The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [48]
The father raised himself up on one elbow. He spoke in a low, angry voice, full of life now. He said, “You told me there was never any need for doctors, that God decides, man believes. Now you are false. You are Judas.” And he pointed, arm extended, forefinger almost in the Colucci eye. He was a picture on the wall.
Mr. Colucci was stunned. He sat down on the bed and took Frank Corbo’s hand in his. He said, “My brother, listen to me. I believe. But when I see your wife and children to be left so, my faith wavers. Even mine. I cannot make my faith your destruction. You are ill. You have these headaches. You suffer. Dear brother, you do not believe. You say God has called you and you say you are dead. You blaspheme. Live now. Suffer a little longer. God will have mercy on you at Armageddon. Rise now and come to my home for supper. Then we will go to chapel and pray together for your deliverance.” Mr. Colucci was weeping. The other men bowed their heads. The father looked at them wide-eyed, seemingly rational.
“I will rise,” he said formally and motioned them to leave so that he could dress. Colucci and the other men went into the kitchen and sat at the table to drink the coffee Lucia Santa set before them.
Mr. Colucci stared silently at the wooden table. He was in terrible distress. What he had seen in that bed was a caricature of Christ and the true believer, the belief carried to its logical conclusion; the lying down to die. He said to Lucia Santa, “Signora Corbo, your husband will be home at nine this evening. Have the doctor come. Have no fear, I will stay with him.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Signora, believe in me. Your husband has true friends. He will have prayers. He will be cured. And his soul will be saved.”
Lucia Santa became coldly, implacably angry at his touch. Who was this man with his single child, a stranger to her grief and suffering, to presume to comfort her? Callow, criminal in his meddlesome religiosity—he was the cause of her husband’s illness. He and his friends had disordered her husband’s mind with their foolishness, their obscene and obsequious familiarity with God. And beyond that she had a feeling of disgust for Mr. Colucci. In some profound way she felt that he cared nothing for life or for his fellow man; that with a beautiful wife he showed a deep distrust and lack of faith by resting with one child. Remembering his weeping at her husband’s bed, she felt an overpowering contempt for him and all men who sought something beyond life, some grandeur. As if life, life itself, were not enough. What airs they gave themselves. She looked away from Mr. Colucci, his pity, his suffering, so that he could not see her face. She hated him. It was she who would feel the anguish, the rage of the sufferer who must bow to fate; as for Mr. Colucci, his would be the easy tears of compassion.
CHAPTER 7
THE DOCTOR WAS a son of the landlord who owned many tenements on Tenth Avenue. That Italian peasant father had not strained and sweated, had not left his homeland, had not squeezed every penny out of his compatriot tenants, had not supped on pasta and fagioli four times a week so that his son could become a Samaritan. Dr. Silvio Barbato was young, but he had no illusions about the Hippocratic oath. He had too much respect for his father, was too intelligent in his own right to be sentimental about these southern Italians who lived like rats along the western wall of the city. But still he was young enough to think of suffering as unnatural. Pity had not been squeezed out of him.
He knew Lucia Santa. As a boy, before his father had become wealthy, he had lived on Tenth Avenue and shown her the respect due an older woman. He had lived as she did not, with his spaghetti on Thursdays and Sundays; pasta and