“Why should he care about me?” Nilo asked.
Rocco put his arm on Nilo’s shoulder once again; this time Nilo did not cringe.
“Maybe he’s just kind. Anyway, he said to give you this if you survived the voyage,” Rocco said, and handed Nilo a small folded piece of cardboard. “It is the address of his New York City office. I believe he sells real estate, among other things. He said that when you need work or advice or money to call him. He knows how hard it is to get started in New York. Especially if you’re Sicilian.”
Nilo jammed the cardboard into his pocket and murmured his thanks.
“Good. Now the news you’ve been waiting for. The captain says you are finished on this ship. Free to go. Welcome to America.”
Nilo stood uncertainly for a moment, not sure what to do next. Then he mumbled a quick thank-you and hurried below deck to gather up his seabag. But when he came back onto the deck, Rocco was still there.
“Do you know where you are going?” he asked.
“I have an address,” Nilo said.
“Ah, but you cannot read, can you? Not even a simple address. Is that not right?”
For a moment Nilo considered lying and then told the truth.
“No,” he said. “Not English. I cannot read. Or write.”
“You Sicilians are all alike,” Rocco said with a laugh. “Then how will you get where you are going?” Rocco demanded. “Have you ever been in New York before?”
“No. But I thought I would take a taxi. Taxi drivers can read. They know New York. They will take me where I want to go.”
“Of course they will. After they swindle you out of every penny you have somehow gathered up.”
“I wouldn’t let them do that,” Nilo said in a flat voice.
Rocco studied him for a moment. Nilo was just nineteen and still almost pretty, even though six months of hard work and regular eating at sea had packed meat and muscle onto his bones.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Rocco said finally. He pulled a massive old pocket watch from his peacoat and looked at it.
“Listen, boy, I’ve got some time, so let me help. I’ll get you to your address. It will be my welcome-to-America Christmas present for you.”
Despite the freezing weather, Rocco insisted upon walking so Nilo could get a look at his new city, and it took more than an hour before they turned off Spring Street and down Crosby.
Nilo was amazed at how many people were out in the street. In Sicily, after dark, only criminals and ghosts could feel at home in the narrow streets.
Rocco watched the building numbers closely, and when they reached the corner of Broome Street he pointed at a redbrick building of four stories that housed a grocery and a barbershop on the ground floor.
“You are here,” Rocco said.
“Thank you,” Nilo answered. “I hope I see you again.”
“You never will,” Rocco answered. “I am just a simple sailor whose life is at sea. But I’m sure I will hear of you. Merry Christmas.”
As Rocco walked quickly away, Nilo went into the building, hoisted his seabag on his shoulder, and started up the stairs. The apartment he wanted was on the top floor. Throughout the building, he could hear people singing and instruments playing and the smell of food cooking and loud laughter. Women’s laughter. Nilo suddenly felt very homesick. He took a deep breath, then knocked, loud and long.
The door opened slowly, and a tired, happy-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-forties looked out. In the room behind him, Nilo could see an enormous Christmas tree, gaily decorated and lit with flickering live candles. He had never seen a Christmas tree before, and he stared at it until the man cleared his throat and Nilo looked back at him. The man’s eyes seemed familiar to Nilo, but the thick muscular shoulders, discernible under his heavily starched white shirt, gave the impression of a man not to be trifled with. The pleasant look on his face had also seemed to fade, as if he had been expecting someone else and did not bother to hide his disappointment at seeing Nilo.
“Excuse me for intruding,” the young man said quickly in his Sicilian dialect. “I am looking for Anthony Falcone.”
“And who wants him?” the man demanded. He seemed to reach behind the door for something. There was a mirror at the end of the long entryway to the apartment, and in it Nilo could see the man put his hand on a revolver that hung from a holster draped over a strange-looking piece of furniture. It did not surprise Nilo; in his hometown, doors were often answered gun in hand.
“I do,” he answered crisply.
