The Fortunate Pilgrim (7 page)

The Bull had to laugh, he couldn’t help it. The balls on the kid, a little shit like that. But just the same, his day would come; he’d be Charlie Chaplin, O.K.; he’d make ’em scream, but not laughing.

GINO DID NOT
bother to look back once he had crossed the Avenue. He wanted to find Joey Bianco and the ice money. He heard his mother yelling from the fourth-floor window, “Gino,
bestia,
where is the ice? Come, eat.”

Gino looked up, and above his mother he saw the blue sky. “I’ll be up in two minutes,” he shouted. He ran around the corner to 30th Street. Sure enough he saw Joey sitting on a stoop, his wagon tied to the iron railing of the basement.

Joey was brooding, almost in tears, but when he saw Gino he jumped in the air. He said excitedly, “I was gonna tell your mother—gee, I didn’t know what to do.”

Thirtieth Street was dusty and full of sun. Gino got into the wagon and steered, with Joey pushing him. On Ninth Ave-nue they bought hero salami sandwiches and Pepsis. Then they went on to 31st Street, where it was shady, and sat with their backs against the wall of Runkel’s chocolate factory.

They ate their sandwiches with the contentment and good appetite of men who have had a completely satisfying day: hard work, adventure, and their bread sweet with their own sweat. Joey was admiring and kept saying, “Boy, you sure saved me, Gino. You sure outfoxed that Bull.” Gino was modest, because he knew he had learned the trick from a book about birds, but he didn’t tell Joey.

The summer sun vanished. There were quick dark clouds. The dusty, heated air and the smell of hot stone pavements and melting tar were swept away by a rushing sheet of rain released by great claps of thunder; faintly, there was an elusive ghost and smell of something green. Joey and Gino crept under the loading platform. The rain pelted down, some of it coming through cracks in the platform floor, and they turned their faces up to the cool drops.

In the shaded, cellar-like darkness there was just enough light to play cards. Joey took the greasy pack out of his trousers pocket. Gino hated to play because Joey won a lot. They played Seven-and-a-half and Gino lost the fifty cents ice money. It was still raining.

Joey, stuttering a little, said, “Gino, here, here’s your fifty cents back for saving me from the Bull.”

Gino was offended. Heroes never took pay.

“Come on,” Joey said more firmly. “You saved my wagon, too. You gotta let me give the fifty cents back.”

Gino really didn’t want the money. It would spoil the adventure if Joey paid him to do a job. But Joey was nearly in tears, and Gino saw that for some reason he had to take the money. “O.K.,” Gino said. Joey handed it over.

Still it rained. They waited quietly while Joey restlessly riffled the cards. The rain kept coming down. Gino spun the half dollar on the pavement.

Joey kept watching the coin. Gino put it in his pocket.

“You wanta play Seven-and-a-half again double stakes?” Joey asked.

“Nope,” Gino said.

Finally the rain stopped and the sun came out and so did they, crawling like moles from beneath the platform. The washed sun was far in the west, over the Hudson River. Joey said, “Jesus, it’s getting late. I gotta go home. You comin’, Gino?”

“Ha, ha,” Gino said. “Not me.” He watched Joey pull his wagon toward Tenth Avenue.

The late shift came out of Runkel’s factory. The men smelled of the chocolate they made and the smell was sweet and sticky like flowers, heavy on the rain-freshened air. Gino sat on the platform and waited until no one came out.

He was deeply pleased with everything he saw—the tenement bricks dyed deep red by the ripening sun, the children coming out again to play in the streets, the few horses and wagons slowly wending toward the Avenue, one leaving a spotted trail of grainy, gold-flecked manure balls. Women came to opened windows; pillows appeared on ledges; women’s faces, sallow, framed in black bonnets of hair, hung over the street like gargoyles along a castle wall. Finally Gino’s eyes were caught by the swiftly flowing stream of rain water in the flooded gutters. He picked up a small flat piece of wood, took out his half dollar, balanced it on the wood, and watched it sail down toward the Avenue. Then he ran after it, saw he was nearing Tenth, picked up the wood and coin and walked back up toward Ninth Avenue.

On the way, passing a row of empty houses, he noticed a bunch of boys as big as Larry swinging on a rope hung from the roof four stories above them. They jumped from the ledge of the second-story window and swung high over 31st Street, riding through the air like Tarzan to the window of an empty house farther up the street.

