The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [64]
Zia Louche said, “Eh, eh,” and made another impatient gesture as if to brush away all people who expected life to run smooth. She took off her shabby black coat and then the long knitted sweater with its buttons down to her knees.
Under those gimlet eyes Octavia felt she could no longer read; it would not be respectful. She rose and began to iron slowly. The mother reached out and closed the book, which was lying open on the table, so the daughter could not look down at it and read while ironing. Then Octavia was aware that she was being accorded the rare honor of a direct address from Zia Louche.
“Young lady of mine,” Zia Louche said, with the rough familiarity of the old, “your handsome brother, has he appeared at all today?”
“No, Zia Louche,” Octavia replied demurely. If anyone else had used this tone with her she would have spat in her face, especially the smug fat matrons, those guineas who always spoke to young girls with voices filled with sly pity because they had never tasted the pleasures of a marriage bed.
“And you, Lucia Santa?” Zia Louche asked. When the mother shook her head the old woman continued sharply, “Then you have no concern for this beautiful son of yours, a boy of seventeen years, in a country like this? You have no fears for him?” Octavia saw her mother’s face contort in a frown of anxiety.
Lucia Santa shrugged helplessly. “What is now with that disgrazia? Saturday nights he never sleeps at home. Nothing has happened?”
Zia Louche gave a short harsh laugh. “Oh, yes, something has happened. A whole comedy has been played. And, as usual in America, the mother is the last to know. Calm, Lucia Santa, your beautiful son is safe, alive. The Lady Killer—” she said this last in American, with incredible relish—“has finally met a girl who is very much alive. Congratulations, Lucia Santa, on your son’s marriage and your new daughter-in-law—American style.”
The stunning effect of this was such that Octavia and her mother could only stare. The old lady, in her taunting way, hoped to draw some of their rage on herself, but now she had to give way to gales and gales of laughter that shook her old skeleton in its flesh of black cloth, gasping out, “No, no, Lucia Santa, you must forgive me, you have all my love in this, but oh, what a villain your Lorenzo is, cue mascalzone. It’s too much, it’s really too much.” But then she saw the stony face of her friend, the tight lips, the almost mortal insult that she had given. She composed herself. She held the wrinkled bones of her face in a gravity suitable to her years. But she could not hide a certain contempt for their anxiety.
“Again forgive me,” Zia Louche said. “But with a son who is such a whoremaster, what did you expect, after all? Would you rather see him beaten or dead? Your son is not stupid, Lucia Santa. Signora Le Cinglata, twenty years barren, and Signor Le Cinglata, married twice, forty years a husband and never a father, finally they are blessed.” She bowed her head mockingly. “Thanks be to the good God. But the man Le Cinglata thinks he owes his thanks to someone nearer and sharpens his knife to repay this debt. And the shameless woman Le Cinglata had a dream of marrying your son. Is this possible of a woman born and raised in Italy? Oh America—shameless land.” At this Lucia Santa raised a threatening hand to heaven in a wordless curse on the brazen Le Cinglata, but she leaned forward to hear more.
Zia Louche went on. “Your son finally is trapped by the tigers he has so thoughtlessly tamed. A word from the Le Cinglata to her husband and he is a dead man. But if he gives hope to the old whore, what may happen? What disgrace? She may even poison the old man and bring them both to the electric chair. But you know your son, he is clever and will do anything to avoid saying ‘No’ to anyone. So away he scampers to City Hall and marries a young innocent Italian girl who has watched him ride his horse on Tenth Avenue since she was in pigtails, without ever speaking to him.