The Godfather - Mario Puzo [112]
Vito Corleone asked her gently, “Why do you ask me to help you?”
Mrs. Colombo nodded toward his wife. “She told me to ask you.”
He was surprised. His wife had never questioned him about the clothes he had washed the night he had murdered Fanucci. Had never asked him where all the money came from when he was not working. Even now her face was impassive. Vito said to Mrs. Colombo, “I can give you some money to help you move, is that what you want?”
The woman shook her head, she was in tears. “All my friends are here, all the girls I grew up with in Italy. How can I move to another neighborhood with strangers? I want you to speak to the landlord to let me stay.”
Vito nodded. “It’s done then. You won’t have to move. I’ll speak to him tomorrow morning.”
His wife gave him a smile which he did not acknowledge, but he felt pleased. Mrs. Colombo looked a little uncertain. “You’re sure he’ll say yes, the landlord?” she asked.
“Signor Roberto?” Vito said in a surprised voice. “Of course he will. He’s a good-hearted fellow. Once I explain how things are with you he’ll take pity on your misfortunes. Now don’t let it trouble you anymore. Don’t get so upset. Guard your health, for the sake of your children.”
THE LANDLORD, MR. ROBERTO, came to the neighborhood every day to check on the row of five tenements that he owned. He was a padrone, a man who sold Italian laborers just off the boat to the big corporations. With his profits he had bought the tenements one by one. An educated man from the North of Italy, he felt only contempt for these illiterate Southerners from Sicily and Naples, who swarmed like vermin through his buildings, who threw garbage down the air shafts, who let cockroaches and rats eat away his walls without lifting a hand to preserve his property. He was not a bad man, he was a good husband and father, but constant worry about his investments, about the money he earned, about the inevitable expenses that came with being a man of property had worn his nerves to a frazzle so that he was in a constant state of irritation. When Vito Corleone stopped him on the street to ask for a word, Mr. Roberto was brusque. Not rude, since any one of these Southerners might stick a knife into you if rubbed the wrong way, though this young man looked like a quiet fellow.
“Signor Roberto,” said Vito Corleone, “the friend of my wife, a poor widow with no man to protect her, tells me that for some reason she has been ordered to move from her apartment in your building. She is in despair. She has no money, she has no friends except those that live here. I told her that I would speak to you, that you are a reasonable man who acted out of some misunderstanding. She has gotten rid of the animal that caused all the trouble and so why shouldn’t she stay? As one Italian to another, I ask you the favor.”
Signor Roberto studied the young man in front of him. He saw a man of medium stature but strongly built, a peasant but not a bandit, though he so laughably dared to call himself an Italian. Roberto shrugged. “I have already rented the apartment to another family for higher rent,” he said. “I cannot disappoint them for the sake of your friend.”
Vito Corleone nodded in agreeable understanding. “How much more a month?” he asked.
“Five dollars,” Mr. Roberto said. This was a lie. The railway flat, four dark rooms, rented for twelve dollars a month to the widow and he had not been able to get more than that from the new tenant.
Vito Corleone took a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off three tens. “Here is the six months’ increase in advance. You needn’t speak to her about it, she’s a proud woman. See me again in another six months. But of course you’ll let her keep her dog.”
“Like hell,” Mr. Roberto said. “And who the hell are you to give me orders. Watch your manners or you’ll be out on your