A watcher on the western wall of the city, everything weighed down his soul and spirit, the wasteland of railroad yards, steel tracks, deserted box cars, engines giving off dirty red sparks and low hoots of warning. The Hudson was a black ribbon beneath the cragged Jersey shore.
He dozed on his window sill, and the babel of voices rose like a faint shout. Far down the Avenue he saw the red lantern of a dummy boy leading his freight train from St. John’s Park. The children below him played on, and Vincent waited with gloomy satisfaction for their shouts of joy, savoring his bitterness at not sharing their pleasure. And then the children were screaming and scrambling up the steps of the bridge to wait for the damp cloud of steam that would make them invisible.
Vincent was too young to know that he was melancholy by nature, that this distressed his sister Octavia so that she brought him presents and candy. When he was a toddling infant Octavia used to take him into her bed, tell him stories, and sing songs so that he would go to sleep with a remembrance of smiles. But nothing could change his nature.
Below, he could hear Zia Louche quarreling shrilly and his mother’s strong voice supporting her. The resentment came that this old crone was his godmother and that the five-dollar gold piece she gave him every birthday must be paid for with a kiss—a kiss he gave only to make his mother happy. He thought his mother beautiful, though she was fat and always dressed in black, and he always obeyed her.
But Zia Louche, ever since he could remember, had made him hate her. Long ago when he played on the kitchen floor between his mother’s feet, Zia Louche would study him. The two women would be talking violently, without their public formality, recalling with gusto their misfortunes through the years. There would be a silence. The two women would look at him thoughtfully, sipping coffee. Then Zia Louche would sigh through age-browned teeth and say with hopeless, angry pity to the little boy, “Ah, miserabile, miserabile. Your father died before you were born.”
That was the climax; the old crone went on to other things, leaving him bewildered and watching his mother’s face go pale and her eyes turn red. She would reach down to touch him, but she never spoke.
Down in the street Vincent saw his sister Octavia get up to look at the baby. He hated her, too. She had betrayed him. She had not protested their mother’s sending him to work. Then the dummy boy rode under the bridge, and Vincent saw his brother Larry riding like a real cowboy on a black horse.
Even from so far up he could hear a loud clatter of hoofs on cobblestones. The children disappeared and the bridge vanished in a cloud of steam from the engine. With a great shower of sparks, the train slid into the railroad yards.
It was late. The night air had cooled the city. His mother and the other women picked up their stools and crates, called to husbands and children. His stepfather wheeled the baby to the tenement door. It was time to get ready for bed.
Vincent left his window sill and went back through the bedrooms to the kitchen. He unlocked the door to the hallway, opening the house for his family. Then he took the thigh-sized loaf of Italian bread and sliced off three thick, crusty chunks. Over these he poured red wine vinegar, then thick, yellow-green olive oil. He stood back and scattered salt over all three, inspecting them with a satisfied air. The coarse bread was a lovely red dotted with blots of greasy green. Gino and Sal would be delighted with this bedtime snack. They would all eat together. He waited. From the street, through windows still open and coming down the corridor of rooms between, he heard Gino’s voice in a loud continuous scream.
That scream froze Lucia Santa with the baby in her arms. Octavia, on the corner of 30th Street, turned toward 31st. Across the Avenue Larry wheeled around on his horse. The father, his temples bursting with fear, started to run and curse. But the child’s scream was one of hysterical triumph. Gino had shot out of the darkness and circled his enemies and was screaming, “Burn the city, burn the city.” So ending the game, he could not stop screaming the magic words or stop running. He aimed himself at his mother’s enormous menacing figure with great leaps into the air, remembered his insult to Zia Louche, and swerved away, through the door and up the stairs.
Lucia Santa, with every intention of striking him to the ground, stood overwhelmed by a fierce pride and tenderness at her child’s wild joy, the spirit that she must someday break. She let him pass unharmed.
The Neapolitan Italians dissolved from the dark streets and left the city to the clatter of hoofs on cobblestones as Larry Angeluzzi galloped his horse to the stable on 35th Street.
