Wait Until Spring Bandini (13 page)

What a night! He bent down and snatched at the white snow, letting it melt in his mouth, the cold liquid trickling down his throat. He did this many times, sucking the sweet snow and enjoying the cold effect in his throat.

The intestinal reaction to the cold liquid on his empty stomach was a faint purring somewhere in the middle of him and rising toward the cardiac area. He was crossing the trestle bridge, in the very middle of it, when everything before his eyes melted suddenly into blackness. His feet lost all sensory response. His breath came in frantic jerks. He found himself flat on his back. He had fallen over limply. Deep within his chest his heart hammered for movement. He clutched it with both hands, terror gripping him. He was dying: oh God, he was going to die! The very bridge seemed to shake with the violence of his heartbeat.

But five, ten, twenty seconds later he was still alive. The terror of that moment still burned in his heart. What had happened? Why had he fallen? He got up and hurried across the trestle bridge, shivering in fear. What had he done? It was his heart, he knew his heart had stopped beating and started again – but why?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
The mysterious universe loomed around him, and he was alone on the railroad tracks, hurrying to the street where men and women walked, where it was not so lonely, and as he ran it came to him like piercing daggers that this was God’s warning, this was
His way of letting him know that God knew his crime: he, the thief, filcher of his mother’s cameo, sinner against the decalogue. Thief, thief, outcast of God, hell’s child with a black mark across the book of his soul.

It might happen again. Now, five minutes from now. Ten minutes. Hail Mary full of grace I’m sorry. He no longer ran but walked now, briskly, almost running dreading over-excitation of his heart. Goodbye to Rosa and thoughts of love, goodbye and goodbye, and hello to sorrow and remorse.

Ah, the cleverness of God! Ah, how good the Lord was to him, giving him another chance, warning him yet not killing him.

Look! See how I walk. I breathe. I am alive. I am walking to God. My soul is black. God will clean my soul. He is good to me. My feet touch the ground, one two, one two. I’ll call Father Andrew. I’ll tell him everything.

He rang the bell on the confessional wall. Five minutes later Father Andrew appeared through the side door of the church. The tall, semi-bald priest raised his eyebrows in surprise to find but one soul in that Christmas-decorated church – and that soul a boy, his eyes tightly closed, his jaws gritted, his lips moving in prayer. The priest smiled, removed the toothpick from his mouth, genuflected, and walked toward the confessional. Arturo opened his eyes and saw him advancing like a thing of beautiful black, and there was comfort in his presence, and warmth in his black cassock.

‘What now, Arturo?’ he said in a whisper that was pleasant. He laid his hand on Arturo’s shoulder. It was like the touch of God. His agony broke beneath it. The vagueness of nascent peace stirred within depths, ten million miles within him.

‘I gotta go to confession, Father.’

‘Sure, Arturo.’

Father Andrew adjusted his sash and entered the confessional door. He followed, kneeling in the penitent’s booth, the wooden screen separating him from the priest. After the prescribed ritual, he said: ‘Yesterday, Father Andrew, I was going through my mother’s trunk, and I found a cameo with a gold chain, and I swiped it, Father. I put it in my pocket, and it didn’t belong to me, it belonged to my mother, my father gave it to her, and it musta been worth a lot of money, but I swiped it anyhow, and today I gave it to a girl in our school. I gave stolen property for a Christmas present.’

‘You say it was valuable?’ the priest asked.

‘It looked it,’ he answered.

‘How valuable, Arturo?’

‘It looked plenty valuable, Father. I’m awfully sorry, Father. I’ll never steal again as long as I live.’

‘Tell you what, Arturo,’ the priest said. ‘I’ll give you absolution if you’ll promise to go to your mother and tell her you stole the cameo. Tell her just as you’ve told me. If she prizes it, and wants it back, you’ve got to promise me you’ll get it from the girl, and return it to your mother. Now if you can’t do that, you’ve got to promise me you’ll buy your mother another one. Isn’t that fair, Arturo? I think God’ll agree that you’re getting a square deal.’

‘I’ll get it back. I’ll try.’

He bowed his head while the priest mumbled the Latin of absolution. That was all. Easy as pie. He left the confessional and knelt in the church, his hands pressed over his heart. It thumped serenely. He was saved. It was a swell world after all. For a long time he knelt, reveling in the sweetness of
escape. They were pals, he and God, and God was a good sport. But he took no chances. For two hours, until the clock struck eight, he prayed every prayer he knew. Everything was coming out fine. The priest’s advice was a cinch. Tonight after the banquet he would tell his mother the truth – that he had stolen her cameo and given it to Rosa. She would protest at first. But not for long. He knew his mother, and how to get things out of her.

