The Big Hunger

by John Fante

  “Jackass!” she shouted. “Sit down!” He apologized under his breath, groping for his chair. Finding the seat shoved neatly under him, he turned to see that Gino was behind him and he smiled his thanks. Donna Martino pointed to Gino. “You,” she said. “Are you able to speak Italian?”

  “Si, Signora”

  “Good,” she said in Italian. “The things I have to say to you I can best say in my native tongue.”

  “My parents taught me the language.”

  “Ah. So you have a mother and a father.”

  “My father lives with my brothers in Philadelphia, Signora. My mother is dead.”

  “You loved your mother, young man?”

  “More than earth and sky.”

  He appraised them coolly—Bettina with arms folded, Rosa with the proudly tilted head, Stella with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. And beside him, Carlotta. Now she locked her arm in his.

  “Stop caressing the young man,” Donna Martino said. “Have you no self-control? Forget your passion for a few moments.”

  Anger blinded Carlotta. Then she felt the pressure of Gino’s arm, heard him suggest that she sit down. He pulled out the chair at Papa’s left and she sank into it, weak with indignation.

  “You loved your mother more than earth and sky,” Donna continued. “Had someone injured her, you would have killed him. Is that right?”

  “Most certainly, Signora.”

  “Brancato, I am an old woman. You are killing me.”

  He smiled. “That, Signora, I cannot believe.”

  She snapped her fingers angrily. “See here, Brancato. I am the mother of four daughters. You can see for yourself that they are beautiful women. Three of them have made fine marriages, Brancato. They have splendid homes, devoted wealthy husbands. It is good and satisfying for a mother to know that her children are protected. It is misery and nights without sleep when one of her children is burdened with poverty.”

  “That is true, signora.”

  “You are a poor man, Brancato. You drive a truck—that proves your poverty. A man of means does not drive a truck.”

  “I am not a rich man, Signora. Some day, by the grace of God, I may have the good fortune of your sons-in-law. I am far from rich. But on the other hand I am not so poor that Carlotta should go hungry.”

  Donna Martino changed her tactics. Now she was smiling.

  “Make your fortune first, Brancato. Let this marriage wait a few years. You are both young. Come back when you are secure like the others, with wealth and position.”

  Something about Gino’s eyes told Carlotta he had had enough. He looked at Donna Martino as though he wished to speak carefully.

  “Signora,” he said. “I do not think we speak of the same things. I am not here to purchase Carlotta. I am here because we love each other and wish to marry.”

  Donna Marino rose majestically and leaned toward him, her heavy arms supporting her.

  “I am weary of this jabbering about love. I say it now—I forbid you to marry my daughter. And I forbid my daughter to marry you. I cannot and I will not welcome you as a son-in-law. Because you are a man of strong will I see that I cannot prevent the marriage. But I denounce it. The curse of almighty God shall be upon it for all time, just as it was on my own tragic marriage.”

  She sat down again, collapsing like some piece of architecture whose foundations had rotted. The dust and debris of her evil fury billowed from her. They could not look at her—not Gino, nor Carlotta, nor the other daughters—and they turned their faces and hid their eyes from her. All but Giovanni. He did not take his eyes from her. His chin was tilted a little, as if he looked down at her, but his face was without emotion.

  Gino turned to Carlotta.

  “Pack your things,” he said.

  “I’m ready. I have.”

  When they returned with the luggage, the others still sat there and Donna Martino had not moved. But they were far from her now, forced back, remote from her. Carlotta choked out a desperate farewell, saying, “Goodbye, Mama.”

  No answer, but there was a change in her sisters, a reaching out with their eyes as if they were telling her to seize love now, to escape with her Gino.

  Papa followed them out to the car. He was so quiet, so calm. Gino told of their plans—marriage in Nevada, home in a few days. Carlotta kissed the old man’s cold forehead and Gino shook his hand.

  The car drove away and Papa stood alone, uncertain, not wanting to return to the house. The pain of his soul filled the night. This evil thing his wife had said! How was it possible? Certainly he had been a poor husband, deserving her harsh words for his laziness. But God had not cursed his marriage. No!

