[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  Everyone was busy working and determinedly moving about; the camaraderie among the players of the street scene predominated, broken only by the raising of angry voices among a couple of men in serious discussion at the door of the tailor shop. Children ran about between the carts, automobiles, trucks, and their elders. A bunch of boys tossed marbles at the curb while little girls pushed baby prams containing younger siblings, over whom they fussed like tiny mothers. Adolescent girls in bright sundresses lounged on stoops, riffling through movie magazines and dreaming of a future in pictures and becoming the romantic object of affection of Douglas Fairbanks. Every so often their eyes would drift over to the strapping gang of young men at the street-corner, a city crew digging with shovel and pickaxe toward the water main, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, forearm muscles tanned and speckled with sand and glistening from the sweat of their labors. Italian dialects and broken English and the accent of New Yorkers alternated in conversations as we walked out from under the relentless sun and into the dark entryway of the building, its street number matching the one scribbled on the scrap of paper that Giusto clutched in his hand.

  Once over the threshold, the heat seemed to pervade with a vengeance, and as we accompanied Giusto up the stairs to the fifth-floor apartment, at each landing the air grew more stifling. The heat and our exertion saw us pathetically dragging ourselves across the floor tiles of the top-floor hallway. We dripped unpleasantly. My hair had frizzed and was damply matted to my skull in a most unattractive way—I could tell by the expression on Mr. Benchley’s face when he recovered his breath and tossed a glance over at me, his moustache and eyebrows weeping.

  “Next time, dry off when you get out of the bath,” he puffed.

  “Next time, I’ll stay home in front of the fan with a good book.”

  The door opened before we could knock, and out flew a brown little black-haired boy with the bluest eyes imaginable, followed in close pursuit by two little heads of bouncing blonde banana curls and the pungent aroma of something burning. One of the girls dropped her ragdoll, which Mr. Benchley retrieved, and which she snatched out of his hand to race down the steps to catch up with her intended quarry. A tall, reed-thin man in his thirties brought up the rear of the passing parade, but instead of bolting through the open door, he reared back in surprise, flashed a great white grin, and flung his arms around young Giusto. He shouted over his shoulder within the apartment, and then turning back toward us upon the appearance of a very beautiful young woman, introduced himself as Lamberto Maggiorani and his wife, Lianella. She laughed with a brilliant smile, and indicated with extravagant sweeping gestures for us all to enter the apartment.

  “Our Giusto is arriv-ed!” said Lamberto, heading for a bottle of wine on a sideboard, filling glasses and raising his glass to toast the young Italian’s arrival in New York. “And tanks to ’is friends!” Then, remembering his manners, “Sit, please,” he said, indicating the chairs that encircled a small dining table.

  There was a brief exchange in Italian among the foursome, Lamberto shaking his head, Lianella leaving her dinner ministrations to lean, frowning, on the back of her husband’s chair as Giusto spoke with a fervent fluidity. I got the drift of what was being said through their hand gestures and their occasional glances to smile at me and my friend during Giusto’s compelling account of the past few hours. When the questions and answers had run their course, Giusto turned to me and Mr. Benchley: “You very kind peoples for help . . . me when come trouble.”

  “Yes,” added Lamberto, “we are fortunate Giusto is safe, not wid police, arrested. He not do any bad. Giusto is good boy,” he said, playfully slapping his brother’s face with a soft palm and then squeezing his cheek. Giusto blushed, but laughed at the show of affection. “Si, Giusto, he is good broth’.”

  Mr. Benchley and I sat there mutely in the little front room of the apartment, smiling benignly and watching as the exchange continued, looking like we’d been caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. The heat seemed to shimmer outside the opened windows. A fan whirred on top of a cupboard, barely stirring the air around the room, which held little more than the table and chairs, a sink, the stove, a small icebox, and a bathtub topped over with a sheet of plywood covered in yellow oilcloth. At the moment the plywood was leaning on its side to accommodate the laundry that was being hand-washed within. On the small stove something was frying, and Lianella left our little gathering and proceeded to scoop out and strain the contents of the frying pan. Bare-handed, she reached inside a bowl and pulled out some flour-covered morsels and dumped them into the frying oil. The sizzle sent tiny bouncing sprays of oil above the pan. She set to work preparing sliced tomatoes with other ingredients, and slid a loaf of crusty bread onto a cutting board. And then I spotted the source of the pungent burning smell that hit me when we entered. Lianella had been roasting red peppers directly over the flame on the stove top, for now she began to peel away their charred skins.

