Wait Until Spring Bandini (4 page)

This latest letter was dated the day before, December eighth, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. As Bandini read the lines, the flesh upon his face whitened and his blood disappeared like sand swallowing the ebb tide. The letter read:

Without looking at his wife, Bandini put the letter down and began gnawing at an already ravaged thumb nail. His fingers plucked his lower lip. His fury began somewhere outside of him. She could feel it rising from the corners of the room, from the walls and the floor, an odor moving in a whirlpool completely outside of herself. Simply to distract herself, she straightened her blouse.

Feebly she said, ‘Now, Svevo –’

He arose, chucked her under the chin, his lips smiling fiendishly to inform her that this show of affection was not sincere, and walked out of the room.

‘Oh Marie!’ he sang, no music in his voice, only hatred pushing a lyrical love song out of his throat. ‘Oh Marie. Oh Marie!
Quanto sonna perdato per te! Fa me dor me! Fa me
dor me!
Oh Marie, Oh Marie! How much sleep I have lost because of you! Oh let me sleep, my darling Marie!’

There was no stopping him. She listened to his feet on thin soles as they flecked the floor like drops of water spitting on a stove. She heard the swish of his patched and sewed overcoat
as he flung himself into it. Then silence for a moment, until she heard a match strike, and she knew he was lighting a cigar. His fury was too great for her. To interfere would have been to give him the temptation of knocking her down. As his steps approached the front door, she held her breath: there was a glass panel in that front door. But no – he closed it quietly and was gone. In a little while now he would meet his good friend, Rocco Saccone, the stonecutter, the only human being she really hated. Rocco Saccone, the boyhood friend of Svevo Bandini, the whiskey-drinking bachelor who had tried to prevent Bandini’s marriage; Rocco Saccone, who wore white flannels in all seasons and boasted disgustingly of his Saturday night seductions of married American women at the Old-time dances up in the Odd Fellows Hall. She could trust Svevo. He would float his brains on a sea of whiskey, but he would not be unfaithful to her. She knew that. But could she? With a gasp she threw herself into the chair by the table and wept as she buried her face in her hands.

It was a quarter to three in the eighth-grade room at St Catherine’s. Sister Mary Celia, her glass eye aching in its socket, was in a dangerous mood. The left eyelid kept twitching, completely out of control. Twenty eighth graders, eleven boys and nine girls, watched the twitching eyelid. A quarter to three: fifteen minutes to go. Nellie Doyle, her thin dress caught between her buttocks, was reciting the economic effects of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, and two boys behind her, Jim Lacey and Eddie Holm, were laughing like hell, only not out loud, at the dress caught in Nellie’s buttocks. They had been told time and time again to watch out, if the lid over Old Celia’s glass eye started jumping, but would you look at Doyle there!

‘The economic effects of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin were unprecedented in the history of cotton,’ Nellie said.

Sister Mary Celia rose to her feet.

‘Holm and Lacey!’ she demanded. ‘Stand up!’

Nellie sat down in confusion, and the two boys got to their feet. Lacey’s knees cracked, and the class tittered, Lacey grinned, then blushed. Holm coughed, keeping his head down as he studied the trade lettering on the side of his pencil. It was the first time in his life he had ever read such writing, and he was rather surprised to learn it said simply, Walter Pencil Co.

‘Holm and Lacey,’ Sister Celia said. ‘I’m bored with grinning goons in my classes. Sit down!’ Then she addressed the whole group, but she was really speaking to the boys alone, for the girls rarely gave her trouble: ‘And the next scoundrel I catch not paying attention to recitation has to stay until six o’clock. Carry on, Nellie.’

Nellie stood up again. Lacey and Holm, amazed that they had got off so easy, kept their heads turned toward the other side of the classroom, both afraid they might laugh again if

Nellie’s dress was still stuck.

‘The economic effects of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin were unprecedented in the history of cotton,’ Nellie said.

In a whisper, Lacey spoke to the boy in front of him.

