The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  Cetta took the hand that had punched the wall. The knuckles were bleeding. She lifted his hand to her mouth and licked the blood away. Then she cleaned her spit off his face.

  Sal stared at her, then turned and climbed into the car. “Good night, kid,” he said, not looking at her, and drove away.

  Cetta watched him turn down Market Street and disappear. She fastened the chain with the cross around her neck. The taste of Sal’s blood was in her mouth.

  She went back to the room. Christmas was sleeping. Vito was asleep, snoring. Tonia was sitting at the table holding a photograph in her hand. Cetta began to stack the plates.

  “Leave them,” Tonia said softly, without taking her eyes off the photo. “We’ll do them tomorrow.”

  Cetta began to undress.

  “This is Michele,” Tonia told her. “Sal calls him Mikey.”

  Cetta came and sat down next to Tonia. The old woman handed her the photo. He was just a boy, wearing a flashy suit and a white shirt, with suspenders and a hat pushed back to show his forehead. He wasn’t very tall. He was thin, with heavy dark eyebrows. He was laughing.

  “He always laughed,” said Tonia, taking back the photo. “I can’t leave this out because when I did, it made Vito too sad. He would stand in front of this picture and weep. Vito’s a good man, but he’s weak. He was letting himself die of grief, and I didn’t want to be alone. So I put it away.”

  Cetta didn’t know what to do. She took Tonia in her arms.

  “Sal told him,” Tonia went on in a singsong cadence. “He told him a hundred times not to steal that money from the boss. But that’s the way Mikey was. He couldn’t be happy with what he had. I always wanted two sons. Sal was the second son I never had. I’m glad he was the one who drove the car with my poor Mikey in it. At least I can be sure he said goodbye before he left him there. He would have said something nice. Like, don’t be afraid in the night, tomorrow they’ll find you, and they’ll bring you home. Sal couldn’t have saved him. The only thing he could have done was die, too.” Tonia took Cetta’s hand. In the other she clasped the photo of her son. “Sal has no idea I know he drove the car,” she said softly. “And Vito doesn’t know either. I’m the only one who knows. And now you know it too. But keep it to yourself. This is what women are good at. We keep the important things to ourselves.”

  “Why did you tell me, Tonia?”

  “Because I’m old. And I’m getting weaker all the time.”

  Cetta watched Tonia’s hand. The thumb was moving back and forth across the dead son’s face, slowly, automatically, with the same distracted care she’d seen on old women in her village when praying with their rosary beads.

  “But why me?” she asked.

  Tonia stopped stroking the photo, reached out her hand to Cetta’s cheek and gave it a rough caress. “Because you need to forgive Sal, too.”

  That night Cetta couldn’t sleep. She held Christmas against her breast. And she prayed that he wouldn’t be a boy with flashy suits.

  Tonia died before New Year’s. She fell to the ground suddenly one morning. Vito was out playing cards with the other old men. Cetta saw her swaying. A moment before Tonia had been holding Christmas in her arms. She had passed him to Cetta, fanning her face with one hand and saying, “Madonna, hot flashes at my age!” But Cetta had read the worry in her eyes. Then all at once Tonia crumpled to the ground. Without a sound. Awkwardly. The body was sprawled, she’d struck her head violently, her fat stomach had quivered like a custard under her black dress, her legs had twitched and then gone stiff.

  Cetta didn’t move, watching her. Tonia’s skirt had slid up, leaving an indecent view of the legs furrowed with varicose veins above her dark stockings.

  Christmas was crying.

  “Stop it!” Cetta shouted, and Christmas stopped crying.

  Cetta set him on the ground and tried to lift Tonia, but she was too heavy. She rolled her onto her back and arranged the skirt. Next she crossed her hands on her breast, smoothed back a lock of hair, and wiped away the thin stream of saliva at the corner of her mouth.

  When Vito came in, he found Cetta sitting on the floor and Christmas playing with one of the buttons on Tonia’s dress.

  “Grandpa,” he said, pointing a finger at Vito.

