The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [18]
Filomena played another tune. Look at the new clothes, this pretty room. He would be the only child. He would have everything, a happy childhood, the university, become a lawyer, a doctor, even a professor. Things that Lucia Santa could never hope to give. What was she? She had no money. She would eat dirt with her bread her whole life long.
Lucia Santa listened, stunned, horrified. When Filomena said, “Come, you understood why I would send you money every week,” the mother drew back her head like a snake and spat with full force into the older woman’s face. Then, child in her arms, she fled from the house. Filomena ran after her, screaming curses.
That was the end of the story as it was told—with laughter, now. But Octavia always remembered more clearly the part never told: her mother’s arriving home with the baby Vincent in her arms.
She entered the house feverish with cold, her coat wrapped around the sleeping infant, her sallow skin black with the blood of anger, rage, despair. She was trembling. Zia Louche said, “Come. Coffee waits. Sit down. Octavia, the cups.”
Baby Vincent began to cry. Lucia Santa tried to soothe him, but his shrieks grew greater and greater. The mother, furious with guilt, made a dramatic gesture, as if to hurl the infant away; then she said to Zia Louche, “Here, take him.” The old crone began to coo to the baby in a cracked voice.
The mother sat at the round kitchen table. She rested her head on her hand, hiding her face. When Octavia came with the cups she said, still shielding her face, “See. A little girl knows the truth and we laugh.” She caressed her daughter, her fingers full of hatred, hurting the tender flesh. “Listen to the children in the future. We old people are animals. Animals.”
“Ah,” Zia Louche crooned, “coffee. Hot coffee. Calm yourself.” The baby continued to wail.
The mother sat still. Octavia saw that a terrible rage at the world, at fate, made her unable to speak. Lucia Santa, her sallow skin darkening, held back her tears by pressing her fingers in her eyes.
Zia Louche, too frightened to speak to the mother, scolded the infant. “Come, weep,” she said. “Ah, how good it feels. How easy it is, eh? You have the right. Ah, how fine. Louder. Louder.” But then the child became still, laughing at that toothless, wrinkled face mirrored from the other side of time.
The old crone shouted in mock anger, “Finished so soon? Come. Weep.” She shook the baby gently, but Vincent laughed, his toothless gums a mockery of hers.
Then the old woman said slowly, in a sad, singsong voice, “Miserabile, miserabile. Your father died before you were born.”
At these words the mother’s control broke. She pressed her nails tightly into the flesh of her face, and the great streaming tears mingled with the blood of the two long gashes she made in her cheeks. The old crone chirped, “Come, Lucia, some coffee now.” There was no answer. After a long time the mother lifted her dark face. She raised her black-clad arm to the stained ceiling and said in a deadly earnest voice filled with venom and hate, “I curse God.”
Caught in that moment of satanic pride, Octavia loved her mother. But even now, so many years later, she remembered with shame the scene that followed. Lucia Santa had lost all dignity. She cursed. Zia Louche said, “Shh—shh—think of the little girl who listens.” But the mother rushed out of the apartment and down the four flights of stairs, screaming obscenities at the kind neighbors, who immediately locked the doors she pounded on.
She screamed in Italian, “Fiends. Whores. Murderers of children.” She ran up and down the stairs, and out of her mouth