NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN

by Harvey Swados

  The forbidding gaze from his one blue eye was more than patriarchal; it was ferociously piratical. Or maybe, Sam thought, I am romanticizing. But the next instant, as Ugo was saying something about Nicolò, the old man leaped upon Sam.

  The dark wrinkles of his face splitting into a smile, old Fannini began to pummel, pinch and shake him, all the while emitting a startling highpitched wheeze. It was an ardent greeting—it could be nothing else—for the old man slapped Sam’s cheek affectionately and even tugged at the point of his short beard, cackling, “Hey, barba, barba! Hey, barbato!”

  Sam wanted desperately to thrust aside the old man, who was no longer just a carving of someone’s idea of a father but a live peasant, smelling powerfully of dried sweat, garlic fumes and stale pipe tobacco. But he dared not move. As he submitted passively to the embrace, little Gian Paolo jumped up and down, like his barking dog, which was careering wildly, leaping into the air as if possessed. His grandmother stood expressionlessly by his mother, her wrinkled hands folded before the waistband of her apron. His father, Ugo, was conversing rapidly and jerkily with Ellen.

  Sam muttered to her, “Would you please get this old man off my back?”

  But Ugo was taking hold, talking loudly to his father and, over his shoulder, more slowly to Ellen.

  “Sam,” she said. “Grandpa is deaf. He thought his son said you were Nick, when he was only saying that you were from Nick.”

  The old man released him, his eye gone suddenly blank and guarded again.

  Sam put his hand to his face. “What was that business of grabbing my beard?”

  “Just teasing. He hadn’t seen you since you were eleven—I mean Nick, of course.”

  Sam could not exactly brush off the old man’s lingering imprint, not with everyone looking at him as though in truth he had suddenly been changed into someone else. The grandfather had resumed his original stance, exactly as though he had never done that wild capering, and so completely unembarrassed by it that now, only moments later, Sam could hardly bring himself to believe that he hadn’t imagined the entire episode.

  “Now that you’ve had your fun,” he said to Ellen, a little more stiffly than he had intended, “would you ask Ugo if he’d mind showing me around?”

  Motioning to him to follow, Ugo trudged off, the tawny dog trotting along at the rundown heels of his fiber sandals.

  Ugo led him up behind the house on a sloping path through the vegetable garden until they had attained the highest point of the diGrasso land. From this small clearing they had a spectacular view. Had they been giants they could have leaped, it seemed, over the beets, cabbages and beans and landed directly on the roof of the Fannini cottage; and from there one more great bound would have taken them yet farther down, to the dome of the monastery beside which stood, alone on the dusty piazza, his little toy of a car, glittering in the spring sun, and far below that, sharply separated from them by the jagged white lightning of the mountain stream whose torrent they had crossed on the way up, the rooftop tiles of the little village of Santa Maria. What was more, it was easy to discern, with the aid of the defining sweeps of Ugo’s arm, the limits of the diGrasso property, the grove of chestnut trees which Nick had spoken of with such deserved enthusiasm. It was a fine few acres, but it was hardly likely that the property could be put to much better use than that which the Fannini family was making of it now.

  With the aid of gestures and a few English words, Ugo explained, stumbling and reddening, that he was frightened by the implications of the Kellers’ visit. Was Nick unhappy with the terms under which the Fanninis were living on his property? Did he have something new in mind?

  Sam tried to protest that he was not in on Nick’s big decisions, that he was simply looking the place over for Nick.

  “What you do?” Ugo asked, pointing to Sam’s hands. He wanted to know, it appeared, what Sam did for a living. Sam did his best to explain what a city planner was, but he might as well have tried to explain bird watching or polo playing to Ugo, who, Sam feared, understood only that his visitor was some kind of landlord’s agent.

  Nevertheless Ugo was polite. Sam was truly pleased to be able to explain, even haltingly, how he would tell Nick that his property was in good hands.