  Vito didn’t say anything. He only took off his hat and held it in his hand. Then he made the sign of the cross.

  Sal paid for the funeral, and the coffin, too. He bought a black suit for Vito and a black band to put around Christmas’ arm. In the church no one wept. Besides them there was Mrs. Santacroce, the only neighbor with whom Tonia had socialized.

  That night Cetta heard Vito weeping quietly, softly, with a kind of dignity, as if he were ashamed of his own immense sorrow.

  Cetta got up and came to lie in the big bed with him and Christmas. The old man said nothing. But after a while he fell asleep, and in his sleep he touched Cetta’s buttocks with his hand. Cetta let him do it. She knew that he was touching his wife, not her.

  The next morning Vito awoke with a little gleam of happiness in his grief. “I had a beautiful dream," he told Cetta. “I was young.”

  Every night, as long as he was awake, he would weep softly, even more softly when Cetta came into his bed, and then when he fell asleep he would touch her.

  Not quite a month had passed when Cetta felt, as she did every night, the touch of Vito’s old hand. But that night she also heard a change in his breathing — always subdued and discreet, like his hidden weeping — a choking sound. Then a long sibilant breath. Then nothing. His hand gripped her buttocks, almost as though he were pinching her, and then it didn’t move. In the morning Vito was dead, and Cetta and Christmas were alone.

  “Can we stay here?” she asked Sal.

  “Yeah, but keep the little pisser from breakin’ my balls.”

  Cetta saw that his eyes were red with weeping. And she understood that now Sal was alone, too.

  11

  Manhattan, 1922

  “Which ones are they?” the captain asked the guard.

  The guard pointed at Christmas and Santo.

  “Bring ’em out,” said the captain, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, uneasily.

  The two boys came up to the bars while the guard unlocked the cell door. Behind the captain, Christmas could see an elegantly dressed man with sad eyes and the look of someone beaten down.

  “All right, here they are, Mr. Isaacson …” said the captain, obviously embarrassed. “Try to understand, well — just look at them. My men thought that these two were the ones who …”

  Mr. Isaacson raised one hand to make the captain stop talking. It was the sure and automatic gesture of someone used to giving orders. A gesture of a tired man, rather than an angry one, Christmas thought. The man’s face looked exhausted. He was looking at the two boys with those tired eyes.

  “Thanks,” he said simply. Then he gave each of them a banknote that he was holding ready in his hand.

  “Ten bucks!” cried Santo.

  “Mr. Isaacson is the father of the girl you, ah …” the captain cleared his throat, “well, the young lady you saved.”

  “Ten bucks!” Santo said again.

  Christmas looked silently at Ruth’s father. Mr. Isaacson looked at him.

  “How is she?” Christmas asked quietly, as if it were something concerning only the two of them.

  “Fine,” said Isaacson. “Well, no … she’s in bad shape.”

  “We’ll find him, Mr. Isaacson,” said the captain.

  “Yes, of course,” said the man, he too speaking softly, without taking his eyes off Christmas.

  “How bad?” asked Christmas.

  “As bad as a thirteen-year-old girl can be after she’s been raped, beaten up, and had a finger cut off …” said Mr. Isaacson all at once. For a moment, his gaze lost the tiredness and instead showed a kind of amazement, as if it were only in that moment that he’d realized what had happened to his daughter. And then, almost frightened, he t
urned away. “I must go now,” he said hastily and moved toward the exit.

  “Sir!” Christmas called after him. “Can I see her?”

  The man stopped, once more looking surprised. His mouth was half-open, as though he didn’t know what to say.

  “We have to question the two of you,” the captain intervened, putting himself between Christmas and Mr. Isaacson, as if the man needed to be protected from the intrusive street boy. “You have to tell us everything. We have to find the bastard who did that to the young lady.” He looked out of the corner of his eye at Mr. Isaacson in a complicit servile way.

  “Yes,” said the man softly, after a pause.

  “I can see Ruth?”

  “Yes …” said Mr. Isaacson tonelessly. He stared silently, absently, at Christmas and then walked slowly and heavily towards the door. “Come along.”

