by John Fante
‘Where’s my father, Rocco?’
‘How do I know? He’sa your fodder. He’sa not my fodder.’
But he had a boy’s instinct for the truth.
‘I thought he was living here with you.’
‘He’sa live by hisself.’
Arturo checked it: a lie.
‘Where does he live, Rocco?’
Rocco tossed his hands.
‘I canna say. I no see him no more.’
Another lie.
‘Jim the bartender says you were with him tonight.’
Rocco jumped to his feet and waved his fist.
‘That Jeem, she’sa lyin’ bastard! He’sa come along stick hissa nose where she’sa got no business. You fodder, he’sa man. He know what he’sa doing.’
Now he knew.
‘Rocco,’ he said. ‘Do you know a woman, Effie Hildegarde?’
Rocco looked puzzled. ‘Affie Hildegarde?’ He scanned the ceiling. ‘Who ees thees womans? For why you wanna know?’
‘It’s nothing.’
He was sure of it. Rocco hurried after him down the hall, shouting at him from the top of the stairs. ‘Hey you keed! Where you go now?’
‘Home.’
‘Good,’ Rocco said. ‘Home, she’sa good place for keeds.’
He did not belong here. Halfway up Hildegarde Road he knew he dared not confront his father. He had no right here. His presence was intrusive, impudent. How could he tell his father to come home? Suppose his father answered: you get the hell out of here? And that, he knew, was exactly what his father would say. He had best turn around and go home for he was moving in a sphere beyond his experience. Up there with his father was a woman. That made it different. Now he remembered something: once when he was younger he sought his father at the poolhall. His father rose from the table and followed him outside. Then he put his fingers around my throat not hard but meaning it, and he said: don’t do that again.
He was afraid of his father, scared to death of his father. In his life he had got but three beatings. Only three, but they had been violent, terrifying, unforgettable.
No thank you: never again.
He stood in the shadows of the deep pines that grew down to the circular driveway, where an expanse of lawn spread itself to the stone cottage. There was a light behind the Venetian blinds in the two front windows, but the blinds served their purpose. The sight of that cottage, so clear in moonlight and the glare of the white mountains towering in the west, such a beautiful place, made him very proud of his father. No use talking: this was pretty swell. His father was a lowdown dog and all those things, but he was in that cottage now, and it certainly proved something. You couldn’t be very lowdown if you could move in on something like that. You’re quite a guy, Papa. You’re killing Mamma, but you’re wonderful. You and me both. Because someday I’ll be doing it too, and her name is Rosa Pinelli.
He tiptoed across the gravel driveway to a strip of soggy lawn moving in the direction of the garage and the garden behind the house. A disarray of cut stone, planks, mortar boxes, and a sand screen in the garden told him that his father was working here. On tiptoe, he made his way to the place. The thing he was building, whatever it was, stood out like a black mound, straw and canvas covering it to prevent the mortar from freezing.
Suddenly he was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps his father wasn’t living here at all. Maybe he was just a common ordinary bricklayer who went away every night and came back in the morning. He lifted the canvas. It was a stone bench or something; he didn’t care. The whole thing was a hoax. His father wasn’t living with the richest woman in town. Hell, he was only working for her. In disgust he walked back to the road, down the middle of the gravel path, too disillusioned to bother about the crunch and squeal of gravel under his feet.
As he reached the pines, he heard the click of a latch. Immediately he was flat on his face in a bed of wet pine needles, a bar of light from the cottage door spearing the bright night. A man came through the door and stood on the edge of the short porch, the red tip of a lighted cigar like a red marble near his mouth. It was Bandini. He looked into the sky and took deep breaths of the cold air. Arturo shuddered with delight. Holy Jumping Judas, but he looked swell! He wore bright red bedroom slippers, blue pajamas, and a red lounging robe that had white tassels on the sash ends. Holy Jumping Jiminy, he looked like Helmer the banker and President Roosevelt. He looked like the King of England. O boy, what a man! After his father went inside and closed the door behind him he hugged the earth with delight, digging his teeth into acrid pine needles. To think that he had come up here to bring his father home! How crazy he had been. Not for anything would he ever disturb that picture of his father in the splendor of that new world. His mother would have to suffer; he and his brothers would have to go hungry. But it was worth it. Ah, how wonderful he had looked! As he hurried down the hill, skipping, sometimes tossing a stone into the ravine, his mind fed itself voraciously upon the scene he had just left.
