The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [97]
Dr. Barbato came to drink his glass of wine, eat the icy-looking pastries, and dance with the bride. He observed Lucia Santa, surrounded like a queen, and went to put his little envelope in her great satin bag. He was greeted with regal coolness. He became angry; he had expected to be fussed over after all he had done for this mangy family. But what had his father said, “Never expect gratitude from a donkey or a peasant.” However, a glass of good wine mellowed Dr. Barbato, and the second glass mellowed him even further. Without wanting to, without affection, he understood these people. How could a person like Lucia Santa show gratitude to everyone who had helped her? She would be constantly on her knees. To her such help was merely fate. As she blamed no living man for her misfortunes, so she gave no one credit for little strokes of luck, which included the stray charity of Dr. Barbato.
Dr. Barbato touched his mustache, straightened his vest. He had attended many of these Italians, and some of them had been children with his father in Italy, but they showed him a coolness, as if he were a usurer, a padrone, or even an undertaker. Oh, he knew very well how they felt behind the respectful, honeyed Signore Dottore this and Signore Dottore that. He fed on their misfortunes; their pain was his profit; he came in their dire need and fear of death, demanding monies to succor them. In some primitive way they felt the art of healing to be magic, divine, not to be bought and sold. But who then should pay for the colleges, the schools, the long hours of study and nerve-racking toil while they, the ignorant clods and louts, drank their wine and bet their sweaty silver on the turn of a dirty playing card? Let them hate me, he thought; let them go to the free clinics, let them wait for hours before some intern bastard looks them over like a bull or cow. They could croak in Bellevue and he would work on Long Island, where people would fight to pay his bills and know what they were getting. Dr. Barbato, to show that such poor greenhorns could in no way affect him, gave his best farewell smile and said his good-byes in his best university Italian, which made him almost unintelligible, and then, to the relief of everyone, he took his leave.
As the festivities went on above them, Angelina and Gino tried to find her coat among the heaped-up garments in Larry’s apartment. Lucia Santa’s fears were groundless. Angelina was not the reckless girl she appeared, and Gino was still too innocent to take advantage of her weakness. Before he walked her to the subway, she gave him a long kiss, the warmth of her heavy mouth coated with a layer of lipstick. Her body pressed against his so fleetingly that Gino could only use it in his dreams.
YES, THE WEDDING was a success, one of the best on the Avenue, a credit to the family of Angeluzzi-Corbo, and a feather in the cap of Lucia Santa. Who did not rest on her glory, but invited the family of Piero Santini for Sunday dinner so that Gino could perhaps show Caterina the sights of the city she had missed from living up there in the distant woods of Tuckahoe.
SUCH A MAN as Piero Santini does not amass four trucks and contracts to haul city garbage by being sensitive to humiliation. The Santinis came to dinner the very next Sunday.
Lucia Santa outdid herself. On Sunday morning she broke a wooden spoon over Gino’s head, parting enough skin to let in common sense, and convincing him it was wise not to go out in the street to play stickball. She then made sauce fit for a king of Naples and rolled out wide macaroni from homemade dough. For the green salad she opened the bottle of almost sacred oil sent from Italy by her poor peasant sister—oil impossible to buy, first blood of the olive.
Gino, in his new gray suit from the long shore, Caterina in her red silk dress, were trapped side by side. Vincenzo, the favorite of old ladies, amused the enormous Signora Santini by telling her fortune with cards. Salvatore and Lena cleared the table and washed the