by John Fante
Coletta dropped her eyes and wouldn’t answer.
“Look, Dino. Let me show you.”
Papa’s arm went around Coletta’s shoulder, pulling her against him. “You see? You don’t have to kiss a woman, Dino. All you have to do is show them who’s the boss. And not a cockroach.”
Dino raised his wine glass, sipped, and blinked his eyes in amusement. Plainly Papa’s advice was having no effect. This enraged him. He jumped out of his chair, rushed over to Dino, and, with arms outstretched and fingers trembling under Dino’s nose, he pleaded in Italian.
“Dino Rossi, in the name of San Rocco, get some sense. I am your beloved friend, Dino. This is Guido Toscana talking to you, one who loves you more than life itself. I would give you my tongue, tear it out by the roots, if you asked. I am trying to help you, Dino. Awake, Dino! Avanti! Do not snout about the highways and byways looking for a mate. I have found her for you, Dino. She is here before you, a flower from the hills of Sorrento. Act, Dino. This is your friend talking to you, Guido Toscana who knew your stupid mother, your worthless father, and your idiotic brothers.”
This was too much for Coletta. She arose and demanded that Papa shut up. With lean cat-like strides she crossed the room and stood with her hands on her hips, her lips in an indignant pout. Papa was on his knees before Dino, and as she spoke he sat back on his heels to listen.
“I think I’ve got something to say about this,” she said. “I happen to be a decent woman, and not the kind to throw herself at the feet of any man who comes along.”
“You see what you’ve done, Dino?” Papa said. “Insulted her. Made a fool out of her.”
Dino reddened.
“But I—”
“But—nothing!” Papa said, “Friend or no friend, I ought to punch you in the nose.”
“Don’t you dare!” Coletta said.
It made Papa speechless, confused.
“Please, dear lady,” Dino said, his hands out, “I ask you to forgive me. I am so worthless, so rude. I meant no offense. It is only that I do not wish to—”
“There he goes!” Papa said. “He’s off again. He wants you to forgive him. That’s all he knows: forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.” Papa chanted it sarcastically. It hurt Dino. He stared at the floor and chewed his lips.
“Forgive me! He’s been saying that ever since he was born. Fifteen years ago he tried to marry my wife.” Papa laughed in scorn. “Him! Trying to take a woman away from me! He was saying the same thing: forgive me, forgive, forgive. I forgived him, all right! I took Maria right out from under his nose—that’s how I forgived him!”
It was like a stiletto between Dino’s ribs. He twisted in his chair, the cords in his neck standing out like ropes. Then I saw his eyes, and he was crying. Papa looked at Coletta in astonishment. She too was surprised. Dino sobbed and dropped his head to his chest, trembling out his misery.
“Poor Dino,” Coletta said. “You’ve hurt him.”
From behind she twined her long arms around him. “Poor Dino, poor, poor Dino.” She put her cheek against his, her throat at his neck. “Poor Dino, poor gentle Dino.” Papa studied them suspiciously. Coletta’s finger went in and out of Dino’s hair. Her voice crooned in his ear, and a long sigh came from Dino. He closed his eyes and relaxed in her arms.
“That’s the boy, Dino!” Papa said. “That’s the way to do it.”
At once Dino broke again, sobbing into his hands. Coletta tried to comfort him, but he wept without shame. Coletta shook her head, and Papa was full of impatience.
“What the hell’s he crying for?”
It brought spasms and chokes from Dino. Through drowning eyes he looked at Papa bitterly. Coletta’s handkerchief fluttered as she dabbed away his tears. He smiled and raised his face to her.
Coletta said: “You’d better go, Guido.”
Papa had already picked up his hat. Dino protested that Papa should stay, and while they got into a fierce argument about it I jumped the fence to the alley and ran down the street. I was home in five minutes. It was a warm night; there was a moon. I found Mamma sitting in the rocker on the front porch. She stood up when I turned into the yard.
“Where’s Dino?” she said.
“I couldn’t find him.”
