The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

“You mean—we’ve been living in adultery all these years?”

  “We’ll be married after my baptism. It’s a lovely ceremony. We’ll be married to the end of our lives.” She smiled. “You won’t be able to divorce me, ever.”

  You do not argue with the mother of your coming child. You do the very best you can, and try to keep her happy. You have lost caste in her eyes, you are barely tolerated, the part you have played is little enough, she becomes the star of the show, and you are expected to knuckle under, for that is the way the script is written. Otherwise you might upset her, bringing anguish, and in turn upset the child.

  “What do you want me to do, darling? In your own words, tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

  “Father Gondalfo is coming to see you. He’s my instructor. I want you to talk to him.”

  Two days later Father John Gondalfo came to our house. That afternoon I found him sitting in the living room with Papa and Joyce. Father Gondalfo was the hard-boiled type. He had been a Marine chaplain in the South Pacific. For over an hour he had been waiting for me. Because of the heat, he had removed his coat, and he sat in a white T-shirt, the black hair of his beefy chest seeping through the weave of the shirt. He had the arms of a wrestler and kept himself in condition by playing handball against the wall of the parish garage. He was a young priest, no more than forty-two, with a dark Sicilian face, a broken nose, and a crew haircut. He looked like a guard or tackle from Santa Clara. The moment I saw him I realized he was, like me, of Italian descent, and the consanguinity quickly established a violent familiarity. He crushed my knuckles in a handshake.

  “It’s five-thirty, Fante. Where you been?”

  I told him, working.

  “What time you knock off ?”

  I told him, a little past four.

  “Four? Where you been, the last hour and a half ?”

  I told him, to Lucey’s for a highball.

  “Don’t you know your wife’s pregnant?”

  Joyce sat in a big chair, the great mound lolling indolently in her lap, her knees spread slightly to support it. She adored Father John. I sensed Papa’s admiration too, as well as a slight hostility toward me.

  “What’s wrong with drinking here in your own home?” Father John said. “With your wife and this great man who’s your father? Ever think of that?”

  I marveled at his shoulders, the black intensity of his eyes. “Sure, Father, I drink at home, lots.”

  “Time you got wise to yourself, Fante.”

  “Certainly, Father. But …”

  “Don’t argue with me, boy. You think I just come over on the ferry from Hoboken?”

  I didn’t want to argue with anybody. Looking at Joyce, I saw that she was caught up in the fervor of Father John’s vague admonition. At that moment she didn’t approve of me at all. Neither did Papa, who sat before a bottle of wine, wetting his lips and nodding sagely at the priest’s words.

  Father John smacked his mighty hands together, rubbed them hard, and said, “Well, let’s get down to business. Fante, your wife intends to join the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Any objections?”

  “No objections, Father.”

  And that was the simple truth. There could be no objections. I might wish it otherwise, I might hope that she postpone her desire for a while, but that was something else again.

  “And what about you? Your father here, this great and wonderful man, tells me that he sweated and toiled to give you a fine Catholic education. But now you read books, and, if you please, you write books. Just what do you have against us, Fante? You must be very brilliant indeed. Tell me all about it. I’m listening.”

  “I don’t have anything against the Church, Father. It’s just that I want to think …”

  “Ah, so that’s it! The infallibility of the Holy Father. So you want to know if the Bishop of Rome is really infallible in matters of faith and morals. Fante, I shall clear that up for you at once: he is. Now, what else is bothering you?”

  I crossed to Papa, took his bottle, and swigged from it. Father John’s sudden attack had me rocking on my heels, and I had to get matters quiet in my mind.

  “You see, Father. The Blessed Virgin Mary …”

  “I’ll tell you about the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fante. I’ll let you have it straight, without equivocation. Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived without sin, and upon her death ascended into heaven. Surely a man of your intelligence can understand that.”

  “Yes, Father. I will accept that for the moment. But in the mass, at the consecration …”

  “At the consecration, the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ. What else is eating you?”

