The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [94]
But all in all this marriage was the fitting crown to five years of good fortune. Lucia Santa insisted on a big wedding, properly in church. There was no trouble with Norman Bergeron. His reading of books was a virtue here. He made no objection to being married as a Christian or to bringing up his children as Christians. There were no objections from his family. He explained to Lucia Santa that they had declared him dead and outcast because of his marriage. Lucia Santa was pleased to hear this good news. It would simplify everything. Octavia and Norman would belong to her.
CHAPTER 16
LUCIA SANTA SPARED no expense. The wedding party in the tenement was done in the finest style. Great purple jugs of wine from the Panettiere’s cellar lined the outside hall of the apartment, mountains of succulent prosciutto and logs of the strongest cheeses covered the table and waited on linen-sheeted beds, brightly colored wedding cookies and long candy-covered almonds filled borrowed silver trays. In the kitchen there were tiers of soda boxes—orange, cream, and strawberry—stacked to the ceiling.
Everyone on Tenth Avenue came to pay respects, and even those proud relatives who owned their own homes on Long Island to gossip and lord it over the poor peasants they had left so far behind. For who could resist such a wedding and what for some was the first intimate sight of a heathen bridegroom?
The young people danced in the front room amidst colored streamers and to the music of a gramophone borrowed from the mad barber. In the dining room and kitchen at the other end of the flat, the old Italians gossiped on rows of borrowed chairs that stood against the blue-painted plaster walls. Octavia gave the great ceremonial silken pouch for presents of money envelopes to Lucia Santa, who clutched it lovingly against her hip. With dignity, she pulled at its silvery strings to open its jaws and let it gulp proffered treasure.
For Lucia Santa it was a day of glory. But there is no day so fine that it does not hold some displeasure.
An old schoolmate of Octavia’s high school days, an Italian girl whose family lived in their own house with a telephone, by name of Angelina Lambecora, dropped in for a short time to wish Octavia well and bring an expensive, patronizing present. But this slut proceeded to turn the heads of all the young men and even some of the old. Her beautifully planed face was made up as by a professional, rouge, even eye-shadow and some delicate lipstick that hid the sluttishness of her wide mouth and made it as inviting as those deep red grapes of Italy. She was dressed in the fashion of who-knows-what—half-suit, half-dress, with the top half of her pushed-up breasts plumped high for the eyes to feast on. Every man danced with her. Larry deserted his wife for her, until poor Louisa wept. He trailed the hussy, thrusting himself before those painted eyes, giving off clouds of his dazzling charm, showing those white square teeth in his most disarming and flattering smile. Angelina flirted with them all, waggled her tail in dance as the Panettiere, his son Guido, the narrow-eyed barber, and the white-haired Angelo of seventy-five years, whose life was his candy store, all deserted the gossip and the wine to stand like dogs, tongues hanging, knees bent to relieve pressure on the groin, eating her up with their hot glances. Until Angelina, feeling her mascara melting in the stuffy apartment, announced she must leave and catch her train to Long Island. Octavia kissed her quickly to speed her on her way, for even Norman Bergeron, shorn of his books this one night, had fixed Angelina with his horn-rimmed poet’s eye.
All very well. The world was never made without its proper number of sluts. One day she too would have children,