The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [68]
Gino was surprised to see Joey’s father home already and sitting at the kitchen table. He was a little hunched-up man with enormous mustaches, who always wore a crumpled gray fedora in the street and for some reason was wearing it now at table. Before him stood a jug of dark red wine, and a glass half full beside it.
“I brought Joey’s books home,” Gino said. “He’s coming home after he helps the teacher.”
He put the books on the table. The little man looked up and said with drunken kindness, “Buono giovanetto, good boy. You’re the son of Lucia Santa and Joey’s friend, a good boy. You never listen to anyone, eh? You go your own way. Very good. Very good. Have a glass of wine with me. And thank God you have no father.”
“I don’t drink, Zi’ Pasquale,” Gino said. “Thanks anyway.” He was sorry for Mr. Bianco’s feeling so bad over his son’s loss. The mother sat at the table watching her husband.
“Drink, drink,” said Zi’ Pasquale Bianco. The woman produced a small wineglass and the man filled it. “To America,” the little man said. “To those American presidents of the banks, may they one day eat the guts of their mothers.”
“Quiet, quiet,” Mrs. Bianco said soothingly.
In earlier days Gino had seen Zi’ Pasquale in his daily resurrection, his glory and his triumph.
First the little bent man, gnarled, a body of lumps and knots, trudged wearily from the railroad yard over the sunken steel rails embedded in Tenth Avenue. How tired he was, how dusty and dirty, the sweat drying and sealing the pores. The round fedora, dirty gray and rimmed with black, repelled the dangerous rays of the sun; the empty lunch pail swung on the right side of his body as he came up the dark stairs of the tenement and into the apartment.
Off came his upper garments, out came warm water and soap, and Zia Bianco wiped his broad knotted back with a wet cloth. Then on with a clean blue shirt, a quick glass of wine as he took the jug from beneath the sink, and then to table.
First Zi’ Pasquale would look them all in the eye, almost accusingly, even Gino, and then he would give a little shake of his head to show he did not blame them for some mysterious woe. Then a sip of wine from his glass. Slowly, carefully, his spine straightened as if the strength were pouring back into his body. Then his wife bent over him with a great deep plate of beans and pasta cloudy with a steam of garlic and brown bean sauce. Zi’ Pasquale picked up a spoon as he would a shovel, scooped in, and with an expert laborer’s flip the mound of beans and pasta disappeared behind that enormous mustached mouth, and after three such thrusts he put down his spoon and tore off a great chunk from the loaf of bread.
Spoon in one hand, bread in the other, he poured life and energy into his very soul. With each mouthful he grew visibly stronger, more powerful. He grew taller in his chair, over them all. The skin of his face became pink, there was a flash of white teeth and even a trace of the black-red lips as the mustache soaked flat with sauce. The brown crusty bread crackled like gunfire between his teeth, the great metal spoon flashed like a sword around their heads. He drained his glass of wine. And as if he had crushed everything on the table to its primal state, there was the smell of grape and flour and raw bean roots in earth.
Finally Zi’ Pasquale took a knife from his wife and cut off a hunk of crumbly grainy cheese from the black-skinned wheel. He held it up to the light so all could fall under the spell of its aroma. His other hand plucked the remainder of the bread loaf from the table and then, powerful, serene, almost with holy authority, he actually smiled at them all and asked in his rough southern Italian, “Who’s better than me?”
His wife would give out a short “Eh” of agreement as if he were confirming a belief of her own that he himself had denied. But the two boys would always stare at him very thoughtfully, trying to understand.