  Sam was pleased, too, with the knowledge that he was not kidding himself. There was really no more practical use for this mountainside than the maintenance of the Fannini family. The chestnut trees looked healthy, but there weren’t enough of them to log, and in any event the hauling would be too hard; it was a glorious site for skiers, but again it was much too far from any place remotely fashionable; and the land itself, although you could keep a kitchen garden or even a subsistence farm of sorts, was too steeply pitched for anything more ambitious than what the Fanninis were doing. Nick’s best bet would be to leave things as they were, even if the Fanninis paid him no more than a couple of dollars a month.

  Scrambling down the garden path with Ugo, Sam found himself disposed to admire the simple improvements the Fanninis had made in the years since Nick’s departure—the freshly plastered walls, the new timber supports for the trellis, the drainage ditches dug behind the old folks’ living quarters to protect them from flash floods.

  Ellen, on her knees in the dust, had been playing with Gian Paolo, the boy laughing shrilly as he sought insincerely to flee, his mother red with pleasure, the grandparents watching remotely in the shade.

  “He’s a love! A perfect love!” Ellen cried as the shadows of the two men fell athwart her and the child. “These are nice people, aren’t they, Sam? I’m so glad we came. Did you have any trouble making yourself understood?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Signora Fannini wants to show us through the house—she’s been waiting. Come, let’s go.” And she nodded to Ugo’s wife, who led the way into her cramped parlor.

  The ceiling was so low that Sam had to duck. Indeed, there was hardly room for the six of them and the little boy, but as they moved on to the kitchen, with its massive wood-burning stove, and to the one bedroom, dominated by a high narrow bed and a loud chromo of the weeping Christ above Gian Paolo’s ancient blackened crib, he could not resist the foretaste of his description of this tour when he returned to his colleagues on Post Street.

  Their hosts seemed more dutiful than proud. It was only when Ugo took them across to the other building, which sheltered both his old parents and his cow, that he lost his taciturnity.

  Flinging open the split door to display the somnolent beast, which was indoors because it had only recently calved, Ugo said, proudly, “Nostro migliore possessione.”

  Sam would have liked to see how the old people lived, in the dirt-floored one room separated from the cow by a partition and warmed by the heat of the beast, but Ugo’s mother unexpectedly barred the way. Wrenching her veined hands, she shook her head violently and muttered something that Sam could not catch.

  “It’s not fit, she says,” Ellen said.

  “What’s not fit?”

  “Their home. For visitors.”

  “Then let’s say our goodbyes and shove off.”

  But Ugo was bringing out wine and setting a tray on the table under the arbor. This was the real proof, Sam felt, that they were being regarded not as accomplices of a far-off landlord, but almost as friends. Ugo wiped the dark bottle carefully before drawing the cork, his wife pressed water tumblers on them, and little Gian Paolo helped his grandmother pass a dish of hard speckled cookies. Only the grandfather stood aloof, wineglass in hand, his blue eye shaded by his beret and by the trellis under which he remained.

  “Salute!” Sam said boldly, raising his glass. Then he turned to his wife. “How am I doing?”

  “This is our chance to ask for that souvenir—the pictures, remember?”

  Sam was suddenly touched by a vague sense of alarm. “I wouldn’t do that. Nick can get along—”

  “Nonsense. Didn’t you see all those old pictures by Gian Paolo’s crib? They’re of the diGrasso family, not of
these people.”

  Before he could ask how she was so sure, Ellen had proceeded with an explanation of Nick’s request. Ugo and his wife listened intently. Then Ugo said something to his wife, who hastened back into the house, wiping her hands on her skirt.

  “You see? They’re probably glad to get rid of the pictures and to send Nick something a little special at the same time.”

  It was too late to argue. Sam gave Ugo an American cigarette (the old man declined with the merest horizontal gesture), and they were lighting up when Ugo’s wife returned, bearing a green embossed box the size of a Whitman’s Sampler.

  “Ecco!” said Ugo Fannini. He opened it for Ellen, saying something about how glad they were to return these pictures Nick had left behind. “With our compliments.” At these words, Gian Paolo burst into tears and, as Ugo cried out in mortification, pounded his fists against his father’s leg.

