New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [365]
During the dancing, the bride would also wear a silk purse into which the men would stuff money.
But the table was something different. Here, the guests who had obligations toward the family would present their gifts for all to see, and the helpers would write them down with a note of their value. Woe betide the guest who failed in his obligations. Everyone would know they were cheap—they’d have made a brutta figura indeed.
Since he was one of the family, they were not expecting him to pause at the table. When he reached it, however, he stopped and gave the helpers his name.
“I wish to add a further present to the one I have given,” he said quietly. “This is for my brother Angelo, that I love, on his wedding day.” And drawing from his pocket a slip of paper, he laid it on the table in front of the helpers, who gasped. It was a check, made out for five thousand dollars.
On the second Monday of June 1927, a great event took place in New York City. In the first half of May, searches had been made for the two gallant French aviators who had vanished in their plane after setting out across the Atlantic. No one had seen them again, but rumors that an aircraft engine had been heard over Newfoundland and Maine had raised hopes. Nothing had been found, however, and whatever had become of them, they certainly hadn’t reached New York.
On May 20, however, a young American that few people had ever heard of managed to take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, in a single-seater, single-engine monoplane that he called the Spirit of St. Louis. By the night of the next day, after flying through rain, wind and fog, sometimes above the clouds and sometimes only feet above the Atlantic waves, the young fellow arrived at Paris’s Le Bourget airport, where a night-time crowd of 150,000 had gathered to meet him. From that moment young Charles Lindbergh became an international sensation. Despite losing two of their own national heroes that month, the French took the young American to their hearts. Breaking all protocol, the Foreign Ministry at the Quai d’Orsay flew the Stars and Stripes from its flagpole. The President of France gave Lindbergh the Légion d’honneur.
Now Lindbergh was back in America, and it was not an opportunity that sporting Mayor Walker of New York was going to miss. On Monday, June 13, Charles A. Lindbergh was honored with a ticker-tape parade.
Salvatore and Uncle Luigi watched it together, as it passed down Fifth Avenue. As the ticker tape rained down like confetti, the huge crowds roared. Uncle Luigi was especially excited.
“Do you know when the first ticker-tape parade was given?” he shouted to Salvatore.
“No,” said Salvatore, “but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“In 1886, to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. You see? The statue was a gift from France, Lindbergh makes the first flight to Paris, we give him the same honor.”
“I get it. Vive la France.”
“Esattamente.”
As they walked back home together afterward, Salvatore looked at his uncle with affection. Uncle Luigi was in his sixties now, yet he had just the same curiosity and enthusiasm about the world as he had in his thirties. Live forever, Salvatore thought, I should be lonely without you.
“That was a fine thing you did for Angelo,” Uncle Luigi remarked. “I do not think I could have done it.”
“Not really,” said Salvatore. And in truth, it hadn’t been so difficult. Partly, it had to be said, it had raised his own status within his family. It had certainly impressed everyone at the wedding. He was sure, also, that Paolo had intended him to share the money with Angelo. And one other thought had also been in his mind.
“It was what Anna would have wanted,” Salvatore said.
In a way, it made him free.
1929
It was halfway through September