The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  “Don’t worry, he won’t get to spend his Judas money, the little shit,” the lawyer said in an even softer voice.

  “Amen,” said Sal.

  “Now it’s up to you to prove whether you’re a man or a shit,” said the lawyer, with a cool stare.

  Sal knew those words were a threat. He knew how to translate them: “Do you want to stay alive?” He stared back at the lawyer, not looking away or blinking. “I ain’t no shit,” he said firmly.

  “You’re going inside,” the lawyer went on.

  “I know.”

  “They’ll give you a hard time.”

  Sal grinned. “Hey, counselor, you gone blind or somethin’?” he said. “You seen my face? Notice my pissed-on pants? Hard time’s already started.”

  “They’ll offer you a deal.”

  “I don’t make deals with no cops. Specially the ones workin’ for micks.”

  The lawyer continued to look at him silently. It was up to him to decide whether or not Sal Tropea could be trusted. But he couldn’t be satisfied with words. He had to read it in his eyes.

  And Sal knew that his future depended on that last searching gaze. Then suddenly the fear that had been crippling him ever since he’d been wounded vanished, and Sal found himself again. He felt free and light. He laughed. A deep laugh, like a belch.

  The lawyer’s sharp features first expressed amazement and then they relaxed. Sal Tropea wasn’t going to talk. He was sure of that now. But he had a final card to play. A last warning. “That puttana you’re so fond of …” he said softly, his voice no longer urgent, because he was sure now, and he could afford simply to be cruel. “She’s home with her kid. What’s his name … Christmas, right?”

  Sal stiffened.

  “He doesn’t look much like you,” said the lawyer. “I saw him, he’s blond.”

  “So what? He ain’t mine,” said Sal, on the defensive. He knew perfectly well what was happening.

  “Poor little bastard, he’s got a crazy name and he’s blond as a mick.”

  “Why would I give a fuck,” lied Sal.

  The lawyer laughed. A little laugh that meant “I don’t believe you.” He was smiling as he said, “You must like that puttana a lot, to have paid her fine.”

  “You oughta take over from Silver, counselor. You’d be good at it,” said Sal pleasantly.

  The lawyer was satisfied. He chuckled again. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll think about it.” He came up close to the steel mesh again. Not because he had any secrets to impart. He had to make sure the message had been understood, even though he had no doubts about his own skill and he could see that Sal Tropea wasn’t as stupid as the thugs he normally had to threaten. Also, he loved making threats. It was like shooting a gun. The blood didn’t come out of any wounds, but he could see it in their eyes. “The boss decided you should get back the money you spent on the puttana’s bail,” he said. “Since you like her so much, he’ll take care of her himself while you’re on vacation.”

  Sal said nothing.

  “We’re a family, no?” said the lawyer. “I’m going to make sure they put you away someplace nearby. That way your honey can come see you whenever she wants,” said lawyer Di Stefano as he walked away.

  Later that day they beat Sal furiously. That night his lips were so bruised he had to stay awake for fear of suffocating in his sleep. The next morning he didn’t know it was dawn, because his eyelids were so swollen he couldn’t open them. And he couldn’t tell what they were giving him to eat or drink because everything tasted like blood. Then they offered him a lighter sentence. Even freedom. But Sal didn’t even bother to say no. Ten days later they sentenced him, they took his clothes and gave him a prison uniform. Lawyer Di Stefano kept his word. Sal wasn’t sent to Sing Sing — as the sentence ordered — but to the prison on Blackwell’s Island, in the east River, between Manhattan and Queens.

  The next week, sitting across from Cetta in the visitors’ room, his face was still purple and yellow with bruises.

  “When I get outta here I ain’t gonna be as good lookin’ as I used to be,” he told her.

  But Cetta was looking at something else. Now she knew that Sal wasn’t afraid any more. That he had come back to being the Sal she had known before. The one who smashed a street vendor’s wretched merchandise just because she’d smiled at him. And in her heart she thanked the Virgin for answering her prayer.

  Sal grimaced, then placed his hands flat against the steel mesh that separated them: “I knew it was bad luck t’ wash ’em,” he said. “I could tell.”