“And who are you?”
“I am the son of his younger sister, Maria,” Nilo said.
The man at the door looked at Nilo hard for a few long seconds, then said softly, “I’ll be damned.” He shouted aloud over his shoulder, “Hey, it’s little Danilo, all grown up and come to America,” and then stepped forward to embrace his nephew.
* * *
IT WAS AS IF THEY HAD BEEN EXPECTING him and planned a party for his arrival, Nilo thought later. His uncle Tony ushered him into a large kitchen, where a big metal-topped table had been set with five places and platters were heaped with food.
He was introduced to his aunt Anna and then his cousin Justina. They both looked disappointed, too, although in the case of Justina it was harder to discern, since she was simply the most beautiful girl Nilo had ever seen and disappointment did not rest naturally on her face. She was probably a little younger than Nilo and dressed in a long skirt and white blouse that did nothing to hide her bosom. While his aunt Anna hugged and fussed over him, Nilo had trouble taking his eyes off Justina, who sat watching him. She had light skin and wide-set green eyes. She seemed to measure him with interest but glanced down shyly at the table whenever their eyes happened to meet.
“I am sorry,” Nilo told his aunt, gesturing around the kitchen. “I have interrupted you.”
“Nonsense,” his uncle said. “We’ve always got room at this inn,” then led him into a bedroom, showed him a closet where he could hang his clothes and a bathroom where he could wash up.
“Take your time,” Uncle Tony said. “We’ll hold supper for you.” Nilo felt better after he had washed up and changed into clean clothes, but he was taken aback when he reentered the kitchen and saw a priest sitting with the rest of the family at the table. The priest was a burly young man with large, meaty hands. His hair was already thinning, even though he could not yet be thirty years of age.
Nilo had grown up regarding priests as part of the official government and therefore not totally to be trusted. Why is he here? Have they called him in to question me, to find out if I am really Danilo Sesta?
He nodded uncomfortably toward the man in the clerical collar, but the man bounded to his feet, came to Nilo, and threw his arm around him. Nilo’s discomfort must have been obvious, because he could see a broad smile cross Justina’s beautiful face.
The smile annoyed him. She is looking at me as if I were not a man but a child. And I am clearly older than she is.
“Father, I…”
“Forget ‘Father.’ I am your cousin, Mario,” the priest answered. “And I am starved after serving Mass all day and all night. So sit down and let us eat before the food gets cold and Mama tells us it is all spoiled.”
After months of eating unappetizing shipboard gruel, Nilo found the meal a feast beyond imagining. At first he was uncomfortable, eating in the presence of a priest, but Father Mario, who waved a drumstick around in one hand to punctuate his conversation—which seemed oddly to concern itself mostly with professional prizefighting—put him quickly at ease. Especially when he pulled Nilo up from the table and helped him arrange his fists in a boxing position, then demonstrated for his father, Nilo’s uncle Tony, a devastating left-right combination to Nilo’s stomach, which had apparently decked some hapless pugilist somewhere. Even though the priest pulled his punches and did not really hit him, Nilo was surprised and a little shocked at the display. He learned only later in the dinner that Father Mar
io, before taking the vows of priesthood, had been a boxer of some local renown, even winning eight professional prizefights. Apparently, at the nearby church where he was assigned, he had begun a boxing team for local boys.
“Fighting? In church?” Nilo asked with surprise.
“See, Papa?” Mario said. “That’s what the monsignor thinks, too. But I think if I can get the kids to fight inside a ring, maybe I can cut down the amount they’ll be fighting in the streets.”
“Good luck,” the priest’s father said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Most of those mugs are Irishers. They’ll be fighting in the street anyway. Irishmen were born brawling in the streets.”
“That’s the trouble with you, Papa. You’re stuck in the old ways of thinking. Wake up. In a couple of days, this’ll be the 1920s.” He looked back toward Nilo. “I might get you over there to the church, too,” the priest said. “You look to me like you might be able to handle yourself pretty well.”