He crossed the schoolyard and climbed the stairs to the auditorium. In the hall the first person he saw was Rosa. She walked directly to him.

‘I want to talk to you,’ she said.

‘Sure, Rosa.’

He followed her downstairs, fearful that something awful was about to happen. At the bottom of the stairs she waited for him to open the door, her jaw set, her camel’s hair coat wrapped tightly around her.

‘I’m sure hungry,’ he said.

‘Are you?’ Her voice was cold, supercilious.

They stood on the stairs outside the door, at the edge of the concrete platform. She held out her hand.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘I don’t want this.’

It was the cameo.

‘I can’t accept stolen property,’ she said. ‘My mother says you probably stole this.’

‘I didn’t!’ he lied. ‘I did not!’

‘Take it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want it.’

He put it in his pocket. Without a word she turned to enter the building.

‘But Rosa!’

At the door she turned around and smiled sweetly.

‘You shouldn’t steal, Arturo.’

‘I
didn’t
steal!’ He sprang at her, dragged her out of the doorway and pushed her. She backed to the edge of the platform and toppled into the snow, after swaying and waving her arms in a futile effort to get her balance. As she landed her mouth opened wide and let out a scream.

‘I’m
not
a thief,’ he said looking down at her.

He jumped from the platform to the sidewalk and hurried away as fast as he could. At the corner he looked at the cameo for a moment, and then tossed it with all his might over the roof of the two-storey house bordering the street. Then he walked on again. To hell with the altar boy banquet. He wasn’t hungry anyway.

Christmas Eve. Svevo Bandini was coming home, new shoes on his feet, defiance in his jaw, guilt in his heart. Fine shoes, Bandini; where’d you get them? None of your business. He had money in his pocket. His fist squeezed it. Where’d you get that money, Bandini? Playing poker. I’ve been playing it for ten days.

Indeed!

But that was his story, and if his wife didn’t believe, what of it? His black shoes smashed the snow, the sharp new heels chopping it.

They were expecting him: somehow they knew he would arrive. The very house had a feeling for it. Things were in order. Maria by the window spoke her rosary very fast, as though there was so little time: a few more prayers before he arrived.

Merry Christmas. The boys had opened their gifts. They each had one gift. Pajamas from Grandma Toscana. They sat around in their pajamas – waiting. For what? The suspense was good: something was going to happen. Pajamas of blue and green. They had put them on because there was nothing else to do. But something was going to happen. In the silence of waiting it was wonderful to think that Papa was coming home, and not speak of it.

Federico had to spoil it.

‘I bet Papa’s coming home tonight.’

A break in the spell. It was a private thought belonging to each. Silence. Federico regretted his words and fell to wondering why they had not answered.

A footstep on the porch. All the men and women on earth could have mounted that step, yet none would have made a sound like that. They looked at Maria. She held her breath, hurrying through one more prayer. The door opened and he came inside. He closed the door carefully, as though his whole life had been spent in the exact science of closing doors.

‘Hello.’

He was no boy caught stealing marbles, nor a dog punished for tearing up a shoe. This was Svevo Bandini, a full-grown man with a wife and three sons.

‘Where’s Mamma?’ he said, looking right at her, like a drunken man who wanted to prove he could ask a serious question. Over in the corner he saw her, exactly where he knew she was, for he had been frightened by her silhouette from the street.

‘Ah, there she is.’

I hate you, she thought. With my fingers I want to tear out your eyes and blind you. You are a beast, you have hurt me and I shall not rest until I have hurt you.

Papa with new shoes. They squeaked with his step as though tiny mice ran around in them. He crossed the room to the bathroom. Strange sound – old Papa home again.

I hope you die. You will never touch me again. I hate you, God what have you done to me, my husband, I hate you so.

He came back and stood in the middle of the room, his
back to his wife. From his pocket he extracted the money. And to his sons he said, ‘Suppose we all go downtown before the stores close, you and me and Mamma, all of us, and go down and buy some Christmas presents for everybody.’

‘I want a bicycle!’ from Federico.

‘Sure. You get a bicycle!’

Arturo didn’t know what he wanted, nor did August. The evil he had done twisted inside Bandini, but he smiled and said they would find something for all. A big Christmas. The biggest of all.

I can see that other woman in his arms, I can smell her in his clothes, her lips have roamed his face, her hands have explored his chest. He disgusts me, and I want him hurt to death.

‘And what’ll we get Mamma?’

He turned around and faced her, his eyes on the money as he unrolled the bills.

‘Look at all the money! Better give it all to Mamma, huh? All the money Papa won playing cards. Pretty good card-player, Papa.’

