by John Fante
I dug into the kit and found another. It seemed right. I held it out.
“Wrong pipe.”
I flung it back, dug out all the short pieces of pipe in the kit, and held them out. Quickly he took the one he wanted.
“Level.”
I handed him the level.
He put it on the floor, got down on his knees, and studied the air bubble inside the measuring area.
“Tape measure.”
I gave it to him, and he measured from the door to the first step of the staircase.
“Twelve foot.”
He placed the pipe on the floor at the door, holding it with his foot. “Floor sags two inches. Pipe’s gonna roll clear to the stairs. Whole house sags in the middle.”
He took his foot off the pipe and it began to move, slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed as it clattered along; yea, even as it thumped against the stair I knew my Papa was the wrong man for the job; I knew that he hated the house, that he was prejudiced against it, that he would show it no mercy. We watched the pipe rocking back and forth and finally come to a stop. Joyce was stunned.
“For heaven’s sake.”
Papa picked up the length of pipe and handed it to me.
“Tool kit.”
I threw the pipe into the kit.
“Lock.”
I locked it.
“Straps.”
I buckled the two straps.
“Termites,” he said.
Joyce led him into the kitchen. I started up the stairs.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“Bath.”
I went up and had my bath. For an hour I lay in warm soothing water, dozing but not sleeping. For me a bath was not so much the cleansing of the body as the refreshing of the mind. My thinking became like a summer sky, gladsome images crossing it like white clouds: the sailboats at Newport Beach, the haunting beauty of Valli, the third fairway at Fox Hills Golf Club, the prose of Willa Cather. All the delicious things, the winsome splendid gentle things, came with my bath.
But now something strange was added, a new and startling imagery, a pool of stagnant water, mossy and cool. Deep forest shadows shrouded the pool, and there were creatures just below the surface of the water, popping their heads out and disappearing again, and, each time they sank, something white and terrible trailed in the water after them. Gradually I recognized the creatures. They were Papa, and Joe Muto, and Mr. Randolph, and the man in tweeds. The white stringy things they dragged after them were umbilical cords. The creatures were so frightening I jumped out of the tub and quickly dressed.
FOUR
JOYCE WAS IN the living room reading, surrounded with books. I could see Papa in the back yard. He sat under a wide lawn umbrella, a wine jug on the steel table beside him, a cigar in his mouth as he stretched his legs and took his ease, studying the house.
“What did he say about the hole in the kitchen?”
“He wants to consider it,” Joyce said.
“There’s nothing to consider. Just fix the hole.”
She closed the book. “Let him think about it. He’s full of ideas.”
“No matter what he thinks, the hole has to be fixed. It was a mistake to bring him down here. He’s old and set in his ways. I predict trouble.”
“That’s not a very nice way to feel about your own father.”
“I can’t help it. He’s turned into an eccentric.”
“You should have thought of that before you asked him. The Fourth Commandment, you know.”
“The Fourth Commandment?”
“Honor thy father and thy mother.”
I gave her a quick look. She was a picture of enormous placidity, her great tummy sitting proudly on her lap like another person. It gave you the feeling you talked to two people. Behind her reading glasses the gray eyes were clear and beautiful. She sat with a dozen books around her, some on the coffee table, others piled beside her on the divan. She was reading Chesterton and Belloc and Thomas Merton and François Mauriac. There were books by Karl Adam, Fulton Sheen and Evelyn Waugh. I glanced at some of the titles: The Spirit of Catholicism, The Faith of Our Fathers, The Idea of a University. Some of these books were mine, out of a dusty box in the garage, but most were new and fresh from the bookstore. It was incredible to find her with such books, for she was a cold materialist; she belonged to a semantic group; nay, she was practically an atheist, with a hard scientific patience for facts.
“What you doing?”
“I’m thinking of making a change.” She took off her reading glasses. “If God is all-good, why does He permit crippled children to be born?”
It frightened me at once.
“Is something wrong with the baby?”
“Of course not. I’m asking you a question.”
“I don’t know the answer.”
She smiled with satisfaction.