  He dragged himself back to the house. Mama had not moved but his daughters had slipped away from the table, silently pulling on coats and gloves. They kissed him and Bettina tweaked his nose. In the doorway they stood smiling at him, reassuring him.

  He watched them get into their fine cars and drive away. Then he turned to see Donna still immobile at the table. He could not stay there. He got his coat and hurried out into the night.

  As he walked he remembered a hundred things—Bettina with the measles, Carlotta in her graduation gown, Rosa running away from home on a broomstick, Stella’s bad report cards—the murmuring of half-forgotten things. He smiled one moment and wept the next, because God had been so good to him—a loafer and a dreamer—had filled his life with beauty and with children. No, Donna should not have said that. But her tongue had always been a wild and dangerous thing, a flash of lightning, the thrust of a sword. How she had abused him and then repented! That day in New York when she found him poor and sick instead of rich and triumphant—that was a day he would never forget, her anger and bitterness flung upon him, in a torrent of language, until they were all spent and she became helpless and remorseful, begging his forgiveness. It was ever so with that woman. And now, he knew, it would happen again. But it was a hard thing to bear.

  By habit his feet carried him to the tailor shop. He unlocked the door and went inside. Sinking into the chair at his workbench, he laid his head in his arms and slept.

  It was daylight when he wakened. Someone was tapping the front window. The great figure of Donna Martino loomed at the door.

  “I come,” he called.

  He unlocked the door. She looked at him with a face shattered from hours of weeping, like the earth pounded by rain, and she was trying to smile.

  “You should not sleep here,” she said. “Your place is at home.”

  He put his arms around her.

  “My wife,” he whispered. “My poor beautiful wife.”

  She wept so hard, so painfully, her flesh shaking, her body shuddering. This was her remorse, more devastating than her wrath, tearing at her bones, choking off her breath. But in a little while she felt better and they walked home together in the fresh morning sun. It was difficult for her, the rheumatism slowing her knees.

  “Brancato spoke of the farm near Palermo,” she said. “Your father’s farm.”

  “He was there, Mama.”

  “My mother’s farm was not far away.”

  “Only a few steps down the road.” He smiled.

  “I wonder if Brancato visited it too?”

  “You will have to ask him, Mama.”

  They did not speak again until they reached the house. He helped her up the porch steps. It was hard going.

  “I will ask him,” she gasped. “That Carlotta! She is very impulsive, Giovanni. She has a mind of her own.”

  The Big Hunger

  HE HEARD HIS MOTHER coming up the stairs, her feet in soft slippers. For an hour he had lain awake, reading Crime Comics, which were forbidden because Mother said they were bad for kids. But Dan Crane couldn’t read, not really, because he was barely seven, a crummy age, two years younger than his brother Nick, who read real good, that heel.

  “Up, Danny boy,” Mrs. Crane said from the doorway. “Breakfast’s ready.”

  Breakfast.
Dan’s stomach lurched. Every morning the same old malarkey: breakfast. He wasn’t hungry. He had gone to bed with a sack of plums and had eaten them all, stowing the pits behind the radiator. Now she was after him to eat again. He lay staring at the ceiling, being very cold to his mother,

  “You hear me, son?”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “And wash your face. And clean your nails.”

  The commands were so beneath him that he didn’t even answer. One thing was becoming apparent: Dan Crane couldn’t take much more. Breakfast. Wash your face. Clean your nails. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Change your shorts. Hang up your sweater. Go to sleep. Wake up. Be quiet. Speak out. Hold still. Get moving. Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue. Close your mouth. For seven long years Dan Crane had hung on grimly, seven years: his whole life, a slave.

  When he tossed back the covers, it pleased him to see the blobs of dirt at the backs of his heels. Take a bath. Use the brush. And suppose he told her to go soak? Then he’d have to deal with the Old Man. Was that bad? Ho ho! He had the Old Man in his power. There was an expression he used—a mystic smile, a look of holy innocence—that melted his father’s wrath every time.

  His brother’s bed was across the room, the covers thrown back, Nick’s pajamas folded neatly under the pillow. Nick liked wearing pajamas! With a pretense of merely sauntering past, Dan Crane snatched the pajamas in one fist and held them out before him, a sneer on his lips.