  “Well, Father. When a man goes to confession …”

  “Christ gave his priests the power to forgive sins when he said, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.’ It’s right there in the New Testament. Read it yourself.”

  “I understand the words, Father. But in the doctrine of original sin …”

  “Ho! So that’s it! By original sin we mean that as children of our first parents we are conceived in sin and remain so until the glorious sacrament of baptism.”

  “Yes, Father. I know. But the resurrection …”

  “The resurrection? For heaven’s sake, Fante, that’s simple enough. Christ our Lord was crucified, and then rose from the dead, which is the promise of immortality for all of his children. Or do you choose to die like a dog, consigned forever to oblivion?”

  I sighed and sat down. There was nothing more to say. Papa cleared his throat, a small smile on his lips, as he raised the bottle. There was a curious warmth to his eyes. Ash from his cigar fell in gray disorder across his lap.

  “The kid reads too much, Father. I been telling him for years.”

  So it was “the kid” now.

  “But I like to read, Papa. It’s part of my trade.”

  “It’s them books, Father. Birth control, he told me himself.”

  “Birth control?” Father John smiled sadly as he shook his head. “I’ll tell you about birth control in the Catholic Church. There ain’t any.”

  “I told him, Father. I said, ‘I don’t like that stuff.’ It’s not the girl’s fault, Father. She’s a Protestant. She don’t know no better. But him: he told me. ‘I like to control my family,’ he told me that, coupla days ago. Me, his own father.”

  “I did say something like that,” I admitted. “But what I meant was this, Father. My income …”

  “You see?” Papa interrupted. “Nearly four years, they been married. Plenty time for two, a little boy and a little girl. My grandchildren. But are they here, Father? Go upstairs. Look in all the rooms, under the beds, in the closets. You won’t find them. Little Nicky and little Philomena. Nicky, he’d be about three now, talking to his Grandpa. The little girl, she’d be just walking. You see them around, Father? Go out in the back yard; look in the garage. No, you won’t find them, because they ain’t here. And it’s his fault!” Papa’s right forefinger, the one with the broken nail, shot toward me.

  “Stop it, Papa.”

  “I won’t stop it. I want to know, because I’m their Grandpa: Where’s Nicky? Where’s Philomena?”

  “How do I know where they are?”

  Joyce went over to Papa and sat down beside him. She spoke quietly, holding his big red paw. “There haven’t been any others, Papa Fante. Really and truly.”

  This was not the way to handle him, for he could wallow in sentimentality. Sure enough, he began to get grief-stricken, his chin jerking, his eyes suddenly wet. I tried to appeal to Joyce with my eyes. It was true that I had opposed pregnancy until we could afford it. It was also true that she had been willing to risk it without money. But I had never thought of those times as distinct human entities, or given them names, those unconceived babies, and now in Joyce’s face I saw the loss, the small despair, since Papa had stated it in that sentimental fas
hion.

  “I am talking with my blood,” Papa continued. “There’s two I’ll never see, but they’re here, someplace, and their Grandpa’s not feeling so good, because he can’t buy them ice cream cones.”

  He began to weep, poking his big knuckles into his eyes and pushing the tears away. He took another swig from the bottle and stood up, a mixture of many moods, wiping his mouth, puffing his cigar, crying, savoring the wine, pleased with his role of a despairing grandfather, yet brokenhearted because the babies were not present. Father John put an arm around him, hugging him with rough affection. They grumbled something of a farewell in Italian and Papa staggered upstairs to sleep off the wine, his chin out, his chest out, bravely up the stairs to his room, triumphantly up the stairs.

  We were silent a moment. Joyce dabbed her eyes and nose with a handkerchief.

  “It’s the wine,” I explained. “The wine makes him very sentimental.”

  “And you?” the priest asked.

  I shrugged. “I do the best I can.”

  “I wonder …”

  He had to leave us. Papa had saddened him. I helped him into his black serge coat and the three of us went outside and across the lawn to his car. We shook hands.

  “Watch your language around your father,” he cautioned. “He’s very sensitive.”

