The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  After an hour of kneeling beside her my bones ached and I sat back with folded hands. Presently she sat back too, the beads in her hands. I was very tired now, and sleepy, and I stretched out on the pew and closed my eyes. Her fingers stroked my hair and she drew my head into her lap and smiled down at me. The beads danced over my eyes as I fell asleep. We were there through the night, starting back to the house in the new day, along streets that asked about my father and why he was not with us.

  —The Brotherhood of the Grape

  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 Caf$eA 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, prosciuto, 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!

  I wept and pounded the table and the wine danced and spilled and the bees snarled. I tore my hair. I fell on my knees and clung to my father. “Come with me, Papa! You need care. You mustn’t die in this wretched place.”

  His vague glance found me.

  “Go home, kid. See what your mother wants.”

  I got up in shame and disgust and sat on the bench, sobbing. I had this talent for crying. It had brought me many rewards through my life, and some trouble too. When your weaknesses are your strengths, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don’t know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears. I cried at my first communion. My tears broke Harriet down and she finally married me. Without tears I could never have seduced a woman, and with them I never failed. It has laid waste the hearts of women who disliked me, and who wanted to kill me afterward for succumbing. I cried through melancholy passages of my own writing. The older I got, the more I wept.

  Now Zarlingo was affected, reaching across the table to press my hand. “Take it easy, son,” he soothed. “Wipe your eyes, have a drink. Don’t worry about your father. He’s strong as an ox.”

  I wiped my face and blew my nose. I forced down the wine. From the highway below came the wail of a siren, drawing closer, louder. I walked out to the driveway and saw a white ambulance streaking a trail of dust as it raced up Angelo’s private road. As it slowed I saw two white-clad attendants in the cab. Dr. Maselli was with them. They leaped to the ground.

  “Where is he?” the doctor asked.

  He followed me into the arbor and moved to my father’s side. Lifting the drooped head, he peeled back an eyelid. Removing a hypodermic from his kit, he filled it with a milky substance from a vial and injected it into my father’s arm. Angelo and the other brothers gathered around, watching. They moved aside as the attendants came up with a stretcher. They carefully eased my father upon the stretcher and lifted him off the ground. As they carried him toward the ambulance each of his friends murmured farewell.

  “Ciao, Nicola. Buono fortuna.”

  “Addio, amico mio.”

  “Corragio, Nick.”

  “Corragioso, Nicola.”

  My father lay motionless, eyes closed. Even the hot sun failed to disturb his eyelids. Now Angelo came to his side with a straw-wrapped bottle of Chianti and placed it lengthwise beneath his arm. It brought a frown from Dr. Maselli. The stretcher was lifted into the ambulance and the door closed. As the white car drove away my father’s friends watched it churning dust toward the highway.

  “He’s gonna be all right,” Zarlingo said.

  “Sure he is,” Cavallaro agreed. “He’ll outlive us all.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Benedetti.

  I got into the rented car and followed the ambulance.

  For half an hour I waited on a bench in a hall outside the emergency room of the Auburn Hospital. When Dr. Maselli emerged, coatless, the look of death was upon him.

  “He’s gone.”

  “How, Doc? Why?”

  “Cerebral hemorrhage. Swift, painless. A man couldn’t ask for a better way to die.”

  As I turned to leave he asked, “Do you want me to tell your mother?”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Down the hall in the pay station I telephoned Stella. She choked at the news and began to cry. We cried together for a long time, in each other’s arms over the teleph
one.

  I said, “Will you tell Mama?”

  “Oh, God!” she sobbed. “Oh, God.”

  I hung up and walked out to the car in the parking lot. The waning day refused to cool and I was numb and unequal to the drive home to the agony of my mother and the empty space in the world now that my father was gone. Remembering the saloons along Chop Suey Street I thought of getting smashed, of losing myself in the semidarkness with those lonely old men peeling off their last days in one of those places.

  As I started the car a nurse came down the hospital steps into the parking lot. It was Miss Quinlan. She was walking straight toward me carrying a white sweater, moving smoothly on low shoes, erect and clean and handsome, the sun behind her, piercing the space between her thighs. I stepped from the car and stood in her path. She paused and smiled.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” she said.

  My eyes filled. I took her hands.