  Now he had Nick where he wanted him, within a coil of his fist, and it all came back to him—old Bright Boy with straight A’s, so clever at drawing too, so helpful to his mother, so impressive when company came, old Bright Boy in person, the pajamas dancing in the air as Dan Crane cuffed them with jabs. Then the pajamas seemed to strike back, and Crane staggered and fell to the floor, for Nick was choking him and his face purpled as he struggled to breathe. He rolled across the floor, the pajamas on top of him until, with superhuman strength, Crane broke the grip at his throat and the tide of battle turned. Now Nick was beneath him, his upturned face receiving sickening blows to the mouth and nose, blood spurting from his nostrils, his eyes flaming in terror. One final bash of Crane’s fist and Nick lay very quiet, not breathing. Dan Crane prodded one of Nick’s eyes with a forefinger. Nick was dead. Weakly, Crane rose to his feet, aware now of his own wounds, of his torn face, a limp arm, blood trickling from his lips. He stood reeling, panting with exhaustion, offering no word of explanation as the Sheriff came in, his eyes popping at the brutal scene.

  “You killed him, Crane,” the Sheriff said. “You beat your own brother to a pulp. Gad, what a beating.”

  “I had to do it, Sheriff,” Crane gasped. “It was him or me. You know Nick. He pulled a knife on me.”

  The Sheriff put out his hand “He was a no-good stinker, Dan. The whole county owes you a vote of thanks.”

  The Sheriff evaporated, and Dan Crane strode naked toward the bathroom, his chest out, the new day taking on a cheery hue now that Nick was dead. Through the window he saw the bright morning, the sunlight bouncing off the white stucco garage and stinging his eyes. The bathroom clock showed eight-thirty. He studied it intently. Nick always teased him for not being able to tell time. Ha—that stupe! Well, it was a quarter to twelve, and it was ten minutes to seven, and eleven o’clock; so what difference did it make?

  From the staircase it came again, her voice: “Daniel Crane. Did you hear me? Breakfast!”

  “Okay, okay, okay.”

  He dipped a corner of the washrag in warm water, braced his feet, and took three light swipes at his face, across his forehead and over both cheeks. It was a revolting experience. His teeth were clenched as he wiped the stuff off with a towel. The mirror told him there was no need to comb his hair; it was fine, away from his face and eyes. Maybe it stuck out at the sides, but so what? He examined his fingernails. But Dan was a poor judge of clean fingernails. These many years of observation had finally persuaded him that his nails were two-toned: pink and grey-black. Sometimes, by sheer brute force, his mother dug out some of the grey-black substance. On these occasions Dan screamed in agony, sure that she was prying out living flesh.

  There was the smell of bacon and eggs in the hall, of buttered toast and wheat germ, and for a moment it pleased him. But now he chose to have it nauseate him, and his mind conjured up the plate of bacon and eggs too gooey, the wheat germ covered with the sweet slime of honey. This wrenching of his imagination produced the desired effect. Up his gullet came the rancid juices of last night’s plums. Crane forced them back. He was sick now, too sick to eat breakfast.

  Bitterly, he reflected on his miserable fate. No corn flakes in this lousy house, or puffed wheat, or Rice Krispies, or Corn Pops, or any of the delicious things shown on TV. His mother brought home nothing but junk from the store. This junk was supposed to give you perfect teeth. But did it? Crane grinned ironically, his tongue probing a tooth that had been filled only last week by the dentist; across the street lived David Culp, nine years old, who ate nothing but Rice Krispies for breakfast and had big, white, absolutely perfect teeth.

  With sullen laziness he pulled on his clothes, being careful not to wear the clean shorts laid out for him, the freshly ironed jeans and T-shirt, the new pair of socks.

  The old shorts slipped nicely into place. They were almost like his own skin, and they smelled that good personal smell of none other than Dan Crane. Yesterday’s T-shirt was befouled with the pleasant memory of adventures under David’s house, a secret hideaway where he and David buried seashells gathered earlier at the beach. Indeed, the preponderant odor coming off Dan Crane was of the sea, the old tired sea at low tide. His jeans clung to his legs like damp canvas, grease and tar lending them an intimate stickiness like buckskin on the thighs of Daniel Boone. His socks were coyly resilient, like a mechanic’s soiled rags, with a comfortable, form-fitting hole for each big toe. He knew his mother would beef about the old tennis shoes. He put one to his nostril and sniffed. He could smell nothing except just plain feet. With much tugging and groaning he got the shoes on, the laces snagged in a fiendish cluster of knots no mother on earth could unravel.

