Unto the Sons (45 page)

Antonio believed he had performed well in the contest, and when he attended the banquet a week later with his classmate and Monsieur Melhomme, he sat anxiously through the meal and the speeches awaiting the
announcement of the winners of the gold and silver trophies. Finally the president of the society was introduced to present the awards, and to Antonio’s disappointment the first prize was won by a student from Toulon who had attended one of the other cutting schools. But as the applause subsided, Antonio heard his name mentioned as the second-prize winner, and suddenly Monsieur Melhomme was shaking his hand and leading him up to the rostrum. After the first-prize winner had received his trophy and made a short speech of appreciation, Antonio was congratulated by the president, but he could see that there was no trophy awaiting him: instead he received a commemorative scroll. After he had expressed his thanks in French, he returned carrying his scroll to the table. Later, when he had a private moment with Monsieur Melhomme, he asked if it was not true that in previous years silver trophies had been given to the runners-up; and Monsieur Melhomme replied: “Yes, but it is unfortunate in your case—the society gives trophies only to the winners who are citizens of France.” Expressing his dissatisfaction in a letter to Joseph, Antonio concluded: “They boast a great deal in this country about égalité, but in reality there is no such thing.”

At this time Antonio was living in the Latin Quarter. He had moved out of the costly little hotel on Rue du Bouloi two months earlier to join a new young friend from Rome, a custom shoemaker named Lauri, in a spacious apartment where Antonio’s share of the rent was only ten francs per month. At a flea market he had purchased a bed and a few other pieces of furniture for a total of twenty-five francs, and this price included the loan of a wagon so that he and Lauri could push the furniture across town to the apartment on the Place du Panthéon. Antonio was still receiving financial help from his father, and also bolts of material with which to extend his wardrobe; but now with his diploma from the École Ladaveze, and his newspaper clippings of the awards ceremony, he was confident that he would soon find a good job and become independent.

He made a list of nearly forty tailor shops within walking distance of his apartment, and spent most of July going from one to another, always wearing a freshly pressed suit, a boater, and one of the three pairs of two-toned wing-tipped shoes that Lauri had made for him. He kept a news clipping about the banquet folded in an inside pocket of his jacket, and tucked under his arm was an expensive umbrella he had bought at the Du Louvre department store. There had been frequent summer showers since he had begun job hunting.

After he had gone through the list, and had returned to some shops
three or four times in order to meet the owners who had been away earlier, he received only two offers—part-time work in one rather dilapidated shop, and full-time work in another, at unacceptably meager pay. Several proprietors in the better shops suggested that he come back and reapply in the middle of autumn, for the summer of 1912 had been a poor season, and things would get no better until the weather was cooler.

There was one shop on his list that Antonio had avoided. Despite his usual high opinion of himself, even he felt that he as yet lacked the experience, and perhaps even the confidence, to offer his services to an elegant shop that already had fifty employees, and six master tailors who enjoyed the finest reputations in all of Paris. It was called Damien, and was located on the Rue Royale, down the street from Maxim’s restaurant. Antonio had often stood near the front door, but each time he had resisted going in. Instead he had drifted over to the display windows, where he gazed admiringly upon the various wooden mannequins garbed in the latest of frenchified Edwardian fashion recommended for wear to the opera, to the office, and to country houses on weekends: black silk-lined capes and gibuses, chesterfields and homburgs, invernesses and bowlers, equestrian caps and light-toned hunting coats with red lining and ornamental gold buttons; single-breasted belted tweed jackets with matching waistcoats and narrow-cut trousers with center creases (obligatory since the recent popularization of the pants press); white and yellow silk scarves flung casually over the broad shoulders and pointed lapels of double-breasted gray herringbone suits suggested as informal evening wear in the cooler nights to come.

From the sidewalk Antonio also observed the arrival by carriage of many of Damien’s customers, nattily dressed men who often issued instructions to their departing drivers in foreign languages, frequently Russian, and then proceeded into the shop to be greeted along the counters by a receiving line of bowing clerks, and then by the circle of master tailors assembled near the mirrored fitting rooms, and finally by a genial round-faced man with reddish hair who was usually seated at an antique desk in the rear of the shop, and who wore a gray cutaway and striped trousers and smoked cigarettes that extended out of a gold holder. Antonio’s attention was drawn to this man every time he looked through the windows, and from his proprietary air, and the deference accorded him by the employees, Antonio deduced that he was the owner and renowned cutter, Monsieur Damien himself, about whom the faculty at the École Ladaveze had often spoken with veneration.