  A flash of color drew my eyes out the window to a bobbing clothesline, moving along a squeaky pulley, one of a dozen ropes cross-hatching through the air; sheets and shirts and towels and curtains waving and dangling like soggy flags of nations at a World Exposition, hung out to dry several stories deep over a courtyard. Music, peculiar to this humanity-swollen quarter of Manhattan, echoed within the canyon created by the neighboring tenements and poured in through the open windows: a woman’s sing-song call to her neighbor across the way, the cry of a baby, the whine of a police siren, the barking of dogs, music from the radio, and children’s screams of delight and dismay. No very tall buildings around to absorb the noise, no wide streets to disperse the racket of daily commerce. Here, people couldn’t afford the quiet, staid conduct demanded of the Upper East Side mansions’ residents, or the elegantly muted strains that wafted through the newly fashionable Central Park West community. Down here, life was an honest chore, a down-to-earth proclamation of hardship, the loud determination for survival, and the resounding belief that in America all could be accomplished through hard work and resolve. The heterogeneous mix of cultures and customs is what feeds innovation in our city, in our nation. The constant influx of new blood, like youthful aspirations, builds and strengthens us, and the influence of all the best we have to offer is celebrated; it’s what makes New York and America so great.

  I felt instantly at home in the little apartment with its unpretentious appointments. There had been an attempt to brighten the sad condition of the cracked and chipping plaster along walls that were in desperate need of paint and repair. A colorful poster, slightly beaten around its edges, from a production of Carmen at La Scala hung unframed on the wall. There were blue gingham curtains flanking the apartment’s two windows and shorter ones wrapping around the sink and small work area. Above a narrow backless couch—probably doubling as a bed—the Virgin Mary looked on lovingly at the baby Jesus balanced on her arm, his face and demeanor that of a bald old man gazing up with pointed finger toward the Heaven He was soon to enter. A crucifix hung on a nail over the front door. Between the two windows a small braided cross made of dried palm leaves brought home from church last Palm Sunday was stuck in place atop a framed picture of Jesus holding His Sacred Heart, an image from my childhood that always frightened this Jewish girl ever since I first caught sight of it at the Blessed Academy, where my Christian stepmother insisted I attend school. Still, all in all, despite the religious images—or perhaps because of the religious conviction held by the couple—and the loving way they had tried to make a cheery home, I felt perfectly at home. Truth is, I envied them a little. In many ways, they had much more than I had. Sure, I had a slew of brilliant and famous friends, was the toast of any social scene, read my name and the witty things I’d said in the daily columns, attended opening nights, hung out in the piéd-a-terres of the rich and famous, was a best-selling poet, toured Europe with Hemmingway and the Fitzgeralds. Sure, I was the embodiment of all the qualities the modern young graduate from Vassar wished to emulate. But
I lived alone in a small, furnished two-room suite at the Algonquin Hotel, and nobody, no man, that is, ever really loved me. Lamberto and Lianella were obviously in love, and poor as they might be, they were together in their journey. That is really something to be envied.

  Soon appeared at the doorway to an adjoining room an elderly man who buttoned the top button of his shirt when he saw me, lifted the suspender that hung at his side, and ran his fingers over his bald head as if through the ghost of a full head of hair, proving that old habits die hard. He smiled, and after Lamberto had introduced him as his father-in-law, Mario Corelli, there began a series of hugs, kisses, back-slaps, and face pinching and other affectionate assaults upon the young Giusto.

  The little boy who had run out from the grasps of the two little blonde girls returned with an appeal composed of English and Italian phrases for a penny with which to buy a stick of Turkish taffy. He hung on his mother’s skirt, pleadingly, and after first trying to discourage him, which didn’t end his incessant appeal, she decided to ignore him as she went about her business at the sink. Finally, with a jovial laugh and a sweep of his arm, Lamberto lifted him off his feet and presented him to his brother.

  “Questo e il tuo Zio Giusto, Enzo, guarda! Zio Giusto, your uncle from Italy!”

  After hugs and kisses between uncle and nephew, Lamberto slipped a coin from his vest-pocket and pressed it into the boy’s hand. A slap to the child’s rear-end (these people were not at all shy about physical contact, judging by all the slapping and patting and kissing and pinching they indulged in), and then instructions were shouted at the child as he sprang out from the apartment on his mission. The brothers smiled lovingly after him.

  Now that we had delivered our wayward young Italian, Mr. Benchley and I thought it was time to depart. We stood to leave. But Lianella indicated that we should stay. Mr. Benchley and I began making our excuses, but the men joined in and were insistent that we remain for lunch. Lamberto said, “Pleez, we want you ’av meal wid us, simple, not fanzy, though.”

  “Oh, thank you, but, we don’t want you to bother—” I said, taking in their poverty, thinking that they didn’t need our big mouths to feed, too. But to decline would have meant insulting their hospitality. It was expected that we stay and break bread with them. It was their way of thanking us for delivering Giusto into their care. Lianella began setting the table while Lamberto refilled our glasses with the excellent wine. The pretty woman moved proudly about, her spine straight, putting the finishing touches on the meal, removing her apron to fold and then hang from a hook. Lamberto spoke about Giusto’s near arrest as Lianella carried a huge bowl of what she had been frying to the table.

  “My broth’, Giusto, ’e is yong, and nev’ should ’af take mony from lady stranger. I write ’im no talk wid stranger. Get on train, com’ a New York and we get ’im job in bakery make pastries wid me.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen each other?” I asked.

  “O-most nine year, I come ’ere. Si, nine year. Giusto just piccolo bambino,” he replied, fussing over his brother, telling him to sit in one of the chairs at the table.

  “Ho ventuno anni.”

