New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [317]
It had been his mother’s idea to send him to the priest’s house. Not their own parish priest, but the silver-haired old man who’d come to say Mass in their church the week before. And where did he live? In the Jewish quarter, of all places.
It wasn’t far. You only had to cross the Bowery and you were in it—the Lower East Side’s tenth and thirteenth wards, which ran across to the river just below the old German quarter. Its poor streets—around Division and Hester streets, through Delancey, and all the way up to Houston—housed small factories, varnish shops, ironworks and tenements which, for a generation now, had been filled to overflowing with the Jews of Eastern Europe. On Rivington Street, however, near the river, was a Catholic church.
Salvatore hadn’t enjoyed the old man’s sermon. It had been about Christ’s temptation in the desert, when Christ had gone up to a mountain and the devil had told him to jump off, so that God could save him. But rightly, the priest reminded them, Jesus had refused.
“Why didn’t he jump?” Salvatore had whispered to Anna. After all, if Jesus could walk on water, why not fly? It seemed a grand idea. But not to the old priest.
“Tempt not the Lord thy God!” he had cried, looking straight at Salvatore. God is all-powerful, he had explained, but He does not have to prove Himself. It is sacrilege—again he looked at Salvatore sternly—to challenge God to do anything. He does only what is necessary for His plan, which we do not understand. If He gives us poverty, if He gives us sickness, if He takes a loved one from us, that is part of His plan. We may ask for His help, but we must accept our fate. “Do not ask Him for more than you deserve. If God wanted man to fly, he would have given him wings. So do not try,” he told them firmly. “For that is the temptation of the devil.”
Concetta Caruso had liked the sermon very much, and she had thanked the old priest afterward. They had talked. She had discovered that his mother came from the same village as her own. And that he had a liking for sugar-coated almonds.
But why had she chosen that day of all days to send Salvatore to his house with a bag of sugared almonds? Who knew? It must have been fate.
Salvatore hurried through the Jewish quarter as quickly as he could. Not that he was afraid, but he always felt uncomfortable over there. The men with their black coats and hats, their beards and their strange language seemed so different from everyone else. The boys were mostly so pale, and as for the ones with ringlets, he tried not to look at them. But they didn’t give him any trouble. He’d never had to fight them. Making his way through the crowded mass of pushcarts and stalls, he soon came to Rivington Street, and saw the Catholic church ahead.
That was another strange thing about the Jews. They didn’t seem to have parish churches like the Christians. Even the larger synagogues were squat little buildings, squashed between tenements, without a churchyard or a priest’s house. Some were just announced by narrow doorways leading to single rooms; you might see three or four in a block. His mother did not approve of the Jews. She said they were heretics, and that God would punish them. But his father only shrugged.
“Haven’t they been punished enough before they came here? There are no pogroms in America, Concetta, thank God. Basta. It is enough. Leave them be.”
The priest seemed delighted with his mother’s gift, and told Salvatore to thank her.
Salvatore was so anxious not to be late that he ran all the way back. Crossing the Bowery into the Italian quarter, he went three blocks before turning left into Mulberry Street, where his family lived. They were waiting in the street already, dressed up for the great occasion. His parents and Giuseppe, his brother Paolo, his face scrubbed. His older sister Anna was still doing little Maria’s hair.
“At last,” said his father,