The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [77]
When Mr. La Fortezza got out of the car, his little brown bag of groceries under his arm, Larry lit a cigarette and winked at his kid brother. Gino winked back. They drove home to Tenth Avenue in some way cheered and confident, as if the world was theirs to conquer.
DR. BARBATO, CLIMBING the four flights to the Angeluzzi-Corbo apartment, was a man grimly determined that by Jesus Christ this time this family would pay his due. Try to help them and someone else made the money. Why should he lose money to the French Hospital?
So Bellevue Hospital was too good for these poor ignorant guinea bastards? They wanted the best of medical care, did they? Who the hell did they think they were, these miserabili, these beggars without a pot to piss in, on home relief and the daughter in the sanitarium at Raybrook.
The door was open as the doctor came over the top stair. Sentineled there was little Sal, looking very solemn. In the kitchen the supper dishes were scattered all over the table, the yellow oilcloth dotted with scraps of French-fried potatoes and eggs. Gino and Vincent were playing a game of cards on this table. A fine pair of bandits, the doctor thought angrily, but he was softened when Vincent left the table to lead him through the string of rooms, doing so with a natural, shy courtesy, and saying in a gentle voice, “My mother is sick.”
In the dark, windowless bedroom lay the heavy figure Lucia Santa. Standing beside her was the small girl Aileen, letting her face and hands be washed by the cloth the mother took from a water basin beside her bed. The scene reminded the doctor of some of the religious pictures he had seen in Italy, not for any sentimentality, but because of the composition of the reposing mother tending the child and the lighting of the room, with the dim yellow of the electric bulb casting a beatific glow on the dark-colored walls.
He tried to isolate the resemblance. Then he realized from his reading that it was simply a peasant upbringing, the child’s complete reliance on its mother. These were the people that famous painters had used.
Dr. Barbato stood at the foot of the bed and said gravely, “Ah, Signora Corbo, you’re having bad luck this winter.” It was an expression of sympathy and a reminder of how badly she had behaved with Octavia.
Even lying flat on her back, Lucia Santa could become so violently angry that her cheeks flushed and her great black eyes flashed. But the reverence of the poor for so exalted a personage as the doctor made her hold her tongue, though she could have reminded him that he too had eaten from her hand a slice of coarse bread soaked in wine vinegar and olive oil. She said meekly, “Ah, Doctor, my back, my legs, I can’t walk or work.”
The doctor said, “First send the child to the kitchen.” The little girl stood closer to the bed and put one arm out to her mother’s head. The mother said gently, “Go, Lena, go in the kitchen and help your brothers with the dishes.” The doctor smiled and Lucia Santa, seeing the smile, called out in Italian, “Vincenzo, Gino, mascalzoni that you are, have you started the dishes? Have you left the kitchen a mess for the doctor to see? Wait—I’ll cripple both of you. Lena, go, and tell me if they don’t work.”
The little girl, delighted with her role of spy, ran to the kitchen.
Dr. Barbato walked around the bed and sat on it. He pulled down the blanket and put his stethoscope to her chest, first on top of the nightgown. As he was about to tell her to raise her nightgown the little girl was beside him, dark brown eyes curious. She said to her mother, “Gino and Vincent are washing the dishes and Sal is cleaning the table.”
The mother saw the doctor’s annoyance. “Good, good, Lena, and now you go help them and watch them. No one is to come in here until I call. Tell them that.” The little girl scampered away.
Lucia Santa had put out her hand to touch her daughter’s head, and the doctor, seeing the swollen wrists, knew what he could expect. When they