“But I do.”
“That’s just wonderful.”
“Don’t you want to hear it?”
I couldn’t take her seriously. It was but another whim of her pregnancy. Here was the same girl who liked chili sauce on her avocado salad. It would pass as soon as her figure returned. It was a whim. It had to be. I liked an atheistic wife. Her position made matters easy for me. It simplified a planned family. We had no scruples about contraceptives. Ours had been a civil marriage. We were not chained by religious tenets. Divorce was there, any time we wanted it. If she became a Catholic there would be all manner of complications. It was hard to be a good Catholic, very hard, and that was why I had left the Church. To be a good Catholic you had to break through the crowd and help Him pack the cross. I was saving the breakthrough for later. If she broke through I might have to follow, for she was my wife. No; this was a whim of hers, a passing fancy. It had to be.
“You’ll get over it,” I said. “Any calls?”
“Nothing important.”
I phoned my secretary at the studio. My calls were routine. Somebody wanted to play golf, and somebody else wanted to play poker. My producer was in New York, and the front office was very quiet. It was a good time to proceed with arrangements about repairing the kitchen. There was lumber to buy, and Papa would probably need a helper. I walked out to the back yard and took a chair under the big umbrella. Papa sat quietly, his feet on the table. His jug was almost empty. He watched his cigar smoke climb into the branches of a small mock orange tree in the center of the yard.
“What do you think, Papa? Will it cost much?”
“My eyes hurt. No good, this country.”
“Smog. You’ll have to replace some of the joists.”
“Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Mingo and the bandits?”
“Sure, lots of times. Will you need a helper on the job?”
“Brave man, my Uncle Mingo. He was an Andrilli, your Grandma’s brother. They hang him right there in Abruzzi. The carabinieri…Two bullets in his shoulder. They hang him anyway. His wife standing there, crying. Sixty-one years ago. I seen it myself. Coletta Andrilli, pretty woman.”
He drank, the jug in both hands, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. He put down the jug and resumed his pleasant thoughts. I told him there was a lumber yard not far away. If he would compute the materials needed we could drive over to the lumber yard that very day.
“I’m anxious to get started, Papa.”
Papa spoke to his cigar: “He’s anxious to get started. I been here two hours. I’m tired. I don’t sleep good on the train, but he wants to get started.”
I apologized. He was right, of course. I had been very thoughtless. “Certainly, Papa. I don’t mean to rush you. Take it easy for a few days. Get a good rest. The kitchen can wait.”
“I’ll take care of the kitchen, kid. You take care of the writing.”
His face showed fatigue, gray bristles at his chin, the tips of his mouth turned down, his eyes half open and bloodshot, smarting from the poison gas in the air.
“Enjoy yourself, Papa. Rest. Anything you want—just ask for it. Y
ou need more wine?”
“Don’t worry about the wine, kid. I’ll take care of the wine.”
“I’ll order you some Chianti, Papa. Real Chianti. Anything else?”
“Typewrite machine.”
“I got a portable upstairs. But you can’t type, Papa.”
He studied his cigar. “You type. I talk.”
It touched me. Only last evening he had left Mama, and now he wanted to send her a little message. “That’s fine, Papa. She’ll be very happy.”
“She’s dead.”
“Who?”
“Coletta Andrilli.”
“I thought you wanted to write a letter to Mama.”
“What for? I seen her yesterday. Good God, kid.”
“Why the typewriter?”
“My Uncle Mingo and the bandits. We write the story. For the little boy, so he’ll know about Uncle Mingo. Make him feel good, proud.”
“Not today, Papa. We’ll do it, but later.”
“Today. Now.”
“But why today?”
Fiercely he answered, frightened he answered: “Because I might die any time. Any minute.”
“Some other time.”
Quick pain smothered his face. Without a word he rose and walked very fast into the house. I saw him hurry through the living room without speaking to Joyce. He clambered up the stairs. As I reached the living room the door of the guest bedroom closed sharply. Joyce peered at me over her reading glasses.
“What did you do to that poor old man?”