  18

  Ellis Island, 1922

  The water was freezing cold. It took his breath away. Bill was clutching a rotting wooden piling, slippery with algae, so he wouldn’t sink. He was naked; teeth chattering uncontrollably. He couldn’t feel his legs any more.

  But the ferry from the Immigration Service was almost here. It announced its arrival with a long wail from the siren. He could see it. He just had to hang on a little longer.

  As soon as he’d thought up this plan, he’d known it was going to be hard. But there was no other solution. If he wanted to survive, he had to withstand the water’s icy bite.

  Every paper in the city was talking about the bloody murder of the Hofflund couple. And the rape of the little Jew bitch. His colleagues at the fish market depicted Bill’s father as an honest workingman. A bunch of loser drunks who — like his father — reeled home every night to belt their wives and children, Bill thought. If he knew how to make a bomb, he’d blow every one of them to hell.

  “Pieces o’ shit!” he gasped, almost frozen now.

  He was furious. And that rage — more even than his fear of being fried in the electric chair — gave him the strength to hold on. If he could, he’d set bombs in all the newspaper offices, where they printed lies like the ones he’d read. His father was supposed to be some kind of hero, a German immigrant who had worked hard for New York City. He symbolized all the honest men who bore the burden of labor for everyone else, without protest. Yes, Bill would love to toss a bomb into every city room and then he’d take every turd reporter’s kids and turn them over to the those strong silent workers in the fish market, because the sons had to pay for their fathers’ lies, counted out with every single welt across their backs. The fucking American dream. He could imagine that delicate skin, used to hot baths and flannel underwear. Oh, he’d make it hear the crushing sound of the American nightmare. Thwack!

  “More pieces of shit,” he gasped again, losing his grip on the piling for a second. These pilings supported the landing stage above his head. He coughed up the water in his throat. His teeth chattered violently again.

  “Blond hair, blue eyes, medium height, medium build”: This was how the police had described him in the papers.

  Bill tried to laugh, but he was trembling too hard. “Good luck findin’ me,” he muttered. How many people looked like that? Just about everybody in New York, except for the niggers, the shitty Jews, and the wops.

  In the distance the ferry sounded the siren three times. The landing stage overhead vibrated with the heavy tramp and lazy tread of the workers who would bring the ferry ashore. A shipload of new rats to choke on the American dream, Bill thought. It was almost time. He’d almost made it.

  The cops didn’t have his picture, neither did the papers. They’d never find one. But they did know his name. They’d printed it in big headlines in all the papers; newsboys were yelling it out in every street. William Hofflund! William Hofflund! William Hofflund. Any document with his name on it would let the cops nail him. He needed to change his name, get new papers, otherwise the bulls would get him, sooner or later.

  As the ferry approached, Bill swung himself from piling to piling, until he reached a ladder that came out of the water and up to the landing stage. The hardest thing was to endure the freezing water, but this was the crucial moment. If he could get through it, he was as good as safe. He pulled himself up onto a traverse beam between two pili
ngs, next to the ladder. If one of the mooring handlers had leaned over to spit, he could have seen him. Bill held his breath, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. He couldn’t. He put his tongue between them. It hurt, but the deafening tiny noise in his ears stopped. His bundle of clothes was still dry. As soon as he was on the beam he began to get dressed. The cold would go away, he told himself. His hands were so numb he couldn’t button his shirt. His fingers were purple. His lips, too, were swollen and raw. Just a little longer and it would be over. Soon.

  He thought about his father’s amazed scared face when he’d felt the knife, reeking of fish, go into his belly, and then his hand and his back and his throat. Ironically enough, the plan had come to him while he was thinking about his old man, yeah, that drunk full of fish scales. He had to laugh.