  “Oh, Miss Quinlan, help me! I don’t know what to do, where to go. What shall I do, Miss Quinlan? I’m lost. I’m wretched!”

  She put her arm around me.

  “There, there, Mr. Molise. I know how you must feel, I know. It takes time, my dear man. You must be strong, for your father’s sake.”

  All my life was tumbling around me, and I seized upon her with my hands and with my grief. “Oh, please, Miss Quinlan. Fuck me, please, please. Save me, fuck me!”

  She freed herself and looked straight into my eyes, startled, hesitant.

  “You ask me to do that?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Quinlan! I love you, I adore you! Have pity on me.”

  She took a backward step and studied me.

  “Well … it’s possible, I guess.”

  “Please, dear, wonderful, beautiful Miss Quinlan!”

  “I have to go to the supermarket first.”

  “May I come with you? I’ll push your shopping cart.”

  “If you like,” she smiled.

  I smothered her hands with kisses and tears. I tried to fall on my knees but she held me up. “Don’t do that, Mr. Molise. Stand up, please.”

  “Oh, thank you, angel. Thank you, thank you!”

  We got in my car and drove to the market, my tears drying fast, Miss Quinlan at my side with her pretty nurse’s hat over her blond Nordic braids, her knees like pomegranates under her hose, tight together, prim, so ladylike.

  How delicious she looked, walking down the market aisles, selecting purchases, dropping them into the shopping cart. I insisted on buying her a bottle of Scotch and a coconut cake and thick lamb chops, and when we went through the checkout stand I paid for the whole damn thing, just to hear her gasp with gratitude and call me crazy. We got to my car again and I opened the door for her, and her magnificent derriere floated past my eyes like the grace of God, like the Holy Ghost. My old man would have loved it; he would have pinched it for sure.

  We drove to her apartment, which was above a garage two blocks from the hospital. I carried the groceries while she unlocked the door. That apartment! It was like entering a hospital emergency room. All white it was, white tile along the sink, a white Formica top to the bar separating the kitchen and the living room, and still more white covering the stainless steel tubular chairs and divan. The sharp odor of Lysol cut across the atmosphere. Everything was closeted, hidden—dishes, pots and pans. Even the toaster on the bar was concealed under something plastic. At Miss Quinlan’s instructions I put the sacks of groceries in the kitchen sink.

  “You can undress here,” she said crisply. “Put your clothes on the sofa.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom and locked the door. I pulled off my clothes and laid them out on the divan, neatly, in keeping with the austerity of the place.

  As I finished, Miss Quinlan came from the bedroom. She was naked and not nearly as attractive as she had been in her nursing costume. Whereas I had conceived her a woman with spacious breasts, they were really almost nonexistent, sorry little dabs of flesh not much larger than a man’s. Then I saw the flesh marks of falsies, which didn’t disturb her in the least.

  “Are we all undressed?” she said cheerfully, but with a professional intonation.

  “Okay,” I answered, standing up, hiding my precious loins with two hands.

  She smiled.

  “My goodness, aren’t we modest.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “This way, please.”

  I followed her into the bathroom, taking note of her drooping buttocks without the trimness her uniform created. The cleavage wasn’t fetching either. Both buttocks just hung there lazily, carelessly, and I began to feel that Miss Quinlan was at least sixty.

  I stood by as she filled the washbasin and stirred up a solution of soapsuds. None of this invigorated my sword, or, as my father called it, my spada. In fact, it began a sullen regression, and when Miss Quinlan grasped it there was little to seize, and she shook it and called it a shy and naughty boy.

  “Prophylaxis!” she exclaimed, scooping soapsuds upon it. “That’s the name of the game. Prophylaxis!”

  The spada began to respond as she manipulated it with both hands. “The dear boy,” she crooned. “He’s such an angel.” She handed me a towel, and as I dried myself Miss Quinlan made a soap and water solution, poured it into a douche bag, hung the bag on a hook, sat on the toilet, and plunged the douche nozzle between her thighs.

  She toweled herself off, seized my spada, and marched me into the bedroom. By now I was without passion but overwhelmed with curiosity. Where would it all end? Miss Quinlan was a fiend but she was fun too, her flabby old buttocks bouncing as she pulled back the bedspread, kneaded the pillows, and nodded approvingly at the bed of love. On swift bare feet she dashed into the kitchen and returned with a jar of honey I had seen her purchase at the market.

