The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [93]
It is easy to laugh at the prejudices of the poor, their reasoning springs from a special experience. How irritating to hear some thieving Sicilian rascal say, “If you seek justice, put a gift in the scale.” How insulting to a noble profession when the sly Teresina Coccalitti whispered, “When you say lawyer, you say thief.” Lucia Santa had a saying of her own. “They who read books will let their families starve.”
Had she not seen with her own eyes how Octavia devoured books long into the night (she had never dared say it, but could not this be the reason for her daughter’s illness and visit to the sanitarium?) when she could have been sewing dresses for the budding daughters of the Santini, the Panettiere, and that maniac barber, earning God knows what sums of dollars? Her sons, too—Vinnie, Gino, and now even little Sal—went to the library for books of nonsense, insensible to the outside world and its duties. And for what? To numb their brains with stories that were not true, to enter worlds in which they could never live. What foolishness.
Illiterate, she was safe from corruption and could have no idea of the magic of books. Still, she sensed their power and rarely protested. But she had seen too many people, finding life painful, evade battle duty. As a poor man should not waste time and money on drink and cards, as a woman should not waste her strength and will on dreams of happiness, so youth, with a great struggle ahead, should not poison its will with fairy tales and dreams that enchanted them from paper pages they turned and turned and turned into the night.
If Lucia Santa had known how right she would prove to be, she would have chased Norman Bergeron out of her tene-ment with the Tackeril. A true renegade, he refused to battle for his bread against his fellow man. Foolishly, innocently kind, he wasted his college degree to become a social worker; but he was not capable of that stern force of character so necessary to those who administer charity. He was like a butcher who faints at the sight of blood. An uncle gave him a minor clerical post in his garment business, and it was there he met Octavia.
Like all weak men, Norman Bergeron had a secret vice. He was a poet. Not only in English, but—much more terrible—in Yiddish. Worse, he knew only one thing thoroughly: Yiddish literature—a talent he himself said was less in demand than any other on earth.
But all this was yet to be known. And despite her many misgivings, Lucia Santa seemed (to Octavia’s amazement) to take some pleasure in her daughter’s not marrying an Italian.
Now it was true that Lucia Santa wanted each of her sons to marry a good Italian girl who knew from the cradle that man ruled, must be waited on like a duke, fed good food that took hours to prepare; who cared for the children and the house without whining for help. Yes, yes, all her sons should marry good Italian girls. Her son Lorenzo had found his fortune with Louisa, and that was the proof.
On the other hand, what mother who had suffered under the masculine tyranny could wish on her tender daughter those guinea tyrants, those despotic greenhorns, who locked up their wives at home, never took them out except to a wedding or funeral; who made an uproar fit for wild goats if spaghetti was not steaming on the table at the precise moment their baronial boots crossed the doorsill; who never raised a finger to help their pregnant wives, and sat calmly smoking stinking De Nobili cigars while their big-bellied women stood on window sills, so top-heavy as they washed dirty glass that they were in danger of tumbling like balloons to the pavement of Tenth Avenue.
Thank God Octavia was marrying a man who was not an Italian and therefore might show mercy to womankind. Only once did Lucia Santa make an insulting remark about her daughter’s choice, and