“Nothing. He wants me to write a story about his Uncle Mingo.”
“You refused, of course.”
“I said, later.”
“After Dorothy Lamour and the gypsies?”
“Don’t be clever.”
“It’s wrong to treat your father like this. It’s a sin. You know very well that you should reverence the aged, specially your parents. It’s your sacred obligation before God.”
Big and calm, she was. A big white rock, unperturbed as the breakers smashed against her. A tower of ivory, she was, a morning star, a rolling hill, a Boulder Dam.
“What’s eating you, anyhow?”
“I can’t allow you to abuse your father.”
I groped around for an answer, but there was none. It shook me up because she was so sure of herself. She was a woman of infinite tact who rarely lashed out. I thought of apologizing to Papa, but that would trap me into a session with his Uncle Mingo. Not that I hated Uncle Mingo. I didn’t hate Uncle Mingo. I vowed again that I would write his story, but I just didn’t want to write the goddamn thing at that moment.
“I’m going to the studio.”
She had resumed her reading. She looked up.
“What did you say?”
“I’m going to the studio.”
“If God is all-good and all-knowing, why does He create certain souls He knows will suffer eternal damnation?”
“I don’t know.”
“But I do,” she smiled.
“Isn’t that just ducky.”
I walked out to the garage and got into the car. It was twenty minutes to the studio, through heavy crosstown traffic, but I was glad for the snarl of cars and the hooting of busses. Here was the temper of our time. After the baby was born, Joyce would feel it again, the comfort of confusion, the all-excluding necessity of staying alive on the earth. A woman’s confinement was a bad time for a man. Creation gave her terrible strength and she got along without him. But it would pass. I saw her slim again, in black lace, starved for my arms. A first child improved their figures, ripened them. I was very happy when I got to the studio. I was reeling with love, savoring the joys to come.
My secretary was on her feet, waiting for me.
“Call your wife. It’s urgent.”
Even as I dialed, I saw her prostrate in the back of a taxi, a messy scene, the baby half born, Joyce moaning, the cab driver in terror, motorcycle police ripping an opening through Wilshire traffic, sirens shrieking as the cab roared to the hospital.
Joyce answered the phone.
“Your father’s gone.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Back to San Juan.”
“But he can’t. He hasn’t any money.”
“He’s walking. Down Wilshire. I couldn’t stop him.”
“I’ll get him.”
I hung up, hurried out to the car, and raced toward Wilshire. A mile east of my house, I found him. I found him and wept. He sat on a bench on the boulevard, at a bus stop. His tool kit and roped suitcases were beside him. There on the corner he sat, an old man with his ruined possessions. He sat without hope, weary in a big town, at the edge of a river of automobiles, waves of monoxide gas flooding his tired face. Yes, I wept. I wanted to beat my breast and say, mea culpa, mea culpa, for I saw the pathos of the aged, the loneliness of the last years, my Papa, my old Papa, all the way from Abruzzi, a peasant to the end, sitting on the bench, alone in the world. Why, sure, I would write his story! Why, sure, we would put it down about Uncle Mingo, for the baby to read! It was the most important thing a man had to write. I parked the car and wiped my eyes and went to him on the bench.
“Papa. What you doing here?”
“Hello, kid.”
I put my hand on his shoulder.
“What was Uncle Mingo like, Papa? Tell me the whole thing from the beginning.”
“He had red hair, kid. Big feet. Very strong man.”
But he couldn’t continue. He began to cry, and I cried too, and we put our arms around one another and cried and cried because we knew the importance of Uncle Mingo and we loved him so much after all these years.
“Come on, Papa. Let’s go home. We’ll write it down. I’m hot now, Papa. I’ll write the whole damn thing.”
I tried to help him from the bench, but he pulled away.
“I got no home, kid. Nobody wants me.”
“Come on, Papa. We’ll get you some wine, then we’ll go home and write it.”
“A little bottle, maybe.”
He took out a blue polka dot bandana and wiped his eyes and sent a blast from his nose. Then he pulled out his pocketbook with the many compartments, and I saw the garlic again, like a snarling little brown flame, and he poked around and his fingers held some coins, sixty or seventy cents, which he offered me.