A blond kid in a red shirt soared in his great half-circle, missed the window, pushed against the wall he hit with his feet and, twisting, soared back the way he had come. For a moment he gave the illusion of really flying. Gino watched with burning envy. But it was no use. They wouldn’t let him do it. He was too small. He went on.

On the corner of Ninth and 31st, in the light-shot oblong shadow of the El, Gino put his stick of wood with its rider coin back in the gutter and watched it sail down to 30th Street; bobbing, riding little wavelets, snagged by soggy bits of newspaper, fruit skins and cores, eroded smooth remains of animal turds, scraping the shining blue-black tarred street bottom beneath the water. The wooden stick turned the corner and started down 30th Street to Tenth Avenue without losing the coin. Gino trotted watchfully beside it, keeping an eye sideways for the kids who had chased him the night before. His boat sailed around tin cans, whirled around piles of refuse, but always fought free to sail finally through a succession of tiny gutter rainbows. Then Gino grabbed his half-dollar piece as the boat sailed down through the grates of the sewer beneath the bridge on Tenth Avenue. Thoughtfully he walked around the corner onto the Avenue and was hit in the stomach by little Sal, who, head down, was running away from a game of “Kick the Can.” Sal shouted excitedly, “Ma’s lookin’ for you. We already ate and you’re gonna get killed.”

Gino turned around and went back toward Ninth, searching for rainbows in the gutter. He backtracked to the empty houses, and found the rope dangling alone. Gino went to the basement and entered the house, climbing crumbling steps to the second floor. The house was gutted, the plumbing stolen for lead, the lighting fixtures gone. The floor was treacherous under a shale of plaster. Everything was still and dangerous as he tiptoed through the ghostly rooms and through doorless doorways. Finally he reached the window and could see the street. The square frame for the windows was only an empty stone socket. Gino stepped onto the ledge, leaned out, and grabbed the rope.

He pushed away from the ledge, and for one glorious moment he had the sensation of really flying of his own will. He soared through the air, out over the street, and, completing the arc, landed on the ledge of a window three buildings up the block. He pushed and sailed back, pushed and sailed out again—faster and faster, soaring back and forth, hitting the window ledges and the wall, then thrusting back out with his feet as if they were his wings, until his arms could no longer sustain him and he slid down the rope in midsail, burning his hands as he braked himself to the pavement and landed in a running movement toward Tenth Avenue, specially timed.

It was twilight. Gino was surprised, and purposeful with the knowledge that he was now in trouble, he trotted down 31st Street to Tenth Avenue, trying hard to keep the look of surprise on his face. But no one in his family was among the people already sitting before the tenements, not even Sal. He ran up the four flights of stairs.

Passing the second floor, he heard Octavia and his mother screaming at each other. Worried, he slowed down. When he came into the apartment he saw them both nose to nose, red spots on their sallow cheeks, eyes flashing black. They both turned to him, quiet, menacing. But Gino, fascinated, had eyes only for his brother Vinnie, already seated at table. Vinnie’s face was powdered dead white with flour, his clothes were caked with it. He looked very tired, his eyes enormous and dark in that floury face.

“Ah. You’re home,” his mother was saying. “
Bravo.
#8221; Gino, noting that the two women were looking at him like judges, hurried to sit at the table so they would bring him food. He was starving. A stunning blow on the side of his head made him see stars, and through the dizziness his mother was shouting, “Sonamabitch. You escape the whole day. What did you do? And then the signor sits at table to eat without washing. Go.
Figlio de puttana. Bestia.
Vincenzo, wash also, you’ll feel better.” The two boys went to the kitchen sink to wash and came back to the table.

Tears were in Gino’s eyes—not because of the slap, but because of the terrible end to such a beautiful day. First a hero, then his mother and sister angry as if they hated him. He hung his head, shamed as any villain, not even hungry until his mother put a platter of sausages and peppers under his nose.

Octavia gave Gino one burning look and said to Lucia Santa, “He has to do his share. Why the hell should Vinnie work for him when his own father doesn’t give a damn? If he doesn’t work Vinnie quits the bakery. Vinnie’s going to have fun on his summer vacation, too.”

Without jealousy, Gino noticed that Octavia and his mother watched Vinnie with pity and love as he ate tiredly, listlessly. He could see that his sister was close to tears for some reason. He watched the two women fussing over Vinnie, serving him as if he were a grown man.