CHAPTER 2
THE ANGELUZZI-CORBO family lived in the best tenement on Tenth Avenue. There was only one apartment to each of the four flights so windows opened to the west on Tenth Avenue and to the east on the backyards, giving cross-ventilation. The Angeluzzi-Corbos, by having the whole floor—and the top floor at that—were able to use the back of the hallway for extra storage space. The icebox, a bureau, countless cans of tomato paste, and boxes of macaroni were stacked against the wall, for though the apartment consisted of six rooms, they were crowded for space.
The apartment was shaped like a long E with the middle prong missing. The kitchen formed the lower shelf; then the dining room, the bedrooms and the living room, with its windows facing on Tenth Avenue, made the long vertical line; and Octavia’s small, doored bedroom off the living room was the top prong of the E. Gino, Vinnie, and Sal slept in the living room on a bed that folded up into an upright dolly. This was put in a corner during the day and covered with a made-over drapery. The parents slept in the bedroom first on the line, and Larry in the next one. Then came the dining room, which was called the kitchen—it had a great wooden table, for eating and living—and at right angles to that was the real kitchen, with its boiler, sink, and stove. By the standards of the neighborhood, the apartment was wastefully commodious, and an example of Lucia Santa’s unthriftiness.
OCTAVIA PUT BABY Aileen on her mother’s bed and went into her own room to change into a house dress. When she came out the three boys were already sound asleep, their great bed having been unfolded onto the middle of the living room floor. She went down the corridor of rooms to the kitchen to wash her face. Her mother sat in the dining room, waiting, sipping a small glass of wine. Octavia knew her mother would stay up to finish their quarrel and that afterward, like conspirators, they would make plans together for the family’s fortune—a house on Long Island, college for the brightest child.
Lucia Santa began with intended conciliation, saying in Italian, “The baker’s son, he has his eye on you. Does he give you ices to make sure you won’t speak to him?” She enjoyed her irony, but paused to listen intently at a sound from the bedroom. She asked worriedly, “Did you put Lena in the middle of the bed? She won’t roll off?”
Octavia was furious. She could forgive the deliberate teasing, though her mother knew her aversion to the young men of the neighborhood. But she herself had given her little half sister the name Aileen. After long consideration Lucia Santa had consented. It was time to be American. But the name could not be said by an Italian tongue. Impossible. And so it had been shortened to the familiar Lena. Lucia Santa, after some valiant tries to please her daughter, one day lost her temper and shouted in Italian, “That is not even American.” And so the baby was Lena to everyone except the other children of the family. Octavia’s hand was in their face when they took such liberties.
Mother and daughter prepared for battle. Octavia patted her curls, then took her fingernail kit from a shelf in the kitchen. She said in meticulous, contemptuous English, “I’ll never marry one of these guineas. They just want a woman they can treat like a dog. I don’t want what you had in your life.” She began an elaborate operation on her nails. She would paint them tonight. It would annoy her mother.
Lucia Santa watched her daughter with exaggerated operatic calm, letting her breath go short and heavy. They resembled each other very much in anger—black liquid eyes flashing; full, sensuous features deadened with rage and sullenness. But when the mother spok
e, her voice was reasonable.
“Ah,” she said. “This is how a daughter speaks to her mother in America? Brava. You would make a fine schoolteacher.” She bowed her head coolly to her daughter. “Mi, mi dispiace. I, I don’t care for it.” And the young girl knew that another such insolence would bring her mother upon her like a cat, hand open in her face. Octavia was not afraid, but she was dutiful within reason; and she knew that her mother, the family chief, leaned heavily on her, respected her, would never side with the outside world against her. She felt guilt at her disloyalty because she thought her mother’s life a waste.
