by Tillie
The hawker came crookedly, thrusting his box of wares ahead of him with a thigh. Then, when he was two seats away, Rilly jumped squarely into the aisle and shot at him twice from inside his pocket.
The hawker fell silently, a look of surprise on his face. His box of wares fell too, without a sound, and automatically Rilly stooped to help pick up the pencils, the chewing gum, the candy, the razor blades.
But nothing had happened; the gun had not fired. Rilly was frantic to find a burnt hole in the pocket of the new mackinaw. He sniffed the air for the relief the smell of gunsmoke would bring as it curled through the woolen fibers up to his nose. But there was no hole nor gunsmoke nor relief.
‘Razor blades,’ the hawker called, ‘razor blades.’
lxii
These little sketches never satisfied me and I never thought much of them. They were exercises and as such I did not show them to anyone. As I have said, I only hoped that one day one of them would provide the germ for a novel.
On two or three occasions, however, I did attempt a real short story. In my old pages I turned one up called ‘The House Where San Giuseppe Lives’. I can vouch for the authenticity of the characters and of the description of the house. The dilemma at the end is one that troubled me personally for years. Here is what I wrote:
The neatly-dressed old lady was explaining to the young man in heavily-accented English.
‘You see over here the window, nice. Over here sink, nice.’
She turned on the cold water; there was also a faucet for hot water but there was no hot water.
‘Over heresa doors, French doors, the beauty of the house, nice.’
She placed a gentle hand on the glassed doors, which had to remain open because they were too swollen to close properly. The young man noticed that the dull cream paintwork overlapped the edges of the glass panes by a good two inches.
The girl with him nodded understandingly. Her young man paid no attention to the old lady. He was studying the ceilings, pitted like moonscapes, and the gaudy flower-printed wallpapers, estimating the time it would take to paint over them.
‘See nice wallpaper, flowers, so beauty,’ the landlady said. ‘Everything clean, nice.’
‘What about the stove?’ the young man asked.
‘Ahdunno,’ the old lady breathed. ‘The gal who was live here before – she no was marry – she want to sell. Stufa è new. She was eat with la zia – the auntie – downstairs. No was cookin here. You want? I ask.’
The place, shown as three rooms, was really two and a quarter. The quarter, the young people figured, could be used as a closet, for the flat had no other storage space. The toilet was out in the hall at the head of the stairs. It had to be shared with the other family on that floor. They had recently come from Italy with their three children. None of them seemed to know how to use the cubicle correctly, for the floor was wet and stank. There were no facilities for bathing. The landlady made no mention of the toilet. She opened a window over the street and indicated an ample fire escape, which she called a balcony. On the floor below it was a clutter of potted plants – a big bushy basil, a horde of marigolds.
‘See, you can have them too the plants, nice. This is a good house. People all nice.’
The glass in the windows was speckled and edged with the bright red paint they’d used on the exterior sashes. It would have to be scraped off with razor blades.
‘See blines, they stay, they yours, nice.’
The young man looked down at the cheap, worn linoleum and on an impulse lifted one corner. A layer of brown newspapers was exposed. He read the date 1940, more than fifteen years earlier. The floorboards were dirty with silty sand and countless bobby pins.
‘What do you think?’ he asked the girl. ‘It’s better than anything else we’ve seen.’
He was non-committal. The rooms were on the top floor – the fourth. There was light and there was sun both front and back. The place was better than anything else they’d seen in the whole North End.
‘How much is the rent, signora?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-four dollars, that’s all.’
That was little, but so were the rooms, so was what he’d be getting.
‘We’ll let you know tomorrow,’ he said.
The little old lady snapped to attention. ‘You marry?’ she said. ‘Well, when you marry, you can put the bambìn in that room. Over here you put the parlor, nice. Sofa go over there.’
Just then a small, rotund man with a mustache came in. The landlady’s husband, he was red-faced with wine and was smoking a smelly stogie.
