like a robbery? Well, it wouldn't matter if they suspected him. He'd be long gone before Mr. Gerbati discovered the broken lock and missing cash.
He began to sweat again. The police of two towns would be after him. But how smart could the police in a hick town like this be, anyway? Besides, he'd gotten the distinct impression from the men at work that the police didn't have much use for the Italian community. Too much drinking and brawling and loud talk in the streets. Duncan had said even his own family, being Scots, hated it that he was working in a wop shed. Duncan had really said "Eye-talian" not "wop." They wouldn't have minded so much if the shed had been owned by a Scot. Duncan's pa had come from Scotland to get the granite out of the ground. Now all the men in Duncan's family, except for him, worked in the quarries.
Duncan would despise him if he stole the money and ran. But why should he care what Duncan thought? The man actually thought old man Gerbati was a kind of god, creating living things out of dead rock.
What if he didn't run? Not at first anyway. If he stole the money and hid it and waited a day or two, then they wouldn't suspect him. If he grabbed it and ran, of course they'd be after him like a shot. Mr. Gerbati would send every goon in the labor union after him. And Rosa, tired of lying for him, would squeal that he'd taken the first train to New York. Then he'd have every cop in New York City on his tail.
He sat up in bed. Today was the day to do it. Nobody went near the sheds on a Sunday. It would be Monday morning before the theft was discovered, and he'd be there, shoveling up the grout, innocent as a daisy. Creeping to his door, he listened while Rosa and the old woman left for church. He dressed quickly, then waited silently until he heard the old man's feet on the stairs. He was headed for the bathroom at the end of the downstairs hall. The door shut, and then Jake could hear the regular morning noises of the old man. First there was the rush of the flushing toilet, then raspy coughing and wheezing and clearing of the throat, a morning ritual before he shaved his face. He waited until he heard Gerbati in the hall, putting on his overcoat. He was getting ready to go fetch his morning newspaper. The front door opened.... It was safe to leave. By the time the old man turned the corner and started uphill for the shop, Jake would be out the kitchen door, heading downhill to the shed.
The sky was gray; the sun had yet to make its way through the heavy clouds, which might or might not mean more snow before the day was over. Jake could tell it had snowed during the night. It seemed to snow all the time up here. He was tired of snow. Oh, it was pretty all right, like now when it first came down, but run a few horses and wagons through it, not to mention automobiles, and it churned up as bad as the slush in the Lawrence streets. Well, no matter. He wasn't out for sightseeing today.
He felt a tickle of excitement in his chest. This was better than going after a poor box. This was the real thing. He quickened his steps. There were not many people on the streets in the North End. The pious were in church. The others were sleeping off the effects of Saturday night. Why, by the time he got to the shed, even the old man would be home, settled in his chair, his glasses on his nose, reading his infernal Italian newspaper. He crossed Main Street without seeing a single vehicle, not even a trolley car. What a dead burg this was!
Just in case, just in case anyone happened to notice him—and he always felt conspicuous in his grand overcoat—he turned off Main Street a block before he needed to and wound his way in and out of sheds before he approached Rossi and Gerbati. How was he going to get in? He'd forgotten that the outside door also had a lock. Never mind, he'd broken into plenty of places before. He forced the small window in the office up far enough to let him wriggle through and slide headfirst onto the office floor. The room was dark, but he wasn't going to risk turning on any lights.
He pulled down the window and went over to examine the safe. He knelt down and ran his thumb along the edge, trying to measure the width of a cutter's point that might fit in the crack between the door and the wall of the little metal safe. The whole thing looked flimsy.
Now to find the right tool. For this he went into the shed proper. Mr. Gerbati always took his own precious tools home with him, but not all the cutters were so fussy. Duncan had left a hammer and several points on the granite block beside his monument. Jake put out his hand, but something made him draw it back. He'd get some other fellow's tools, not Duncan's. He might chip them, and Duncan was pretty particular.
It was harder to find the right point than he'd imagined. The shed was dark, and even when he'd take one over to the window to examine it, it was hard to tell. He took several into the office, only to have to return them as too wide for the crack, which seemed to grow narrower each time he tried to insert a point.
After what felt like an eternity, he found a point sharp enough to slide into the miserable crack. He stood up and took off his overcoat and threw it over Mr. Gerbati's chair. He was sweating again and breathing too fast. He coughed—the wretched air was clogged with dust even on a Sunday. He knelt again in front of the safe and jammed the point into the crack right at the place where the door lock met the wall. He picked up the hammer. Hell's bells, it was heavy, and his hand was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. He raised it and struck the first blow with all his might. Nothing. He struck again. Nothing seemed to be giving. Now sweat was running down from his hair and stinging his eyes, but he didn't have to see to strike. Clang! Clang! They could probably hear the racket from Main Street. But he couldn't stop now. He raised the hammer and attacked the end of the point over and over again, lifting his right arm high....