  “Yes, you twenty-won years old, now! You work in bakery, go night school, learn English, make nice life, marry bella ragazza . . . .”

  “Madonna! One step at a time!” said Papa Corelli.

  Lianella chuckled, placed the bowl of sliced tomato wedges covered with olive oil and seasoned with herbs on the table, and then carried over a huge crusty loaf of bread, which Papa sliced into great chunks. “From bakery,” said Lamberto, patting the wonderfully yeasty loaf. “I bake.”

  As Lamberto continued to speak, from the icebox Lianella carried to the table a wedge of cheese on a plate, and fresh mozzarella wrapped in layers of cheesecloth. She looked over her table, went to fetch a serving spoon, and then pulled over a wooden bench for her seat at the table. She urged us to dig in, and we gratefully did partake of the incredible fried squid, roasted red peppers salted and sprinkled with olive oil, the delectable summer-ripe tomato salad, into which we dunked ripped-off chunks of bread, and the golden, nutty parmesan cheese we cut from the block. The freshly made mozzarella literally melted in my mouth, and I piled a slab of it atop bread with a red-pepper topping. Heaven! It’d been a long time since I had eaten such a veritable feast of simple, yet intensely flavored foods. Suddenly, Italian food became my favorite kind, and would be for the rest of my life!

  Lamberto, with the occasional comment from Lianella, told us that he came to the States soon after the War—Italy’s economy was in shambles, there were political battles being waged, labor was struggling for better wages, and the bosses began taking benefits away in order to make bigger profits for themselves. Now the Black Shirts were terrorizing hard-working men and women. When he passed through Ellis Island and set foot in Manhattan, he knew no one here from the Old Country, and although he was helped early on by acquaintances he made within the Italian community, he had to take the only work he could find, that of a ditch digger. “I work pic-shov! Ten, fourteen hours day. Break-back work, kill even strong man.” After enduring three years of hardship—at low wages—he took work in a factory six days a week for the paltry sum of nine dollars a week. “Get sick, or don’t work Sunday, you get fire-ed.” Then a year at the fish market down on Fulton, where he met Mr. Castelli, who owned a little restaurant on Mulberry Street. Castelli liked to go and buy the fish for his restaurant himself; it was odd, of course, that he didn’t let the chef do it. But, he was a Sicilian, the son of a squid fisherman, and he knew best what fish he wanted served. Lamberto and Mr. Castelli soon discovered they were both natives of Agrigento. They even had friends in common. This forged an instant bond, and Castelli proceeded to make it his business to help Lamberto advance successfully in his new country. A man in his forties, he had no children of his own. He had no wife, for the woman he loved would not leave Italy with him as her father had objected to the marriage, calling Bernardo Castelli a dreamer who would be the ruin of his daughter should she go on this misadventure to the barbaric country across the sea! That Bernardo Castelli proved himself a success—he did, after fifteen years in America, have his very own restaurant in New York City—would have made little difference to the father of his beloved. The old man had died soon after Bernardo’s departure, but not before wedding his daughter to the village tailor. So in many ways the young man and the older restaurateur helped each other. They adopted one another as friend, son, mentor, and confidant. America had been good to Bernardo; he’d made a success of his venture in the New World. And Bernardo Castelli was as good as his word, happy to share his good fortune by helping a fellow countryman make his own. As Lamberto had trained as a baker in Italy, and although there were few jobs and many bakers on both continents, Bernardo decided to expand his restaurant, and next door opened a bakery. This decision made Bernardo a wealthy man, for he contracted his bread to restaurants around the city. Lamberto was in charge and earning a good living. “In two, three year, I buy house in Long-a Island near sea. I miss sea. So I buy house by sea in Long-a Island.” And then, from out of left field, he said, “Vanzetti and Sacco dead, now, you hear?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Benchley, nodding grimly.

  And as if he held some sense of guilt for his rising success while watching compatriots struggling, Lamberto said, “I send for Giusto. In Italia, it very bad. Mussolini, who long time ’go say he want to help poor worker, turn back on dem, come si dice? Sell out? He sell out to rich men own factories, take mony to make himself power, power-ful! He lead i fasci di combattimento—polizia—like police—beat, put in jail, kill labor and socialista and communists. We call dem fascista.”

  “Forgive me,” I interrupted—they had just fed me a most incredible feast, and I sensed these were gentle people, whatever their political beliefs. “Giusto told us he is an anarchist—”

  “Si, yes, he believe in worker be pay enoof to feed family, live good after hard work
all day. Who don’t tink dat? Me, I agree, but America system has been good for me and Lianella. But many amici—friends—they not so much success-a-ful. Dey only can work to make richer da rich man, da big capitalist! But, we no Dago Red, like some. No!”

  Giusto watched the intense volley of words back and forth across the table with wide-eyed interest, if confusion. His hair was very dark, almost black, and in spite of the heat he’d hardly broken a sweat. It was then that I saw how very good-looking the young man was—spare, his features chiseled into fine angularity. Age and experience would try their best to ruin him, but I doubted they’d succeed, for he was just the type to benefit from their influences, his face becoming more richly etched, less the boy and more the man, handsome instead of sweet.