Tina’s biggest problem was that during the past year she had not been charged tuition because Uta explained that the fees from her work at the recitals more than covered her training, room, and board. But if she no longer sang at the recitals, she feared Uta would again ask her to pay for lessons, and Tina simply had no money for that.
Voices had been singing downstairs, and when they stopped, Tina went into the large living room, where Uta was alone, arranging stacks of music.
The tall blond woman looked at her icily and acknowledged her presence simply by speaking her name.
“Tina.”
“I hope you have a moment to talk,” Tina said.
“Of course. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m wondering why I no longer go with you to the out-of-town recitals.”
Tina was sure she saw a shadow of anger momentarily darken the other woman’s features, but Uta simply answered, “All right. That’s one question. Have you any others?”
“I also wonder … perhaps this is foolish … but if you are angry with me. You have seemed to be cold and distant since—”
“Since you had your abortion?”
Tina thought it sounded vile and vaguely obscene when Schatte referred to it in that cold mechanical way. She merely nodded.
“Those are your questions?”
She wants to be cold. I can be cold, too.
“Yes,” Tina answered crisply. “And I’d like some answers, if you don’t mind.”
“Very well. First. I am not taking you out of town with me because the other young ladies here need the experience.”
“And I need the money,” Tina said. “To pay for my lessons.”
“Have I asked you for any money?” Schatte said.
“No.”
“Then that is not an issue, is it?” Before Tina could speak, she went on. “The second reason is that I believe you have made great strides, so much so that I am planning a private concert for you here in New York in the spring. I am trying to book Carnegie Hall. I want you to save your strength, to practice well, and to sing all the time. I want you to be ready.”
Tina was stunned. “Oh, Frau Schatte. A concert? Carnegie Hall?”
“Yes,” the woman answered, but she did not smile, and her face showed no expression. Her voice still had the cold, impersonal tone of a city hall clerk.
Tina wanted to shout her happiness, to hug the woman, to shower her with thanks. She looked at the woman, hoping for some hint of encouragement, but Schatte merely looked back down at her music and said, “Now if you’ll forgive me, I have to prepare my next lesson.”
Tina turned and fled from the parlor. Back in her own room, she sat on the bed, crying softly. She looked up as her door opened and Flora, the maid, bustled in with an armful of clean linen. She seemed surprised to see Tina.
“I’m sorry, Tina. I knocked on the door a few minutes ago and I thought you were out. Is everything all right, honey?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know what’s happening.”
Flora put the fresh linens on a chair, closed the door behind her, and came over to sit on the bed alongside Tina.
“Can I help?” she asked in her light singsong accent. She put her arm around Tina and drew the younger woman closer to her. Unrestrained now, Tina began to weep and, through her sobs, told Flora of her fears and her worries.
“What is it?” she finally asked. “What have I done wrong?”
“Have you asked your boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend? What boyfriend?”
“That Mr. Luciano,” Flora said.
“He’s not my boyfriend. He never has been.”
Flora put her arms on Tina’s shoulders and moved her back so she could see her face. “Oh, God, child, you really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what? Oh, Flora, please.”
“You have to promise me you won’t say anything to Uta.”
“I promise, I promise.”
“A couple of months ago, one night while you were out, I think at your family’s, this Luciano fellow came to the house to talk to Uta. She didn’t know I was there, but I was in the next room and I heard everything.”
Tina nodded in anticipation.
“He told Uta that you were in trouble and that it was her fault. And then he started on her. He told her that as far as he was concerned, she was nothing but a pimp and a whore, providing girls while she was pretending to provide music. He told her he wasn’t going to do anything about it, but that you weren’t going to be part of it anymore.”
Tina felt the color drain from her face.
“He got real nasty. He told her she was supposed to be some kind of singing teacher, that she better—I remember just what he said—he said, ‘You’d better get your fancy ass working to get Tina some real singing work or else.’ Well, Uta got real mad. She said, ‘Who do you think you are, coming here, threatening me?’ And he said, ‘I’m your landlord, lady. I own this building. I bought it last week. And I’m also a guy with a lot of friends. If you want, I’ll send twenty or thirty of them over here some night and we’ll see how much you like lying on your back with your legs in the air, getting humped all night long. For nothing.’ I was peeking through the slats on the door then, and I saw Uta’s face go all white. I never saw her afraid before. So he stands up and he unbuttons his fly and he says, ‘I ought to take this out right now and show you what I think of you.’ But then he buttons it back up and says, ‘You’re too old. I wouldn’t even use you in one of my houses. But if you make any more mistakes with Tina, you might get your chance, lady. Take my word for it. You won’t like it. Just you teach like you’re supposed to teach. If you’ve got bills, send them to me.’ So then he says something like ‘I hope I don’t ever have to talk to you again; the next time won’t be so pleasant,’ and then he leaves. Later I came back into the room from the other door, and Uta was sitting at the piano, just staring, and I asked her who the man was who just left, and she said, ‘That was Tina’s boyfriend. He’s a well-known gangster. We were talking about her career.’” The black woman stopped and stared at Tina’s face. “You don’t know anything about this, do you?”
