The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [41]
They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. There was nothing either could say. What he had done had been impossible not to do. He could make no apology, no plea for understanding. She must accept it as she must accept sickness and death. And just as impossible was it that she could forgive him. She rose and went to the door where he had left his suitcase, as if he might not stay, and put it in the farthest corner of the room. Then she made him a quick omelet to go with his coffee.
When she bent her head over to serve him, he kissed her cheek and she accepted the kiss. It was an act of two people who have betrayed each other and with this kiss pledged themselves never to seek vengeance.
The two women and the man sat around drinking coffee. Zia Louche asked, “So how was it to go back on the land? Ah, work, real work is the best thing for a man. In Italy people work sixteen hours a day and never get sick. But you, you look very fine. The land agreed with you, then?”
The father nodded his head. He was polite. “It was good,” he said.
The two small children, Sal and Baby Lena, came down the corridor from the front room, where they had been playing. When they saw their father, they stopped and held each other’s hand. They stared at him.
Zia Louche said sharply, “Go kiss your father, go.” But the father was looking at the children with the same helpless vulnerable ghost of remembered love, a kind of wonder, remembrance mixed with wariness, of danger. When they came to him he bent and kissed their foreheads with an infinite gentleness. After he had done this his wife saw that stricken look in his eyes that had always troubled her so.
From his pocket the father took two small brown paper bags of candy and gave one to each of the children. They sat on the floor beside his chair, to open the bags and explore their gifts, brushing against the father’s legs like cats. He drank his coffee, seemingly unaware, making no gesture to touch them again.
Zia Louche left. When the door closed, the father took a roll of bills from his pocket, kept two for himself, and gave the rest to Lucia Santa. There was a hundred dollars.
She was overwhelmed. “Maybe you did the right thing. You look better. How do you feel, Frank?” Her voice was touched with concern, a little apprehensive.
“Better,” the husband said. “I was sick. I didn’t want to fight before I left, so I couldn’t tell you. The noise in the city, in the house. My head hurt all the time. Out there it was quiet. I worked hard all day and at night I slept without dreams. What man could want more?”
They were both silent. At last he said, as if in apology, “That’s not much money, but it’s everything I earned. I didn’t spend a penny on myself. My boss gave me the suitcase, the clothes, and my living. Better than staying here and washing your stairs.”
The mother said quietly, reassuringly, “It is a lot of money.” But she could not help adding, “Gino did your stairs for you.” She expected him to be angry. But Frank nodded his head and said in a reasonable, gentle voice, without irony, “Children must suffer for the sins of their fathers.”
He spoke like a churchgoer, a Christian, and, in confirmation of her suspicion, he took a red-edged holy book from the pocket of his jacket.
“You see this?” he asked. “This book has the truth and I can’t even read it. It’s in Italian and still I cannot read it. When Gino comes home from school he can read to me. The places are marked.