The King of Mulberry Street (2 page)

As I walked, children passed me on their way to school. I didn't go to school; Uncle Aurelio didn't like how Catholic teachers put religion into the lessons. So he taught me numbers and Mamma taught me reading. Mamma said I needed more than that and I was smart enough not to let the Catholic teachers influence me. She had just about talked Uncle into letting me go to school in autumn.

Crowd noises came from Via Toledo. I ran over to see men in gloves and top hats and horses in black cloth hoods with white rings around their eyeholes marching down the road. A funeral. A flag waved the family crest from the top of the coach that carried the women in the dead person's family. It must have been someone important.

The casket rolled by with lilies on top. Lilies in
summer. Somehow Catholic funerals had real lilies, no matter the season. If only I could take one—just one—for Mamma.

I made my way to the next road, where I begged a ride from a horse-drawn cart to the stables where Uncle Aurelio worked.

He smiled when I came in, but we didn't speak. He was scraping the rear hoof of a mare. When he finished, Uncle Aurelio walked outside with me. “So what's the message? Who sent you?”

“I just wanted to see you. I'm on my way up the hill.”

“To Vomero?” He winked. “Going to snitch food from the midday meal?” He put his hand on my head, in the center of my yarmulke. The weight made me feel solid and safe.

I climbed onto the next cart going toward Vomero. At the base of the hill, I took the stairs up to the piazza and looked down and out over my town and the bay and the two humps of Mount Vesuvio beyond. The buildings shone yellow and orange, and the bay sparkled green, dotted with fishing boats and merchant boats and sailboats. A huge steamer docked in the port. I saw bright market umbrellas in piazzas, and a train slowing to a halt at the station, and oxen pulling carts on the bay avenue.

I turned to face the wide Vomero streets with sidewalks under the wispy fringe of acacias. A couple strolled along, arms linked. Everything was calm—so different from the Napoli below. Vomero was rich; rich people didn't have to hustle all the time. The people here owned the sailboats on the bay. The women played tennis in white dresses to their ankles, with sleeves to their knuckles; the men cheered for
their sons at soccer matches. Their lives were a mystery of leisure.

A boy sat on a barrel beside a cow and filled pails with milk for servants to carry back to the big, airy houses. Aunt Rebecca stood waiting. When her pails were full, I carried one while she carried the other.

Aunt Rebecca was not lovely like Mamma or Nonna. Everyone had been delighted when she got married and devastated when her husband was killed in a street fight. No one expected her to remarry. But her looks were in her favor when it came to being a servant. Rich women didn't hire pretty servants; their husbands might like them too much.

Entering the house, I heard the noises of
tombola
— bingo—from the parlor. Aunt Rebecca went on to the kitchen, but I stopped and peeked.

“Look.” One of the three girls on the sofa pointed at me.

I stepped back into the hall, out of sight.

“It's just a servant's boy,” said a second girl.

“Make him play with us.”

“He's dirty.”

I wasn't dirty. Or not that dirty.

“It's more fun with more people. Get him, Caterina.”

We played
tombola
at home, like every Napoli family. But what boy would play with girls? I hurried to the kitchen and set the milk pail on the counter. Aunt Rebecca looked sideways at me from her chopping. I put a finger to my lips and ducked behind the pantry curtain.

“Where's your nephew?” came Caterina's voice.

“I thought there was a noise on the cellar steps,” said Aunt Rebecca. Not a lie—just a crafty answer.

“Why would he go down there?”

“I could use a bucket.” More craftiness.

I heard steps cross the room. “Are you down there, boy?” Caterina called. “Come on up. We want you.”

I burst from the pantry and ran out the front door. I didn't stop to pant till I reached the bottom of the hill. Stupid me, now no lunch.

I passed the window where Nicola sold hot, almond-speckled
taralli
—dough loops. My mouth watered, my stomach fluttered.

Oh, for a coin to buy a dough loop.

Instantly, I thought of the convent. I set off running to the church of San Gregorio Armeno and clanked the iron knocker on the side chapel door.

My favorite nun answered. “Ah, Beniamino, what a pleasure.” She kissed my cheeks. “What brings you here?”

“Perhaps you might need help?”

