The Brotherhood of the Grape

by John Fante

  “Ready?” I said, reaching for the door handle.

  Stella gave Mama a reassuring hug.

  “Stay cool now. Don’t cry.”

  That started the tears immediately, but she choked them off as we entered the room. Nick sat up on the high hospital bed, serene, almost languid. We gathered around him, saying hello and touching him. He looked splendid, clean-shaven, hair trimmed and combed, mustache clipped, fresh and rested, not sick at all. Mama gazed at him and wilted like warm butter, her eyes filling. She bent down and kissed him, and so did Stella. A strong aroma of shaving lotion wafted from him.

  “Where’s Mario?” he asked.

  “He had to work,” I said.

  “Still mad at me about that baseball business.”

  “Not so,” Stella said. “Mario has a family now. He’s forgotten all about it.”

  “Not Mario. He don’t forget anything.”

  Mama squeezed his hand.

  “Do they treat you good?”

  “Real good.”

  I had never seen him so composed, at such ease. Maybe it was the Valium.

  “You look thin,” Mama said. “Do you get enough to eat?”

  “Plenty to eat. Asparagus with toast for supper. String beans and Jell-O.”

  “Jell-O? You won’t eat Jell-O.”

  “Tasted good.”

  “What kind of sauce on the asparagus?”

  “No sauce.”

  Mama was appalled.

  “What kind of a place is this?”

  “Nice place. Nurses, nice.”

  “You look pale.” She turned to us. “Don’t you think he looks pale?”

  We didn’t think so.

  “I feel good,” he said. Then, pleased: “I take insulin now.”

  I asked if he gave the injection to himself.

  “Miss Quinlan gave it to me.”

  “That’ll be your job from now on, Mama,” Stella said.

  “Every day, from now on,” Papa said. “Talk to Miss Quinlan. She’ll show you what to do.”

  “Who’s Miss Quinlan?” Mama said.

  “My nurse,” Papa said.

  It bothered Mama. She folded her arms.

  “Lots to learn,” he went on. “What I eat, what I can’t eat. Not like the old days. No more pasta. Not much, anyway.”

  Mama was astonished. “No pasta…no spaghetti?”

  “A little bit. Once a week.”

  “Lasagne?”

  “Christmas and Easter.”

  “Pastina? The little ones, in garlic and oil?”

  “Talk to Miss Quinlan. She’s got a list.”

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Maselli. I don’t need to talk to a nurse.”

  Virgil had a gift for him, a pack of Italian stogies. He took the pack tentatively, then passed it back. “I don’t smoke no more, son. I quit for good.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Virgil said.

  “Doctor’s orders. No more wine, no more cigars.”

  “And no pasta?” Stella smiled doubtfully. “It won’t be easy, Papa.”

  His eyes shone.

  “I’ll make it.”

  Mama clasped his wrist. “Course you will. First, get out of this place. Come home. Rest a few days, until you feel good. No more work, no more mountains. Sleep in your own bed. Go downtown, walk around. Talk to the menfolks at the Roma. Maybe one cigar after supper. Pretty soon you’ll feel better. I don’t care what the doctor says: one cigar never hurt anybody. Same with a little spaghetti, and a glass of wine. You ain’t gonna live forever, so enjoy it while you can. I’ll talk to Dr. Maselli. He understands.”

  It made the old man smile.

  “We’ll see.”

  A preposterous dilemma. I didn’t think much of his chances. Sixty-five years of wine and pasta and cigars, and now he proposed changing to a life of self-denial. How could he resist the siren fragrances wafted from his wife’s cauldrons? Every room in his house was scented with the good life, the Mediterranean life. I looked down at him in that stark hospital gown, eyes bright with the determination to stay alive, his jaw as square as a stone, fists in his lap, this strong, decaying man, all shot to hell on the inside, who now proposed to pit himself against the tender guile of a woman who had kept him vigorous and content through the thousands of days of his existence. Yet, in spite of everything, miracles did happen. A man could change, if only to survive.

