The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [92]
Her tongue was venomously foul, the tight bones of her face were pointed to the very devil’s mask of cunning. Yet when it suited her purpose she could show a fawning charm dangerous as a snake.
Four sons working, she collected home relief. When she bought a dozen fruit she reached out after paying and took an extra piece. She browbeat the butcher for the left-over scraps of veal, for the fat from a cut roast. Her hand was against the world.
It was Zia Coccalitti who taught Lucia Santa how to stretch a dollar. Eggs were bought from a fine young fellow who stole crates out of the backs of poultry trucks and sometimes even had fresh chickens. Suits and bananas came from those bold longshoremen who unloaded ships, though what suits were doing on a ship who could know. Dress material, good silks, genuine wool were sold door-to-door by polite and eloquent hijackers, neighborhood youths who kidnapped them by the trailerful. And all of these people dealt more honestly with you than the shopkeepers from Northern Italy who roosted on Ninth Avenue like Roman vultures.
Who lived otherwise? No one in their world.
And so the years passed. Only five? Seeming more, yet so quickly gone. Only death could mark off time.
The Panettiere one day found his wife dead like the dragon she was, talons buried deep in a pail of heavy silver, on her face the peaceful look of one who had found the true Jesus. Then what a change came over the Panettiere. That horse of work left everything to his son, Guido, who grew thin over the hot ovens. He closed the bakery early, no longer made lemon ice or kept the glass-walled stand clean for pizza. Day and night he roistered with his old cronies in the back of the barber shop, losing those buckets of silver and copper his dragon-wife had so faithfully guarded. And he took the air regularly, strolling along Tenth Avenue like a duke, fat American cigars smoking in his mouth.
And so it was the Panettiere who first spied Octavia towing her future husband around the corner of 31st Street onto Tenth Avenue. He watched them with interest and compassion as they approached Lucia Santa, who was seated innocently on her backless chair before the tenement. One look at the young man was enough. The Angeluzzi-Corbo family was about to suffer another misfortune.
This macaroni carried a stack of books—a grown man—and with high pompadour black hair, his horn-rimmed spectacles, thin sliced features curved like a bow, proclaimed himself a Jew. Not only a Jew, but a Jew not in the best of health.
At once it became known that Octavia Angeluzzi was to marry a heathen. A scandal. Not because the man was a Jew, but because he was not an Italian. Worse than that was the girl’s sheer contrariness. Where did she find a Jew, in Christ’s name? For blocks uptown and downtown, east side and on the western wall of Tenth Avenue, there were only Catholic Irish, Polish, and Italians. But then, what could be expected of an Italian girl who wore business suits to cover her breasts?
There was no prejudice or ill-feeling. The old crones, uncles, aunts, and godparents were happy that a relative had found a breadwinner so late in life. She must be at least twenty-five years of age, ripe for trouble.
Now, thanks to the good Jesus, she would be married, know life: in short, she would open wide her legs. She would never have to bear that tactful deference given to old maids, the crippled, and the deformed. They rejoiced that Octavia would not go rotten like uneaten fruit. And remember—Jews were moneymakers of the finest feather. Octavia Angeluzzi would lack for nothing, and, good Italian daughter that she was, she would not let her mother, little brothers, and sister go free of luxury. So said the neighbors, the Panettiere, Zia Coccalitti, and the mad jealous barber, who eyed the Jew’s high pompadour with an inflamed covetous eye.
Lucia Santa did not share these optimistic views. True, this young man was handsome, fair, slender of build, and gentle as a girl. As for his being a Jew, it was