Sofia's Tune (2 page)

Images came to her mind like a rapid projection of glass lantern slides. Sofia had once held a hand, warm and heavy. She and Serena had toddled up the cobblestone streets of Benevento side by side. They had whispered their twin language at night in a shared crib, Serena lying on Sofia’s right side. They had fed each other soft cheese. Laughed only because the other did. Pulled on each other’s hair. In the hot afternoons when thunderstorms passed, they had plunged their bare feet into the same rain puddles. Their giggles had melded together in such a way that later Sofia’s laughter had felt soft and hollow.

The shadowy memory of someone Sofia’s own size had been real not imaginary in the least. Later, when Sofia had held out her arm and called to that shadow, when she had insisted that presence had been tangible, Sofia’s loss had been passed off as mere wishful imagining.

Memories, not fantasy.

Papà’s eyes moistened when he looked at her. “You missed the sister you never knew about,
sì
?”

She nodded.

“I suppose so.” He drew in a deep breath, probably preparing to tell her the worst of it. “The extra plate you set at the table.”

“
Sì
, Papà.”

“Somehow you knew.”

“And you told me I made things up.”

He flipped his hands in the air. “A mere child. We thought you could not remember.”

“But I did.”

She thought about the times she had insisted her invisible friend listen to Papà read the Bible along with her. Her habit of bunching up blankets next to her when she went to bed had actually been an attempt to feel the presence of the twin who had once lain in that spot. It all made sense now. Her parents had known the reason while she had not. Sofia had simply been acting out the part of her that was missing. And her parents had chosen to dismiss it, pretend there was no reasoning behind her behavior. Perhaps they had so desperately wanted to act as if Serena had never lived, and they found that too difficult with Sofia around. Did she look like her dead sister? Was there some expression in her eyes or curve of her facial features that kept the memory of Serena alive?

She rubbed a hand over her face as realization dawned. All this time she had not realized her presence had been the impetus for Mamma’s sadness. She had to know the whole story now. “Please go on. Won’t you tell me, Papà?”

He tipped his dark head in her direction. “Accidents are no one’s fault. They happen and we cannot stop them.” He spoke in an even, no-nonsense tone, the one he employed when he was determined not to show what his heart was feeling. Sofia knew better. This was a difficult story to tell. If her own heart wasn’t aching so much she might feel sorry for him. He rubbed his hands over his knees. “The two of you were playing inside our house in Benevento. You heard the shepherds coming.” He made that wistful sound again. “Serena always loved the goats because we had none of our own. She thought they were furry playmates. She adored the clanking of their bells, their bleating…like a newborn baby, you understand. It was as though she had been directed toward those goats that day, Sofia, although I do not blame God for it. An accident is all it was.”

“Papà, what Mamma said. This tragedy…was I responsible?”

He huffed. “I say to forget this. It will be better if you do. Your mamma? I am not so sure she does not blame God. And when you blame God curses follow. I tell her that.”

“Please, Papà.” Sofia brought her folded hands to her chin. “Tell me how it happened.”

He nodded and pulled at the scarf tied at his neck. “The shepherds, they drive their goats to the market,
sì
? Right past our house and down
per la via
. Serena, she fell beneath a cart’s wheels. We could not save her. There.” He smacked a hand on the knee of his dungarees. “You wanted the truth. There you have it.”

“Oh, Papà.” She fought tears, biting her lip. The fingers of her right hand grew strangely cold as though moments earlier she’d held a hand that was now absent.

The bedroom door opened.

Sofia wiped her eyes. “Oh, Mamma. How awful. I am sorry this happened.”

Mamma glared at them. “Sorry? You see, Giuseppe? Is this what you wanted?” Mamma’s eyes held a look Sofia had never seen before, something she could not comprehend. Madness? Pain? Mamma seemed as though the top of her head might erupt like Mount Vesuvius. She sputtered her lips and marched past them to the stove and began stirring the soup Sofia’s brothers would eat when they returned from the night shift.

Papà squeezed Sofia’s shoulder too tightly. “And now you forget this, Sofia. Can you not see how it upsets your mamma?”

“But…she was
my
…where is she buried, Papà?”

He stood suddenly and waved one hand beside his head. “We will talk no more of this.”

Sofia went to her mother. “I meant no harm, Mamma. I only wanted to know.”

Mamma spun around, her expression melting from anger to sadness. “I never wanted you to worry about this, Sofia. It would have been better if you had never known. Now…” She sighed. “No peace. No peace for you or for me.” She brushed Sofia to the side and returned to her bedroom.

Chapter 2

Antonio Baggio climbed the four sets of stairs to his one-room apartment. When he reached the landing he heard barking and scratching. “Hold on, Lu. I’m coming.” He stuck a skeleton key into the lock on his door and when he opened it, Luigi lunged at the sack of apples. “Down, fella. These aren’t for you.” Antonio set his load on the square table next to the tiny window and gave the dog a rub behind the ears. Before Antonio’s father died, Antonio hadn’t cared much about having a pet. About six months ago Papà brought home a puppy he’d found shivering in the cold and now Luigi was full-grown, a welcome companion in the small space that seemed vastly empty now without Papà.

