She got out of bed, put on her robe, and walked to the bedroom door, but there she hesitated. In the kitchen she could hear the sounds of an ongoing battle. For a moment, Sofia considered going back to bed, but then she decided she must have courage, must do what was right.
She opened the door and stepped into the other room. Her mother was backed into a corner, waving a heavy butcher’s knife at her husband. She was bleeding slightly from the corner of her mouth.
Sofia let out a small gasp and her father turned toward her. He was a tall and handsome man, with wavy black hair that he kept oiled with scented pomade. His mustache was thin and well trimmed, and he showed his teeth, even and large and sparkling white, as he hissed to his daughter.
“Sofia, my baby, go to bed. This is none of your affair.”
He looked as though he was going to say more, but just at that moment, with his attention diverted and his body half-turned away from her, Sofia’s mother slashed out with her knife, slicing her husband’s shirt.
He looked down with apparent surprise at the faint line of blood that suddenly appeared on his white shirt. Then, before Sofia’s eyes, he seemed to change. What had gone before had been like a long worked-out ritual, more like war games than the real thing. But in that instant all was transformed. Matteo Mangini looked down at the blood coming from him and then at his wife, Rosalia. He slowly made a fist, and while his wife began crying he raised his big paw high and then with all his might smashed it backhanded into his wife’s face. There was a loud noise and Rosalia’s face exploded into a bloody pulp. She exhaled a slow, soft sigh and collapsed to the floor.
Sofia watched, unable to move. Matteo advanced on his wife and casually plucked the knife from her hand. He held it up in a muddle-headed way and seemed to be considering what to do with it.
“No, Papa,” Sofia said. “Please don’t. Please.”
Matteo looked down at his wife and started to cry.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Sofia. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“I know, Papa. I know.”
Sofia moved closer to her mother. Rosalia was moaning now, crying softly.
“Help me take her into the bedroom,” Sofia said.
Like some overgrown child, Matteo nodded vigorously. He lifted his wife in his arms and carried her into their bedroom, where he gently set her down. Sofia made him leave the room while she washed her mother’s face. The nose was bloodied but did not appear broken. Sofia made her drink a tumbler full of red wine, then sat at her side, holding her hand until Rosalia was asleep.
When Sofia went back out into the kitchen, her father was seated at the table.
“Let me help you, Papa,” she said.
Numbly, he let her take off his shirt and dress his wound. It was a long thin scratch across his ribs, which had produced more blood than real damage. When she was done bandaging it, she took him by the hand and led him into her bedroom.
“Sleep here tonight, Papa,” she said. “I will sleep on the sofa.”
Matteo said something incomprehensible and Sofia went to the door. But when he began crying, she hesitated.
“Sofia,” he said. “Sofia, I’m so sorry. I’m no good. No damned good.”
Sofia went back to him where he sat on the edge of her bed. She put her hand on top of his and stroked it gently like a baby’s. He cried some more and she sat down beside him. She put her arm around him and he rested his head on her shoulder. She thought that he had suffered much and felt a great sense of forgiveness toward her father. Matteo Mangini could not help what he had become.
Sofia put her arms around him and patted him gently on the back. He was like an overgrown child who badly needed comforting, although this “child” was big and burly and reeked of red wine.
She kissed him gently on the forehead, and he looked up at her with grateful surprise. So she kissed his forehead again. Every person, she thought, deserves to have someone show him love and affection. It was life and it was poetry. It was beauty.
Suddenly Mangini stood, put his arms under her legs, and turned around to lower her onto the bed. Then his hands went to his suspenders and slipped them from his shoulders.
Sofia let out a gasp as her father began undressing. He stretched out beside her on the bed and clumsily reached inside her robe and cupped her naked breast.
Sofia told herself that it was not right. But the man had so much sorrow. And perhaps there could be love even in this house.
Slowly she put her arms around her father and pulled him toward her.
* * *
MARCH ADVERTISED ITS STUBBORN EXISTENCE with a wailing whistle of wind. Spring might be only a few weeks away, but down here, in the pit, there was only winter, cold, eternal, remorseless.
Nilo put down his pick and studied the dirt wall in front of him. It was a sticky gray clay, oozing water, but his only interest in it was that it was too damned hard to dig into. At the rate that the crew had been going, the job would take weeks to complete.
Nilo stepped back from the clay and wiped his face with the sleeve of his rough woolen peacoat. The sun did not penetrate down into the pit, and whenever he stopped working he began shivering. He could feel the sweat on his body turning cold and chilling him. Stay still long enough, he thought, and his sweat would turn to ice.
And so they rule you, he thought. They work you like a beast of burden, and you have only two choices: to sweat until the fevers carry you off, or refuse the work and starve. Either way, long enough, you die and they bury you in the ditch that some poor fool exactly like you just dug.
Nilo looked around at his world, the bottom of a twelve-foot-deep trench, barely wide enough for him to stand in sideways, covered with a foot-deep, ice-cold mud slurry on the bottom. Twenty yards away, another worker bent over his pick, his shovel leaning against one of the walls of the ditch. In the distance, Nilo could hear the sound of a ship’s horn. They were working somewhere on the waterfront to do a job that had never been explained to any of them.