Tina shook her head. “He’s not my boyfriend. We don’t talk. We’ve never even gone out with each other.”
“Did he arrange for the baby doctor?”
“Yes. But I thought he was just doing me a favor. We’re from the same neighborhood. I haven’t talked to him since before then.”
“Well, girl, be careful ’cause someday he’s going to hand you a bill for everything. And I wouldn’t want to be around when it happens.”
“So that’s why Frau Schatte is arranging a concert for me.”
“I guess so,” Flora said. “I know I would if it was me. I saw that man’s eyes, and I wouldn’t want him mad at me.” She rose from the bed. “Remember now, you can’t say anything about this to Uta, or I’ll really be in trouble.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“All right. I’ll come back later and do your bed,” Flora said, walking to the door.
“Flora?” When the black woman turned, Tina said, “What did he mean that Uta was a pimp, arranging girls for clients?”
“What do you think Uta gets paid big money for? It’s not for singing. We go somewhere, Uta and you or somebody else does some music, and then we have a party, and sooner or later everybody goes to bed with somebody. That’s why Uta got those two new girls. They can’t sing much, but, well, they’ll do other things. But you just put that all out of your mind. Girl, you’re going to be a singer. You’re going to have a concert.” And with a big warm smile, Flora left the room.
Tina touched the dry salt from her tears and thought, with astonishment, that she had been working for a pimp and never even knew it. She washed her face, then went downstairs to make a telephone call. From outside, she heard nearby church bells ringing carols, calling true believers to Christmas Eve worship.
I should go to church, she thought, while w
aiting for her number to connect. I’m a believer. I believe in anything.
* * *
SOFIA SESTA—GOD, how she hated that new last name, hated it even more than her twisted father’s name—leaned back in her new easy chair, folded her hands softly across her swelling belly, and cried.
Outside, she could hear the church bells calling people to midnight Mass, but she had decided earlier that she would not go. God simply did not care about her, and so she no longer cared about him. He had never done anything for her. Instead, he had sent her suffering and misery and pain. He was no God of love, no God of goodness. He was a bringer of evil.
The baby kicked, kicked so hard she winced. She smiled to herself and thought it strange that she should love this little bastard in her womb so much. The child kicked again. Sofia rubbed the spot on her belly lovingly and began softly crooning an old lullaby to her unborn child. She was sure it was a boy.
At least that way, as a boy, he will have a chance in this world.
She felt the tears roll down her face but could not question them. She knew why. She was crying because she was just so damned lonely, so totally alone in the world with nobody who really cared that much about her one way or the other.
The church bells still rang, but they were not part of her life anymore. It had been a long time since she was a little girl, and the sound of the bells was a call to enter the body of the church, to share in its mysteries, to dream one day of being a nun, holy, dedicated, consecrated in spiritual marriage as a bride of Christ.
Later, older, she had fallen in love with poetry and dreamed of herself as one of the new voices who, sad, alone, and unrewarded, would yet devote her life to bringing happiness to the rest of the world.
A nun? A poet? Sofia laughed bitterly. I will be a breeder of bastards. At least that way I will be part of this world. Poetry is powerless in the face of evil and God.…
The apartment was still and she looked it over with appreciative eyes. A week after she and Nilo had been married in the prison, a driver had come to bring her to the uptown offices of Salvatore Maranzano.
She had been impressed by the splendor of the place, by the beauty of the young red-haired secretary who sat inside the door, by the courtliness of Maranzano himself. A few years ago, she had often heard Maranzano referred to in contemptuous terms by the gees who frequented her father’s restaurant as a silly, useless pretender to the throne of Joe the Boss, but clearly, despite their dire forecasts, the man had prospered.
There was almost a regal nature to Maranzano himself when he brought her into his office and poured tea for her. He greeted her with quiet dignity, inquired after her health, thanked her for having stood by his young friend, Nilo.
“Of course,” he said, “you will be needing a place of your own.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sofia answered.
“You have someone to stay with you? A sister, perhaps, a girlfriend?”
She had shaken her head no, and Maranzano smiled a fatherly smile.
“Suetonius quotes Caesar,” he said. “‘Meo tam suspicione quam, e crimine iudico carere oportere.’ Which is usually—”
“Which is usually incorrectly translated as ‘Caesar’s wife must be above all suspicion,’” Sofia said. “Yes, I know of what you are speaking.”
Maranzano should have sounded like a pompous ass, Sofia thought, spouting Latin at her like that, but somehow he hadn’t. Somehow it all seemed of a piece with what she knew of the man.
“Ah, you know the language of our ancestors?”