A sound behind him made him freeze. Luigi growled. Antonio swore under his breath. How could he have been so foolish as to leave his front door ajar with all the beggars about? He turned around slowly, holding firmly to Luigi’s collar.

“You spend too much money feeding that mutt.”

Antonio’s uncle, Nicco, stood leaning on the doorpost. Antonio let out the breath he’d been holding. “Not completely sozzled today, I see.” Nicco lived here and there, as he described it, but he would never accept Antonio’s invitation to live with him. They were family, but Nicco insisted he would not stay. Perhaps because he knew Antonio would not tolerate his drunkenness.

“The night’s early yet.” The man let out a gruff laugh.

Antonio released his dog who ran over to sniff the cuffs of Nicco’s trousers. The man kicked playfully at Luigi, causing the dog to flee yelping. Lu regained his stance and growled at Nicco from his post in front of the coal stove. A mutt with unreasonable bravado for his size, Luigi feared no one, not even a lump of a man like Nicco.

Nicco grinned at the dog. “Anyone ever tell you he looks something like that dog on the Victor records? You know, the one with that foolish pose, as though he’s listening to that music machine.”

“The phonograph. Yeah, some people have said that. I don’t see it. Come looking for a meal, Uncle?” Antonio reached behind the man and closed the door.

“Can’t a fella come see his boy for no reason?”

“Not some fellas.” Antonio filled a pan at the kitchen sink and placed it on the stove.

“Don’t be that way, Tony.”

Antonio blew out a breath and turned around. “Oh, you know I don’t mind having you come by, Uncle. You can stay as long as you like, but please stop calling me Tony.”

Nicco sat on Antonio’s bed, the only seat in the room save for the piano bench and a rickety kitchen chair that probably would not hold his weight. Antonio had told his uncle not to take the piano bench, so he knew better. The mahogany seat was Antonio’s private space, the place where he practiced his gift, and he didn’t want it relegated to mere lounging. Shortly after Papà’s death Antonio had given away his father’s bed to a family downstairs, not wanting it to serve as a reminder of his father’s absence. Now the apartment seemed sparse.

Funny how grief has no practical constraints. It lurks to spring on you without warning, especially when death comes without explanation or reason as it had for his father. All they knew was Ernesto Baggio had been shot outside Cooper Union, a long way from their neighborhood. They didn’t know by whom or for what reason or even why Antonio’s father had been there in the first place. An unfortunate bystander, the police had said. Recently, when Nicco stopped by the theater while Antonio was working, to bring Luigi some water, he’d said some men had come asking for him. Antonio still did not know why.

Nicco scratched at his unshaven chin. “Might as well Americanize that name, no? Maybe then those men would leave you alone.”

“No one has reason to bother me, Uncle.” He said this with a bit a doubt. There
were
unanswered questions.

The man held his arms in surrender. “I don’t know why your father was at Cooper Union when he was killed. Him, an immigrant, up there with all those educated types. He was a smart one, your father, but not of that ilk. Ernesto always helped a man who was down on his luck. But, up there, no one needed him. No one even knew who he was. It makes no sense. And I don’t know why those men, when they saw your name at the theater and said they thought you were Ernesto’s boy, were looking for you. I know nothing at all about this business!”

“What am I supposed to do, Uncle? I have to go to work. I can’t be running down rabbit trails, and I certainly don’t want your friends, or whoever they were, causing trouble for me at work.” This had to be another one of Nicco’s wild imaginings, the stories he came up with when he’d been drinking.

“I never said they were friends. I do not know them. I only want you to be cautious.”

“Hard to be careful when you don’t know what you’re looking out for. I cannot have them jeopardizing my job. Someone has to work.”

Antonio could see his words wounded his uncle, but it was the truth. Antonio’s father’s savings—what he’d stuffed under his mattress, warning Antonio not to trust the Italian bank—had run out. Only recently had Antonio found employment. When his father was alive, he hadn’t wanted Antonio to work, encouraging instead his son’s interest in music, urging him to practice rather than to labor as a bricklayer or painter, as most of Antonio’s school friends were now doing. The only job his father had approved of for him had been the occasional substituting for the church organist. “You will go to college, my son. Learn all the great subjects and grow in wisdom. I could never achieve this dream for myself, but my son? He will be someone great using the talent God gave him.”

Now that his father was gone, Antonio could not ignore his father’s request, even though without his father’s financial support it would be much harder to achieve.

Antonio had no choice but to accept that his father’s death had been a terrible accident. If only his uncle would leave things be instead of stirring up trouble where it surely did not exist.

Nicco helped himself to an apple from the sack. “Stay away from those people, son.”

“What people? We don’t know who they are. I suppose I could talk to the New York police again.” When he’d first sought answers the police reminded him folks had been fired up since the president’s assassination. Mobs still gathered and rallied most everywhere. There had been an anarchy meeting going on at the Union when Papà was killed. He probably did not realize what he was walking into. At least that was what the police report had claimed.