  Astonished, Ellen released her hold on the box, photographs fluttered through the air like dying moths, and the little boy scrambled about swiftly, trying to catch the photographs as they fell, tripping over his dangling laces and bumping into Ellen as she stumbled back in an effort to stand clear.

  “I didn’t mean…” she said helplessly, but stopped, for everyone was talking at once, the Fanninis apologizing, the old lady saying something incomprehensible as she grabbed at the lopsided table against whose legs Gian Paolo was colliding. A tumbler half full of wine tipped over; the dripping red pool fell into a sticky puddle at the child’s feet.

  It was the old man who swooped down, grabbed his grandson by the arm, yanked him half erect and cracked him viciously across the behind.

  “Hey!” Sam started in anger as the little boy uttered a scream. He took a step forward to protest. It brought him face to face with the glaring old man, separated from him only by the body of the squirming, squalling Gian Paolo, held by the middle under his grandfather’s arm like a slippery little pig. Ugo was attempting to explain, but his wife seized her child and carried him away into the cottage.

  The old man now retreated once again, just as he had when Sam’s identity had been made clear to him. Sam turned from him to expostulate with Ellen, who was helping Ugo to retrieve the photographs.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have done this.” Sam knew that the reminder would annoy her—she could never stand being told that she had been forewarned—but he couldn’t help himself, not with the old man’s eye still fixed on him.

  From her squatting position Ellen said shortly, “It was just that the child was used to playing with these.”

  “Then why do we have to take them away?”

  “They’re not his.”

  “For God’s sake, did we come here to teach the kid property rights?”

  “His parents want us to have the pictures. And his grandparents. I don’t think we can refuse them now. I offered to take something else of Nick’s—they wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “You’re ruthless, you know that?”

  Ellen rose. She smoothed out her skirt and, accepting the green box from Ugo, said quietly, “Better that than weak.”

  Sam was infuriated. But then Ugo’s wife was back with the child, amazingly fast, with the boy’s face washed and wiped, quite composed, and with every trace of jealous hatred gone from those great black eyes. It was fantastic. Why, Sam thought, in wonder at how the memory came unbidden, when my father slapped me for stealing pennies I bit his hand; but here was Gian Paolo, peaceably accepting Ellen’s placatory presents. Rummaging through her purse, she brought out ticket stubs, packets of Kleenex and photographs of Sam himself, younger, sans beard or wife. Gian Paolo, neither snuffling nor snubbing her, accepted Ellen’s random and hurried offerings with a pleased grin.

  Everyone was mollified; there were smiles, smiles wherever you looked—except for the old one, who remained grim and motionless, almost as though he were standing in judgment, even when Sam hoisted Gian Paolo up onto his father’s shoulders as he had been when they had first met down behind the monastery. Ugo offered to walk down the path with them to the piazza, but Sam demurred. “He climbs the hill often enough,” he said to Ellen. “Tell him it’ll be more pleasant to remember them all this way.”

  After she had explained, Ellen said, “Now you can take that family portrait.”

  The old man, however, either did not understand or refused to budge; in any case, the others had to cluster around him. His wife stood on one side, still somewhat tense, his daughter-in-law on the other; before the three Ugo knelt, with little Gian Paolo still grinning atop his shoulders. Sam shrugged and focused swiftly, and was startled to see, when he peered through the view finder, that the cow in the barn behind the family had stuck her ruminating head out the upper half of the stable door.

  “I have it,” he said and snapped the picture. It was only after he put down the camera that Sam became aware of how the old man had stubbornly hung back, hands behind him, chin against his chest, blue eye in shadow, the string sticking out of his empty eye socket like a wick ready to be lit and so to set him afire.

  Sam made no effort to shake hands with the old man after he and Ugo had said their farewells. Ellen kissed Gian Paolo, embraced his mother and then took Sam’s arm for the precipitous walk down through the chestnut grove, with the family slowly waving farewell.

