Wait Until Spring Bandini (2 page)

‘Christmas will soon be here, Svevo,’ she said. ‘Say a prayer. Ask God to make it a happy Christmas.’

Her name was Maria, and she was always telling him something he already knew. Didn’t he know without being told that Christmas would soon be here? Here it was, the night of December fifth. When a man goes to sleep beside his wife on a Thursday night, is it necessary for her to tell him the next day would be Friday? And that boy Arturo – why was he cursed with a son who played with a sled?
Ah, povera
America!
And he should pray for a happy Christmas. Bah.

‘Are you warm enough, Svevo?’

There she was, always wanting to know if he was warm enough. She was a little over five feet tall, and he never knew whether she was sleeping or waking, she was that quiet. A wife like a ghost, always content in her little half of the bed, saying the rosary and praying for a merry Christmas. Was it any wonder that he couldn’t pay for this house, this madhouse occupied by a wife who was a religious fanatic? A man needed a wife to goad him on, inspire him, and make him work hard. But Maria?
Ah, povera America!

She slipped from her side of the bed, her toes with sure precision found the slippers on the rug in the darkness, and he knew she was going to the bathroom first, and to inspect the boys afterward, the final inspection before she returned to bed for the rest of the night. A wife who was always slipping out of bed to look at her three sons. Ah, such a life!
Io sono fregato!

How could a man get any sleep in this house, always in a turmoil, his wife always getting out of bed without a word?
Goddamn the Imperial Poolhall! A full house, queens on deuces, and he had lost.
Madonna!
And he should pray for a happy Christmas! With that kind of luck he should even talk to God!
Jesu Christi
, if God really existed, let Him answer – why!

As quietly as she had gone, she was beside him again.

‘Federico has a cold,’ she said.

He too had a cold – in his soul. His son Federico could have a snivel and Maria would rub menthol on his chest, and lie there half the night talking about it, but Svevo Bandini suffered alone – not with an aching body: worse, with an aching soul. Where upon the earth was the pain greater than in your own soul? Did Maria help him? Did she ever ask him if he suffered from the hard times? Did she ever say, Svevo, my beloved, how is your soul these days? Are you happy, Svevo? Is there any chance for work this winter, Svevo?
Dio
maledetto!
And she wanted a merry Christmas! How can you have a merry Christmas when you are alone among three sons and a wife? Holes in your shoes, bad luck at cards, no work, break your neck on a goddamn sled – and you want a merry Christmas! Was he a millionaire? He might have been, if he had married the right kind of woman. Heh: he was too stupid though.

Her name was Maria, and he felt the softness of the bed recede beneath him, and he had to smile for he knew she was coming nearer, and his lips opened a little to receive them – three fingers of a small hand, touching his lips, lifting him to a warm land inside the sun, and then she was blowing her breath faintly into his nostrils from pouted lips.

‘
Cara sposa
,’ he said. ‘Dear wife.’

Her lips were wet and she rubbed them against his eyes. He laughed softly.

‘I’ll kill you,’ he whispered.

She laughed, then listened, poised, listened for a sound of the boys awake in the next room.

‘
Che sara, sara
,’ she said. ‘What must be, must be.’

Her name was Maria, and she was so patient, waiting for him, touching the muscle at his loins, so patient, kissing him here and there, and then the great heat he loved consumed him and she lay back.

‘Ah, Svevo. So wonderful!’

He loved her with such gentle fierceness, so proud of himself, thinking all the time: she is not so foolish, this Maria, she knows what is good. The big bubble they chased toward the sun exploded between them, and he groaned with joyous release, groaned like a man glad he had been able to forget for a little while so many things, and Maria, very quiet in her little half of the bed, listened to the pounding of her heart and wondered how much he had lost at the Imperial Poolhall. A great deal, no doubt; possibly ten dollars, for Maria had no high school diploma but she could read that man’s misery in meter of his passion.

‘Svevo,’ she whispered.

But he was sound asleep.

Bandini, hater of snow. He leaped out of bed at five that morning, like a skyrocket out of bed, making ugly faces at the cold morning, sneering at it: bah, this Colorado, the rear end of God’s creation, always frozen, no place for an Italian bricklayer; ah, he was cursed with this life. On the sides of his feet he walked to the chair and snatched his pants and shoved
his legs through them, thinking he was losing twelve dollars a day, union scale, eight hours hard work, and all because of that! He jerked the curtain string; it shot up and rattled like a machine gun, and the white naked morning dove into the room, splashing brightly over him. He growled at it.
Sporca
chone
: dirty face, he called it.
Sporcaccione ubriaco
: drunken dirty face.