  A nurse entered the room. She was around forty, a bleached blonde, tall, attractive, cheerful, chatty, and carrying a specimen jar.

  “Good evening all!” she greeted, and we fumbled out of her way as she moved to the bedside.

  “And how’s my naughty boy tonight?”

  “Purty good,” Papa grinned.

  She fluffed his pillow, bending over him with hefty breasts in a tight uniform, rucking him in, brushing back his hair, embarrassing him as he avoided Mama’s cold glare.

  “This is my family,” he said.

  “How are you all?” the nurse said. “I’m Miss Quinlan. Doesn’t he look fine tonight? You should have seen him last night! It only goes to show what loving care can do. Such a good boy. Not a bit of trouble.”

  “When can we take him home?”

  “That’s for the doctor to decide.”

  She held out the specimen jar to Papa.

  “Have you got a bit of something for me, Daddy?”

  Daddy!

  You could see my mother writhe as she tried to destroy Miss Quinlan with a sneer while the nurse helped Papa out of bed and toward the bathroom, his gown open and flapping in back, his bare ass showing.

  He entered, closed the door, bolted it carefully, then reappeared with the half-filled jar.

  “What a lovely specimen!” Nurse Quinlan enthused, holding the bottle up to the light. “Clear as honey, the best so far.”

  Nick cowered back into bed past Mama’s smoldering eyes, covering himself to the chin, as if to hide his body. Miss Quinlan fussed with his pillow, smoothed his blankets, pushed back his hair.

  “Good night, sweetie,” she whispered, marching off with the specimen.

  A gaping silence filled the space vacated by Miss Quinlan. Mama looked lost, etherized, a shambles. She glanced toward the door, as if Miss Quinlan were still there.

  “Puttana!” she said.

  The bell rang, signaling the end of the visiting hour. “Time to go,” Virgil said.

  Mama bent to kiss her husband on the forehead, searching deeply into his eyes.

  “Be careful,” she warned.

  Stella kissed him and Virgil and I said good night. We left, looking back at him watching us, a lonely old man in a stark room, on a high bed, filtered, obfuscated, blended into a blue wall.

  Down the corridor in a fast shuffle raced my mother, anxious to put the hospital behind her. Stella and Virgil quickened their steps to keep up but I hung back, intrigued by images on a television screen inside one of the hospital rooms. It was a baseball game. Sitting up in bed, a man watched.

  “Who’s playing?” I asked.

  “The Giants and the Dodgers.”

  It explained what had happened to Mario.

  27

  THREE NIGHTS later I dreamed of my father’s funeral. Miss Quinlan was at the graveside across from Mario, and they were smiling intimately. Nearby was a hearse drawn by four black horses adorned with silver harnesses and white plumes. My wife and sons were in the driver’s seat, smirking at my mother as she spaded earth into the grave, and a score of mourners chatted and laughed without reverence, like revelers at a picnic. I was only an observer, but my presence was not in the dream. I was sodden with the residual effect as I wakened at ten o’clock and walked into the kitchen and poured coffee. Through the window I saw my mother in the backyard, throwing grain to her chickens. The phone rang.

  It was Dr. Maselli calling from the hospital.

  “Have you seen your father this morning?”

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Not anymore. I just came from
his room. His clothes are gone and so is he.”

  I laughed. “How long has he been gone?”

  “He left between seven and eight this morning.”

  I laughed again.

  “What the hell’s so funny?” the doctor said. “The old cocker hasn’t had his insulin this morning.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “If he stops to gas up in some saloon it could be another coma.”

  “Maybe he’s on a bus back to San Elmo.”

  “Better check and see. Try the Onyx and the Café Roma.”

  I asked if he had tried any of the saloons near the hospital.

  “I’ve got patients here. I can’t leave now.”

  “How about the police?”

  “What for? He’s not a criminal, he’s just a goddamn fool.”

  “What do I do if I find him?”

  “If he’s in San Elmo, get him to my office. I’ll be there in an hour. Or put him in a car and bring him back to the hospital.”

