The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [81]
Octavia was so offended she nearly cursed. The condescending use of her first name, his familiarity, made her spit, but into her handkerchief, as befitted a newly recovered lung patient. They watched her with sympathetic understanding. So she sat and listened to her mother toady to the welfare investigator.
Now he had read novels, Mr. La Fortezza had, in which the poor working girl had only to be smiled at and condescended to by a young man of the higher classes and the lucky female would fall flat on her back, legs waving in the air like a dog. Understand, not because of the money, but the recognition of nobility. Alas, Mr. La Fortezza did not have that flashing air, that smiling blondness, that slim American debonair charm, or the million dollars (always the million dollars), which of course meant nothing to heroines. And so La Fortezza became more and more animated, loquacious, and as charming as his two dark circled owl eyes would permit. Octavia looked at him more and more coldly. Gino and Vincent came into the house and, seeing their sister’s face, lounged around the room, happily expectant.
La Fortezza spoke now of literature. “Ah, Zola, he knew how to write about the poor. A great artist, you know. A Frenchman.”
Octavia said quietly, “I know.” But La Fortezza went on. “I would like to see him alive today to write about how the poor must live on the few pennies the welfare gives. What a farce. Now there is a man whose books your daughter should read, Signora Corbo. That would be an education in itself. And it would make you understand yourself Octavia, and your environment.”
Octavia, itching to spit in his eye, nodded quietly.
La Fortezza was gratified, as was the mother. With solemn eyes he said, “Why, you are an intelligent girl. Would you like to see a play with me sometime? I ask you in front of your mother to show my respect. I’m old-fashioned myself as your mother can tell you. Signora, isn’t it true?”
Lucia Santa smiled and nodded. She had visions of her daughter marrying a lawyer with a good city job. For mothers, even in books, do not set their sights so high as heroines. She said benignly, “He’s a good Italian boy.”
La Fortezza went on. “We’ve had many long talks together, your mother and I, and we understand each other. I’m sure she would not object to our having a friendly date. The city gets us the theater tickets cut-rate. It will be a new experience for you instead of the movies.”
Octavia had been to the theater with her girl friends many times. The dressmaking shops got cut-rate tickets, too. Octavia had read the same novels and always had a supreme contempt for the heroines, those generous, witless maidens who exposed themselves to shame while serving pleasure to men who flaunted their wealth as bait. But that this stupid starving guinea college kid thought he could screw her. Her eyes began to flash and she spat out shrilly in answer to his invitation, “You can go shit in your hat, you lousy bastard.” Gino, in a corner with Vinnie, said, “Ooh-oh, there she goes.” Lucia Santa, like an innocent sitting on a lit powder keg and only now seeing the sputtering fuse, looked around dazedly as if wondering where to run. A surge of blood coursed through Mr. La Fortezza’s face, even his owl eyes turned red. He was petrified.
For there is nothing more blood-curdling than a young Italian shrew. Octavia’s voice in a high, strong, soprano note berated him. “You take eight dollars a month from my poor mother, who has four little kids to feed and a sick daughter. You bleed a family with all our trouble and you have the nerve to ask me out? You are a lousy son-of-a-bitch, a lousy, creepy sneak. My kid brothers and sister do without candy and movies so my mother can pay you off, and I’m supposed to go out with you?” Her voice was shrill and incredulous. “You’re old-fashioned, all right. Only a real guinea bastard from Italy with that respectful Signora horseshit would pull something like that. But I finished high school, I read Zola,