Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [133]
Moses, recovering from his stroke, learned what had happened and broke his silence. “That girl will not die a natural death!” he condemned.
Good, Hannah thought, serves Moses right. Look, the momser is happy! He’s got something terrible to get his teeth into. The son of a bitch is taking to this tragedy as though it were a joy!
Hannah expected Pearl to come crawling back on her hands and knees, but such was not the case. After a few months, Hannah established an oblique, secondhand liaison. She would have neighbor friends just happen by the Abruzzi Brothers’ stall and make innocent, offhand inquiries. Old Angelo sensed what was going on and he knew, in his heart, that Hannah was a fine, fine person and it would only be a matter of time until she made peace with the situation.
Hannah caved in when word got back to her that Pearl’s water had broken three weeks prematurely. She plunged headlong into the strange world of Mercy Hospital, with all its crosses and somber nuns and candles and chapels and kneeling and God knows what else, to be at her daughter’s side.
She met Dominick, her Italian son-in-law, for the first time, pacing the corridor with Angelo and a half-dozen Abruzzi women.
For such an infant as Anna Maria Abruzzi, only an animal could not find forgiveness. What a baby! From the absolute minute of birth she was a ravishing beauty, little Anna Maria with the huge deep dark eyes and a head already filled with little black curls. What normal grandmother could reject?
When push came to shove, one would have to admit that Dominick was not so much of a disaster as she first believed. A regular masher, just like his father. Dominick certainly seemed head over heels, crazy in love with Pearl. Likewise, a policeman in peacetime was nothing to be sneezed at.
After an overheated discussion between Dominick and his father, it was decided that, out of respect for Hannah, the baby need not be christened in St. Leo’s. This endeared Dom to Hannah. What the hell, Dominick reasoned, his old man would get over it in a few years. They weren’t Sicilians, after all, who kept a feud going forever.
1919
IT WAS OVER, over there! The boys came home. After the initial jubilation and victory parades, a more somber judgment was passed on the price of glory and victory. A wiser America withdrew into a shell of isolation and vowed it would never again become embroiled in a European affair. Let them fight their own wars from now on.
So Al Singer claimed his bride and daughter and repaired to Cleveland.
Joe Kramer had suffered a poison gassing and would never take another pain-free breath in his life. He, too, went west, to Joplin, Missouri, with Leah and Molly.
Hannah Balaban was left with a new French daughter-in-law, Simone, and her little son, Pierre, and Dom and Anna Maria Abruzzi. Hannah would sigh and shrug and say, “Well, kinder, this is America.”
SUCH A FUSS the family was making over the returning soldiers. Gilbert Diamond harbored deep resentment about the veterans. Like maybe it was his fault he was physically unfit to serve. Maybe the family would be happy if he were dead in the ground under a Star of David, in some French cemetery.
Gilbert was frustrated, and who better to take it out on than a genuine certified war hero who had been with the United States Marines. Gilbert didn’t like Lazar, even before the war when they both worked in his father’s drugstore. Lazar was the super-salesman, always ready with the bullshit and the smiles to the old ladies. Johnny-on-the-spot, ready to help just to impress Gilbert’s father.
Now Lazar comes home with a fancy braid around his left shoulder, a decoration awarded the Marine Brigade by the French Government for valor, and everyone treated him as though he were the messiah.
Lazar’s wife, Simone, likewise was as glamorous as her husband. She arrived on a special ship filled