The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [99]
CHAPTER 17
FOR SEVEN YEARS Frank Corbo had left his family in peace. Now he was to trouble them again. Far out on Long Island, in the Pilgrim State Hospital for the Insane, he decided to make his final escape. And so one dark night he hid in his caged bed and secretly sent his brain spinning against the bones of his skull. Slowly, divinely, he called up the great wave of cerebral blood that hurled his body onto the tiled floor of the ward and freed forever that tiny spark that was the remainder of his soul.
WHEN THE TELEGRAM came, Lucia Santa was drinking her mid-morning coffee with the formidable Teresina Coccalitti. And that terrible woman, to show her great friendship, revealed one of her secrets. She could read English. This astounded Lucia Santa more than the news in the telegram. How armed this woman was against the world. And how coolly she now regarded Lucia Santa. There could be no false grief before those cunning eyes.
It is most terrible to know that another human being who has put his life in trust to you can no longer move you to pity for his fate. To herself Lucia Santa was completely honest: Frank Corbo’s death brought a sense of relief, a freedom from hidden, nagging fear that someday she must again condemn him to his cage. She dreaded him; she feared for her children; she begrudged the sacrifices his living would demand.
Go further. Trust in the forgiveness of God: the death of her husband lifted a terrible burden from her spirit. On her rare visits, seeing him caged behind barred windows, her faith in life drained away, she had lost her strength for days afterward.
Lucia Santa felt no grief; only an enormous relief from tension. The man who fathered three of her children had died gradually in her heart during those years he was hidden away in the asylum. She could not keep before her eyes his living flesh.
Now Teresina Coccalitti showed the iron mind that was the legend of Tenth Avenue. She put Lucia Santa on the right path. Why bring her husband’s body all the way to New York, pay an undertaker, make a big fuss, remind everyone that her husband died insane? Why not take the whole family out to the hospital and have the funeral there? Frank Corbo had no family in this country to take offense or to pay their respects. Hundreds of dollars would be saved, gossip cut off.
A queen could not have reasoned more coldly.
Lucia Santa prepared a huge supper, too heavy really for the warm summer weather, and the Angeluzzi-Corbo family ate together that night. No one was grief-stricken by the death of the father. Lucia Santa was shocked when Gino took the news very coolly, looking into her eyes and shrugging. Salvatore and Aileen could not be expected to remember him, but Gino was eleven when his father was sent away.
As they ate, they made plans. Larry had already called the hospital long distance and arranged for the funeral to be held at noon and for a headstone to be put up in the hospital cemetery. He had borrowed his chief’s limousine—Mr. di Lucca had insisted—to drive them all up there. They would start at seven sharp in the morning; it would be a long drive. They would be home by evening. Only one day of work would be missed. Octavia and her husband would sleep in Lucia Santa’s house, in Octavia’s old room. Lena could sleep again with her mother this one night. It was comfortably arranged.
Gino ate hurriedly and then put on a clean shirt