“Of course. You're getting bigger. You should help us more often while you can still fit through the passageways. Come.”

I followed her to the floor hatch that opened to the ladder down to the grotto. She put a key in a pouch, then added a backup candle, two matchsticks, and rough paper. She hung the pouch around my neck and gave me a candle. “Two bottles today.”

That might mean double pay. I held the lit candle sideways between my teeth and went down the ladder. Twenty-two rungs. That was nothing. Some grottos were two hundred steps down.

The grottos and the channels between them formed the ancient water system, connected to the old aqueducts aboveground. Greek slaves had built it a thousand years
before. The grottos had been closed for nearly a century, but they were still used as wine cellars; and thieves climbed down them, then crawled up old, dry wells into the atriums of fancy homes when the people were out. I'd never seen a thief here, but other boys claimed they had.

Once I saw a lover, though. Lovers of rich married women came and left like thieves. I knew the man was a lover, not a thief, because he smiled as we passed. A boy told me lovers came to the nuns, too. But they couldn't come to my nuns—not unless they were as small as I was— because of the awful tunnel.

At the bottom of the ladder I took off my yarmulke and left it safely under the last rung. I followed the passageway to where the ceiling came down so low I had to crawl. I held the end of the candle in my mouth now, so that the flame led the way. The walls were wet from the humid air. My hair stuck to my neck.

I'd gone through this tunnel many times, but it always seemed endless. I was afraid I'd die there.

Then suddenly I was out. I stood and breathed, and oh, what was that terrible smell? Something lay in the channel ahead. I held out my candle to see better. A body! I screamed and the candle fell. I crawled to the wall. I sat and pulled my feet up quick under my bottom. I wedged the backup candle between my knees and struck a match on the rough paper. The flame fizzled out and the dark swallowed me. My hands were wet from the damp air, so I blew on them frantically. I struck the other match; it flamed and the wick took. Blessed light.

I pressed my back against the wall and stood on tiptoe to look again. Rats ripped at the naked, bloated body of a man.

My eyes burned. The month before, an old man had stabbed a man on our street. A week later a young man had shot another in the piazza. When the stabbing happened, I was with Mamma. She whisked me home and held me till I slept. For the shooting, I was alone. I bit my knuckles to keep from screaming. The shooter walked up to me, and I recognized him—he lived nearby. He knocked my yarmulke off with the tip of the gun and hissed, “
Bastardo
Jew.”
Bastardo
—a name for mongrel dogs, not people.

I ran home, but I didn't tell Mamma. She would have cried. I didn't cry then and I battled away tears now. Boys didn't cry.

I kept my eyes straight ahead till I got to the locked grotto that held the convent's special wines. I took two bottles and walked back. Fast, fast past the body. Hardly breathing.

At the tunnel I tried to tuck the bottles into my waistband. They wouldn't both fit. The idea of leaving one behind and passing through that tunnel two more times to fetch it was unbearable. So I lay on my back in the tunnel with my hands cradling the bottles on my belly and with the candle in my mouth. Little by little I scooched headfirst the length of that tunnel, as hot candle wax dripped on my chest through my open collar.

When I got to the ladder, I kissed my yarmulke and stuck it on my head. I climbed up with one bottle and put it on the convent floor, then went down for the other before I could think twice. I set it beside the first, crawled out, and stood.

“What's the matter, child? You smell awful.”

The nun's worried face undid me; I cried. Loudly, as
though I was crying for everyone who had ever died and everyone who ever would. And I thanked the Most Powerful One that there were only nuns to watch me disgrace myself like this.

Soon five nuns huddled around me, wiping me with a wet cloth, offering water and bread with chocolate. I rinsed my mouth. “There was a body,” I said.

“Oh. That. Ah.” My favorite nun smoothed my hair gently. None of them was surprised. The cemeteries were full, so after funerals, men dug up the corpses and dumped them in the grottos.

I ate as they talked. Chocolate, such good chocolate, speckled with nuts.

My favorite nun lifted the pouch from my neck. “A candle is missing.” She touched my cheek. “Munaciello stole it.”

Munaciello was a spirit who hid things. Children blamed him, not adults. I felt charmed, though her words were just kindness, to keep the head nun from charging me for that candle.