  The night before, terrified by what he’d read in the papers, Bill had scuttled through the darkest and most deserted streets of the city, not knowing what to do. Like a maddened rat. He couldn’t stop moving. When he flung himself behind a garbage can to catch his breath, to try to figure out what to do, he felt caged. Fear made him leap up again. Bill kept on moving. After a while he realized that he’d been circling through the same back alleys. Making concentric circles that tightened around the fish market. The place he hated most. His father’s kingdom. The Kraut who’d married the Polish Jewess. But at the moment the idea came to him. He remembered the boring complaint that his father had kept on repeating. A singsong accompaniment to the kicks and blows, but that night, suddenly, it had become something he could use.

  “The first thing I see, from the ship comin’ in from Hamburg,” the father always began his maundering drunken soliloquy, “was the Statue of Liberty. It was dark and I could not see the city. Just duh outline of duh lyin’ statue standin’ against duh sky. First thing I see. How should I know she was holdin’ a fuckin’ torch? I thought she have a big roll of dollar bills. Mein money, money I come to New World to make! Why else would I leave mutti und mein vater, I didn’t want to be fishmonger like him, always with fish scales on hands. I never found money here; I never found liberty in this shitty town. What I found was mein own hands full of fish scales. Every time I look up from the market, what do I see? I see that fuckin' statue, leadin’ me around by the heinie. That torch, that fire, it burn up all my dreams.”

  And then, in the darkness of that sewer-rat night, Bill had looked up. He saw her. Holding the torch in her hand. To light the way for new arrivals. To welcome them. The Statue of Liberty. Of his own new liberty. Looking at the statue’s outline, Bill realized what he had to do: He’d land in New York, like any unknown immigrant coming to the Promised Land, at Ellis Island. That torch wasn’t going to burn up his dreams.

  “Get fucked, Pop,” he said, giggling. Then he destroyed his papers.

  Who would be looking for a murderer standing in line with a new bunch of greenhorns? Bill knew that the stream of new arrivals had shrunk since his father’s time and that Ellis Island had become more like a detention center than a place of welcome. But new rats kept scuttling off the ships. Yeah, the government of the United States was going to invite him to step ashore, give him a new name and new papers. How about that?

  And so that night, he wrapped up the money and the precious stones he’d pried out of the ring in a scrap of oilcloth. He climbed a tree in Battery Park and hid the little packet in a cavity, high up. Then he stole a rowboat, the kind that plies between two larger boats, and headed for Ellis Island. It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. The boat was heavy, there was a strong current and it was hard to get his bearings in the thick darkness. But he did it. He reached the Golden Door from the sea, slipping past the guards. He reached the sea wall, stripped off his clothes and sank into the cold water, with one arm over his head to keep his bundle of clothes dry. He hung onto a piling, gasping from the cold, and let the boat go. The current slowly coaxed it away from him.

  There were moments when he was afraid he’d let go, sink to the bottom, end it. But he’d won. Now — deafened by a last long whistle from the Immigration Service’s ferry — he knew he’d won. A foamy wave, reeking of oil and salt, splashed under the landing stage. The pilings sunken in the water trembled. He could hear voices over his head, shouting orders. The moment had come. Bill could almost touch the iron hull.

  He waited till the gangplanks were set. He waited, shivering, until the new arrivals were leaving the ship. And then he set his foot on the first rung of the ladder and looked at the landing stage.

  “Hey, you!” someone shouted.

  He didn’t turn towards the voice. He climbed the last rungs and walked towards the crowd that was leaving the ship.

  “You, stop!” the voice ordered.

  Bill wanted to run, but he stopped. He turned slowly. The cop was big and broad, and as he approached, he pulled his truncheon out of his belt. With him were three crewmembers, fastening hawsers.

  Bill looked at the immigrants coming down the gangplank and being herded into three lines, like sheep. He stared at the cop again. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know what language these new arrivals spoke. “Me?” he tried. “I’m with dem.”

  The cop gestured at the crowd coming off the ship. “With them, is it? Then what the hell are ye doin’ here?”

  Now Bill looked at the ladder.

  “Aw, I bet he took a shit,” said one of the landing crew. “Nine outa ten of ’em has the runs.”

  Bill stared at him.

  “Is that it? Did you go crap under there?”

  Bill nodded.

  The cop guffawed. “Son of a bitch! You’re all like animals. Here in America we got toilets.”