Something caught his wrist in the air, twisting it so that the hammer clanked heavily to the floor. Terrified, he wrenched his n
eck to see that it was little Mr. Gerbati above him, his veined hand gripping Jake's wrist like an iron vise.
The Bargain
Mr.Gerbati let go of Jake's wrist, leaned over, and picked up the hammer and the point, now badly blunted. He put them carefully on the table. Then he took Jake's overcoat off his desk chair. "Up to your feet," he said. "We go." He handed Jake the overcoat and waited for him to put it on.
At both the office and the outside doors, Mr. Gerbati stepped aside for Jake to go through first. And then, as though he had no fear of what Jake might do, he turned his back on the boy and carefully locked the shed door.
Should he try to make a break for it? But where could he go? Where could he hide? Jake felt paralyzed. He just stood outside in the snow and waited for what the old man was going to say. How had Gerbati known? He'd sneaked into the office without Jake realizing it because Jake had been so intent on jimmying the infernal lock, making so much racket of his own. But how had the old man known where Jake would be, what he'd planned to do? Why had Gerbati suddenly taken a notion on a Sunday morning to come to the shed? It was all too neat, as if God had put it in the old man's mind to catch him.
Mr. Gerbati returned his watch fob to his vest pocket, buttoned his suit coat, then his overcoat, and started to walk, but he was not taking the usual route home. He was following two sets of footprints in the snow around several long neighboring sheds before heading over to Main Street, which was still pristine with blinding new snow—except for the same two pairs of footprints. As though taunting Jake, Mr. Gerbati followed the tracks like a bloodhound in reverse right up to his own back door and into his kitchen, where Mrs. Gerbati was bustling about laying out her usual bountiful Sunday morning spread.
"We took walk," Mr. Gerbati said, as though an explanation were required.
It was a late breakfast, as it would be on a Sunday following Mass. Rosa hardly touched her food. Still mooning over her stupid family, Jake supposed. The girl didn't know what real trouble was. He was sure he wouldn't be able to eat, either—his belly seemed to have taken up residence in his throat—but when Mrs. Gerbati said, "Eat, eat," he obeyed. He found, to his amazement, that the food went down the usual way and stayed there.
Mr. Gerbati got up as soon as he had finished his coffee spiked with the spirits he always liked to slop into the cup at the end of a meal. He went into the hall, shutting the kitchen door behind him. They could hear him talking out there, the words muffled but apparently in English.
"Telefonata—call on telephone," Mrs. Gerbati explained.
Telephone call? Gerbati must be calling the police ... or worse. Now the rich, oily meal did threaten to rise from his stomach. Jake wanted to make some excuse to get out of there—to go to his room or to the toilet—but he sat frozen, trying to hear through the wall what Mr. Gerbati might be saying into that infernal machine.
"Get your coat, Salvatore," Mr. Gerbati said when he reappeared. "He come soon to take you."
The hair stood up on Jake's head. The man let him eat his breakfast as though nothing was happening and then was going to turn him over to ... to the goons or the cops or—He got up and fetched his cap and overcoat, though Lord knew he didn't need them, sweating the way he was. Someone rang the bell at the front door.
"Come," Mr. Gerbati ordered. "Is here."
He followed Mr. Gerbati out to the front door. The old man opened it, revealing not a policeman or one of Jake's imagined goons, but Duncan, of all people.
"Hello, Sal," the big man said cheerfully. "Ready to go?" Jake nodded. "You coming, Mr. Gerbati?" Duncan asked.
Mr. Gerbati shook his head. "No. I read my paper."
"Okay. Then it's just us two, Sal."
Jake trailed the big Scot down the stairs. There was a truck standing in the street, the engine put-putting as though impatient to be off. "Hop in," Duncan said.
Jake climbed up into the passenger seat. Duncan started down Brook Street and turned left on Main. They were heading toward the town green, toward the city hall, where, Jake knew from his walks around town, there was a police station. He could hardly breathe.
At the green, however, instead of bearing to the right toward the city hall, Duncan bore left up a slight grade. Then he stopped the truck at the tip of a triangular piece of land, well short of the imposing brick building that stood farther up the grade.
"See it?" Duncan asked.
Jake was so relieved that they hadn't parked in front of the city hall that he wasn't even looking straight. "See what? That building up there?"
"No, not the school—the monument ... there." Now he saw it. In the point of land, as though looking down on all the activities of the town, high on a carved pedestal was a tall granite statue of a man with a coat slung over one arm. "That's our own Bobbie Burns, it is. We Scots paid a pile of money to have that done. Mr. Gerbati wanted you to see it."
What in the blazes was going on? Was Gerbati trying to tease him? The way a cat toys with a mouse before killing it? And who the devil was Bobbie Burns?