  “Jasmine honey!” she exclaimed, unscrewing the lid from the jar. “Taste!” She flecked a bit of it on her index finger and held it out. I opened my mouth to partake of it, but it wasn’t for me at all, it was for my spada, a tiny dab with which to get acquainted, smack on the tip. With sudden and enormous energy the spada came forth, head aflame, and looked around, ready to fight. I felt a moment of shame. What a ghastly way to honor my poor father. But I was caught up in it, I had asked Miss Quinlan for it, and there was no reason to stop now, in spite of my father, my wife, and my two sons.

  Seating herself on the edge of the bed, Miss Quinlan spread a thin layer of jasmine honey over my spada, from the scabbard to the tip. The golden gleam of it delighted her and with a murmur of desire she partook of the delicacy. The dear Miss Quinlan! She took everything—I felt it all going away and out of me, my sword, my glands, my heart, my lungs and my brains, a banquet for a rather elderly queen—and as the sorcery subsided she lay back on the bed, panting desperately, and I sat pooped in a chair. She had taken everything, and I had nothing to give in return.

  And as she remained motionless, her arm covering her eyes, I moved to the bathroom and cleansed my sword with warm water and a washcloth. I saw her lying in the same position as I pulled on my clothes. My eyes scanned the apartment for a last look around. A cold, sterile place, but with a terrible beauty, the beauty of loneliness and two strangers sharing an intimacy, the beauty one felt but did not see. Unforgettable.

  I started for the bedroom to say good-bye, but in the doorway I saw something that made me hesitate. Miss Quinlan lay as before, her arm shielding her eyes. But her hair had moved. That lovely pile of Nordic blandness wasn’t real after all. It had slipped to the side, over her ear, revealing a white, bald skull. It humbled me. Had I stayed longer I would have burst into tears. How good she was!

  “Thank you, Miss Quinlan,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure.” It was a tired whisper.

  She did not move.

  “My father thanks you too.”

  “He was a dear man. I’m so glad I could help.”

  “Good-bye, Miss Quinlan.”

  “Good-bye.”

  —The Brotherhood of
the Grape

  TEN CARS OF MOURNERS FOLLOWED the hearse across town to the cemetery a mile away, behind the high school gym. We had a police escort, a cop on a motorcycle leading us through the deserted little town, everybody having gone to the circus. No traffic at all, only the slow-moving funeral procession over the bridge to Pacific Street. My car followed the hearse, Mama sitting between Virgil and me.

  “Didn’t Papa look great?” Virgil said. “God, the things they can do nowadays.”

  “He looked happy,” Mama said. “It’s the way he used to be, always laughing, always making jokes.”

  The joke was on Papa, but I held my tongue.

  At every intersection the cop brought his Harley to a halt, raised his arm, glanced to the left and the right, blew his whistle, and waved the hearse to proceed. It was twelve blocks to the graveyard and he stopped the procession at all twelve intersections. My mother watched, deeply impressed, her veil lifted, for the escort gave her husband an air of importance, as though he’d been a big man in the town.

  We moved slowly through the cemetery gates and past the “new” graveyard to the “old” one, the difference being that the new section was without ornate tombstones or large trees, whereas the old place was a brooding fairyland of grotesque marble figures beneath enormous oaks and sycamores, luxuriantly shaded, the grass moist and very green and uncut, as if to devour the ancient sunken graves. Through the trees we could see Father Martin standing before an opening in the ground, waiting, prayer book in hand.

  I helped my mother from the car and she choked back a cry as she moved toward the priest. As I started to follow, Virgil snatched my arm.

  “Let’s watch it now,” he cautioned. “Keep her between us. She might try something.”

  “Try what?”

  “Jumping on the coffin.”

  The thing was possible, but it didn’t happen. Each of us held her by an elbow during the last rites, and though she swayed as she watched the casket descend, the pulleys squealing, she remained composed and without grief. Afterward Father Martin came to her side and took her hands in his and she looked up at him and began to cry. He bent and kissed her on the forehead and that made everybody cry, adults and children alike, and people turned away and tried to hide their misery as they drifted back to their cars.