‘Albè,’ his wife said, ‘I’ma just tell them how nice people live here. All siciliàn. You siciliàn?’
‘No,’ the young man answered blankly.
‘No?’ They were disappointed – but only for a moment. ‘Well, that’s all right.’
The husband suddenly peered at the bride-to-be. ‘You wife iss taliàn?’ he asked.
But the young man did not have a chance to answer. The landlady wanted an end to the pleasantries, wanted to press another point so as to close the deal. ‘You say you been live on North Street,’ she said to the young man. ‘Well then, you go askin all the siciliàn ladies on North Street about la signora della case dove abita San Giuseppe.’
The house where San Giuseppe lives? What did she mean? She didn’t seem a religious fanatic.
On the way downstairs the husband held the young man back.
‘She’s americàn you wife?’ he whispered. ‘She’s a no cattòlic?’
‘No,’ the young man said.
‘She’s a change?’
‘No.’
‘But you no change too?’ It was half a fearful plea.
‘Religion doesn’t –’
To the young man’s relief the landlady broke in. ‘Hey, come on you two mens.’
The four gathered on the second-floor landing at the door of the landlady’s flat. She waited for her husband to produce the key.
‘You want to see my nice rooms?’ she asked sweetly. ‘They so beauty, you see. Anyway, you come in and see the saint. Come on, dolly,’ she said to the young woman, ‘you too.’
There was already one saint looking down on them in the semi-darkness of the hallway. It was the slant-eyed Santa Maria de Perpetuo Succursu, hanging over the door, framed in the center of a large, Gothic-lettered motto – God Bless Our Home.
They went in. The landlady took the young woman’s hand. The young man expected to be led into a crowded bedroom with a sickly-sentimental plaster statue of San Giuseppe on a cluttered dresser.
Instead, their hosts seated the young couple at an ample kitchen table. The landlady brought a small tray with a decanter and four miniature glasses.
‘You have a little glass?’
‘No, thank you.’ The girl smiled politely. The landlady filled two glasses.
‘Go head, dolly, is good for you.’
It was anisette. The young man drank his and finished the girl’s. Without leaving his chair, the landlady’s husband dragged a gallon jug of dark red wine out of a cupboard.
He poured himself half a tumbler.
‘I make,’ he said softly and proudly and a little as if he were clearing up a doubt. ‘I make myself.’
When the young man put down his liqueur glass, the old Sicilian filled him a stemmed glass of the red wine. Not a drop went astray from the heavy gallon bottle.
The young man tasted it. The wine was heady with alcohol and had a muscatel odor. His wife – by then to the old couple she was simply his wife even if there had not yet been a wedding – was given a small glass of the red wine.
The old lady brought out color photographs of her children. Three hulking Italian-looking boys, one in the uniform of a U.S. Marine. There followed the pictures of the grandchildren and the three ‘daughter-in-laws.’
The drink was going to the young people’s heads. They had not eaten since early morning. The landlady and her husband had recently finished lunch. A platter
of unfinished rigatoni, like a red crater, stood on a counter.
The young people were offered food. The platter of macaroni was whisked under their noses. They refused.
‘Why? Why you no eat? You no like? Look, they so nice. Albè is eat four time – yes, four dishes hisself.’
‘Grazie, signora, but we must be going. Grazie per tutto. Grazie tante.’
A large bowl of fruit appeared. A fat peach for the young man, a smaller one for his wife. Like a ritual, it could not be refused, could not be hurried.
The two young people got up to leave.
‘But you no see the saint, you two dollies,’ said the landlady, clasping her gentle hands together over her breast. It was like a sigh.
Now the bedroom, the young man thought. The claustrophobic feel of the house, something stuffed and crammed into every corner, weighed him down.
The landlady’s husband sat within reach of an enormous television. His wife told him to move aside so that she could get to a corner pantry that was fitted with an odd aluminum-and-glass storm door. He shuffled his chair out of the way. Tugging the two young people by the hand, the landlady unlocked the pantry.