He raised his eyes and looked at her, she with her hands gripped in the sides of the chair, as though ready to spring at him, and he realized he was afraid of her, and he smiled not in amusement but fear, the evil he had done weakening his courage. Fan-wise he held the money out: there were fives and tens, a hundred even, and like a condemned man going to his punishment he kept the silly smile on his lips as he bent over and made to hand her the bills, trying to think of the old words, their words, his and hers, their language. She clung to the chair in horror forcing herself not to shrink back from the serpent of guilt that wound itself into the ghastly figure
of his face. Closer than ever he bent, only inches from her hair, utterly ridiculous in his ameliorations, until she could not bear it, could not refrain from it, and with a suddenness that surprised her too, her ten long fingers were at his eyes, tearing down, a singing strength in her ten long fingers that laid streaks of blood down his face as he screamed and backed away, the front of his shirt, his neck and collar gathering the fast-falling red drops. But it was his eyes, my God my eyes, my eyes! And he backed away and covered them with his cupped hands, standing against the wall, his face reeking with pain, afraid to lift his hands, afraid that he was blind.

‘Maria,’ he sobbed. ‘Oh God, what have you done to me?’

He could see; dimly through a curtain of red he could see, and he staggered around.

‘Ah Maria, what have you done? What have you done?’

Around the room he staggered. He heard the weeping of his children, the words of Arturo: ‘Oh God.’ Around and round he staggered, blood and tears in his eyes.

‘
Jesus Christi
, what has happened to me?’

At his feet lay the green bills and he staggered through them and upon them in his new shoes, little red drops splattered over the shining black toes, round and round, moaning and groping his way to the door and outside into the cold night, into the snow, deep into the drift in the yard moaning all the time, his big hands scooping snow like water and pressing it to his burning face. Again and again the white snow from his hands fell back to the earth, red and sodden. In the house his sons stood petrified, in their new pajamas, the front door open, the light in the middle of the room blinding their view of Svevo Bandini as he blotted his face
with the linen of the sky. In the chair sat Maria. She did not move as she stared at the blood and the money strewn about the room.

Damn her, Arturo thought. Damn her to hell.

He was crying, hurt by the humiliation of his father; his father, that man, always so solid and powerful, and he had seen him floundering and hurt and crying, his father who never cried and never floundered. He wanted to be with his father, and he put on his shoes and hurried outside, where Bandini was bent over, choked and quivering. But it was good to hear something over and above the choking – to hear his anger, his curses. It thrilled him when he heard his father vowing vengeance. I’ll kill her, by God, I’ll kill her. He was gaining control of himself now. The snow had checked the flow of blood. He stood panting, examining his bloody clothes, his hands spattered crimson.

‘Somebody’s got to pay for this,’ he said. ‘
Sangue de la
Madonna!
It shall not be forgotten.’

‘Papa –’

‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then get in the house. Get in there with that crazy mother of yours.’

That was all. He broke his way through the snow to the sidewalk and strode down the street. The boy watched him go, his face high to the night. It was the way he walked, stumbling despite his determination. But no – after a few feet he turned, ‘You kids have a happy Christmas. Take that money and go down and buy what you want.’

He went on again, his chin out, coasting into the cold air, bearing up under a deep wound that was not bleeding.

The boy went back to the house. The money was not on the floor. One look at Federico, who choked bitterly as he held out a torn section of a five-dollar bill told him what had happened. He opened the stove. The black embers of burnt paper smoked faintly. He closed the stove and examined the floor, bare except for drying blood spots. In hatred he glared at his mother. She did not move or even heed with her eyes, but her lips opened and shut, for she had resumed her rosary.

‘Merry Christmas!’ he sneered.

Federico wailed. August was too shocked to speak.

Yeah: a Merry Chistmas. Ah, give it to her, Papa! Me and you, Papa, because I know how you feel, because it happened to me too, but you should have done what I did, Papa, knocked her down like I did, and you’d feel better. Because you’re killing me, Papa, you with your bloody face walking around all by yourself, you’re killing me.

He went out on the porch and sat down. The night was full of his father. He saw the red spots in the snow where Bandini had floundered and bent to lift it to his face. Papa’s blood, my blood. He stepped off the porch and kicked clean snow over the place until it disappeared. Nobody should see this: nobody. Then he returned to the house.

His mother had not moved. How he hated her! With one grasp he tore the rosary out of her hands and pulled it to pieces. She watched him, martyr-like. She got up and followed him outside, the broken rosary in his fist. He threw it far out into the snow, scattering it like seeds. She walked past him into the snow.

In astonishment he watched her wade knee-deep into the whiteness, gazing around like one dazed. Here and there she
found a bead, her hand cupping fistfuls of snow. It disgusted him. She was pawing the very spot where his father’s blood had colored the snow.