Half a block down the street we heard heels clicking and the whistling of “La Donna è mobile.” Along came Papa, swaggering home. I hurried inside and watched from the front door. Papa and Mamma looked at each other, but they didn’t say anything. Then Papa sat down on the porch steps and Mamma went back to the rocker. For an hour they were outside in the moonlight. Crickets chirped, and now and then a car swooshed by, but Mamma and Papa never said a word about anything. They came inside together and went to bed together, and still they didn’t say a word.
It was three days later that they spoke to each other again. It happened so casually that we scarcely noticed it. We were all at dinner, everyone eating and nobody talking, when Mamma’s eyes searched the table for something. The bread plate was at Papa’s elbow. He saw her looking around, but he didn’t seem to care. Then it happened.
“Guido,” Mamma said, “please pass the bread.”
Papa looked around, pretending to be very confused. “The bread? You said bread?” He glanced over his shoulder and all around the room, as though the bread had legs and was about to stumble through the door. “Oh, the bread! Sure, the bread. Here it is, right here.” He passed it to her, and from that instant the whole house seemed to lift itself back to life like a dying person who had at last opened his eyes and would survive after all.
“This is good cabbage,” Papa said. “You put bay leaf in it?”
“A little bit,” Mamma said. “Personally, I don’t believe in too much bay leaf. I prefer rosemary. But you have to be awfully careful with rosemary. Sometimes you put too much in and it ruins everything. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.”
“You’re right,” Papa said. “Absolutely. You know what I like? I’ll tell you.” He pinched his fingers to denote a very small amount. “I like oregano. Just a pinch of it. I think you ought to try oregano some time. It’s a fine spice.”
“Why, Guido! I didn’t know you liked oregano! Why, you should have told me! Well, now isn’t that funny! Why, I have lots and lots of oregano, Guido. Just lots of it.”
“Wonderful spice. Back in the old country we used it all the time.”
“Is that so, Guido? Why I’ve got a whole box of it in the pantry.”
Papa was amazed, dumfounded.
“A whole box! Pheeeew! I sure wish you’d use it some time.”
“Why, of course, Guido. Wait. I’ll show you.”
She hurried into the pantry and we could hear her fussing frantically through boxes and papers. She came back with a small green box, her face sparkling with excitement. Papa took the box and studied it in wonder. Aloud he read the writing on the box: “‘Oregano. Five ounces. A Schilling product. Price, ten cents. Packed in California, U.S.A. Schilling Spice Products Company, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.’” Papa nodded. “This is the stuff, all right. This is her, sure enough.”
He looked at us kids, and that old glitter had come back to his eyes. He was no longer the teller of heroic tales, the dispenser of coins and kindness. He was himself once more. For a week he had exhausted himself in gentleness toward us. That was all over. Now the pendulum had swung. Now he was going to be tough again.
“You,” he said, pointing at me. “Why didn’t you get the coal and kindling this morning?”
“But I did,” I whined, lying.
“You did not. I saw your poor mother carrying a bucket of coal this morning. Come here.”
I got up and stood before him. In the corner Hugo stood up, the fur rigid on the back of his neck.
“Around,” Papa said.
I turned around and bent slightly. Hugo whined. The flat of Papa’s hand resounded against my rump. I yelled, not in pain but in order to exaggerate the effect. Hugo yelped piteously. Mike and
Tony cackled joyously. I didn’t care. Their turn was coming too. I got three more wallops, but none stung like the first. Pretending to be in great torment, I staggered back to my chair and began eating again. Hugo came up and nuzzled me with his nose, comforting me. Mike and Tony were very quiet now. Papa was looking at them.
“You,” he said to Mike.
“I never done nothing.” Mike said.
Hugo began to whine again.
“How do I know that?” Papa said. “Do you help your mother with the work around here? No. You run around all day, and you let her slave her life away. How you going to prove you never done nothing?”
“Ask Mamma,” Mike said. “Mamma, did I do anything wrong? Haven’t I been a good boy?”
But Mamma was too pleased with Papa to intervene.
“This is between you and your father, Mike. You’ll have to settle it yourselves.”
Mike began to cry, “You crook, you. You dirty crook!”
“Ho!” Papa said. “So that’s how it is! So your mother’s a dirty crook, is she? I’ll teach you to show some respect around here. Come here!”
“I never did a single thing,” Mike said, getting to his feet, “not a single thing.”