Nicco shook his head. “Don’t bother with the police. A poor immigrant is of less concern to them than an alley cat stranded on a fire escape. The Benevento people, over in the Bend? They were the ones asking for you. Stay away.”

“So these men, the ones you know nothing about, they were from Benevento?”

Nicco brought a fist to his mouth and coughed. “They talk like it. I can tell from their accent.”

Luigi growled.

“What would they want with me, Uncle? Offer condolences?”

Nicco sighed. “I don’t know. A whole crowd of them from that village live over on Mulberry. Those men, they must live there. If you get theater work over that way, decline, just to be safe.”

“There aren’t any Vaudeville shows in that neighborhood.”

“Good.”  He shrugged, his rumpled jacket making crumpling noises. “An old man from Northern Italy, they don’t like. So I always avoid those thugs. If they think you are Tony, an American, they will leave you alone.” He muttered under his breath. “Italians? They will not pray together in church, won’t give you a match or tell you the time of day, but they will work wherever and beside whomever. Who can understand it?”

Nicco, Antonio’s late father’s brother, used to work like Papà had, for a
padrone
, an Italian boss, who had come to their village in Italy and promised them paid labor in America. For a time they had traveled back and forth, working in America for a season in order to feed their families in Italy, until one day Antonio’s father decided he and Antonio would immigrate. Nicco came too. In later years, Papà worked for the street department.

“If your mamma was here, Antonio…” Nicco shed tears even though Antonio’s mother had died almost two decades ago, giving birth to Antonio’s sister who lived but one hour. “She would take care of you.” Now he was weeping, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Maybe he had been drinking more than usual, or else his constant binges had made him more emotional than he should be.

“I know, Uncle. It’s all right. I am fine.”

“Back then, the
padrone
get us work. We did all right. But now…”

Antonio had heard the story many times. America held the promise for a better education and a good life. Nicco worked with Antonio’s father for a time, and had decided to stay in New York too. Life was hard at first, but they survived. Antonio went to school, learned English well. When Nicco started hitting the bottle and preferred not to share the apartment with them so he could come and go without scrutiny, Antonio’s father supported them all with his paycheck.

“After all this time, Uncle, perhaps it would be best to move on with our lives and accept it was an accident.”

The man shuffled his feet as though the floorboards were eavesdropping neighbors. “You just be careful, boy. Got work at the theater tonight?”

Antonio stirred oatmeal into the steaming pot. “A new vaudeville engagement. And Sunday I will be standing in for the organist again at mass.”

Nicco slapped his knee. “St. Anthony’s, God bless ‘em.”

The church helped support the Italian aid society where Nicco often found assistance. It seemed when it came to the aid society, the Italian immigrants from all regions could tolerate each other’s presence. Tolerate, but without any real fraternizing. Mass was celebrated separately. The Northern Italians went to the magnificent St. Anthony’s on Sullivan to say their prayers, worship, and observe confession. The impressive structure was built by a previous generation of Italian immigrants. But when large numbers of immigrants started arriving from Southern Italy, those people were regulated to the lower levels for their services. Eventually the Franciscans began helping to complete a church over in the Mulberry Bend area for the Southern Italians. He shook his head thinking about it. At St. Anthony’s he’d heard people saying that the Mulberry church wasn’t finished still, only the basement. Well, at least those folks had their own basement now for services and didn’t have to endure a shunning from their northern countrymen. Antonio could walk from one church to the other in about half an hour. Why folks couldn’t get along, he didn’t know.

Nicco chatted on and on about what he had seen that day on the streets.

When the oatmeal was ready, Antonio handed Nicco a mugful and a spoon. “Finish up quickly. I have to practice.” He tossed Nicco another apple and the man stuck it in his pocket. At least he’d have something in his stomach should he drop in on the saloon again. Antonio wanted to be kind to his father’s brother, but he often battled a desire to send him away because of the man’s propensity for liquor. A man should work for his food and not beg for his drink.

They ate in silence until Nicco was ready to leave.

“You watch yourself out there, Antonio. On my mother’s grave, I tell you I do not know what those men wanted. But I would bet my last dime they are up to no good.”

“Don’t worry about me, Uncle.” Antonio would be careful when he went back to work, bringing Luigi with him whenever he could. Most theaters didn’t mind having the dog around, so long as Luigi waited outside the door. Luigi was well trained and faithful, a watchdog if not a weapon. Lu would stay as long as he was told and do his part. Uncle made a good point. Those men, whoever they were, might come back, and even if they didn’t, it was time Antonio got some answers. With a man like Nicco, habitually bending his arm down at the nearest saloon, this might be the most help Antonio would get in trying to solve the mystery.

Antonio handed his uncle a blanket.

“Are you sure you have enough?” Nicco wouldn’t look at him. Shame was not something any man wanted his kin to see in his eyes.

“I have enough, but you won’t stay?”

“No.”

He showed his uncle to the door.

“You’ll be careful?”

Antonio nodded despite the dread creeping up his throat.