Inside were no shelves, but strung around the door jamb were big Christmas lights of all colors. The old lady switched them on. Blue, chartreuse, silver balls dangled from the ceiling and reflected in miniature, on an infinite curve, the interior of the closet and a bit of the kitchen. The floor space of the little niche could have measured no more than two feet by three.
The walls were lined with crinkled aluminum foil. And in the middle of all this, enclosed in a great cellophane bag, stood a life-size plaster statue of San Giuseppe.
He was festooned with ribbons of one- and five- and even ten-dollar bills. Pictures of other saints – Saint Anthony with a blue pate and an oversized lily in his hand and the Byzantine-looking Sicilian saint of the hallway – were attached to the cellophane cocoon.
San Giuseppe stood with one relaxed leg slightly forward, his head bent pensively, showing off a great blue beard. His face had no particular expression. He held a weightless baby aloft and in the other hand an orb. Maybe, after all, he looked a bit tired, closet-weary. The baby looked old too and was completely naked except for a real gold bracelet that dangled from its fingertips.
‘Nice, nice,’ the young couple murmured, doing their best to make an exit.
Out on the street – it was really an alley – the two looked back in disbelief. A string of lights framed the arched doorway.
‘Had you noticed them before?’ the young man asked.
‘I thought they were Christmas decorations nobody bothered taking down,’ she said. ‘Shall we say yes to the place?’
‘Needs a lot of work,’ he said glumly.
‘It’s got sun and air. And it’s not expensive.’
‘Yeah, two-and-a-quarter rooms with built-in saint.’
‘For twenty-four dollars a month,’ she said.
He did not reply. When she pressed, he said, ‘Let me think it over.’
‘You mean no,’ she said, growing upset.
‘I mean I want to think it over.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s not your style.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like that saint suffocating in his Christmas niche. Did you? I didn’t like the old couple’s mindless piety, their tawdry beliefs. But most of all I didn’t –’
He couldn’t bring himself to repeat what the old man had said to him coming down the stairs. He too was now worked up and he didn’t want to have to explain further, didn’t want to have to tell her what really rankled. But certain memories had suddenly flocked in on him, and he found himself lashing out in anger. ‘In Italy …’ He did not want to go on. ‘They persecuted my grandmother because she wasn’t a Catholic. Priests drove my father out because he wouldn’t believe what they wanted him to believe.’ His vehemence bewildered her.
‘This is America,’ she said in dismay.
‘This is a backwater of Italy,’ he told her. Then, softening his tone, he said, ‘I’m not trying to make a stand.’ His words made him laugh. ‘Or maybe I am.’
lxiii
It was at this time, when Johnny first began addressing me as author, that he revealed in his younger years he too had tried his hand at writing. He had, in fact, once written a play. But Johnny was all tongue-in-cheek, and I was never sure how much to believe of what he told me on the few occasions when he spoke about himself.
We rarely conversed one to one, face to face. Nearly everything that passed between us was uttered on the firing line, there behind the counter, in the thick of battle. So a topic might be introduced and then, abruptly, get stalled, interrupted, or altogether broken off, never to be resumed or completed. Of Johnny I now lament that I knew so little.
He had a wife, a pretty woman, turning plump. I met her once. Did he have kids? He never spoke of any. He came in to work from Medford or Revere Beach, one of city’s northern suburbs. At work, to keep going, he required regular, steady, small intakes of fuel, but this was owing to the nature and unrelenting pressures of the job. He was never tipsy, and never once did I smell alcohol on him. He drank something called Green River whiskey.
So what follows, for what it’s worth, is the only intelligence I was able to glean on our frantic Fridays.
Remember that everything Johnny said was spoken at the same time both to me and to his waiting admirers. This is why I am not sure how trustworthy the facts are. Johnny always played to the crowd, and the good story, the tall tale, was all.