One day as Antonio watched Monsieur Damien rise from his chair to shake hands with a customer, he became aware of something that he had failed to notice earlier. Monsieur Damien was very short. He was certainly no taller than Antonio. The more Antonio looked at him the more approachable he seemed. Antonio was then seized by an impulse to walk right in and ask him for a job.

But first he headed in the opposite direction, toward the nearby Church of the Madeleine, at the end of the Rue Royale. Unlike his mother and his grandfather Domenico, Antonio was not exceptionally religious. The only times he had previously entered this church, before purchasing his umbrella, had been to avoid getting wet during showers. But now, after climbing the steep row of stone steps and passing through the colonnade of Corinthian columns, he fell to his knees within the imposing and darkly magnificent sanctuary that Napoleon had dedicated to his army. Antonio crossed himself and prayed to Saint Francis that he might be inspired to make a favorable impression upon Monsieur Damien. He then hastened out of the church back onto the Rue Royale, and soon he had pushed through the front door of Damien’s and was marching up the center aisle, ignoring the foppish young clerks who stood in his path offering their assistance. He did not stop until he had reached the back of the shop and stood over Monsieur Damien, who sat quietly at his desk exuding a fragrant scent of cologne and the acrid smell of his burning Turkish cigarette.

Slowly looking up, Monsieur Damien removed his cigarette, pushed aside the papers he had been reading, and, rising to his feet, smiled at this diminutive well-tailored visitor whose suit size he recognized as identical to his own.

“I am from a tailoring family in Italy,” Antonio began, in a voice unhurried and confident, “and I came to Paris to attend the École Ladaveze …”

“Ah, yes,” Monsieur Damien interrupted amiably, “I recall seeing you recently at the banquet when you went up to receive your award.”

“I am honored that you were there,” Antonio said, feeling his fortunes rising, and, wasting no time, he added: “I would be honored even more if you would hire me as an assistant to one of your master tailors. I want to work at Damien’s.”

The proprietor studied him momentarily, regarding him with a certain ambivalence.

“But why would you wish to work at Damien’s?” the owner inquired
finally, in a tone of false modesty that was well known to his longtime employees.

“Damien’s has the finest tailors in Paris,” Antonio replied. “Here I will learn from the best.”

Monsieur Damien let his glance stray briefly to the shoulder line of Antonio’s suit, which, he noted approvingly, fit snugly to the neck.

“Well,” he said, still seeming somewhat ambivalent about hiring Antonio, “if we could use you here, when would you be available to start?”

“At once,” Antonio said.

“Oh, very well,” the owner then said, with a soft sigh, “we shall give you a one month’s trial, beginning tomorrow morning.” Antonio was filled with excitement and satisfaction. But Monsieur Damien went on to say, with a decisiveness he had not shown earlier: “During this trial period, of course, you will receive no salary.”

Antonio said nothing. He was deeply disappointed, even a bit insulted, and his first inclination was to reject the proposal. He had thought the interview had gone well; and while he had not expected high pay, he certainly had expected
some
financial compensation for his efforts. But being unsalaried would prolong his dependence upon his father, whose support he could not count on indefinitely. Antonio’s only option would be to return to one of the lesser shops he had visited earlier and accept a low-paying job on a part-time or full-time basis. In such places, of course, he would not have the opportunity to learn what he might at Damien’s. Returning to Italy, which his father would have undoubtedly welcomed, was out of the question.

Antonio was aware that Monsieur Damien was waiting for his response, and was perhaps becoming impatient. A clerk had just approached the desk and was about to whisper something into Monsieur Damien’s ear. Antonio hesitated no longer.

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Antonio declared, forcing a smile. “And thank you very much.”

“We shall await your arrival tomorrow with pleasure,” Monsieur Damien answered cordially, as he turned toward his clerk and at the same time waved good-bye to Antonio with his burning cigarette in its gold holder.