‘Hey, Holm. Give the Bandini a gander.’

Arturo sat in the opposite side of the room, three desks from the front. His head was low, his chest against the desk, and propped against the ink-stand was a small hand mirror into which he stared as he worked the point of a pencil along the line of his nose. He was counting his freckles. Last night he had slept with his face smeared with lemon juice: it was supposed to be wonderful for the wiping out of freckles. He counted, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five … A sense of life’s futility occupied him. Here it was, the dead of winter, with the sun showing itself only a moment in the late afternoons, and the count around his nose and cheeks had jumped nine freckles to the grand total of ninety-five. What was the good of living? And last night he had used lemon juice, too. Who was that liar of a woman who had written on the Home Page of yesterday’s
Denver Post
that freckles ‘fled like the wind’ from lemon juice? To be freckled was bad enough, but as far as he knew, he was the only freckle-faced
Wop on earth. Where had he got these freckles? From what side of the family had he inherited those little copper marks of the beast? Grimly he began to poll around his left ear. The faint report of the economic effects of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin came to him vaguely. Josephine Perlotta was reciting: who the hell cared what Perlotta had to say about the cotton gin? She was a Dago – how could she possibly know anything about cotton gins? In June, thank God for that, he would graduate from this dump of a Catholic school, and enroll in a public high school, where the wops were few and far between. The count on his left ear was already seventeen, two more than yesterday. God damn these freckles! Now a new voice spoke of the cotton gin, a voice like a soft violin, sending vibrations through his flesh, catching his breath. He put down his pencil and gaped. There she stood in front of him – his beautiful Rosa Pinelli, his love, his girl. Oh you cotton gin! Oh you wonderful Eli Whitney! Oh Rosa, how wonderful you are. I love you, Rosa, I love you, love you, love you!

She was an Italian, sure; but could she help that? Was it her fault anymore than it was his? Oh look at her hair! Look at her shoulders! Look at that pretty green dress! Listen to that voice! Oh you Rosa! Tell ’em Rosa. Tell ’em about that cotton gin! I know you hate me, Rosa. But I love you, Rosa. I love you, and some day you’ll see me playing center field for the New York Yanks, Rosa. I’ll be out there in center field, Honey, and you’ll be my girl, sitting in a box seat off third base, and I’ll come in, and it’ll be the last half of the ninth, and the Yanks’ll be three runs behind. But don’t you worry, Rosa! I’ll get up there with three men on base, and I’ll look at you, and you’ll throw me a kiss, and I’ll bust that
old apple right over the center field wall. I’ll make history, Honey. You kiss me and I’ll make history!

‘
Arturo Bandini!
’

I won’t have any freckles then, either, Rosa. They’ll be gone – they always leave when you grow up.

‘
Arturo Bandini!
’

I’ll change my name too, Rosa. They’ll call me Banning, the Banning Bambino; Art, the Battering Bandit …

‘
Arturo Bandini!
’

That time he heard it. The roar of the World Series crowd was gone. He looked up to find Sister Mary Celia looming over her desk, her fist pounding it, her left eye twitching. They were staring at him, all of them, even his Rosa laughing at him, and his stomach rolled out from under him as he realized he had been whispering his fancy aloud. The others could laugh if they pleased, but Rosa – ah Rosa, and her laughter was more poignant than all others, and he felt it hurting him, and he hated her: this dago girl, daughter of a wop coal miner who worked in that guinea-town Louisville: a goddamn lousy coal miner. Salvatore was his name; Salvatore Pinelli, so low down he had to work in a coal mine. Could he put up a wall that lasted years and years, a hundred, two hundred years? Nah – the dago fool, he had a coal pick and a lamp on his cap, and he had to go down under the ground and make his living like a lousy damn dago rat. His name was Arturo Bandini, and if there was anybody in this school who wanted to make something out of it, let him speak up and get his nose broke.

