The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [54]
Lucia Santa reflected that whatever else you might say of the place, you must say the truth: that it was a hospital of charity. It owed her and people like her nothing and would receive nothing from them. Its dark tiled corridors were noisy with children waiting for drugs, treatment, stitches. In one ward children crippled by automobiles and drunken parents fought over a solitary wheelchair.
In some beds were the righteously ill—men whose labor had earned bread for their wives and children, whose fear of death was compounded by the vision of their helpless, unprotected families.
It was a hospital where people brought food every day to their loved ones—casseroles of spaghetti, bags of oranges, and towels and decent soap and fresh linen. It was a factory for the human vessel to be glued together without pity, tenderness, or love. It was a place to make an animal fit to take up his burden. It was heedless of the hurt spirit; it gave a grudging charity that on principle would never dispense flowers. It hung on the eastern wall of the city, medieval in its tower-like formation and iron gates, a symbol of hell. The pious poor crossed themselves when they entered those gates; the gravely ill resigned themselves to death.
Lucia Santa and her son found the doctor’s office and entered. The mother could not believe that such a young man in his ill-fitting white jacket held power over her husband. As soon as they were seated, he told her that she could not see her husband that day; it would be best if she signed certain necessary papers.
The mother said to Larry in a low voice, in Italian, “Tell him about the wink.” The doctor said in Italian, “No, Signora, you tell me.” The mother was surprised, he looked so American.
He spoke the Italian of the rich and he treated her with gentlemanly courtesy. Lucia Santa explained to him how at the height of madness that terrible night her husband had winked his eye at his oldest natural son. To reassure him, to show he was not really crazy. It was clear, he had let himself go out of weakness or exasperation with his family, or despair at his fate. They were poor. He was really too ill to earn a living. This was the reason, sometimes, that men behaved so strangely. And he had gone all winter without a hat. His brains had been chilled with the cold. And she must not forget that, digging the new subway for Eighth Avenue, he had been buried alive a few minutes and hurt his head.
She went on and on to show that the illness was physical, external, subject to simple care, but she always came back to the winking of the eye. He had fooled them all that night. They had everyone been taken in, even the doctors.
The doctor listened with grave courtesy and tact, nodding his head in agreement that the winking of the eye was very strange, that the cold, the blow on the head might be at fault, murmuring encouragement. The mother did not realize that this courtesy was an expression of pity and compassion. When she finished, he spoke in his beautiful Italian, revealing himself as an enemy.
“Signora,” he said, “your husband is very ill. Too ill for this hospital. Too ill for your home. He must be sent away. Perhaps in a year or two he will be well. No one knows. These things are still a mystery.”
The mother said in a low voice, “I will not sign any papers. I want to see my husband.”
The doctor glanced at Larry and shook his head. Larry said, “Come on, Ma, I’ll bring you back tomorrow, maybe we can see Pop then.”
Lucia