But one look at the wasted, sunken face of his mother sleeping the sleep that brought no rest, and he hated his father again.
He shook her.
‘I saw him,’ he said.
She opened her eyes and wet her lips.
‘Where is he?’
‘He lives down in the Rocky Mountain Hotel. He’s in the same room with Rocco, just him and Rocco together.’
She closed her eyes and turned away from him, pulling her shoulder away from the light touch of his hand. He undressed, darkened the house, and crawled into bed, pressing himself against August’s hot back until the chill of the sheets had worn away.
Sometime during the night he was aroused, and he opened his sticky eyes to find her sitting at his side, shaking him awake. He could scarcely see her face, for she had not switched on the light.
‘What did he say?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’ But he remembered quickly and sat up. ‘He said he wanted to come home. He said you won’t let him. He said you’ll kick him out. He was afraid to come home.’
She sat up proudly.
‘He deserves it,’ she said. ‘He can’t do that to me.’
‘He looked awfully blue and sad. He looked sick.’
‘Huh!’ she said.
‘He wants to come home. He feels lousy.’
‘It’s good for him,’ she said, arching her back. ‘Maybe he’ll learn what a home means after this. Let him stay away a few more days. He’ll come crawling on his knees. I know that man.’
He was so tired, asleep even as she spoke.
The deep days, the sad days.
When he awoke the next morning, he found August wide-eyed too, and they listened to the noise that had awakened them. It was Mamma in the front room, pushing the carpet sweeper back and forth, the carpet sweeper that went squeakedy-bump, squeakedy-bump. Breakfast was bread and coffee. While they ate she made their lunches out of what remained of yesterday’s chicken. They were very pleased: she wore her nice blue housedress, and her hair was tightly combed, tighter than they had ever seen it, rolled in a coil on the top of her head. Never before had they seen her ears so plainly. Her hair was usually loose, hiding them. Pretty ears, small and pink.
August talking:
‘Today’s Friday. We have to eat fish.’
‘Shut your holy face!’ Arturo said.
‘I didn’t know it was Friday,’ Federico said. ‘Why did you have to tell us, August.’
‘Because he’s a holy fool,’ Arturo said.
‘It’s no sin to eat chicken on Friday, if you can’t afford fish,’ Maria said.
Right. Hurray for Mamma. They yah-yah-yahed August, who snorted his contempt. ‘Just the same, I’m not going to eat chicken today.’
‘Okay, sucker.’
But he was adamant. Maria made him a lunch of bread dipped in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. His share of the chicken went to his two brothers.
* * *
Friday. Test day. No Rosa.
Pssssst
, Gertie. She popped her gum and looked his way.
No, she hadn’t see Rosa.
No, she didn’t know if Rosa was in town.
No, she hadn’t heard anything. Even if she did, she wouldn’t tell him. Because, to be very honest about it, she would rather not talk to him.
‘You cow,’ he said. ‘You milk cow always chewing your cud.’
‘Dago!’
He purpled, half rose out of his desk.
‘You dirty little blond bitch!’
She gasped, buried her face in horror.
Test day. By ten thirty he knew he had flunked geometry. At the noon bell he was still fighting the English composition quiz. He was the last person in the room, he and Gertie Williams. Anything to get through before Gertie. He ignored the last three questions, scooped up his papers, and turned them in. At the cloak-room door, he looked over his shoulder and sneered triumphantly at Gertie, her blond hair awry, her small teeth feverishly gnawing the end of her pencil. She returned his glance with one of unspeakable hatred, with eyes that said, I’ll get you for this, Arturo Bandini: I’ll get you.
At two o’clock that afternoon she had her revenge.