“A little bottle, for your Papa.”
“Put it away, Papa. I’ll get you the best wine in the world. Save your money, Papa. I got money.”
We carried the luggage to the car and he got in beside me. So he had forgiven me, and it was good to be forgiven, and I wanted to show my thanks. We drove to a liquor store with many handsome bottles from everywhere, and he looked about, his sadness vanishing in that shimmer of beautiful bottles. Only a little wine, he insisted, something to wet his lips, maybe a pint of California wine, but the great wide world was on these shelves, and it was for my Papa. Some Cabernet from Chile, and he weakened and we ordered a few bottles; and some Château Lyonnat; and a case of golden Bordeaux, and he smiled and thought it was very foolish and expensive for a man who wanted only a sip or two of California claret. Yes, Joyce was right, and I must honor the aged, pay homage to my Papa, and he almost sobbed to hold that bottle of Chianti wrapped in straw, so we bought a case of that too.
“It’s too much,” he said, and he wrung his hands, but he got into the spirit of the thing presently, he lit a cigar and a shrewd merchant-prince aspect came over him, and he walked up and down the handsome store, pulling out bottles, reading labels, putting bottles back. He was a man of superb taste, he knew Portuguese brandies, and he did not forget Martell. But there was an exotic side to his nature too, for he liked the Florentine anisette made by the Italian monks, and when he saw the tall golden bottle of Galliano I knew he must have that too, an old man must have Galliano, the bottle is so exquisitely tall, the liqueur as yellow as the Italian sun.
The clerk promised quick delivery to my house, but Papa trusted only himself with the Galli
ano, and he felt he should bring the Martell too. We drove home and pulled into the garage. He got out carefully, measuring each movement.
Joyce was glad to see us come in together and she kissed us, and her lips on my cheeks were the lips of a nun.
“Bless you, dearest,” she said.
It was the first time in her life she ever said such a thing. Papa opened the Galliano, and the Martell, and we got comfortable in the living room. Like an alchemist in some ancient Venetian cellar, he poured himself two ounces of Martell and smiled in blissful content as he floated an ounce of Galliano upon it. He sipped, and such ecstasy seized him I thought he might float gently to the ceiling.
“My Uncle Mingo had red hair,” he said. “He lived in a stone house with walls three feet thick…”
Joyce brought a plate of cheeses and salami.
“One time I said, ‘Uncle Mingo, what makes you so strong?’ Uncle Mingo, he picked me up with one hand, held me straight out, and he said, ‘Olive oil.’ ”
We sampled the Galliano, Joyce and I.
“Uncle Mingo’s brother, he was the mayor of Torcelli. We had poor roads in those days. Five thousand people. My cousin Aldo died when he was four. Everybody came to the fiesta. Cheese. Antonio didn’t like the priest. Some wheat, but mostly oats. I went up there, and I said, ‘Vico, what’s going on here?’ That was before we had electric lights…”
Darkness came. The phone rang many times, and Joyce tiptoed to answer it. She wouldn’t let me move. I had to stay there and listen, get the facts. Papa put the Galliano aside and drank the brandy straight. The doorbell rang; some friends of Joyce. She whisked them past us quietly, to the den.
“Uncle Mingo’s sister, Delia, she married Giuseppe Marcosa. One day I seen d’Annunzio in town, riding a bicycle. Hot in summer, cold in winter. Big man, Uncle Mingo. Chocolate sometimes, but no coffee. Walls, three feet thick. Maybe two acres. Plenty of rock. Six feet six, maybe. Good man. Strong. Tile roof. When Italo died, whole town was there. I said to myself, they could bring the fish from Bari, but he was no good, that Luigi. How could a man steal his own daughter’s dowry? I knew there was trouble…”
Joyce left her guests to bring my supper on a tray. Papa wasn’t hungry. I gritted my teeth and kept listening. Joyce went back to the den and her friends. Their laughter came through. Papa was half finished with the brandy.