We are no longer humans, just beasts of burden. Is this the promise of America? Is this to be my reward for wanting to be a good citizen?
Nilo hated this. He had not liked the tonnara, but at least the weather had been good. He hated the weather in America. He hated his life. The only thing he loved right now was the thought of a cigarette. He looked around for the job’s straw boss, a big hulking dumb Irishman, who had made it clear early on that he hated having to work with wops.
Not as much as we hate you, Nilo thought.
He was supposed to tell the boss whenever he left the ditch for any reason, but the man was not around and Nilo needed a smoke. At least American cigarettes were better than the ones back in Sicily. He climbed the ladder up to the pavement.
Topside, he could see the West Side docks, not far from where he had first come ashore nearly three months earlier. Up there, the sun shone with a mild warmth that took the chill from his bones.
He squatted down to give the wind a smaller target and lit a cigarette. He remembered that he was to have dinner tonight at the Falcones’ apartment. He had lived with them for a few weeks after Tommy returned, but he had always seemed to be in somebody’s way, so finally he rented a room in the apartment of an old Italian widow directly across the street from the Falcones, in the building where Sofia Mangini lived.
He still ate dinner with the Falcones three or four times a week; he had to, because he could not afford too many dinners on his skimpy pay and he resolutely refused to dip into the small stash of stolen funds he kept under his mattress. But except for meals, Nilo stayed away as much as he could. Tina was to blame for that. In his mind, she was just a tease, leading him on with her beauty and then going cute and coy and virginal at the last moment. He also feared that she might be saying bad things about him to Tommy.
It’s because I saw her feeling herself up in the bathroom. People hate it when you find out their secrets.
“Hey, Sesta.”
Nilo stood up and turn
ed around. It was Chambers, the straw boss. Nilo slowly took a puff on his cigarette.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Chambers said. “Taking a fucking vacation?” Nilo did not answer, and Chambers said, “Not on my shift, you dumb wop. I get paid to produce. Now get back to work.”
Without even thinking of his reply, Nilo answered, “No.”
The word surprised Chambers; it even surprised Nilo. Chambers looked at him for a moment, then turned away.
“Then get your ass the hell out of here,” Chambers said. “I’ll give you your chit, and you go back to the office and collect your stuff. You’re through. Fired. Now beat it.”
It was not fair, Nilo thought. This is supposed to be America, where men are free. A man should not lose his job because he needs a cigarette. Who makes these rules?
He could feel the rage boiling inside. There was a long-handled digging shovel on the ground, and he picked it up, ran after Chambers, and smashed the Irishman across the back with it, knocking him into the cold mud at the bottom of the ditch.
Nilo walked to the edge and looked down at Chambers writhing in pain, paused thoughtfully, and then dropped the shovel down on top of him. For good measure, he also flicked his cigarette butt down at the man.
After that, Nilo did not bother going around to collect the half day’s pay that was due him. Instead, he walked away from the site and kept on walking. Early afternoon found him in Midtown beginning to worry about how he was going to get along. His command of English still was not good, except for a fair number of obscenities he had mastered while on the job. All he knew was that he was never ever going to dig ditches again.
He walked up Broadway, surprised at how lively and warm New York City seemed up here. Down a side street he saw a modest-looking diner, and his stomach reminded him that he had left his lunch back at the work shack. He went into the restaurant, sat at the counter, and ordered apple pie and coffee.
He looked in his small money purse to check how much cash he had, and while he was fishing through it, he noticed for what must have been the hundredth time since he had put it there the card that Rocco had given him with the New York address of his benefactor, Don Salvatore Maranzano.
Nilo looked at the card, but figuring out the address was beyond him.
He asked a woman if she could tell him how to get to the address, but she shied away from him and walked quickly outside. Nilo had to admit that it seemed like a sensible thing to do since he looked and smelled like something that had just crawled out of a sewer.
After his meager lunch, he went back to the street and began to ask passersby if they would help him. One by one they ignored him and walked off, and finally a city policeman came up to him and told him to move along.
Nilo tried to explain in his halting English that he was looking for an address, and after a long few moments, finally succeeded in making himself understood.
The cop looked at the card. “Maranzano, huh? A friend of yours?”
Nilo nodded. “Sì. Yes,” he said hopefully.
“That figures,” the policeman said. “They’re all as dumb as you.” He handed back the card. “Keep walking up Broadway. You’ll come to the number.” He pointed to the number on the business card and then to a street sign on the corner.
Nilo nodded, fixed a big smile of thanks on his face, and walked off. But inside, he was seething. He knew the word “dumb.” He had heard it enough from Chambers on the ditchdigging job.
And why did that policeman seem to know Don Salvatore? Perhaps the don is truly a big man in this city. And maybe he will have work for me.
A few minutes later, Nilo was standing outside a large brick building. A brass plaque on the front of the building announced:
MARANZANO
REAL ESTATE
Nilo could not decipher “real estate,” but he was able to work out the letters for “Maranzano.” He started for the large glass doors of the entrance but suddenly was brushed aside by two burly men who pushed their way out of the building.