  At the car door she released her hold on his arm and turned to look up, although the trees separated them from the Fanninis. Her face was flushed—whether from the walk or the excitement, he could not be sure—and it struck him, even in his annoyance with her, that she had never looked prettier. He was going to say it, but Ellen jumped into the car without even giving him the chance to hold the door for her, and he saw that she was clutching the little green box very tightly.

  “Listen, Ellen,” he said as he clambered into the driver’s seat and started up the motor, “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave that box behind.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “There’s nobody else around. They’ll find it here in the piazza.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “If you won’t put the box down here, we’ll have to leave it for them in the village. Or mail it back.”

  “I have no intention of sending it back. It’s Nick’s.”

  He released the clutch so swiftly that the car almost stalled as he swung it about. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded hotly. “You saw how much those pictures mean to the kid.”

  Ellen held herself rigid in the lurching car. “Look who’s talking—shooting off that damn camera in their faces as if they were monkeys in a zoo. Everything is a project for you. You had to take pictures to prove to the idiots in your office that you were here.”

  “And what do you have to prove with that box you’re hanging onto so tight? You don’t care about those people up there—it’s Nick you care about.”

  “I knew you’d throw him at me sooner or later.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth.” Even in second they were descending too fast, and he had to hit the brake while he wrenched at the wheel. “All you want those pictures for is to ingratiate yourself with him. And if Nick doubles the rent on those people, or evicts them, you couldn’t care less, could you? What matters is having Nick slobber all over you for bringing those silly pictures of his dead old man in a soldier suit.”

  Ellen’s face was contorted. She shouted at him over the wind and the rising babble of the mountain stream below them. “You’re not jealous just of me. You’re envious of Nick, because he loves his father, because he’s happy with his family. Because he makes babies.”

  Sam shot out his right hand and twisted Ellen’s bare arm so brutally that she dropped the box. “How do you know I can’t make babies? How do you know?”

  “I’ve been waiting four years. Betty diGrasso didn’t have to wait four years.”

  “And you’re not Betty. How do I know it’s not you? You wouldn’t go to a doctor, would you?”

  “I’ve got news for yo
u. I don’t have to. What do you think of that? Watch the road!” she cried as he bent down to retrieve the box. “Give me back those pictures. You and your noise about the kid’s playthings. He doesn’t even miss them. I saw how you envied his father. And hated his grandfather. Yes, hated that poor old man! That’s when you give yourself away. Just because he made a simple human mistake and tried to put his arms around you!”

  “I didn’t hate him. He smelled bad, that’s all.”

  “Like your father, I suppose. Is that why you haven’t talked to him in all these years? The whole human race smells bad to you, and all you can do is lie to yourself.”

  “You’re the honest one, you and your Conversational Italian, swiping a kid’s toy just to be able to suck around Nick.”

  “You lie to yourself. Not just to me. To yourself. You hate happy people like Nick because you’re not happy, you hate men like Nick because you’re not a man. Beard or no beard, you’re a spoiled baby. Talk about little Gian Paolo. Look at you—jealous of your own wife because she speaks Italian!”

  “You’re not even honest enough to say why. You have the soul of a cheat.”

  Ellen began to laugh. It was that laugh, defiant, bitter, unyielding, that enraged him past the point of any restraint; it goaded him on to destroy her mocking superiority.

  He lifted the green box high to pitch it into the swirling stream swinging into sight below as the car careened on down the swerving road. With a cry Ellen was at him. She managed to deflect the sweep of his arm so that instead of soaring through the air and disappearing into the river, the box sprang open as it flew upward, showering them with pictures.

  Half blinded by the fluttering photographs that glinted as they tumbled topsy-turvy about him, and thrown off balance by the sudden weight of his wife’s straining body, Sam lost control of the wheel. The car bounded from left to right, once, twice, thrown from rock to rock as though flung by the same hand that sprinkled the glossy, sparkling prints through the air; and as he heard his wife’s high wailing scream rising and then declining with their violent thrust through space, he was hurled forward, his head smashing against the glass of the windshield at the impact of the car against the great gray boulder which impaled it so that it hung helpless, its wheels spinning uselessly, above the wild blue-white torrent fifty feet below.