The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [108]
But there was one thing that mascalzone could do. Vinnie had forgotten his lunch bag again; Gino could take it to him. Lucia Santa blocked Gino’s way as, baseball bat under his arm, that midwife’s glove on his hand, he sought to get past her bulky form. Like a duke with cane and hat. “Bring this to your brother on the job,” she said, holding out the greasy brown bag, and she could have laughed to see his finicky disgust. How proud he was, all people are who do not have to sweat for bread. How tender.
“I’m late, Ma,” Gino said, ignoring the bag.
“Late for what?” Lucia Santa asked impatiently. “Late to get married? Late to put all the money you earned this week in the bank? Late to see a friend about some honest work?”
Gino sighed. “Ma, Vinnie can get something to eat in the diner.”
It was too much. Lucia Santa said bitterly, “Your brother is giving his life away for you—he never plays or runs in the park. You never even ask him to go out with you, and he is so lonely. But you can’t even bring him his bread? You are a disgrace. Go play your baseball and bum around with your friends. I’ll bring it myself.”
Shamed, Gino took the lunch bag. He saw the light of victory in his mother’s eyes, but he didn’t care. He really wanted to do something for Vinnie.
He trotted easily along Tenth Avenue up toward 37th Street and then down to Eleventh Avenue. He loved the full freeness of his body moving through the heavy summer air. When he was smaller he had taken giant leaps to see if he could fly as it seemed he might, but he was too old now. Just before he reached the freight building, he threw the brown paper bag high in the air in front of him, then put on a dazzling burst of speed to catch it before it hit the ground.
He rose slowly through the old rat-smelling building in an iron-grilled elevator. The operator, in a gray dirty uniform with wormy yellow insignia on the lapels, opened the metal doors with that mysterious contempt some adults have for the young, and Gino stepped out into a loft office that stretched away to the far end of the building.
It was like a nightmare in which a man sees a prison that he knows he will someday come to live in. There were long rows of desks with billing machine typewriters spewing forth rolls of multiple lading accounts. The men who operated these machines were all in vests and white shirts and loose, dangling ties. They were older than Vinnie, and they were very quick. The machines clattered blindly. Each desk had its own yellow lamp; the rest of the office was in darkness except for a long counter heaped with printed bills. At this counter a long thin bent man with the grayest face that Gino had ever seen was sorting out bills under a huge spotlight. There was no sound of voices. There was no hint of daylight outside. It was as if these people were all entombed above the rumbling of the coupling freight trains that moved below in the pit of the building. Gino looked, and at last he spotted Vinnie.
Vinnie was the only man without a vest, and he wore a colored shirt so he could use it two or three days without changing. His curly black hair looked damp under the yellow steel-armed lamp. Gino saw that Vinnie was slower than the others and that his face was screwed up with intense concentration to his task. The others had the blank expressions of sleepwalkers.
Suddenly Vinnie looked up. He stared at Gino without expression. He lit a cigarette. With surprise, Gino realized that Vinnie couldn’t see him, nor could any of the others. He was standing in darkness outside their world. He walked past the first line of desks into the living yellow square. As if he had blocked out the sun, heads snapped up. Vinnie raised his eyes.
There was a heartbreaking gladness on Vinnie’s face. His smile was sweet, as it had been in their childhood. Gino raised the lunch bag and threw it. Vinnie caught it expertly and Gino went to stand awkwardly by his desk.
“Thanks, kid,” Vinnie said. The men on either side of him stopped typing, and he said to them, “This is my kid brother, Gino.”
Gino