Psssssst, Arturo.
The note she had written fell on his history book. That glittering smile on Gertie’s face, the wild look in her eyes, and her jaws that had stopped moving, told him not to read the note. But he was curious.
Dear Arturo Bandini:
Some people are too smart for their own good, and some people are just plain foreigners who can’t help it. You may think you are very clever, but a lot of people in this school hate you, Arturo Bandini. But the person who hates you most is Rosa Pinelli. She hates you more than I do, because I know you are a poor Italian boy and if you look dirty all the time I do not care. I happen to know that some people who haven’t got anything will steal, so I was not surprised when someone (guess who?) told me you stole jewelry and gave it to her daughter. But she was too honest to keep it, and I think she showed character in giving it back. Please don’t ask me about Rosa Pinelli anymore, Arturo Bandini, because she can’t stand you. Last night Rosa told me you made her shiver because you were so terrible. You are a foreigner, so maybe that’s the reason.
GUESS WHO????
He felt his stomach floating away from him, and a sickly smile played with his trembling lips. He turned slowly and looked at Gertie, his face stupid and smiling sickly. In her pale eyes was an expression of delight and regret and horror. He crushed the note, slumped down as far as his legs would reach, and hid his face. Save for the roar of his heart, he was dead, neither hearing, seeing, nor feeling.
In a little while he was conscious of a whispered hubbub about him, of a restlessness and excitement flitting through the room. Something had happened, the air fluttered with it. Sister Superior turned away and Sister Celia came back to her desk on the rostrum.
‘The class will rise and kneel.’
They arose, and in the hush no one looked away from the nun’s calm eyes. ‘We have just received tragic news from the university hospital,’ she said. ‘We must be brave, and we must pray. Our beloved classmate, our beloved Rosa Pinelli, died of pneumonia at two o’clock this afternoon.’
There was fish for dinner because Grandma Donna had sent five dollars in the mail. A late dinner: it was not until eight o’clock that they sat down. Nor was there any reason for it. The fish was baked and finished long before that, but Maria kept it in the oven. When they gathered at the table there was some confusion, August and Federico fighting for places. Then they saw what it was. Mamma had set up Papa’s place again.
‘Is he coming?’ August said.
‘Of course he’s coming,’ Maria said. ‘Where else would your father eat?’
Queer talk. August studied her. She was wearing another clean housedress, this time the green one, and she ate a lot. Federico gobbled his milk and wiped his mouth.
‘Hey Arturo. Your girl died. We had to pray for her.’
He was not eating, dabbing the fish in his plate with the end of his fork. For two years he had bragged to his parents and brothers that Rosa was his girl. Now he had to eat his words.
‘She wasn’t my girl. She was just a friend.’
But he bowed his head, averting the gaze of his mother, her sympathy coming across the table to him, suffocating him.
‘Rosa Pinelli, dead?’ she asked. ‘When?’
And while his brothers supplied the answers the crush and warmth of her sympathy poured upon him, and he was afraid to raise his eyes. He pushed back his chair and arose.
‘I’m not very hungry.’
He kept his eyes away from her as he entered the kitchen and passed through to the back yard. He wanted to be alone so he could let go and release the constriction in his chest, because she hated me and I made her shiver, but his mother wouldn’t let him, she was coming from the dining room, he could hear her footsteps, and he got up and hurried through the back yard and down the alley.
‘Arturo!’
He walked down the pasture where his dogs were buried, where it was dark and he couldn’t be seen, and then he cried and panted, sitting with his back against the black willow, because she hated me, because I was a thief, but Oh hell, Rosa, I stole it from my mother and that isn’t really stealing, but a Christmas present, and I cleared it up too, I went to confessional and got it all cleared up.
From the alley he heard his mother calling him, calling out to tell her where he was. ‘I’m coming,’ he answered, making sure his eyes were dry, licking the taste of tears from his lips. He climbed the barbed-wire fence at the corner of the pasture, and she came toward him in the middle of the alley, wearing a shawl and peering secretively over her shoulder in the direction of the house. Quickly she pried open his tight fist.