Nilo blushed. As he mumbled a response, Mario asked, “You ever fight?”
Not unless you count the three men I killed before leaving home, Nilo thought, but answered instead with a simple shake of his head.
“Well, plenty of time to learn,” Father Mario said. “I taught my brother Tommy; I can teach you.”
“Will you all leave the boy alone?” Aunt Anna said. “All this talk of fighting. It’s like living with gladiators. Stop talking. Eat, eat.”
After sitting with the family for a while, Nilo figured out the reason for their disappointment. Apparently, the Falcones’ other son, Tommy, who had been injured in the war, was expected home any day, and when they heard Nilo’s knock on the door they had hoped, although without real expectation, that Tommy had returned early in time for the holiday.
For his part, surrounded by the warmth of a family for perhaps the first time in his life, Nilo spoke of his boyhood in Sicily. He was amused to learn that Justina’s command of Italian was spotty, and Father Mario and the Falcone parents served as translators so the two young people knew what each other was talking about.
He did not tell them the real reason for his leaving home, commenting only that he thought it was time for him to get out into the world. When later in the dinner he found out that Tony Falcone was a New York policeman—which explained the gun hanging in the hallway—he knew he had acted wisely in keeping his secrets to himself.
After they had eaten and drunk wine and dark Italian coffee and then more wine, they all went inside to the living room, where Tony Falcone lit even more candles on the ceiling-high Christmas tree that took up half the room. When Nilo sat on the sofa, Justina shyly approached him and handed him a gift-wrapped box.
Her smile lit her face and his heart. “For you,” she said. “For Christmas. From all of us.”
“But … I have nothing for any of you.”
“You’re here. That’s gift enough for Italians. We’re big on family,” Father Mario said heartily.
“Open it, open it,” Justina insisted.
Nilo opened the box. Inside was a white shirt and a dark blue tie. It was the first dress shirt and tie he had ever owned.
“I don’t know what to say. You did not even know I was coming.” He looked around at all of them. His uncle Tony said, “We really bought it for Tommy. But we’ll get him another one.”
“Oh, Papa,” Justina said. “You take all the fun out of it.” She looked at Nilo for support, but he only shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It’s all fun.”
Near midnight, when Father Mario was getting ready to leave, Nilo asked if they knew a nearby hotel or place where he could rent a room, but his aunt and uncle would have none of it.
“I have money,” he insisted.
“Good,” Aunt Anna said. “Hang on to it; you’ll need it.”
“You have money,” said Tony, “but we have room. What kind of family are we if we turn you out into the street?”
“You can stay in Tommy’s room,” Justina said, and her father added, “And when Tommy gets home, then we’ll see how things work out.”
* * *
LATER, NILO LAY IN TOMMY FALCONE’S BED, exulting in the silence. He had been aboard ship so long that the drone of the ship’s powerful engines was a constant, day and night, and the ear became so adapted to it that the mind eventually forgot to recognize it as noise. But here now, it was like being back in Sicily. The apartment was still, and from the street below, at this early morning hour, came not a sound. He could hear his own breathing, and that realization brought a smile to his face.
America, he had decided, was a wonderful country. His uncle was a simple policeman, but he lived like a king, wearing a suit, with a priest in the family, living in an apartment that had three bedrooms. No one in Sicily, save for the Mafia and the politicians, lived like that.
It is what I will do. I will become the best of Americans and I will be rich and honored like my uncle Tony.
He wanted to dwell on that, to roll around in his mind the thought of how well the New York Falcones lived, but he was very tired. And besides, it was difficult to think of anything else except Justina. The thought that she was now in her own room, lying in a bed only a scant few feet from him, almost made him ache with anticipation.
Maybe she is awake, too, thinking of me. Someday, someday …
He could not finish the thought; it would have been ungrateful to his uncle. He fell asleep and dreamed of her.
