by Mario Puzo
Often, after work, even through the fall and winter, he’d stop by the courtyard to check on the fig tree before going up to the apartment. The courtyard was quiet, and though it belonged to the whole apartment building, the neighbors had ceded it to him without his asking. Not once in all the years he’d lived in Hell’s Kitchen—with the clatter of the freight trains rumbling down the streets, and the noise of car engines, and the ragman and the iceman and the peddlers and knife sharpeners shouting up at the buildings—not once in all the years he lived in that noisy part of the world had he ever found someone else sitting at his table, next to his fig tree. In August, when the first crop fattened and dangled under green leaves, he’d place a wooden bowl full of juicy figs on the first-floor landing in the morning, and when they were all gone by midmorning, Carmella would bring the bowl back up to her kitchen. The first fig of the season he kept for himself. With a kitchen knife, he’d slice through the mahogany-colored skin to the light pink flesh. In Sicily, they called this kind of fig a Tarantella. In his memory there was an orchard of fig trees behind his home, a forest of them, and when the first crop came, he and his older brother, Paolo, would eat figs like candy, stuffing themselves on the sweet, juicy fruit.
These were some of the memories from his childhood that Vito cherished. He could close his eyes and see himself as a boy following in his father’s footsteps in the early morning, at the first light of day, when his father went out hunting, the barrel of the lupara slung over his shoulder. He remembered meals at a rough-hewn wood table, his father always at the head of the table, his mother at the other end, he and Paolo across from each other, facing each other. Behind Paolo there was a door with glass panes, and beyond the glass, a garden—and fig trees. He had to struggle to recall the features of his parents’ faces; even Paolo he couldn’t completely recall, though he had followed Paolo around like a puppy all the years of his life in Sicily. Their images had faded over the years, and even if he was sure he would recognize them instantly were they to come back from the dead and stand before him, still he couldn’t see them distinctly in his memories. But he could hear them. He heard his mother urging him to speak, Parla! Vito! He remembered how she worried because he spoke so little, and shook her head when he explained himself by shrugging and saying Non so perché. He didn’t know why he spoke so little. He heard his father’s voice telling him stories at night, in front of a fire. He heard Paolo laughing at him one evening when he fell asleep at the dinner table. He remembered opening his eyes, his head on the table next to his plate, awakened by Paolo’s laughter. He had many such memories. Often, after some brutish ugliness required by his work, he’d sit alone in his tiny courtyard, in the cold of New York and America, and remember his family in Sicily.
There were also memories he wished he could banish. The worst of these was the picture of his mother flying backward with her arms flung open, the echo of her last words still alive in the air: Run! Vito! He remembered his father’s funeral. He remembered walking beside his mother, her arm around his shoulder, and the gunshots that rang out from the hills as the pallbearers dropped his father’s casket and scattered. He remembered his mother kneeling over Paolo’s dead body, Paolo, who had tried to follow the funeral procession looking down from the hills, and after that he recalled a series of scenes that merged with each other—as if one moment his mother knelt over Paolo weeping and the next moment he was walking with her up the gravel path of Don Ciccio’s estate, beautiful, bright flowers blooming on either side of the pathway as his mother held his hand and pulled him along. Don Ciccio was seated at a table with a bowl of oranges and a glass decanter of wine. The table was small, round, made of wood, with fat round legs. The Don was a stout man with a mustache and a mole on his right cheek. He wore a vest and a white long-sleeved shirt in the bright sunlight. The stripes of the vest slanted toward the center, making a V. A gold watch chain slung between vest pockets made a semicircle over his belly. Behind him were two great stone columns and a wrought-iron ornate fence where one of several bodyguards stood posted with shotguns slung over their shoulders. He remembered all this with great clarity, every detail: the way his mother begged for the life of her only remaining son, the way the Don refused, the motion with which his mother knelt to pull a knife from under her black dress, the way she held it to Don Ciccio’s neck, her last words, Run! Vito! And the shotgun blast that sent her flying backward with her arms flung open.
These were the memories he wished he could banish. Fourteen years ago, when Vito chose his current way of life by murdering Don Fanucci, another stout pig who tried to run his little piece of New York as if it were a village in Sicily, Vito’s friends thought him fearless and ruthless to his enemies. He let them believe this then and now. It was, he supposed, the truth. But it was also the truth that he wanted to kill Fanucci the instant he first saw him, and he found the resolve to do it when he saw how he might profit from the killing. He felt not a moment’s fear. He had waited for Fanucci in the darkened hallway outside his apartment, the music and street noise and fireworks from the Feast of San Gennaro muffled by the brick walls of the tenement. To silence the pistol, he had wrapped a white towel around the muzzle, and the towel burst into flame as he fired the first shot into Fanucci’s heart. When Fanucci ripped open his vest as if to search for the offending bullet, Vito shot him again, this time in the face, and the bullet went in clean, leaving only a small red hole high on the big man’s cheek. When finally he fell, Vito unwrapped the burning towel from the gun, placed the muzzle in Fanucci’s mouth, and fired a last shot into his brain. All he felt at the sight of Fanucci slumped in his doorway dying was gratitude. Though the reasoning of the mind might not understand how killing Fanucci revenged the murder of his family, the logic of the heart understood.