The head nun gave me three coins. Three! “Beniamino, special one.” She was about to tell me to become Catholic. Mamma hated my coming here because of that. But for three coins, let her blab. Besides, she called me special. Everyone said my cousins Luigi and Ernesto were special because they were named after famous men, but only Mamma thought I was special. “A boy with no earthly father is always special,” said the nun. “Jesus Christ was just so. Your right place is here, child.”

Despite the praise, I knew she felt sorry for me; I was Jewish and fatherless. What a fool she was to feel that way.
Being Jewish was best. And Nonna had taught me not to be jealous of children with fathers. “
Chi tene mamma, nun chiagne
”—Whoever has a mother doesn't cry. A proverb. That's all I needed, all anyone needed: a mother.

My favorite nun handed me half a lemon dipped in sugar. “That extra coin can't lessen the horror behind, but it may make the prospects ahead better, right?” That was why she was my favorite—she spoke straight. “Come back soon, sweet one.”

I sat on the step and blinked at the sunlight. The lemon made my mouth fresh, but I couldn't shake the feeling of being dirty. The odor of the corpse clung to me.

I walked slowly through the empty streets; people had gone home for the afternoon rest. The three coins pressed into my fist. I needed something to put them in so I wouldn't lose them.

I took a side street, where a girl sat on a chair outside while her mother combed her hair. At the next corner a woman dressed in rags picked lice from the head of a boy at her feet. They were all poor. Maybe poorer than us.

I came out into the marketplace. In front of an oil store a family had set out a table under a canopy of grapevines. Their meal was over, but two men leaned back in their chairs, talking.

A fine gentleman came into the square, and a man and two boys appeared from nowhere. The man plunked down a shoe-shine box and the gentleman put a foot up on the box. One boy stood behind the gentleman and reached a stealthy hand under the loose hem of his fancy coat. He pulled out a handkerchief and stuffed it under his own shirt.

The thief looked hard at me.

The man finished the shoe shine, and he left with the boys.

People were robbed all the time; still, I went all jittery.

My family would hit me if I stole. Nonna especially. She'd recite: “
Chi sparagna 'a mazza nun vô bene ê figlie
”— Those who don't beat their children don't love them. Then she'd hit me again. And the Most Powerful One, He'd never forgive me.

The men at the table were still talking. Had they noticed? I'd noticed, but the thief had glared at me to make sure I'd never tell. Like the man with the gun who'd said, “
Bastardo
Jew.”

I felt dirtier than ever. In the trash I spied a matchbox. I slipped the coins into the box and tied the ends of my pant strings around it, then tucked it in at my waist. Now to get clean.

I ran along the bay to a cove. Boys were jumping off a fishing boat. They were naked, like most boys at the beach, but these boys were probably always naked except in church. They were
scugnizzi
—urchins, the poorest of the poor. No one trusted them. One stood on the gunwale and jabbed with a pole under the water. A seagull circled, screeching greedily.

They didn't look at me, but they knew I was there. They were aware of everything that happened; scugnizzi always were. If I hid the matchbox, it would disappear while I was swimming.

I was so filthy. I had to swim. Where else could I go?

Vesuvio, of course. Up to the rain-filled craters near the volcano's peak. I hitched a ride on the coastal road and lay
on my back in the empty wagon, arms and legs spread wide. The sides were high; I saw only clouds. The air smelled of sea. I felt tiny—a speck of nothing, suspended without time or care.

The wagon turned inland and stopped in front of the monastery at the base of Vesuvio. Then I climbed on foot.

Some of the crater lakes were so hot they bubbled. I stopped at the first one that wasn't steamy, and I hid the matchbox under a rock. Then I took off my clothes, swished them in the water, and stretched them to dry on a rock while I swam. The water was heavy like oil and stank of sulfur. I scrubbed my skin nearly raw with bottom silt, the black volcanic ash.

When I came out of the water, my pants were gone. I had two pairs—one for the Sabbath, one for other days. Now one was gone. But the matchbox was undisturbed.

In my wet shirt I walked with slow, heavy steps downhill. Mamma would be furious, Nonna would smack me, my uncles would shout. It wasn't that I was indecent; my shirt came to my knees. But how much did pants cost? And I was supposed to be smart; no one should have been able to steal from me.