“School and church, many years,” Sofia said.
Maranzano seemed pleased. “Then you will understand the importance for your proper behavior. Quite aside from the matter of morality, of course. I expect Nilo will be coming out of prison before long, and when he does, it is imperative that he return to an unsullied home.” There was an edge to Maranzano’s voice. “For a woman as beautiful and as young as you, there will be many temptations, many opportunities to disgrace yourself and your family. That must not happen. A young lady who knows Latin must surely understand.”
He phrased the last sentence almost as a question, but the implication of it, and the expression on Maranzano’s face, was so blankly chilling that Sofia recognized it instantly as a threat.
She had said she understood.
The next day, she had stayed upstairs in her family’s apartment as she had every day since the trial ended, unwilling to go downstairs to work in the restaurant, unwilling to be gawked at by strangers as the bride of the Dago of Death. Late in the afternoon, an envelope had come to her containing four crisp new fifty-dollar bills and a pair of keys. The messenger said that he would be bringing the same amount of money the first of every month as long as it was necessary. The keys, he explained, were to her new apartment. She was to live there as long as Nilo was away. Without her participation, a moving truck came later that same day to transport her pitifully few belongings to the new place, which was just north of Fourteenth Street, closer to Midtown Manhattan but still only a long walk away from Little Italy.
That had all happened three months ago and Sofia had since seen her mother only once, when the woman had taken some time off from her work at the restaurant and had come to her daughter’s new place, only to sit quietly and stare at the newness and expense of it all. Sofia had not seen her father at all, and she lived in the fear that he might show up one night, uninvited, and try to force himself on her.
So when her mother, just before leaving, asked, “Who is paying for this apartment?” Sofia answered, “Nilo’s employer. Mr. Maranzano.”
Her mother nodded without comment, and Sofia added, “He has told me that if anyone tries to hurt me, he will kill them.”
Her mother nodded again.
“You might tell that to Papa,” Sofia said.
Her mother nodded and left.
If Matteo Mangini did show up some night, she promised herself, she had Maranzano’s phone number. She would make that phone call and her father would never bother her again.
In Sofia’s early weeks at the apartment, Tina had stopped over several times. It turned out to be a rather pathetic attempt to try being old girl chums again, but it had not worked. Or rather it had not been given a chance to work.
Tina had seemed distracted and dissatisfied with something involving her singing teacher, the German woman she always called Frau Schatte. Sofia wanted to talk about her pregnancy but was stunned into silence when Tina glibly admitted having had an abortion and that she had not even the faintest of inklings whom the father might have been.
“I have been with so many men,” Tina said.
“Do you think that’s good?”
A harsh laugh erupted from Tina. “Sure. One of them gave me that nice little gift I had in my belly. At least you know your baby is Nilo’s.”
Sofia was silent. They had changed so much, she thought, that they no longer had anything to talk about, and the visit quickly ended. Still, a week later, in another desperate attempt at frivolity, Tina had invited Sofia to accompany her on a visit to some of her new haunts in Greenwich Village.
The excursion promised to take Sofia to the places she had always dreamed of being, the dens of poets and writers, the hangouts of artists and freethinkers, but instead she found just a lot of drunks who seemed only to want to paw her and Tina.
She had left early, and not an hour after returning home there was a knock on the door. She opened it to Salvatore Maranzano, who said that he had just stopped in to see if she was comfortable in her new apartment or if she needed anything.
“I have everything I want, Mr. Maranzano,” she said.
“That is good. Because I have heard stories that you’ve been seen in places where young wives should not be without their husbands. I knew such stories could not be true.”
He had said no more than that, but it was enough. His voice had not changed, nor had his ever-present smile, but deep in the back of his eyes Sofia saw something
that sent cold shivers through her.
After he left, she realized that Maranzano had somebody watching her—probably the apartment doorman to start with—and the next time Tina asked her to go out to a party, she declined and said she had no interest in such things.
* * *
TINA HAD NOT CALLED AGAIN, until this night, this Christmas Eve, when she arrived and asked Sofia if she wanted to go to Mass with her, a Mass that Mario was celebrating at his church in the Village.
“Then we could go over to my parents’ house to celebrate,” she said brightly.
But both of them knew somehow that Sofia would not go, and so there was a sense of sadness and futility to Tina’s whole visit. Still Tina tried to put the best face on it. She talked of the old neighborhood and fondly recalled their close friendship when growing up together. The memories, so long forgotten since Sofia had tried to block all happiness from her heart, charmed and warmed her, and after they recalled one story of an escapade of theirs from parochial school, Sofia blurted out honestly, “Oh, Tina, I loved being your friend. I guess I always loved you most in the world. It just all seems so long ago.”
“That’s because you don’t try to remember the happy times, the fun we had,” Tina said. She talked of their visit one day to see her cousin, now known as Charlie Luciano, when Sofia had been having trouble with her father.
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