Octavia smiled to make her words less cruel. She said, “I just meant I don’t want to get married or have children if I do. I don’t want to give up my whole life just for that.” In the last word she expressed her contempt and also her hidden fear of what she did not know. Lucia Santa looked her American daughter up and down. “Ah,” she said, “poor child of mine.” Octavia grew hot with a rush of blood and was silent. The mother thought of something else, rose, went into the bedroom, and returned with two five-dollar bills in the postal savings book. “Here, quick—put it in your dress before your father and brother come. Bring it to the post office tomorrow at work.”
Octavia said casually but with venom, “He’s not my father.”
Not the words but the quiet hatred behind them brought quick and passionate tears to the mother’s eyes. For only the two of them could remember Lucia Santa’s first husband; only the two of them had really shared that first life, suffered together. He was the father of three children, but only this child could hold his memory between them. To make it worse, Octavia had loved her father with passion, and his death had affected her greatly. The mother knew all this; she knew that the second marriage had destroyed some feeling in her daughter for herself.
The older woman said in a low voice, “You’re a young girl, you don’t understand the world. Frank married a widow desolate with three small children. He gave us our bread. He protected us all when no one except Zia Louche would even spit on our doorstep. Your own father was not as beautiful as you think. Ah, I could tell you stories—but he’s your father.” The tears were gone now and Lucia Santa wore the familiar mask of remembered sorrows, a mask of pain and rage which always distressed the young girl.
They had this quarrel many times and found the wound always fresh.
“He won’t help,” Octavia said. She was young, pitiless. “You make the poor kid, Vinnie, work for that lousy baker. He won’t have any fun this summer. And meanwhile, your beautiful husband, all he can do is be a janitor for free work. Why can’t he find work? Why is he so goddamn proud? Who the hell does he think he is? My father worked. He died working, for Chrissakes.” She paused to hold back her tears.
Then she went on quietly, as if she believed she could really convince her mother, “But him, he lost his job on the railroad just to be smart. The boss tells him, ‘Don’t take all day to get a pail of water,’ and so he took the pail and never went back. He thought that was so funny, he was really proud of that. And you never said a word. Not a goddamn word. I would have locked him out, I’d never let him in the house. And I goddamn sure hell wouldn’t let him give me another baby.” She said this scornfully, with a look meaning she would never let him commit a dark act of communion and domination that filled the night. But now her mother had lost patience.
“Talk about something you understand,” Lucia Santa said. “You are a young, stupid girl and you will be old and stupid. Christ give me patience.” She finished her wine in one swallow, and sighed wearily. “I’m going to bed. Leave the door open for your brother. And my husband.”
“Don’t worry about our beautiful Lorenzo,” Octavia said. She dabbed paint on her nails. The mother stared with distaste at the bright redness, came back into the room.
“What is it now with Lorenzo?” she asked. “He stops work midnight. Why shouldn’t he be home? All the girls are off the street except those little Irish tramps on Ninth Avenue.” She added with mock fervor, “Thank Jesus Christ he only ruins good, decent Italian girls.” She smiled with a touch of pride.
Octavia said coolly, “Larry might stay at the Le Cinglatas’. Mr. Le Cinglata is in jail again.”
The mother understood immediately. The Le Cinglatas made their own wine and sold it by the glass in their own home. In short, they were bootleggers violating the Prohibition laws. Only last week the Le Cinglata woman had sent Lucia Santa three great flagons, supposedly because Lorenzo had helped unload a wagon of grapes. And Signora Le Cinglata had been one of the three married in church by proxy those long years ago in Italy. The shyest, the coyest of them all. Good. There was nothing to be done tonight. The mother shrugged and went to bed.
But first she went into the living room and covered the three boys with a sheet. Then she looked out the open window, down into the dark street, and saw her husband still pacing up and down Tenth Avenue. She called softly, “Frank, don’t stay too late.” He did not look up at her or see the sky.
Finally she was in bed. And now she was reluctant to go to sleep, for it seemed to her that as long as she was awake she controlled, in some measure, the actions of her husband and son. She felt annoyance, a real displeasure, that she could not make them leave the world and enter their home, sleep when she slept.