“Oh, no,” Papa sneered. “You insult the person who brought you into this world, but you never did a thing. I’ll show you. Around!”
He and Hugo were bawling as he took his position, blinking tears from his eyes and staring at Mamma accusingly. Papa slapped him lightly, the blows resounding; they must have stung somewhat, but hardly enough to merit his screams. I knew he cried not from pain but from the belief that Mamma had betrayed him. Two minutes later, eating jello for dessert, he had stopped crying, and while Hugo licked his hand he looked up to see Mamma smiling at him, and a shadow of revenge crossed his face.
Tony was next. He was such a little boy, and he made so much noise and trouble, that he was crying even before Papa accused him. There he sat, crying in his jello, and Papa hadn’t said a word. But Tony was Papa’s favorite and rarely, no more than seven or eight times a year, did he get a licking. Nor were they bona fide lickings. It was the noise that scared Tony, for Papa would clap both hands loudly against Tony’s seat, and Tony would scream in agony.
“And now you,” Papa said.
“You better not,” Tony said. “I’ll leave home. I’ll take Hugo, and we’ll run away and never come back.”
“Listen to who’s talking,” Papa said.
“I will too,” Tony said. “I’ll run away and join the circus. Me and Hugo. Won’t we, Hugo?”
Hugo looked very unhappy.
Anything about circuses frightened Mamma, who loathed snakes and shivered even at their pictures in the newspapers. “Don’t you dare!” Mamma said. “Don’t you try it.”
“Then you better tell him not to lick me.”
But he got his licking, anyway, the same loud, painless licking he always got, and he was angry and humiliated before Mike and me.
“We’re leaving for the circus,” he wept, staggering into the bedroom. “Come on, Hugo, let’s run away from this awful house.” Hugo followed him into the bedroom and the door closed. “I’m packing my suitcase now,” he informed us, and we heard him dragging something across the floor. Hugo was growling and tearing at something. “I’m putting my things in now,” Tony wailed. “Here goes my shoes, and here goes my sweater, and here goes my socks, and I’m not going to take any underwear either, and maybe I’ll catch cold and die.” We laughed, and so did Papa, but Mamma’s forehead was choppy with zigzag lines of concern. She started to get up. Papa shook his head.
“Here we come,” Tony announced. “We’re all packed and now we’re coming out. Here we go to join the circus. Come on, Hugo.”
We watched the door open. He emerged with his back to us, dragging a suitcase as big as himself, so heavy he couldn’t lift it, Hugo tugging at a strap from the other end, his paws slipping on the linoleum. “Good-by, everybody,” he wept. “Here we go to join the circus. Good-by, Mamma, good-by, Papa, good-by, Mike, good-by, Clara, good-by, Jimmy. They treat you good at the circus. They don’t give you lickings, and you get to feed the animals. Good-by, everybody.”
We laughed as he tried to tug the heavy suitcase toward the front door, Hugo’s powerful neck tensing as he slowly pulled Tony back toward the bedroom. Our laughter made Tony so angry he cried the more, wasting his strength in savage tugs and jerks that Hugo easily parried. Then Mamma couldn’t bear it any longer. She got up and threw her arms around him.
“I’ll give you a nickel if you don’t go away,” she said.
He sniffed, wiped his arm across his nose, and considered her offer. “Make it a dime,” he said.
Mamma lifted him off the floor and kissed him, and Hugo barked joyfully. Papa whispered Clara’s name. She sobbed, ran to him, and he lifted her to his lap and kissed her.
Again there was peace at our house. Papa growled and complained, but that was a good sign: it meant that he was on good terms with the universe. Mamma lived in the clouds, her lips smiling, her thoughts far away from us. Every night at dinner she wore her expensive Sunday dress, the one Auntie Louise had given her. She was good to us; she let us take Hugo into the bathtub with us, warning us not to tell Papa about it.