That was the beginning. The next man Vito killed was Don Ciccio himself. He returned to Sicily, to the village of Corleone, and gutted him like a pig.
Now Vito was in the study of his spacious apartment, a don himself, looking over blueprints for an estate of his own. Downstairs, Fredo and Michael were fighting again. Vito took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the desk chair. When the boys stopped shouting, Vito turned his attention again to the blueprints. Then Carmella shouted at the boys, and they started yelling again, each of them pleading their cases. Vito pushed the blueprints aside and started for the kitchen. Before he was halfway down the stairs, the shouting stopped. By the time he reached the kitchen, Michael and Fredo were seated quietly at the table, Michael reading a schoolbook, Fredo doing nothing, sitting with his hands folded in front of him. With Carmella watching and looking worried, Vito took each of the boys by the ear and pulled them into the living room. He sat on the edge of a plush chair by the front window, still holding tight to each of the boys. Fredo had started yelling “Pop! Pop!” as soon as Vito took hold of him, while Michael, as usual, was silent.
“Pop!” Fredo said. “Michael took a nickel from my coat pocket!” Fredo’s eyes were already brimming with tears.
Vito looked at Michael. His youngest son reminded Vito of himself as a boy. He seemed happiest playing alone, and he spoke very little.
Michael met his father’s eyes and shook his head.
Vito slapped Fredo and then held him by the chin.
“Well, it was in my pocket!” Fredo yelled, furious. “And now it’s gone!”
“And so you accuse your brother of being a thief?”
“Well,” Fredo said, “the nickel’s gone, isn’t it, Pop?”
Vito squeezed Fredo’s chin a little harder. “I ask you again,” he said. “You accuse your brother of being a thief?” When Fredo’s only response was to turn his eyes away, Vito let him go and said, “Apologize to Michael.”
Fredo said, “I apologize,” halfheartedly.
Behind them, the front door opened and Sonny came into the foyer. He was dressed in overalls from his work at the garage, and his face was smeared with grease along his jaw and on his forehead. Carmella, who had
been watching from the kitchen doorway, gave Vito a look.
Vito told the boys to go up to their room and not to come down till dinner, a punishment for Fredo, whereas Michael would have gone to his room anyway and read or entertained himself. When Sonny came into the living room, Vito said, “You come all the way to the Bronx to take a bath again?”
Sonny said, “I don’t mind getting some of Ma’s cooking while I’m here. ’Sides, Pop, I want to take a bath in my place, I got to do it in the kitchen.”
Carmella came into the room undoing her apron. “Look at you,” she said. “You got grease all over!”
“That’s what happens when you work in a garage, Ma.” Sonny leaned down and wrapped up his mother in a big hug. “I’m gonna go get cleaned up,” he said, looking to Vito.
“You’ll stay for dinner?” Carmella asked.
“Sure, Ma,” Sonny said. “What are you making?” he asked, on the stairs, on the way up to his room.
“Veal parmigiana,” Carmella said.
Vito said, “You want to check the menu? See if it’s to your liking?”
Sonny said, “Everything Mama makes is to my liking. Right, Ma?” Without waiting for an answer, he hurried up the stairs.
Carmella gave Vito another look after Sonny disappeared from sight.
Vito said, softly, “I’ll talk to him,” and pulled himself up from his seat. He checked the timepiece in his vest pocket and saw that it was a few minutes before six. On his way to the stairs, he turned on the radio and rolled the tuner slowly over the station numbers. When he found a news broadcast, he listened for a minute and then kept searching, hoping to find an Italian opera. The news was all about the Fusion ticket and reformers and the new mayoral candidate, a Neapolitan big shot, a pezzonovante who was running as a reformer. When Vito came to a Pepsodent testimonial, followed by the Amos ’n’ Andy show, he listened long enough to figure out that the Kingfish had once again gotten Andy into a predicament of some kind, and then he turned off the set and went up to Sonny’s room. He knocked once and Sonny opened the door a sliver to peek out, and then opened it all the way and said, “Pop!” evidently surprised to find his father knocking at his door. He was bare chested, with a towel slung over his shoulder.
Vito said, “Well? Can I come in?”
Sonny said, “Sure. What did I do?” He opened the door fully and moved out of Vito’s path.
Sonny’s room was small and simple: a single bed against one wall with a crucifix over a wood headboard; a dresser with an empty cut-glass, footed candy dish in the center of it; sheer white muslin curtains over two windows. Vito took a seat on the bed and motioned for Sonny to close the door. “Put a shirt on,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“What’s this about, Pop?” Sonny took his crumpled shirt from the top of the dresser and slipped into it. “Is something wrong?” he asked, buttoning up.
Vito patted the bed alongside him. “Sit over here,” he said. “Your mother’s worried about you.”
“She’s worried about the money,” Sonny said, as if now he understood what was going on.
“That’s right,” Vito said. “She’s worried about the money. You don’t miss fifty dollars? You leave a fifty-dollar bill in your pants pocket, and you don’t even ask her about it?”