  He wondered if he could get away with it. His mother might send him back upstairs; then again, she might not. It was worth a try. Slowly he descended the stairs, his chest sliding along the bannister. Then he saw her, his two-year-old sister Victoria, down there at the bottom, and he became alert to the danger, for she was waiting for him to come down to her, and her large brown eyes were full of mischief. She was the anguish of his life, the person in all the world he wanted to tear limb from limb.

  “Okay now, Vicky,” he warned. “Be careful. I’m just telling you: Watch it.”

  She knelt at the bottom step and smiled up at him.

  “Danny,” she smiled. “Danny.”

  Her plump pink fingers were stretched out to him lovingly, but Dan Crane knew her only as a woman of devious cunning who kissed him one moment and bit him the next. Worse, he was not permitted to defend himself. The Old Man gave a lot of orders around there, most of which could be ignored, but one he enforced always: nobody could lay a hand on Victoria—not even if she poked out your eyes, bit your finger, or banged you with a croquet mallet. In her time she had done all these things and more to Dan Crane, and his cup of bitterness overflowed.

  “Danny…”

  She put her arms around his hips and he felt the softness of her hair and he could smell her morning sweetness, and suddenly he was sorry he cherished such resentment for her. She kept repeating his name out of a rosebud mouth, adoring him with magic eyes.

  “Dear Vicky,” he murmured. “Dear little thing.”

  He sat on the bottom step and she touched his face and stroked his hand, purring with happiness at seeing him again. Her round innocence almost overwhelmed him, and now he was in her power again, hugging her tightly, kissing the soft hair of her neck.

  “Kiss,” he begged. “Kiss brother.”

  Like a wafted rose her mouth drift
ed to his lips, and he closed his eyes in delicious acceptance. But a demon burst within her and her bright teeth snatched his lower lip in a terrible vise. With a shriek he threw out his arms, falling back on the stairs, the little mouth hanging on. When she let go, Dan Crane lay there weeping. He covered his face with his hands and wept hard.

  “Victoria!” Mother said. “Bad girl!”

  It frightened the child and she began to howl. Mrs. Crane bent down to examine Dan’s trembling lower lip. Now he cried with fervor, for he knew the bite had saved him, that he wouldn’t have to go upstairs and change, and that he wouldn’t even have to eat any breakfast. All he had to do was keep suffering, letting the anguish roar out of him, while his mother held him tenderly, sniffing suspiciously, but comforting him nevertheless.

  Like a broken man he staggered into the kitchen and flopped on the bench in the breakfast nook Through his tears he saw the bacon and eggs, the cereal, the orange juice, the glass of milk. It was more than he could bear. Fresh cascades of misery heaved out of him, his whole body rocking.

  “Please, Mother. Oh, Mother, Mother! I beg you, Mother. Don’t ask me to eat!”

  She ruffled his dirty hair, feeling sand and tar on her fingertips. “Of course not, Danny.”

  He did not rise at once and rush off. For a few moments he produced more sobs. Even Vicky, contrite now, was touched by his suffering. She slid over to him and brushed his hand with a cheek that was still wet with her own tears.

  He wanted to belt her, but he remembered how useful she had been. Sighing hard, he moved out of the kitchen, reeling slightly but not overdoing it. Once on the porch, he dropped the mask of misery, and his eyes danced with the prospect of this great new day. Under his breath he made guttural sounds, turning a phrase as he thought of his mother.

  “Sucker, he said, grinning. “What a sucker.”

  A slinking figure at the corner of the garage caught his attention. It was Johnny Stribling from next door. He was armed to the teeth, a rubber knife in his jaws, a rifle in his hands, and two Gene Autry .45s strapped to his hips. John Stribling was the sworn enemy of law and order in the West. Day and night he roamed the plains, shooting down constables, knifing sheriffs, ambushing marshals. For two weeks, since the beginning of summer vacation, Stribling had left a trail of blood and murder in his wake, his guns going ckh! ckh! with a movement of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.