Maria slept with the drowsy awareness of a kitten, and that curtain brought her awake quickly, her eyes in nimble terror.

‘Svevo. It’s too early.’

‘Go to sleep. Who’s asking you? Go to sleep.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Time for a man to get up. Time for a woman to go to sleep. Shut up.’

She had never got used to this early morning rising. Seven was her hour, not counting the times in the hospital, and once, she had stayed in bed until nine, and got a headache because of it, but this man she had married always shot out of bed at five in winter, and at six in summer. She knew his torment in the white prison of winter; she knew that when she arose in two hours he would have shoveled every clod of snow from every path in and around the yard, half a block down the street, under the clothes lines, far down the alley, piling it high, moving it around, cutting it viciously with his flat shovel.

And it was so. When she got up and slipped her feet inside of slippers, the toes aburst like frayed flowers, she looked through the kitchen window and saw where he was, out there in the alley, beyond the high fence. A giant of a man, a dwarfed giant hidden on the other side of a six-foot
fence, his shovel peering over the top now and then, throwing puffs of snow back to the sky.

But he had not built a fire in the kitchen stove. Oh no, he never built a fire in the kitchen stove. What was he – a woman, that he should build a fire? Sometimes though. Once he had taken them into the mountains for a beefsteak fry, and absolutely no one but himself was permitted to build that fire. But a kitchen stove! What was he – a woman?

It was so cold that morning, so cold. Her jaw chattered and ran away from her. The dark green linoleum might have been a sheet of ice under her feet, the stove itself a block of ice. What a stove that was! a despot, untamed and ill-tempered. She always coaxed it, soothed it, cajoled it, a black bear of a stove subject to fits of rebellion, defying Maria to make him glow; a cantankerous stove that, once warm and pouring sweet heat, suddenly went berserk and got yellow hot and threatened to destroy the very house. Only Maria could handle that black block of sulking iron, and she did it a twig at a time, caressing the shy flame, adding a slab of wood, then another and another, until it purred beneath her care, the iron heating up, the oven expanding and the heat thumping it until it grunted and groaned in content, like an idiot. She was Maria, and the stove loved only her. Let Arturo or August drop a lump of coal into its greedy mouth and it went mad with its own fever, burning and blistering the paint on the walls, turning a frightful yellow, a chunk of hell hissing for Maria, who came frowning and capable, a cloth in her hand as she twitted it here and there, shutting the vents deftly, shaking its bowels until it resumed its stupid normalcy. Maria, with hands no larger than frayed roses, but that black devil was her slave, and she really was
very fond of it. She kept it shining and flashily vicious, its nickel-plated trade name grinning evilly like a mouth too proud of its beautiful teeth.

When at length the flames rose and it groaned good morning, she put water on for coffee and returned to the window. Svevo was in the chicken yard, panting as he leaned on his shovel. The hens had come out of the shed, clucking as they eyed him, this man who could lift the fallen white heavens off the ground and throw them over the fence. But from the window she saw that the hens did not saunter too close to him. She knew why. They were her hens; they ate from her hands, but they hated him; they remembered him as the one who sometimes came of a Saturday night to kill. This was all right; they were very grateful he had shoveled the snow away so they could scratch the earth, they appreciated it, but they could never trust him as they did the woman who came with corn dripping from her small hands. And spaghetti too, in a dish; they kissed her with their beaks when she brought them spaghetti; but beware of this man.

Their names were Arturo, August, and Federico. They were awake now, their eyes all brown and bathed brightly in the black river of sleep. They were all in one bed, Arturo twelve, August ten, and Federico eight. Italian boys, fooling around, three in a bed, laughing the quick peculiar laugh of obscenity. Arturo, he knew plenty. He was telling them now what he knew, the words coming from his mouth in hot white vapor in the cold room. He knew plenty. He had seen plenty. He knew plenty. You guys don’t know what I saw. She was sitting on the porch steps. I was about this far from her. I saw plenty.

Federico, eight years old.

‘What’ya see, Arturo?’

‘Shut yer mouth, ya little sap. We ain’t talkin’ to you!’

‘I won’t tell, Arturo.’

‘Ah, shut yer mouth. You’re too little!’

‘I’ll tell, then.’