“Mama gave the money to Tom, Pop.” Sonny sat on the bed next to Vito. “Tom told me all about it. If I thought I’d lost fifty bucks, I’d be asking all over town. I know where the money is, so what’s there to ask about?”
Vito said, “What are you doing with a fifty-dollar bill, Sonny? That’s more than two weeks’ salary for you.”
“What have I got to spend money on, Pop? I eat here most of the time. My rent’s cheap.”
Vito folded his hands in his lap and waited.
“Jeez,” Sonny said. He jumped up and turned his back to Vito and then turned again to face him. “Okay,” he said. “I played poker Saturday night with the Poles in Greenpoint.” He raised his voice a little in his defense. “It’s a friendly game, Pop! Usually I lose a couple of bucks, I win a couple of bucks… This time, I won big.” Sonny clasped his hands together. “It’s a little poker on a Saturday night, Pop!”
“This is what you do with the money you earn? You play poker with a bunch of Polacks?”
“I take care of myself,” Sonny said.
“You take care of yourself,” Vito repeated. He pointed to the bed again, meaning Sonny should sit down. “Are you saving any money? Did you start a bank account like I said?”
Sonny dropped onto the bed next to Vito. He looked at the floor.
“No,” Vito said. He pinched Sonny’s cheek and Sonny pulled away from him. “Listen to me, Santino,” he said. “People are making their fortunes in the automobile industry. In the next twenty, thirty years…” Vito opened his hands, meaning the sky was the limit. “If you work hard,” he added, “and I can provide you a little help here and there, by the time you’re my age you’ll have more money than I can even dream of.” He put his hand on Sonny’s knee. “You have to work hard. You have to know the industry from the ground up. And in the future you’ll be able to hire someone to take care of me when I can’t make it to the bathroom on my own.”
Sonny leaned back against the headboard. “Listen, Pop,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.”
“For what?” Vito asked, surprising himself a little with the sharp edge of annoyance in his voice.
“For working like a slob every day,” Sonny said. “I work eight, ten hours to earn Leo fifty bucks, and he pays me fifty cents. It’s sucker work, Pop.”
“You want to start out being the boss?” Vito asked. “Did you buy the tools and equipment, or did Leo? Do you pay the rent, or does Leo? Does the sign out front say Leo’s Garage or Santino’s Garage?” When Sonny didn’t answer, Vito added, “Look at Tom, Sonny. He’s got a bank account with a couple hundred dollars saved. Plus he worked all summer to help pay for college. Tom knows how to buckle down and make something of himself.” Vito took Sonny roughly by the chin and pulled him closer. “No one gets anywhere in this life without hard work! You remember that, Santino!” When Vito got up from the mattress, his face was red. He opened the bedroom door and looked back at his son. “I don’t want to hear anything more about work being for suckers, capisc’? Take a lesson from Tom, Santino.” Vito looked harshly at his son and then exited the room, leaving the door open behind him.
Sonny fell back on his bed. He punched the air as if it were Tom’s face. What would Pop think if he knew his precious Tom Hagen was screwing a mick whore? That was something Sonny’d like to know. Then, somehow, the thought of that—the thought of Tom getting himself in a jam with Luca Brasi’s twist—it made him smile and then laugh, and his anger melted away. He lay on his back, his arms crossed under his head, a big grin on his face. Pop always held up Tom to him—Tom’s doing this, Tom’s doing that—but there was never any question about loyalty or love. Sonny was Vito’s oldest son. If you were an Italian, that was all that needed to be said.
Sonny could never stay mad at Tom anyway. In his heart Tom Hagen would always be the kid Sonny found sitting on a three-legged chair, out on the street in front of his apartment house, where the landlord had just tossed all the furnishings of what used to be his home. Tom’s mother had died the year before from drink, and then a few weeks earlier his father had disappeared. Soon after that, Catholic Charities came for him and his sister, but Tom beat it before they could get him, and for weeks he’d been scrounging around the rail yards, sleeping in freight trains and getting his ass beat by the cinder dicks when they caught him. This was all generally known around the neighborhood, and people were saying that his father would show up, that he was off on a bender—but his father never showed up, and then one morning the landlord emptied the apartment and threw all the furniture out on the street. By midafternoon everything was gone but a three-legged chair and a few useless odds and ends. This all happened when Sonny was eleven years
old. Tom was a year older than Sonny, but all skin and bones, and anyone looking at him might have thought he was a ten-year-old. Sonny, on the other hand, looked more like fourteen than eleven.
Michael had been following him that afternoon. He was seven or eight at the time, and they were coming back from Nina’s on the corner with a bag of groceries for dinner. Michael saw Tom first and tugged at Sonny’s pants. “Sonny,” he said. “Look.” When Sonny looked, he saw a kid with a bag over his head sitting on a three-legged chair. Johnny Fontane and Nino Valenti, a couple of the bigger kids in the neighborhood, were smoking cigarettes a few stoops over. Sonny crossed the street, and Michael tugged at his shirt. “Who is that?” he asked. “Why’s he got a bag over his head?” Sonny knew it was Tom Hagen but didn’t say anything. He stopped in front of Johnny and Nino and asked Johnny what was going on.