  “I know.”

  “I want you back in the Church.”

  “I’ll try, Father.”

  —Full of Life

  PEACE IN MY HOUSE, quiet, a time of great calm. She became another woman again. She was out of the fable now, out of the novels, a tale of motherhood, a woman in waiting. No more breaking of stones or mixing mortar. I never saw her so beautiful. She walked on quiet feet, a different perfume trailing after her. Every morning she went to early Mass. Every afternoon she visited the parish house for instructions. Father Gondalfo was rushing it a little, but it was at her insistence. In the evenings I walked with her to the church. She said the rosary, made the stations of the cross, or simply sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap.

  It was a strange time for me. I sat beside her, not able to pray, to articulate a feeling for Christ. But it all came back to me, the memory of the old days when I was a boy and this cool and melancholy place meant so much. From the beginning she had assumed I would return with her. It had seemed the right thing to do. Somehow I would capture the old feeling, the reaching out with the fingers of my soul and grasping the rich fine joy of belief. Somehow I had felt it was always there, that I had but to move toward it with only a murmur of desire and it would cloak me in the vast comfort of God’s womb. There was the scent of incense, the creaking of pews, the play of sunlight through stained-glass windows, the cool touch of holy water, the laughter of little candles, the stupendous reaching back into antiquity, the baffling realization that countless millions before me had been here and gone, that other billions would come and go through a million tomorrows. These were my thoughts as I sat beside my wife. These and the gradual realization that I had been wrong, that it was not easy to come back to your church, that the Church changeless was always there, but that I had changed. The drift of years had covered me like a mountain of sand. It was not easy to emerge. It was not easy to call out with a small voice and feel that I was being heard. I sat beside her, and I knew it would be very hard. Nay, I knew it would be almost impossible.

  I sat beside her and enjoyed the sensation of a new kind of thinking. For one’s thoughts were different here. Outside, beyond the heavy oak doors, you thought of taxes and insurance, of fade-outs and dissolves, you weighed the matter of Manhattans and Martinis, you suspected your agent of treachery, your friend of disloyalty, your neighbor of stupidity. And yet I could sit beside her before the altar, her small hands exquisite in green kid gloves, and I could adore her for the beauty of her effort, the striving of her heart, the mighty force that prompted her to be but a good woman, humble and grateful before God. I could sit beside her, my own lips dry for lack of words, I, the phrasemaker, and the pages of my soul were blank and unlettered, and I turned them one after another, seeking a rhyme, a few scattered words to articulate the fact that in this place I thought not of taxes and insurance, and my agent, my neighbor and friend were somehow disembodied, they assumed a spirituality, a beauty; they were entities and not beings, they were souls and not swine.

  Yet, in spite of it all, I was not ready. Born a Catholic, I could not bring myself to return. Perhaps I expected too much; a shudder of joyful recognition, the dazzling splendor of faith reborn. Whatever it was, I could not return. There before me was the road, the signposts clearly marking the direction to peace of soul. I could not take the road. I could not believe that it was so easy. I was sure that beyond the next hill lay trouble.

  —Full of Life

  SHE LAY IN A SMALL OCEAN OF PAIN, the vapors of her anguish clouding the room. She lay upon sheets wet and writhing with perspiration, her mouth distorted, her teeth clenched, her eyes like balls of white milk. At first she did not see me, but as I closed the door she lifted herself out of the waves of her suffering, her fingers clutching the iron bar across the top of the bed as she pulled herself into a sitting position. The white balloon was like an enormous blister, shimmering with pain, too heavy for the wild strength in her bloodless fingers. She panted in exhaustion, her breath coming in harsh jerks through lips twisted in torment.