They both wore crisp pin-striped suits, and their faces, under their snap-brimmed hats, were hard and suspicious.
At the curb they got into a parked car, and as one man clambered into the passenger seat Nilo saw a revolver in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The two men quickly drove off. Nilo watched them go, then turned back toward Maranzano’s building.
This time he stopped short of the door.
Who am I trying to fool? Don Salvatore has a big business, and what do I know about business? Why would he hire me? To do what? To dig more ditches for one of his businesses?
In his mind, he weighed himself against the two men who had just driven away from the real estate office. Their suits … their strong faces … the gun he saw. Were these businessmen? he wondered. Did they work for Don Salvatore?
There are too many things I do not know. I speak of being a man, but I am truly not much more than a child. What use has Don Salvatore for a child whose only skill is digging ditches? I will dig ditches until I die. It is America’s gift to Nilo Sesta.
He turned from the door and started the long walk back to Crosby Street. Softly, the rain began to fall.
* * *
TOMMY FALCONE PICKED UP the coffeepot from the stove, where it had been gently percolating itself into mud, and poured himself a thick steaming cupful and walked into the living room.
Outside, the day had changed from sunny and chill to a long, slow, cold drizzle. The weather fit his mood exactly, and he sank down into the sofa, kicked his shoes off, and stared out the window, studying the rain.
Tony Falcone came out of the bathroom rubbing his damp hair with a towel, looked over at his son, then went into the kitchen for his own cup of coffee. He sat down next to Tommy and said, “You look very serious. It must be all this philosophy that you are studying.”
“Nothing so brilliant,” Tommy said. “I was just trying to figure out which bank to rob.”
His father grinned at him. “It might be easier to marry a rich widow,” he said.
Tommy laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that.” After a pause, he said, “Do you think there’s one around that old man Mangini doesn’t have his paws on?”
The elder Falcone scowled. He did not like his neighbor from across the street and went into Mangini’s Restaurant only when it was absolutely necessary. “The man gives philanderers a bad name,” he finally said, then quickly dropped the subject, as if it annoyed him.
“Why this worrying about money all of a sudden?” he asked. “I thought between your army back pay and maybe working this summer, you wouldn’t have any trouble with money for school.”
“I won’t,” Tommy agreed. “So long as I don’t go anywhere or do anything. Without cash … well, as far as girls are concerned, I might just as well have stayed up there with the Sisters of Quietude.…”
He stopped suddenly, realizing what he had said, aware that he had mentioned a part of his life that he had planned to keep secret forever.
“I mean…” he began.
Tony smiled softly. “I know what you mean,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Tommy took a small sip of his coffee before turning toward his father.
“What do you know?” he finally asked.
Tony shrugged his shoulders.
“No,” Tommy snapped. “You said you know. Now, what do you know?”
“I know most of it, Tommy. Look, it’s not something you want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about it, either.”
“You know I was with the sisters?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find out? Did Bigmouth Mario tell you?”
“Your brother is Father Mario,” Tony snapped. “Don’t forget it. And he didn’t say a word. It was the postmark on your letters. I’m too good a cop to have missed that.”
“What else do you know?”
Tony sighed. “Okay. I know about the morphine.”
Tommy rose and walked to t
he window. “You let me come back home. Even after you found out?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“Your dope fiend son?” Tommy said.
“My son. Who was sick. And isn’t anymore,” his father replied.
Tommy came back to the couch and sat down again.
“We were talking about money,” Tony said.
“I’ve been thinking about law school,” Tommy said. “In a few years, after I finish at CCNY. But I want to go to a good one. Columbia’s the one I want.”
“You’re right,” Tony said. “You will need money for that. I hear it’s pretty expensive.”
Tommy nodded and Tony said abruptly, “I could probably get you a job somewhere.”
“I had a different idea. Maybe I’ll become a cop.”
“No,” his father answered sharply.
“Why not? I could learn a lot about how the law and the world really work. The money’s not bad. They’d put me on late shifts and I’d be able to go to school days.”
“No,” his father said again.
“That’s really not much of an explanation, Papa.”
“All right, I’ll give you a better one. You’re too good to be a cop.”
“It doesn’t seem to have hurt you,” Tommy said.
“Look, when the immigrants come, the first thing they think of is becoming a cop. And that’s all right. But their kids … their kids have to do better. I didn’t become a cop so you could become a cop. You’ve got to be better than me.”
“I’m not talking about a career. I’m talking about a temporary job, while I get through school.”
“There’s another reason. For a long time now, the gangs have been dying out. We were winning. The criminals were losing. And now this stupid Prohibition.”
“What do you mean?”
“The gangs are coming back and they’re coming back worse than ever. There’s a lot of money to be made in this illegal liquor, and if you get enough crooked money, criminals sprout like weeds. Every gavone who makes wine in his cellar is working overtime, peddling his stuff to criminals who sell it to taverns that are open illegally. They call it bootlegging now.”
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