During the weeks that followed, Antonio remained financially solvent by eating irregularly and lightly—restricting himself at lunchtime, for example, to a single cup of heavily sugared coffee bought at the bar of a nearby
café—and by taking in extra mending and alteration jobs from a secondary tailor shop, completing the work at night in his apartment and delivering it early in the morning on his way to Damien’s.

His role at Damien’s was that of roving apprentice to several tailors, both master and subordinate, and he performed many of the same chores that had been assigned to him in Maida—making buttonholes, basting and sewing seams, turning, tacking, and ironing trouser cuffs. But in Paris he worked with more energy and enthusiasm, particularly during the lunch period, when he was most often alone in the large workroom. In a letter to Joseph at this time he wrote: “One sure way to impress your superiors is to work hard when they’re not there. While the owner, the tailors, and even the apprentices and clerks are out enjoying long lunches, I return to the shop after my cup of coffee, and do huge amounts of work that my superiors notice when they return. I have become known as a man who does not need to be supervised or pushed to get work done. Some apprentices have grown to hate me. But the other tailors respect me. They give good reports about me to Monsieur Damien. Last Friday, which was the end of the trial period, he came to me and said: ‘We do not really need you. But I’m going to keep you.’ ”

Antonio received a modest salary of seventy-five francs a month. But by November 1912, he was a junior tailor with a fifty-franc raise, and he was singled out by Monsieur Damien to assist him while he cut the patterns for the clothing of certain important customers whose wardrobes commanded the owner’s personal attention. Among such clients were three wealthy, vain Russian princes; a stout Bavarian banker who insisted that his jackets be made without buttons; a querulous literary critic and legal adviser to the French tribunal, Léon Blum, who would one day become the nation’s first Socialist premier; the celebrated French aviator Louis Blériot, who in 1909 had crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover in the record time of thirty-seven minutes; and Baron Edmond de Rothschild, whose ever-fluctuating weight prompted him to return his new suits regularly for alterations. All of the baron’s suits came back displaying on their lapels the rosette of the Legion of Honor, and when Antonio was alone in the workroom at lunchtime, he would often stand proudly in front of a mirror wearing one of the baron’s jackets, imagining that he had just been installed in the Legion of Honor.

One afternoon Antonio found himself standing next to the baron himself, holding a silver tray filled with the pins that Monsieur Damien was using while in the process of reducing the size of the dinner jacket the
baron was wearing, and Antonio heard Rothschild boast to Monsieur Damien that he now had seven thousand sheep on his country estate. Just then one of the Russian princes arrived and said: “On my country estate I have seven thousand
shepherds
.”

The most challenging client for Monsieur Damien to fit properly was France’s flying hero Blériot, who had been injured often in plane accidents and had a disproportionate figure. His hips were conspicuously offcenter, and one of his legs was a few inches shorter than the other, requiring that one of his shoes be constructed with an elevated heel. Still, he was a fastidious dresser; and, favoring pin-striped suits, he ordered several at a time—all of which Monsieur Damien designed and tailored in slightly tilted ways that allowed the material to hang most compensatorily and flatteringly on the slanted body of the aviator and achieve an illusion of sartorial symmetry.

At times Antonio accompanied Monsieur Damien in his carriage to the private fittings in the homes or apartments of these leading clients; and early one evening, in a grand suite of the Hôtel Crillon, where an archduke from Hungary was being fitted, Antonio could hear someone playing the piano magnificently in an adjoining room. “The music consisted almost entirely of southern Italian love songs and the arias that we have grown up listening to,” Antonio wrote to Joseph. “The door was slightly open, and as I stood helping Monsieur Damien with the archduke I felt carried away by the sadness and beauty of the music. Then it stopped, and a lovely woman with blond hair appeared in the doorway, wearing a long gown and a sparkling necklace. She apologized to the archduke because she did not realize we were there. The archduke introduced her as his wife to Monsieur Damien, who complimented her on her playing. She thanked him and said that she had studied only as a young girl at a conservatory in Naples, and that the music of Italy was the only music she had deep feelings for. Later, before we finished the fittings, she returned to play again, and as I left the hotel that night I had tears in my eyes. It is the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve felt a little bit homesick.”