"Get out. You have to look close. It's probably the bonniest granite sculpture in the world." Duncan set the brake and hopped out of the truck. Jake climbed down and accompanied the big Scot over to the statue, which towered over them both. More than three times taller than Duncan himself.
"Every big city puts up its monuments to generals and war heroes, but when it came to the hundredth anniversary of our Bobbie's death, the Scots here wanted the whole town to remember that he was Scotland's greatest poet. The Italians understood. They worship men who write operas. But we couldn't do it ourselves. We mostly get the stone out of the hill. It's the Italians who are the artists. We hired the best that Barclay's shed had to offer. Barclay was one of us Scots, but his carvers were Italian—Novelli and Corti. Novelli carved the great man himself, but look, these panels under the statue—they were Corti's work. Corti was Mr. Gerbati's teacher. Mr. Gerbati followed him here from the old country."
Jake was studying the panels under the statue. There were four scenes, one on each side of the pedestal. Duncan took off his right glove and fingered a panel. "These are from the poems, all but this one—this is his own wee cottage in Ayr. Here—" He took Jake's finger and made it trace the lines of the cottage. "See. You have to feel it. Bas-relief. Harder to do, I think, than a statue." The big Scot shook his head. "God help us. What a waste," he said. "It was just a crazy thing. A fight between the socialists and the anarchists at the Labor Hall, and someone had a gun. Corti wasn't even there for the fight. He was just standing in the wrong place, and some crazy anarchist shoots his pistol off, and boom! the greatest carver this side of Italy is dead."
"Do you know...?" How could Jake ask the question? "Do you know why Gerbati wanted you to show me this?"
"Mr. Gerbati. I'm not sure. He just called and said he wanted you to see this before you left town. I guess he didn't want you to fail to see the most beautiful thing in the city."
Jake's stomach gave a lurch. "Did he tell you I was leaving?"
"Well, I guess he figures the strike will be over soon and all you kids will be leaving."
"Oh, yeah."
"He wanted to be sure you didn't miss this."
"Why—uh—why didn't he show me himself?"
"He must have thought I could explain it better, being a Scot. Besides, I can always borrow my brother's truck. It's a cold walk from the North End." Duncan grinned and put his glove back on. "Come on, I want to show you one more thing before I take you home." The word "home" sent a spike through Jake's belly, as though the Gerbatis' house could ever be home to the likes of him.
They rode back down Main Street. Duncan didn't even glance toward the city hall. He just drove the noisy, smelly truck along the street, past the shops, taverns, and livery stables. A block before they got to Brook Street, he turned right. They wound up a hill until they stopped at the gates of what was obviously a cemetery. It was here that Duncan pulled over. The road between the gates had not been rolled, much less c
leared, so the snow was high. Duncan set the brake. "Can't risk trying to drive in. Can you walk?"
"Yeah," Jake said, though he didn't much like walking into a graveyard, even in broad daylight.
They hiked through snow higher than his new boots, and he could feel it melting on his stockings, but he dared not complain. At last, Duncan stopped. Snow had blown against the stone, and he wiped it off with his large gloved hand. "Here," he said. "Look at this." He was pointing to letters chiseled into the light gray granite. He didn't know that the letters meant nothing to Jake, whose eye was caught by the stream of flowers cascading down the stone. Roses, lilies, daisies, daffodils—all alive in a way that made him sure that Mr. Gerbati had carved them.
"It's his masterpiece," Duncan said. "The boy was his life. First his master dies, then, within the month, his son. They tell me his hair turned white overnight." Duncan took off his glove and reverently fingered a rose. "In the more than eight years since, the man has carved nothing but flowers, only flowers. It's as though he's determined to bring dead stone to life."
So this was where Vittorio Gerbati lay—the boy whose clothes he had put on that first morning. Now here he was, dead and under the ground, and his father had made these flowers, which would never die, for him.
"I wanted to show you this, too, before you left. Mr. Gerbati probably wouldn't have."
They walked in silence to the truck, which was still put-putting bravely in the cold, and drove back to Brook Street. Duncan stopped in front of the house. "I won't be going in," he said. "Can't risk this old crate dying on me. Been tempting fate all day. See you tomorrow."
"Thanks," said Jake.
"My pleasure, lad."
He opened the front door. Someone was in the parlor—not the sitting room, but the parlor across the hall. He was talking.
"Come in, Salvatore," Mrs. Gerbati called out as he tried to pass the door unnoticed. He took off his cap and went into the room. Mr. Broggi was seated on the best chair, Mr. and Mrs. Gerbati were on the settee, and Rosa was on the footstool. "Sit! Sit! Mr. Broggi bring news of your mamma." Jake perched uneasily on the edge of the small rocker, not daring to glance at either Rosa or Mr. Gerbati.
Bread and Roses, Too Page 16