Gino put his hand in his pocket and took out the fifty cents and gave it to his mother. “I made this selling ice,” he said. “You can have it. I can bring home fifty cents every day.”

“You better make him stop stealing ice from the yards,” Octavia said.

Lucia Santa was impatient. “Eh, the railroad doesn’t care about children taking a little ice.” She looked at Gino, a curious warm smile on her face. “Bring your brother to the movies Sunday with the money,” she said. And she buttered a big piece of bread for him.

Vinnie’s face was still white, even with the flour gone. The strange lines of fatigue and tension, always obscene on the face of a child, made Octavia put her arm around him and say worriedly, “What did they make you do, Vinnie? Is the work too hard?”

Vinnie shrugged. “It’s O.K. It’s just so hot.” Then he added reluctantly, “I got dirty carrying sacks of flour from the cellar.”

Octavia understood. “The lousy bastards,” she spat out. To her mother she said, “Your dirty guinea
paesan’ Panettiere
making a kid like Vin carry those heavy sacks. When that son of his asks me for a date, I’ll spit in his face right in the street.”

Vinnie watched them hopefully. Octavia, so angry, might make him quit the job. Then he felt ashamed because his mother needed the money.

Lucia Santa shrugged and said, “Five dollars a week and our bread free as extra, a courtesy. Then free lemon ice when Vincenzo serves, and that’s money saved in summer. With their father gone—”

Octavia flared up. Her mother’s calm acceptance of the father’s desertion made her furious. “That’s just it,” she said. “His father left. He doesn’t give a shit.” Even through her anger she was amused at the look the two small boys gave her—a girl using a dirty word like that. But her mother was not amused and Octavia said in a reasonable tone, “It’s not fair. It’s just not fair to Vinnie.”

The mother spoke in grim Italian, asking, “Who are you to be a schoolteacher when you have the mouth of a whore?” She paused for an answer. But she had upset Octavia’s vision of herself. The mother continued, “If you want a house to give orders in, get married, have children, scream when they come out of your belly.
Then
you can beat them, then you can decide when they will work and how, and who works.” She looked at her daughter, coldly, as at a deadly rival. “Enough.
Bastanza,
” she said.

She turned on Gino. “You,
giovanetto.
From morning to night I don’t see you. You could be run over. You could be kidnapped. That’s one thing. Now. Your father has gone away for a time and so everyone must help. Tomorrow if you disappear I’ll give you this.” She went to the cupboard and took out the skinny wooden club used for rolling dough for the holiday ravioli, “The
Tackeril.
#8221; Her voice became hoarse, more angry. “By Jesus Christ, I’ll make you visible. I’ll make you so black and blue that if you were the Holy Ghost you could not vanish. Now, eat. After, wash the dishes, clean the table, and sweep the floor. And don’t let me see you come down the stairs this night.”

Gino was impressed. Though unafraid, he had been alert and tense through the whole uproar. Out of such noise sometimes would come a wild swing which it was permissible to evade. But nothing happened. The two women went downstairs and Gino relaxed and ate, the fatty sausage, the oily pulpy peppers blending together deliciously on his hungry palate. The storm was over, there were no hard feelings. He would work for his mother tomorrow, help her out.

Vinnie was staring down at his plate, not eating. Gino said cheerily, “Boy, I’ll bet you had it tough working for that bastid
Panettiere.
I saw you carrying a big basket. Where’d you bring it?”

“Nah,” Vinnie said. “They got a store on Ninth Avenue. It ain’t so bad. Just carrying the flour up the cellar.” Gino looked at him. There was something wrong.

But already Vinnie was feeling better and he took in great mouthfuls of food, not knowing that what he had felt all that day was fear. That he had suffered a common cruelty—a child sent from the warmth of his family to be commanded by strangers to perform their drudgery. It was his first experience of selling part of his being for money, so unlike doing something for his mother, or shining his big brother’s shoes for a nickel.

But school would come in the fall and set him free, and he would forget how his mother and sister had sent him out of the family and its rule by love and blood. He no longer thought of how he could not play stickball in the summer morning sun, or wander aimlessly around the block talking with friends, hiding in the shade of 31st Street as he sleepily licked a pleated paper cup of lemon ice. He felt the terrible sadness that only children can feel, because they have no knowledge of the sadness of others, of the general human despair.