  I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house and into the cool and lucid morning, fresh upon my skin.

  My old man! What a treasure he was, what excitement he kicked up! That was his genius, a talent for shaking up the small world in which he lived. I walked quickly toward town, laughing quietly, so pleased with him. He might die, but what of that? Dostoyevsky was dead, yet very much alive in my heart. He had come to me like the grace of God, a flash of lightning that illumined my life. My father had that same iridescence, a nimbus around me, my own flesh and blood, a poet asserting his will to live.

  I stopped at the Onyx Bar first. Art Pinto was behind the counter, serving beer to a couple of brakemen. I asked if he had seen my father.

  “Not anymore, Henry. He ain’t allowed.”

  The Café Roma was deserted except for Frank Mascarini, polishing glasses behind the bar. He had not seen my father in days.

  I asked, “Where’s Zarlingo this morning, and Lou Cavallaro?”

  “They don’t get here till noon.”

  I walked out. The day was warming up. Standing in the shade under the awning of the Leroy Hotel, I pondered the problem. Where would a man leaving the Auburn Hospital find a drink? Obviously, the nearest saloon. That had been my hunch in the first place. He wouldn’t waste time waiting for a bus to take him back to his hometown if he was in flight from the hospital. Chances were he’d duck into the first saloon in sight. He had to be in Auburn somewhere, in a saloon on Chop Suey Street not far from the hospital. I walked up the street to the Hertz people and rented a Chevy for the drive to Auburn.

  Chop Suey Street was a block long, the Chinese section of Auburn. It consisted of six saloons squeezed among the crumbling frame and brick buildings. I parked at the end of the old, elm-lined block and entered an establishment called the Silverado. It was cool and dark inside and fragrant with the vapors of beer. The young bartender paid no attention to me.

  “I’m looking for my father,” I explained. “Old guy, about my size. Seventy-six years old, wearing khaki pants and shirt. Has a mustache.”

  He nodded toward the dark interior.

  “Take your pick. We got several answering that description.”

  Back in the gloom I walked among the tables where a dozen old guys sat in somnolent silence, sipping beer and sherry. It surprised me how much they all looked like my father, the same gnarled hands, the same scuffed, turned-up shoes, the same battered hats, the same opaque eyes staring into nowhere. Nick was not among them, nor was he in any of the other bars along the street.

  I walked back to the rented car and drove a few blocks to the Auburn downtown area. He wasn’t in the bus depot, and the cocktail lounges along the main street were too fancy for his taste and I didn’t stop to look for him there. Instead I drove to the hospital, wondering doubtfully whether he had returned.

  Miss Quinlan and another nurse were at the desk on the second floor as I stepped from the elevator. Miss Quinlan was talking into the phone. She was startled to see me.

  “It’s your father,” she said, handing me the phone.

  I took the phone.

  “Hello, Papa. Where are you?”

  He hung up.

  I cradled the phone and asked Miss Quinlan if she knew where my father had called from.

  “Some place on the highway. A winery.”

  “The Angelo Musso winery?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “I think he’s been drinking.”

  “Does he need help?”

  “Without insulin he’s in desperate need of help.”

  “Why did he call, Miss Quinlan? What did he want?”

  She hesitated. “He asked me to come out there and meet him.”

  “What for?”

  “He wanted to show me the vineyard.” It made her smile. “The old rascal…”

  I spun around and started to leave, but what she had said troubled me, and I turned back and drew her away from the desk and the other nurse standing there.

  “Miss Quinlan,” I said. “That ‘old rascal’ remark, what did you mean by it?”

  She studied me with wide sky-blue eyes, carefully sorting out her answer: “Last winter I had a patient on a kidney machine, a fine old gentleman, ninety-two years old. The dear man died in my arms, with his hand in my panties. You know what I mean, Mr. Molise?”

  My libido began to hiss and a spell of lust fell around me, heat in my throat and knees, my eyes diving into the blue of hers, the heavy breasts pulling me toward her; her white neck softly turned and I wondered irrationally if her pussy was blond too, and I shuddered, ashamed, wondering, my God, what am I thinking at a time like this?

