The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [118]
It was not true. He had never killed his brother. He held his mother’s coat before her face, but his arms were so terribly tired. Her accusing eyes bore him back, and seeking some sort of mercy, he whispered, “I cried on the stoop down the street, see my face is still wet.” But his mother only sneered and said, “It’s just another one of your tricks. Animale—animale—animale—”
And she was smiling at him. The dazzling smile of a young woman. Gino almost fell into the trap that would have destroyed them both. He almost spoke about the day he had stood in front of the tenement, waiting for her to bring his father home. But slyly, cunningly, he bowed his head. As she had not accused him in life, he would not accuse her in his dreams. Trembling, he promised to become another Vinnie, work in the railroad, marry, live in the tenements along the Avenue, wait at trolley stops with a child in his arms, chain himself in the known, lightless world he had been born in.
CHAPTER 23
THE OLD WOMEN of Tenth Avenue circled in the summer night and incanted the woes of the family Angeluzzi-Corbo.
At first they all cried out in sympathy, “Ah, what a terrible life! Poor Lucia Santa—her first husband dead, the second destroyed for life, and now a grown son, already a breadwinner, struck down. What tragedy, what misfortunes. Maledictions on God, His world, and all His mysterious saints and fates.”
Their heads wagged in agreement. But another woman—no stranger to misfortune, respected for her hard life—nodded a gray head and then said, True, true, and yet she has a grown daughter, a forelady—intelligent, married to a sober man. She has masculine children who would do credit to any mother. Lorenzo, married, giver of grandchildren, making his fortune in the bakery union; Gino, now a good dutiful boy, a head of the family that made you think of Italy with his hard work on the railroad and never in trouble with the police. Salvatore, who won medals in school and would surely be a professor. Lena, an Italian daughter of the old school, a worker in the home, ever obedient, ever dutiful. Look how they all respected Lucia Santa. The two married ones still gave money; Gino brought his pay envelope home unopened.
Five good children. True, no husband, but considering some husbands on Tenth Avenue, this might not be a real misfortune. At least Lucia Santa had now only a small family. Even poor Vincenzo, dead, had never brought disgrazia to his family. He had been ill and fallen beneath a railroad engine. It was an accident. And he had been buried in holy ground. Poor Vincenzo, born under an unlucky star, had met a destiny prepared for him at the beginning of time.
So the balance was struck. Many women had suffered as much or more. Husbands had been killed on the job, infants born misshapen, children had died from harmless colds, small injuries. There was not a woman in the circle who had not buried at least one child.
And look at those misfortunes Lucia Santa had escaped. Daughters pregnant without a husband in sight for miles around; sons who became jailbirds of the finest feather or found a way to rest their disobedient legs in the electric chair. Drunken, gambling, whoremastering husbands.
No, no. Lucia Santa had been fortunate to escape for so long a period of time that measure of sorrow due her station in life. All her children were strong, healthy, handsome, the world was before them. Soon she would reap the rewards of all her travail. So, courage. America was not Italy. In America you could escape your destiny. Sons grew tall and worked in an office with collars and ties, away from the wind and earth. Daughters learned to read and write, and wore shoes and silk stockings, instead of slaughtering the bloody pig and carrying wood on their backs to save the strength of valuable donkeys.
Had not misfortune entered once even into heaven? Who could