  Then she knew I was there at the foot of her bed. She saw me with startled eyes. My heart went out to her in pity for the blinding pain. I could not find words of consolation, only the clich$eAs, the adumbrations and traps of futile language, the miserable inadequacies. As I stood there with a dry throat, pain seized her. Her knees came up and an animal cry, scarcely more than a suppressed howl, came from her lips. It had rhythm and could be measured, a thin coiling ribbon of noise drawn through her teeth. When it was over and the pain had spent itself, she sighed gratefully and pushed back a mass of wet disheveled hair, her eyes fixed at the ceiling. Then she remembered I was there.

  “Oh, I’m such a coward!” she moaned.

  “You’re nothing of the kind.”

  I went to her side. The bed was built like a large crib, with adjustable steel sides. As I bent over to kiss her, I saw her red mouth, the lips thick with the sensuality of pain. I saw the white avid eyes and her suffering overwhelmed me. But there was passion in her mouth, and she clung to me with such ferocity that it took all the strength of my thick wrists to break her arms away. She loved me, she moaned, she loved me, loved me, loved me.

  Then the pains took her again, sending her rolling from side to side, her knees up, her fingers pulling at the bar above her, the ribbon of anguish spilling out. As the suffering subsided, the white eyes beat about me like captured birds, and the pain reached me too, and I got a terrible stomach-ache. It nearly doubled me up. I backed into a chair and sat down. She was watching me.

  “You’re sick,” she said. “This whole thing has been too much for you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Drink this,” she panted, and she reached for a glass of water on the bed table. But the pains leaped at her as her hand went out, and she twisted and rolled, pouring out the ribbon of noise from her throat. It doubled me up in agony, but I didn’t cry out, I just moaned as a crazy upheaval went on inside me, the pain of green apples.

  “Darling,” she was saying. “Call the doctor. I know you’re sick!”

  “Me? I feel wonderful.”

  But I could see my reflection in the wall mirror, and I was white and popeyed and disgusted and enraged with myself.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she gasped. “I’m doing wonderfully. The pains have stopped altogether. Look!” She held out her arms, smiling.

  As I turned to see her, the pains were upon her again, and she struggled, her eyes softened now, full of tears, and when it was over again she covered her face with her hands and wept softly.

  “Oh, God!” she cried. “I can’t stand it much longer.”

  I would h
ave done anything for her, my two arms, my feet, my hands, my life, all of it I would have given to lessen one pang of her anguish, but there I stood, unable to endure a spasmodic bellyache that finally sent me staggering, doubled up, into the hall.

  Coming toward me was Dr. Stanley, and a nurse carrying a trayful of bottles and hypodermics.

  They looked at me without speaking. Dr. Stanley took a phial of pills from the nurse’s tray and tumbled one into his palm.

  “Take this,” he said.

  I swallowed it in a fast gulp.

  “My wife’s in bad shape, Doc.”

  They sailed past me into the room. I waited. My bellyache subsided. In a few minutes they emerged, the doctor rubbing his hands.

  “She’s coming along beautifully.”

  “I tell you she’s suffering terribly, Doc.”

  “Nonsense. She’s had scopolamine. She won’t remember a thing. We’re taking her to the delivery room.”

  When they rolled her out of the room and down the hall, I hung back at first, pressed against the wall, afraid my presence would disturb her. But as she floated past I saw that she was asleep. They must have given her something, for her eyes were closed and her face was transformed into an image of white loveliness. I walked down the corridor at her side. Once she moaned. It was the murmur of one who had achieved ineffable peace after hours in the storm. It brought peace to me too. Now I knew that all was well, that the baby would soon be born, and Joyce would be all right.

  I turned back to the waiting room. Papa sat in one of the big chairs, his arms folded, an iron silence holding him.

  “Soon now,” I said.

  “What?” he whispered. “Nothing yet?”

  “They’ve taken her to the delivery room.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re doing all they can.”

  This made him growl, and I knew he felt I was conspiring with the hospital to keep the baby from being born. He stared ahead, saying no more.

  A new crop of fathers sat in the waiting room, but their words were the same, the old wives’ tales out of the mouths of baffled men. I couldn’t stay there. Thinking of coffee, I left Papa in the waiting room and took the elevator to the hospital restaurant on the ground floor.