* * *
IN EXPECTATION OF HIS SON’S RETURN home, Tony Falcone had arranged with other detectives to cover his shifts so he was off for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s. Justina was also on vacation from school, so the two of them were free to act as Nilo’s guides to New York City.
For two busy days, the three of them traveled around their neighborhood and the rest of the city, showing Nilo the landmarks, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, Madison Square Garden, Central Park, even a tour of Tony’s police precinct. Aunt Anna was dutifully invited to join them on their outings but regularly refused. She seemed always to have something to do, either in the kitchen or at the neighborhood parish.
They were two days of wonderment for Nilo. He had known the United States was big, but until he saw the buildings of New York City he had not realized just how big it was or just how far he had come from his little hometown in Sicily. He also savored the opportunity to be near Justina—in fact, often wishing that Uncle Tony might find something else to do so the two young people could spend some time alone, but that clearly was not to be. Still, they were two wonderful days.
On the third day, Tommy Falcone returned home.
* * *
FROM WHAT HE HAD BEEN TOLD about Tommy’s wounds, Nilo had expected some kind of crippled war veteran, but the young man he met looked the picture of health. He was a little older than Nilo and a little bigger, and like everyone else in the family he seemed sincerely happy to meet a relative from the old country. While neighbors kept streaming into the Falcone apartment to welcome Tommy home from the war, his American cousin always took pains to make sure that Nilo was not left out and was always included as part of the Falcone family.
This is what it must be like to have an older brother, Nilo thought. And it would be hard to find a better one.
Or a better family than the Falcones, for that matter. While they celebrated Tommy’s return home, they never forgot Nilo, the guest in their house.
After a couple of days rest, Tommy took over the tour-guide duties from his father and Justina, and while they had shown Nilo the tourist attractions, Tommy promised to show the young Sicilian “the real city.” He walked Nilo around lower Manhattan and pointed out the railroad yards where as a young boy he stole coal, the piers where the neighborhood kids would go to smoke cigarettes and not be found out, and where they would cool off by illegally swimming in the polluted river.
Not too far from the Falcones’ apartment, he showed Nilo a neighborhood that even to
the foreigner’s eye was clearly a decrepit, dangerous slum.
“People live here?”
“And die,” Tommy answered. “This is the Five Points. For a hundred years, the worst spot in the city. When my father was a rookie cop, he used to patrol here.”
“Rookie?” Nilo said.
“Young. A beginner. Like you. You’re a rookie American,” Tommy said with a grin. “Everything here was crooked. There were almost three hundred saloons and more whorehouses and dance halls than that. The whole place was run by the most vicious gangs in New York.”
“And now?”
“Now it looks a little better. From what I hear, the mobs around here are dying out because there’s not that much business for them. But I still wouldn’t want to live here.” He looked around. “When we were kids, we used to come over, just to watch the weird drunks and women and just the general filth.”
He stopped and pointed to an empty lot down the block. “There used to be a brewery there. It made beer once and then they closed it down, I guess because it was too filthy. So they made it into a tenement, and the police said that they figure five thousand people were killed inside the building over the years. The cops used to have to go in forty or fifty strong or they’d never come out alive. When they got ready to tear it down, they forced everybody out of the building. Some of the kids who came out had never been out of the building before. They were afraid of the sunlight ’cause they’d never seen the sun.”
“You are making a joke with me, aren’t you?”
“No, Nilo, I’m not. That’s the way it was. Things are better now. They get better all the time.”
“I hope so,” Nilo said grimly. “You make living in America sound like being in hell.”
They wandered together over to Father Mario’s church in Greenwich Village and found the young priest in a large basement recreation room that had been outfitted with a boxing ring. Stripped to an undershirt and priestly black pants, he was in the ring, a heavily muscled formidable figure wearing boxing gloves and showing a half-dozen awkward looking young teenagers the way to move around the ring.
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