  The three crewmembers laughed with the cop. “Look at that red face,” said one. “He must of took one hell of a dump.”

  The cop pushed the tip of his billy club against Bill’s chest. “Aw, go get in line with the rest of ’em,” he said, shoving him away.

  Bill turned away slowly and sauntered towards the Irish horde, taking his time, while he blinked tears of joy away and felt a laugh shaking him from deep inside.

  The others were still guffawing behind him. The policeman leaned over the edge of the pier and looked at the water. “The stink of it!” he exclaimed. The three crewmen leaned out and then fanned their hands in the air. “He stunk it up but good,” said one. "At least he mighta killed a few rats,” contributed another. “Hey, mick, what the hell did you eat for breakfast?” shouted the cop.

  Bill turned back and smiled. He got in line, studying his companions. Each immigrant was holding a document in his hand, a paper with information about the ship that had brought him to New York.

  At the head of the line three officers from the Immigration Service were separating the groups: men on one side, women and children on the other. From there they were taken into a huge room where a group of doctors hastily examined the health of each one of the new arrivals. Bill saw that some of them got letters marked on their backs with chalk. C for consumption; H for heart problems; SC for scalp diseases; TC for trachoma; X for mental retardation. And the ones who got letters marked on them were fucked: Return to sender. Bill looked around. He saw a sign for the bathrooms. He asked a cop for permission to go there.

  The cop looked him over and then nodded.

  When he came into the bathroom another five persons were in there. Two old men, two teenagers and a man in his forties. Bill began to feel nervous. He crept into one of the toilet stalls and waited. For such a long time, he thought he was going to go crazy. At last the occasion presented itself.

  Medium height, average build, blond hair, blue eyes. About twenty years old.

  “Hey, I got to talk to you,” said Bill, approaching the youth.

  The newcomer looked at him suspiciously. In addition to the two of them, there was only one old man in the room.

  “I found out about a trick,” Bill said softly.

  “And what trick would that be?” said the young man.

  Bill p
ut a finger to his lips and glanced at the old man. “He could be one of them,” he whispered.

  “‘Them’? Who?”

  “Wait till he’s gone,” Bill went on.

  “What do I care?” said the young blond man, shrugging his shoulders.

  Bill took hold of his arm. “I’m savin’ your ass, greenhorn,” he hissed into his face. “You and the other guys our age.”

  The youth didn’t know how to react. Now he looked at the old man with suspicion. And at Bill with greater attention. “What trick?” he asked softly.

  The old man emitted a fart, turned towards the two young men, grimaced and left.

  “All right then, what trick are ye talkin’ about?”

  Bill head-butted him in the face. He wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed with all his strength, trying to drag him into one of the wooden stalls. The Irishman was strong and fought hard. His hands dug into Bill’s arm, trying to loosen his grip so that he could breathe. Bill was worn down from the hours in freezing water, but he his need to stay alive was more urgent than the other’s. An entire night spent fighting to survive. A whole night heavy with thoughts of death. He squeezed even harder, gritting his teeth, resisting the punches that the young man was throwing blindly. He could feel his prey growing weaker. He demanded a last effort of his muscles and gave two violent squeezes. He felt the youth’s trachea crumple like a squashed cockroach. The Irishman’s legs flailed; he gave a shudder, and at last went limp. Bill closed the latrine door and went through his pockets. He found the travel documents and passport. In his underpants he also found a roll of bills.

  He heard people coming into the bathroom. Voices of two men, laughter. Bill arranged the corpse on the toilet. Then he slid silently across the floor, passing under the wooden panel into the adjacent latrine and came boldly out its door. He smiled at the two men and went back into the huge room.

  After the medical tests and the dictation test — fifty words, to prove that he could read and write — he was taken to the Records Room, another huge space on the second floor, with very high ceilings and a gallery halfway up the walls, help up by rectangular columns. In the center of the room sat the immigration inspectors, at tables surrounded by papers and stamps. On the two sides of the room were metallic structures to hold the men in line — as if in a cage — along a serpentine itinerary.