  “What about me?” asked Santo, who had not for a second stopped staring at the ten-dollar bill in his hand.

  “Tell him everything,” said Christmas, motioning with his chin at the captain. He came close to Santo’s ear. “But don’t mention Diamond Dogs.”

  As he looked up he saw Joey, the pickpocket, staring at him through the bars. Christmas thought the circles under his eyes had gotten even darker and deeper, and that his eyes had lost their irony and boldness. Now he looked like any boy, a boy like Santo and Christmas. A sickly kid who — like them — had grown up without much to eat, in rooms that were cold in winter and stifling in summer. He nodded to him, and Joey answered with a sad little grin.

  Christmas caught up with Mr. Isaacson in the corridor of the police station and followed him out to the street. A luxurious Hispano-Suiza H6B with a chauffeur was waiting by the sidewalk outside the station. The driver opened the door and looked reprovingly at Christmas, his filthy clothes, his muddy shoes. He closed the door politely, regained the driver ’s seat, and started the engine.

  “The hospital, sir?”

  Mr. Isaacson barely nodded. The chauffeur looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He changed gears and the big canary yellow automobile, with black mudguards and a gray roof, began to move through the dusty East Side streets.

  “Are you Christmas?” asked Mr. Isaacson, still staring ahead of him, lost in nothingness.

  “Yes, sir,” Christmas answered, and he felt his heart plunge.

  Mr. Isaacson turned to look at him, not speaking. Perhaps not seeing him, either, thought Christmas. Then the gentleman went back to gazing straight ahead, immersed in his own loss. Christmas toyed with the ten-dollar bill — which until now he hadn’t even looked at — and sensed that even with all that this man was suffering, Christmas couldn’t really like him.

  Twenty bucks, he thought. His pain is worth twenty bucks.

  In a few minutes the great car, that everyone along the streets had turned to gape at, pulled up in front of the hospital. The driver hurried to open Mr. Isaacson’s door, and Christmas followed him out, feeling the eyes of the two cops at the hospital door fixed on him.

  The atrium was crowded with poor people. As soon as the nurse behind the desk saw Mr. Isaacson she signaled to another nurse, a man, who hurried up to them.

  “Dr. Goldsmith is here. He’s in Miss Isaacson’s room,” he said eagerly. “I’ll show you the way.”

  They went through a series of corridors full of people wailing, smoking, and playing cards. The nurse hurried rudely past anyone who crossed their path. He was haughty, perhaps he thought that was how anyone who worked for Mr. Isaacson ought to behave. Christmas saw how the children playing and tussling in the corridors grew quiet as they came past. He saw how men and women instinctively looked down or hunched their shoulders. Then he looked at Mr. Isaacson. He was walking like a ghost, not noticing anyone. Maybe it was because of grief and worry, thought Christmas, or maybe he never noticed people who didn’t count.

  But none of that was important now. Christmas was feeling an odd sensation, something that made it hard for him to breathe, that made him lightheaded, as if he’d had a drink; his legs felt shaky. His knees felt soggy. He was thinking of the green eyes he’d intuited through the clotted blood. Ruth’s eyes, which had looked at him and smiled. He felt a stirring in his stomach that he’d never felt for any girl. He could still feel — as if it had just happened — the ache in his arms from carrying her. And he remembered how, instinctively, he hadn’t wanted Santo to touch her when he’d offered to help. Because, it was as though, Ruth belonged to him. Or he was Ruth’s. As if he had been born so that he could save her that morning. And the more he thought about it, the harder it was for him to breathe. His young heart was palpitating, fretful.

  “Dr. Goldsmith,” intoned the nurse, addressing a man as elegant as Mr. Isaacson.

  “Philip,” the doctor said at once, embracing Mr. Isaacson.

  “Have you seen her?” asked Isaacson worriedly. “Are they taking good care of her?”

  “Yes, fine, fine, don’t worry,” Dr. Goldsmith reassured him.