  “Miss Quinlan,” I groped. “Is that why my father ran away from the hospital?”

  “It was the insulin injection. He wouldn’t take it. Orinase—the kind you take in a pill—it didn’t work on your father. He had to have the insulin by hypodermic, and it made him climb the walls, he hated it so.”

  I thanked her and asked her to get in touch with Dr. Maselli. “Tell him my father’s at Angelo Musso’s winery. Maselli knows all about it.”

  28

  IT WAS TEN minutes down Highway 80 to the turnoff to Angelo’s place, then half a mile up the hill to the winery. Circling the driveway at the rear of the house, I came upon Joe Zarlingo’s Datsun camper. It didn’t surprise me. (Later I learned that after telephoning Zarlingo from his hospital room that morning, my father had dressed and calmly walked out of the main hospital entrance, past the reception desk and out the front door, waiting on the hospital steps for Joe and his friends to whisk him away.)

  The midday heat grabbed me by the neck as I stepped from the Chevy and crossed to a gathering of men under the grape arbor. The six were at the long picnic table, Angelo at one end, my father at the other.

  Drooping majestically, my old man slumped deep in a wicker chair, wistfully drunk, his arms limp over the chair arms. He was like an ancient Roman patrician waiting for the blood to drain from his slitted wrists. Across from one another on benches were the four galoots from the Café Roma—Zarlingo, Cavallaro, Antrilli and Benedetti. They were all bombed but under control, swigging wine from thick tumblers. Jugs of Chianti and trays of food were spread over the long table: salami, sausages, prosciutto, bread and anise cakes. They had feasted long and well beneath the hot vine, and so had swarms of stunned bees, staggering over the food and floundering in puddles of wine, while hundreds droned mournfully among overripe muscats hanging from the vines.

  Not a word was spoken as I came among them. It was as if I was of no importance, a nuisance, another bee. I moved quietly behind my father’s chair and put my hands on his shoulders, his soft flesh drawing away, his bones so near to the touch.

  “It’s me, Papa.”

  He raised his head.

  “What time is it?”

  “Time for you to go back to the hospital.”

  “No, sir. Not me.”

  “You need
your insulin.”

  He shook his head.

  “Stop picking on your father,” Zarlingo said. “Sit down, have a drink. Be quiet. Enjoy the party.”

  “I’m taking him back to the hospital.”

  “That’s up to him.” He reached out and touched my father’s hand. “You wanna go back to the hospital, Nick?”

  “No, Joe. It’s nice here. Quiet.”

  The voiceless Angelo made a cackling sound, motioning me to come to his side, beguiling me with a toothless smile. As I moved toward him, he began to write something on a pad with a pencil, writing swiftly, slashing the paper, tearing off the sheet and handing it to me.

  It was legible, but it was Italian.

  “Can’t read it,” I said, handing it back.

  Benedetti snatched it from my grasp. “Let me see it.”

  He studied the writing for a moment, then nodded approvingly at the old man. “Right,” he said to Angelo. “You are always right, Angelo.”

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “It says, ‘It is better to die of drink than to die of thirst.’”

  I looked from him to the old winemaker.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, staring at Angelo’s crumbling eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  Quickly Angelo was writing again, another swift sentence, passing the sheet to Benedetti, who translated once more:

  “It is better to die among friends than to die among doctors.”

  It brought applause, a clapping of hands, glasses held aloft and drained in a toast, even a wave from my father, who was beyond the point of understanding anything.

  Encouraged, Angelo began to write once more. There was only one course left for me. I drew back my father’s chair and tried to lift him, my arms around his chest. He fought me, feebly but in anger, squirming back into the chair. The paisani stared. They would not help me.

  I said, “Please, someone, give me a hand. This man is very sick.”

  They sat there like tombstones. I began to cry. Not from grief, not anguish for my father, but compassion for myself. How good I was. What a loyal, beautiful son! See me trying to save my father’s life. How proud I was of myself. What a decent human being I was!