‘Shhhhhhh. Don’t say a word to August or Federico.’
He opened his palm and found a fifty-cent piece.
‘Go to the show,’ she whispered. ‘Buy yourself some ice cream with the rest. Shhhhhhh. Not a word to your brothers.’
He turned away indifferently, walking down the alley, the coin meaningless in his fist. She called him after a few yards, and he returned.
‘Shhhhhhh. Not a word to your father. Try to get home before he does.’
He walked down to the drugstore across from the filling station and sucked up a milkshake without tasting it. A crowd of collegians came in and took up all seats at the soda-fountain. A tall girl in her early twenties sat beside him. She loosened her scarf and threw back the collar of her leather jacket. He watched her in the mirror behind the soda-fountain, the pink cheeks flushed and alive from the cold night air, the gray eyes huge and spilling excitement. She saw him staring at her through the glass and she turned and gave him a smile, her teeth even and sparkling.
‘Hello there!’ she said, her smile the sort reserved for younger boys. He answered, ‘Hi,’ and she said nothing more to him and became absorbed in the collegian on the other side of her, a grim fellow wearing a silver and gold ‘C’ on his chest. The girl had a vigor and radiance that made him forget his grief. Over the ethereal odor of drugs and patent medicines he scented the fragrance of lilac perfume. He watched the long, tapering hands and the fresh thickness of her strong lips as she sipped her coke, her pinkish throat pulsing as the liquid went down. He paid for his drink and lifted himself off the fountain stool. The girl turned to see him go, that thrilling smile her way of saying goodbye. No more than that, but when he stood outside the drugstore he was convinced that Rosa Pinelli was not dead, that it had been a false report, that she was alive and breathing and laughing like the college girl in the store, like all the girls in the world.
Five minutes later, standing under the street lamp in front of Rosa’s darkened house, he gazed in horror and misery at the white and ghastly thing gleaming in the night, the long silk ribbons swaying as a gust of wind caressed them: the mark of the dead, a funeral wreath. Suddenly his mouth was full of dust-like spittle. He turned and walked d
own the street. The trees, the sighing trees! He quickened his pace. The wind, the cold and lonely wind! He began to run. The dead, the awful dead! They were upon him, thundering upon him out of the night sky, calling him and moaning to him, tumbling and rolling to seize him. Like mad he ran, the streets shrieking with the echo of his pattering feet, a cold and haunting clamminess in the middle of his back. He took the short cut over the trestle bridge. He fell, stumbling over a railroad tie, sprawling hands first into the cold, freezing embankment. He was running again even before he crawled to his feet, and he stumbled and went down and rose up again and rushed away. When he reached his own street, he trotted, and when he was only a few yards from his own home, he slowed down to an easy walk, brushing the dirt from his clothes.
Home.
There it was, a light in the front window. Home, where nothing ever happened, where it was warm and where there was no death.
‘Arturo …’
His mother was standing in the door. He walked past her and into the warm front room, smelling it, feeling it, revelling in it. August and Federico were already in bed. He undressed quickly, frantically, in the semi-darkness. Then the light from the front room went out and the house was dark.
‘Arturo?’
He walked to her bedside.
‘Yes?’
She threw back the covers and tugged at his arm.
‘In here, Arturo. With me.’
His very fingers seemed to burst into tears as he slipped beside her and lost himself in the soothing warmth of her arms.
The rosary for Rosa.
He was there that Sunday afternoon, kneeling with his classmates at the Blessed Virgin’s altar. Far down in front, their dark heads raised to the waxen Madonna, were Rosa’s parents. They were such big people, there was so much of them to be shaken and convulsed as the priest’s dry intonation floated through the cold church like a tired bird doomed to lift its wings once more on a journey that had no end. This was what happened when you died: someday he would be dead and somewhere on the earth this would happen again. He would not be there but it was not necessary to be there, for this would already be a memory. He would be dead, and yet the living would not be unknown to him, for this would happen again, a memory out of life before it had been lived.