  Mr. Isaacson looked around, as if he were seeing the hospital and the people in it for the first time. “Ephraim,” he said, stretching out an arm as if to include everything around him. “My God, we have to get her out of here right away.”

  “I’ve already arranged everything,” said the doctor. “We’ll move Ruth to my clinic …”

  “Can’t I bring her home?”

  “No, Philip, not for these first days, it wouldn’t be prudent. I prefer that we be able to monitor her.”

  “Is Sarah here?” Mr. Isaacson looked around again. This time there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  “She said she didn’t feel up to it …”

  Mr. Isaacson looked down, shaking his head. The light had already gone out of his eyes.

  “Philip, try to understand her …” and Dr. Goldsmith, as Mr. Isaacson had a few minutes before, made a broad gesture that described the squalid public hospital, and the squalid people who used it.

  Christmas, off to one side, was listening to the conversation and twice now he had seen himself included in that gesture that drastically separated certain people from others. Suddenly he was ashamed of his patched pants, and his too-large shoes. All the same, he took a step towards the partly open door of the room.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” said the nurse, blocking his path.

  Christmas turned towards Mr. Isaacson. The man looked at him without recognizing him. Without seeing him.

  “I’m Christmas, mister …”

  “Where is she? Where’s my grand-daughter?” The voice echoed imperiously.

  Christmas saw an elderly man advancing furiously down the corridor, brandishing a walking stick, followed by two nurses and a liveried chauffeur.

  “Papa,” said Mr. Isaacson, “what are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing? I’m taking care of my granddaughter, you idiot! Why wasn’t I told immediately?” barked the old gentleman.

  “I didn’t want you to worry …”

  “What am I, some kind of meshugga? Where is she?” Then noticing the doctor, “Ah, Dr. Goldsmith: good. You can give me a diagnosis right now,” he commanded, pointing his cane at the doctor’s chest.

  “Ruth has three broken ribs, internal bleeding, her ring finger has been severed, two broken teeth, a dislocated jaw and a broken nasal septum,” the doctor recited. “Also various contusions. I don’t think her eyes are damaged, but possibly her left ear drum is punctured … and … unfortunately the fellow also … she’s been …”

  “Shtupped!” and the old man struck the wall with his cane, cracking the plaster, “If she’s pregnant, then we get rid of the mamzer right away!”

  “Papa, calm down, please,” sighed Mr. Isaacson.

  The elder Isaacson glared fiercely at him. “So where is she?” he asked. “In there?”

  Mr. Isaacson nodded.

  “Out of my way, boy,” said the old man, trying to push Christmas aside with the tip of his cane.

  But Christmas blocke
d the cane with his hand. Resolutely. Looking the old man in the face, fearlessly. Not knowing why he was reacting like this.

  The nurse was on him at once, holding his shoulders, trying to immobilize him.

  “I want to see her!” cried Christmas, twisting free.

  “Let him alone,” the old man ordered the nurse. Them lowering his cane, he came closer to Christmas. “Who are you?”

  “I found Ruth,” Christmas told him. And again he felt that sensation of belonging and possession. As if he were boasting that he’d discovered both a treasure and a burden. “I carried her here,” defying the old man with his gaze.

  “So what do you want?”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do.”

  Old Saul Isaacson turned towards his son. Then towards Dr. Goldsmith. “Can he see her?” he asked the doctor.

  “She’s under sedation.” Dr. Goldsmith replied.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes …”

  Old Saul peered at Christmas. “Are you Irish?”

  “No.”

  “Jewish?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you?”

  “American.”

  The old man stared silently at him. Then: “What are you?”

  “My mother’s Italian.”

  “Oy, Italian,” the old man nodded. “All the same, you’ve done more than anybody else in here, boy. Come in.” And with his cane he pushed open the door of Ruth’s room.

  A nurse who had been reading a movie magazine in a corner of the room stood up when they entered. The curtains were drawn. But even in that dim light Christmas could see Ruth’s face clearly. It was much more stark than it had been that morning. Although her wounds had been cleaned and treated, the girl’s face — wherever it wasn’t covered with bandages and tape — was deformed by bruises and swelling.