His play, an amateur suburban production, had been staged some years earlier. But because the story and the details changed with each telling I was never able to pin down whether he had actually written the play or had merely taken part in its production or performance. Johnny on stage – yes, I can believe that. Johnny the playwright – maybe, I wish, but I can’t be certain.
Anyway, the play, he always said, was called What Tillie Told the Tailor. In fact, I believed the title too good to be true, too good to be his. Besides, it rang a faint bell. But I never did any checking to establish once for all whether any such play existed, penned by someone else, or whether indeed it was Johnny’s creation. I have always cherished the presumed play and its perfect title, and so during all the years since I quit the North End I have elected to dwell in ignorance, where the play will forever be his. Indisputable. Inviolable. This is why I have not dared or even been tempted to purloin the exact title for these pages.
So what did Tillie tell the tailor? Who was Tillie? And who was the tailor? At first I liked to think the play was some sort of sophisticated bedroom farce. But I could never work it out and so I changed tack.
I tried to plot it. Tillie friends with the tailor. Tillie, tormented, confiding in him about something, about the ache in her heart for someone else. Meanwhile the tailor head over heels for Tillie. The ending poignant, bittersweet, neither gets the other.
But my forays into these dramatic exercises were futile. Behind Dave’s cold-cut counter, however, from that day forth, the day when Johnny first told us about Tillie and the tailor, I began returning his compliment and addressed him by his due honorific. Playwright.
‘Playwright, did you hear that?’ Tone suggestive, voice lascivious. ‘Did you hear what this lady just asked me about my salame?’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But in the end, when the curtain came down, was Patricia going to be Tillie and I the tailor?
lxiv
That morning she had let me sleep. She got dressed and vanished. Beside her pillow she’d propped a spike of rosemary. Rosemary for remembrance. On the sprig, one or two pale blooms were just opening. But it was the scent of her that I wanted, and I plunged my face deep into the place where her head had lain.
lxv
Apart from silly antics, something else was going on there behind the cold-cut counter. We too had our sticky fingers, we too practiced playing the typewriter. But in reverse. In U
ncle Dave’s favor.
If a customer asked for half a pound of this or that salame Johnny and I knew with a fair degree of accuracy how many slices that would amount to. But we always kept going, hacking off another four or five or more slices, so that when we eyed the reading on the scales we could tell the customer in all honesty that we had exceeded the mark. ‘A little over,’ we’d call out. Or, sometimes – it did not matter which – ‘a little under.’ It was this little over or little under that was the key to the scam. That and the fact that our prices were never in easy round numbers. Nothing cost, say, one dollar fifty a pound. It would be one forty-nine or one fifty-nine. Our scales could be read simultaneously by us and, from the opposite side, by the customer. If the price of salame were one dollar fifty a pound and I cut off exactly one pound there was no customer in the world who could be cheated. But if a pound of salame is priced one fifty-nine the pound and I have dozily overshot the mark and cut you off a little more than a pound, or a little less, not even an Einstein is going to be able to work it out.
What we were doing in fact was taking advantage of the deliberate obfuscation and adding on to the actual accurate price an additional several cents that could not be readily detected. We were cheating. By the end of the day, this cheating ran to a tidy sum.
Forget morals, forget conscience. Remember the nation’s financial heroes and benefactors, Morgan and Rockefeller and Ford and all those other barons and tycoons. Even the North End was America, where the proclaimed business of government is business. The North End was in fact the oldest part of America, and we were only exercising those three lofty ideals of Americanism, commerce, commerce, commerce, a concept sometimes vulgarly known as money, money, money.
But I was unable to do it to them all. Some of my customers, maybe ten or twelve, came over as just too decent. These I never fiddled.
lxvi
A grand, referring to money, is the common word for a thousand. But in the North End grand is always used in the plural. They say ten grands. Also half a grands.