They joined forces then, and threw him out of bed. He bumped against the floor, whimpering. The cold air seized him with a sudden fury and pricked him with ten thousand needles. He screamed and tried to get under the covers again, but they were stronger than he and he dashed around the bed and into his mother’s room. She was pulling on her cotton stockings. He was screaming with dismay.

‘They kicked me out! Arturo did. August did!’

‘Snitcher!’ yelled from the next room.

He was so beautiful to her, that Federico; his skin was so beautiful to her. She took him into her arms and rubbed her hands into his back, pinching his beautiful little bottom, squeezing him hard, pushing heat into him, and he thought of the odor of her, wondering what it was and how good it was in the morning.

‘Sleep in Mamma’s bed,’ she said.

He climbed in quickly, and she clamped the covers around him, shaking him with delight, and he was so glad he was on Mamma’s side of the bed, with his head in the nest Mamma’s hair made, because he didn’t like Papa’s pillow; it was kind of sour and strong, but Mamma’s smelt sweet and made him warm all over.

‘I know somethin’ else,’ Arturo said. ‘But I ain’t telling.’

August was ten; he didn’t know much. Of course he knew more than his punk brother Federico, but not half so much
as the brother beside him, Arturo, who knew plenty about women and stuff.

‘What’ll ya give me if I tell ya?’ Arturo said.

‘Give you a milk nickel.’

‘Milk nickel! What the heck! Who wants a milk nickel in winter?’

‘Give it to you next summer.’

‘Nuts to you. What’ll ya give me now?’

‘Give you anything I got.’

‘It’s a bet. Whatcha got?’

‘Ain’t got nothing.’

‘Okay. I ain’t telling nothing, then.’

‘You ain’t got anything to tell.’

‘Like hell I haven’t!’

‘Tell me for nothing.’

‘Nothing doing.’

‘You’re lying, that’s why. You’re a liar.’

‘Don’t call me a liar!’

‘You’re a liar if you don’t tell. Liar!’

He was Arturo, and he was fourteen. He was a miniature of his father, without the mustache. His upper lip curled with such gentle cruelty. Freckles swarmed over his face like ants over a piece of cake. He was the oldest, and he thought he was pretty tough, and no sap kid brother could call him a liar and get away with it. In five seconds August was writhing. Arturo was under the covers at his brother’s feet.

‘That’s my toe hold,’ he said.

‘Ow! Leggo!’

‘Who’s a liar!’

‘Nobody!’

Their mother was Maria, but they called her Mamma,
and she was beside them now, still frightened at the duty of motherhood, still mystified by it. There was August now; it was easy to be his mother. He had yellow hair, and a hundred times a day, out of nowhere at all, there came that thought, that her second son had yellow hair. She could kiss August at will, lean down and taste the yellow hair and press her mouth on his face and eyes. He was a good boy, August was. Of course, she had had a lot of trouble with him. Weak kidneys, Doctor Hewson had said, but that was over now, and the mattress was never wet anymore in the mornings. August would grow up to be a fine man now, never wetting the bed. A hundred nights she had spent on her knees at his side while he slept, her rosary beads clicking in the dark as she prayed God, please Blessed Lord, don’t let my son wet the bed anymore. A hundred, two hundred nights. The doctor had called it weak kidneys; she had called it God’s will; and Svevo Bandini had called it goddamn carelessness and was in favor of making August sleep in the chicken yard, yellow hair or no yellow hair. There had been all sorts of suggestions for cure. The doctor kept prescribing pills. Svevo was in favor of the razor strap, but she had always tricked him out of the idea; and her own mother, Donna Toscana had insisted that August drink his own urine. But her name was Maria, and so was the Savior’s mother, and she had gone to that other Maria over miles and miles of rosary beads. Well, August had stopped, hadn’t he? When she slipped her hand under him in the early hours of the morning, wasn’t he dry and warm? And why? Maria knew why. Nobody else could explain it. Bandini had said, by God it’s about time; the doctor had said it was the pills had done it, and Donna Toscana insisted it would have stopped a long time ago had they followed her suggestion.
Even August was amazed and delighted on those mornings when he wakened to find himself dry and clean. He could remember those nights when he woke up to find his mother on her knees beside him, her face against his, the beads ticking, her breath in his nostrils and the whispered little words, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, poured into his nose and eyes until he felt an eerie melancholy as he lay between these two women, a helplessness that choked him and made him determined to please them both. He simply
wouldn’t
pee the bed again.