Hell with her. He was leaving. He wanted his father. He dressed and walked down the street. Merry Christmas. The town was painted green and white with it. A hundred dollars in the stove – but what about him, his brothers? You could be holy and firm, but why must they all suffer? His mother had too much God in her.

Where now? He didn’t know, but not at home with her. He could understand his father. A man had to do something: never having anything was too monotonous. He had to admit it: if
he
could choose between Maria and Effie Hildegarde, it would be Effie every time. When Italian women got to a certain age their legs thinned and their bellies widened, their breasts fell and they lost sparkle. He tried to imagine Rosa Pinelli at forty. Her legs would thin like his mother’s; she would be fat in the stomach. But he could not imagine it. That Rosa, so lovely! He wished instead that she would die. He pictured disease wasting her away until there had to be a funeral. It would make him happy. He would go to her death-bed and stand over it. She would weakly take his hand in her hot fingers and tell him she was going to die, and he would answer, too bad Rosa; you had your chance, but I’ll always remember you Rosa. Then the funeral, the weeping, and Rosa lowered into the earth. But he would be cold to it all, stand there and smile a little with his great dreams. Years later in the Yankee stadium, over the yells of the crowd he’d remember a dying girl who held his hand and begged forgiveness; only for a few seconds would he linger with that memory, and then he would turn to the women in
the crowd and nod, his women, not an Italian among them; blondes they’d be, tall and smiling, dozens of them, like Effie Hildegarde, and not an Italian in the lot.

So give it to her, Papa! I’m for you, old boy. Some day I’ll be doing it too, I’ll be right in there some day with a honey like her, and she won’t be the kind that scratches my face, and she won’t be the kind that calls me a little thief.

And yet, how did he know that Rosa
wasn’t
dying? Of course she was, just as all people moved minute by minute nearer the grave. But just suppose, just for the heck of it, that Rosa really was dying! What about his friend Joe Tanner last year? Killed riding a bicycle; one day he was alive, the next he wasn’t. And what about Nellie Frazier? A little stone in her shoe; she didn’t take it out; blood-poison, and all at once she was dead and they had a funeral.

How did he know that Rosa hadn’t been run over by an automobile since he saw her that last awful time? There was a chance. How did he know she wasn’t dead by electrocution? That happened a lot. Why couldn’t it happen to her? Of course he really didn’t want her to die, not really and truly cross my heart and hope to die, but still and all there was a chance. Poor Rosa, so young and pretty – and dead.

He was downtown, walking around, nothing there, only people hurrying with packages. He was in front of Wilkes Hardware Company, staring at the sports display. It began to snow. He looked to the mountains. They were blotted by black clouds. An odd premonition took hold of him: Rosa Pinelli was dead. He was positive she was dead. All he had to do was walk three blocks down Pearl Street and two blocks east on Twelfth Street and it would be proven. He could walk there and on the front door of the Pinelli house there would
be a funeral wreath. He was so sure of it that he walked in that direction at once. Rosa was dead. He was a prophet, given to understanding weird things. And so it had finally happened: what he wished had come true, and she was gone.

Well, well, funny world. He lifted his eyes to the sky, to the millions of snowflakes floating earthward. The end of Rosa Pinelli. He spoke aloud, addressing imagined listeners. I was standing in front of Wilkes Hardware, and all of a sudden I had that hunch. Then I walked up to her house, and sure enough, there was a wreath on the door. A swell kid, Rosa. Sure hate to see her die. He hurried now, the premonition weakening, and he walked faster, speeding to outlast it. He was crying: Oh Rosa, please don’t die, Rosa. Be alive when I get there! Here I come Rosa, my love. All the way from the Yankee stadium in a chartered airplane. I made a landing right on the courthouse lawn – nearly killed three hundred people out there watching me. But I made it, Rosa. I got here all right, and here I am at your bedside, just in time, and the doctor says you’ll live now, and so I must go away, never to return. Back to the Yanks, Rosa. To Florida, Rosa. Spring training. The Yanks need me too; but you’ll know where I am, Rosa, just read the papers and you’ll know.

There was no funeral wreath on the Pinelli door. What he saw there, and he gasped in horror until his vision cleared through the blinding snow, was a Christmas wreath instead. He was glad, hurrying away in the storm. Sure I’m glad! Who wants to see anybody die? But he wasn’t glad, he wasn’t glad at all. He wasn’t a star for the Yankees. He hadn’t come by chartered plane. He wasn’t going to Florida. This was Christmas Eve in Rocklin, Colorado. It was snowing like the devil, and his father was living with a woman named Effie
Hildegarde. His father’s face was torn open by his mother’s fingers and at that moment he knew his mother was praying, his brothers were crying, and the embers in the front-room stove had once been a hundred dollars.