The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [76]
Gino would watch wide-eyed at the little scene to be played. The thin pink and yellow slices laid out on a long cere-monial platter, the large mug of coffee, and Mr. La Fortezza at his ease, resting his swollen feet on another chair as he talked to Lucia Santa of his trials and tribulations, the mother shaking her head in sympathy. For the poor man climbed countless flights of stairs, quarreled with those low-class Italians who tried to conceal their sons’ working and cursed because he would not approve their applications for relief, saying that he was a Jew and not an Italian, for no Italian would serve this government against his own kinfolk. “Ah,” Mr. La Fortezza said always, “was it for this my poor parents pinched each penny? Ate scarola and pasta and beans every day of the week? For their son to earn his bread at the cost of his health?” Lucia Santa would cluck with pity.
The owl eyes were sad. Mr. La Fortezza was out in all kinds of weather. He was not well. Four years at the university studying hard. “Signora,” he said, “I am not one of the clever ones; after all, my people were illiterate peasants for a thousand years, and even now it is enough for them that I do not have to work with my hands.”
The ham and cheese eaten, he would stand, ready to take his leave. Lucia Santa would give him the three dollars with an exquisite tactfulness, picking up his hand and thrusting the money into it as if he would absolutely refuse if she did not press him. Mr. La Fortezza would make a gesture of reluctance, pushing back the money; then he would sigh and raise an eyebrow and say “Eh” in a hopeless voice to show that his circumstances were so desperate that refusal was impossible.
It was true, they were fond of each other. He liked the older woman for her courtesy, her regard for his feelings, her little thoughtful snack with the coffee. She on her part felt a real sympathy for the sad-looking boy, thanking God that none of her sons showed so little joy in life. She felt no resentment that she must pay tribute.
In a few weeks Mr. La Fortezza got Lucia Santa a fifteen-dollar-a-month rental allowance. Without being asked, Lucia Santa put a five-dollar bill in his hand instead of three dollars. It was an understanding with a foundation like a rock.
It grew. He got her another four dollars a week. Lucia Santa made it a point to have a little parcel of groceries for him to take home, a pound of the pink sweet ham, a bottle of homemade fiery anisette to help his digestion. Now that Larry had a ramshackle tin lizzie that he tinkered with when he was not working, the mother had her son drive Mr. La Fortezza home all the way to the Bronx on Arthur Avenue.
The three of them, Larry, Mr. La Fortezza, and Gino, would ride in the bouncing rattling car, darting between horses and wagons and trolleys and automobiles. Gino noticed that Larry was always polite, but had a contempt for the young lawyer that came out in little kidding remarks. Mr. La Fortezza obviously did not dream that he was being kidded. He would earnestly tell his misfortunes like beads. How little the welfare paid its investigators, the payments that must be made on the house in the Bronx, how his parents were now getting so old they could not work, and he would have to support them and discharge the mortgage. There was real fear, almost terror, in his voice when he spoke of his desperate need for money, and this puzzled Gino. For Mr. La Fortezza was rich. He had been to college, he owned a two-family house, his family went away in the summer for vacation. What people on Tenth Avenue dreamed of achieving after forty years of heavy toil, this young man already