When we nailed barrel hoops on the front-room walls and had a basketball game, she never said a word. We broke a window and smashed a vase, but she stood at the kitchen stove, stirring polenta, her face like an angel’s, her thoughts far away, and she didn’t even hear the noise. Nor did she say anything when we shot away the chin of Benito Mussolini, whose picture hung over Papa’s desk. Papa saw the mutilation from the supper table that night, but luck was with us, because Papa had just read something in the evening paper that made him mutter: “That damn bum of a Mussolini!” and when he lifted his eyes to find the Duce’s chin shot away he blinked several times and seemed pleased with the result. He and Mamma had always discussed Dino Rossi, but now they never even mentioned his name. As for Coletta Drigo, all of us sensed that the very thought of her was explosive.
Sunday morning, the first Sunday after the peace, we got up to go to church. It was the one morning in the week when Papa slept late. We had to talk in whispers and walk around on tiptoe. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that we had to do it in our Sunday clothes, new shoes pinching, neckties strangling us. Mamma fixed breakfast. We didn’t pay any attention to her. Then we put on our coats and started for church.
As I stepped out of the house I felt something was wrong. Something was screwy, something was missing, and I didn’t notice it until then. I went back to the living room and stood there. Then I felt it clearly, the house telling me of it: Papa’s absence, instinct telling me Papa was not in the house. I opened the bedroom door. Mamma had gone back to bed. Beside her, Papa’s place was empty, smooth: he had not slept in it the night before.
It sickened me. I felt like rushing across the room and punching the empty place. Mamma turned and opened her eyes. Before she could speak I closed the door and walked out. I wasn’t going to church that morning. I was going to find my father and tell him this had gone far enough.
I dog-trotted all the way to Dino Rossi’s barber shop. Reaching the back fence in the alley, I became scared and confused. After all, what could I ever say to Papa? Who was I to order his life? He wouldn’t tolerate it; he’d give me a licking for sure. Just the same, I could tell him to come home. I could say it politely, in a way not to arouse him.
Dino answered my knock. He wore a white nightgown and a funnel-shaped nightcap. He rubbed his sleepy face and told me to come inside.
“Where’s my father?” I said.
“You mean he did not come home last night?”
“He didn’t.”
He smacked his lips. “Bad. Very bad.”
“Where could he be?”
He opened his hands. “Who can say?”
“I bet he’s with her-that Coletta dame.”
He pressed my li
ps with his two fingers. “You must not say such things about your father. No, no. Never about your father.”
“Just the same, I bet he is.”
“No,” he said vaguely. “It is impossible.”
“He hadn’t ought to do things like that, Dino.” I felt mature and full of ancient wisdom. “A man’s place at night is with his wife and children.” Then I remembered something else Papa was fond of saying. “That’s just the trouble with the world nowadays, Dino. No more family life.”
He patted my shoulders.
“Go home,” he said. “I’ll find your papa.”
But he didn’t find Papa. That night at ten he came to our house, his face weary, his feet aching. Mike and Tony and Clara had gone to bed, but they were making a lot of noise. I went into the bedroom. It was full of floating feathers. In the corner was Hugo, mangling what was left of a pillow.
“Watch!” Tony said.
He picked up the pillow and threw it across the room. “Go get Coletta, Hugo! Go get her!” The dog jumped across the bed and lunged into the pillow, ripping it savagely. I made them shut up. I turned off the light and kicked Hugo out of the room.
In the kitchen Dino had removed his shoes. He had searched all over North Denver, every poolhall and every cardroom, every bowling alley and saloon, but there was no trace of Papa. Mamma fixed a tub of warm suds and Epsom salts; Dino sank his feet into the tub, moaning with pleasure.
“There is no need to worry,” he said. “Guido can take good care of himself.”
“He certainly can,” Mamma said. “The father of four children, chasing after a she-wolf!”
Dino shook his head violently.
“No, no, Maria! You must not say such things. You have no proof. Guido is a reckless man, but he is a good man, Maria. A family man.”
“Sure,” Mamma said. “Everybody’s family.”
But Mamma wasn’t crying. She looked as though she had spent a lot of time thinking things over, and had finally made up her mind. Her face was unsmiling, but it was soft and calm. There wasn’t much to say. Dino worked his toes in the water, staring absently at the ripples. He seemed anxious to speak his heart, but to Mamma alone, and I could feel that my presence worried him, and that he felt I was too young to become involved. Mamma understood his glances at me.