She reached out. The infant was safely trapped against the wall. She called out, “Octavia, sleep, go to bed, it’s late. You work tomorrow.” But really because she could not sleep when anyone in the house was still awake. And then her daughter passed through the room without a word, rebellious.
In the heavy summer darkness sighing with the breath of sleeping children, Lucia Santa pondered over her life. Marrying a second husband, she had brought sorrow to her first child. She knew Octavia held her guilty of not showing proper grief. But you could not explain to a young virginal daughter that her father, the husband whose bed you shared, whom you were prepared to live with the rest of your life, was a man you did not really like.
He had been the master, but a chief without foresight, criminal in his lack of ambition for his family, content to live the rest of his life in the slum tenements a few short blocks from the docks where he worked. Oh, he had made her shed many tears. The money for food he had always given, but the rest of his pay, savings-to-be, he spent on wine and gambling with his friends. Never a penny for herself. He had committed such an act of generosity in bringing Lucia Santa to the new country and his bed, beggar that she was without linen, that he had no need to be generous again. One deed served a lifetime.
Lucia Santa remembered all this with a vague resentment, knowing it was not all truth. His daughter had loved him. He had been a handsome man. His beautiful white teeth chewed sunflower seeds and the little Octavia would accept them from his mouth as she never did from her mother. He had loved his daughter.
The truth was simple. He had been a kind, hard-working, ignorant, pleasure-loving man. Her feeling had been the feeling of millions of women toward improvident husbands. That men should control the money in the house, have the power to make decisions that decided the fate of infants—what folly! Men were not competent. More—they were not serious. And she had already begun the struggle to usurp his power, as all women do, when one terrible day he was killed.
But she had wept. Oh, how she had wept. A grief compounded with terror. Not grief for departed lips, eyes, hands, but a wail for her shield against this foreign world, a cry for the bringer of her children’s bread, the protector of the infant in her womb. These widows tear their hair and gash their cheeks, scream insane laments, do violence, and wear mourning for the world to see. These are the real mourners, for true grief is thick with terror. They are bereaved. Lovers will love again.
His death was comically grotesque. While a ship was being unloaded, the gangplank had given way high above the water, plunging five men and untold tons of bananas down into the river mud. Human limbs and banana stalks buried together. Never rising once.
/> She dared herself to think it: he had given them more dead than alive. In the darkness, now, years later, in mockery of her younger self, she smiled grimly. At what her younger self would think of such thoughts. But the court had awarded each of the children a thousand dollars—even Vincent not yet born but only too visible to the world. The money in trust, because here in America there was wisdom; not even parents were given charge of their children’s monies. She herself had received three thousand dollars that no one on the Avenue knew about except Zia Louche and Octavia. So it was not all in vain.
Not to be spoken of, not to be thought of even now, were those months with the child in her belly. A child whose father had died before he was born, like the child of a demon. Even now she was struck with a terrible superstitious fear; even now, thirteen years later, tears sprang beneath her eyelids. She wept for herself as she was then, and for the unborn child, but not for the death of her husband. Her daughter Octavia could never know or understand.
And then the most shameful: only a year after her husband’s death, only six months after the birth of that dead husband’s son, she—a grown woman—had for the first time in her life become passionate about a man, the man who was to become her second husband. In love. Not the spiritual love of young girls or priests; not the emotion for heroes in romances that could be told to a young girl. No; love was the word for the hot flesh, the burning loins, feverish eyes and cheeks. Love was the feel of turgid, spongy flesh. Ah, what madness, what foolishness for the mother of children. Thank Jesus Christ in heaven she was beyond that now.
And for what? Frank Corbo was thirty-five, never married; slender, wiry, and with blue eyes; considered odd for being unwedded at that age, odd also in his reticence, his silent nature and lonely pride—that pride so ludicrous in those who are helpless before society and fate. The neighbors, searching for a widow’s mate and feeder of four hungry mouths, thought him capable of any foolishness and a fine candidate. He worked steadily on the early morning shifts of the railroad gangs, and his afternoons were free for courting. There would be no scandal.