‘
Arturo Bandini!
’

‘Okay,’ he drawled. ‘Okay, Sister Celia. I heard you.’ Then he stood up. The class watched him. Rosa whispered
something to the girl behind her, smiling behind her hand. He saw the gesture and he was ready to scream at her, thinking she had made some remark about his freckles, or the big patch on the knee of his pants, or the fact that he needed a hair cut, or the cut-down and remodeled shirt his father once wore that never fit him smartly.

‘Bandini,’ Sister Celia said. ‘You are unquestionably a moron. I warned you about not paying attention. Such stupidity must be rewarded. You’re to stay after school until six o’clock.’

He sat down, and the three o’clock bell sounded hysterically through the halls.

He was alone, with Sister Celia at her desk, correcting papers. She worked oblivious of him, the left eyelid twitching irritably. In the southwest the pale sun appeared, sickly, more like a weary moon on that winter afternoon. He sat with his chin resting in one hand, watching the cold sun. Beyond the windows the line of fir trees seemed to grow even colder beneath their sad white burdens. Somewhere in the street he heard the shout of a boy, and then the clanking of tire chains. He hated the winter. He could picture the baseball diamond behind the school, buried in snow, the backstop behind home plate cluttered with fantastic heaviness – the whole scene so lonely, so sad. What was there to do in winter? He was almost satisfied to sit there, and his punishment amused him. After all, this was as good a place to sit as anywhere.

‘Do you want me to do anything, Sister?’ he asked.

Without looking up from her work, she answered, ‘I want you to sit still and keep quiet – if that’s possible.’

He smiled and drawled, ‘Okay, Sister.’

He was both still and quiet for all of ten minutes.

‘Sister,’ he said. ‘Want me to do the blackboards?’

‘We pay a man for doing that,’ she said. ‘Rather, I should say we overpay a man for that.’

‘Sister,’ he said. ‘Do you like baseball?’

‘Football’s my game,’ she said. ‘I hate baseball. It bores me.’

‘That’s because you don’t understand the finer side of the game.’

‘Quiet, Bandini,’ she said. ‘If you please.’

He changed his position, resting his chin on his arms and watching her closely. The left eyelid twitched incessantly. He wondered how she had got a glass eye. He had always suspected that someone had hit her with a baseball; now he was almost sure of it. She had come to St Catherine’s from Fort Dodge, Iowa. He wondered what kind of baseball they played in Iowa, and if there were very many Italians there.

‘How’s your mother?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Swell, I guess.’

She raised her face from her work for the first time and looked at him. ‘What do you mean, you
guess?
Don’t you know? Your mother’s a dear person, a beautiful person. She has the soul of an angel.’

As far as he knew, he and his brothers were the only nonpaying students at that Catholic school. The tuition was only two dollars a month for each child, but that meant six a month for him and his two brothers, and it was never paid. It was a distinction of great torment to him, this feeling that others paid and he did not. Once in a while his mother would put a dollar or two in an envelope and ask him to deliver it to the Sister Superior, on account. This was even more hateful.
He always refused violently. August, however, didn’t mind delivering the rare envelopes; indeed, he looked forward to the opportunity. He hated August for it, for making an issue of their poverty, for his willingness to remind the nuns that they were poor people. He had never wanted to go to Sister School anyway. The only thing that made it tolerable was baseball. When Sister Celia told him his mother had a beautiful soul, he knew she meant his mother was brave to sacrifice and deny for those little envelopes. But there was no bravery in it to him. It was awful, it was hateful, it made him and his brothers different from the others. Why, he did not know for certain – but it was there, a feeling that made them different to all the others in his eyes. It was somehow a part of the pattern that included his freckles, his need for a haircut, the patch on his knee, and being an Italian.

‘Does your father go to Mass on Sunday, Arturo?’

‘Sure,’ he said.

It choked in his throat. Why did he have to lie? His father only went to Mass on Christmas morning, and sometimes on Easter Sunday. Lie or not, it pleased him that his father scorned the Mass. He did not know why, but it pleased him. He remembered that argument of his father’s. Svevo had said, if God is everywhere, why do I have to go to church on Sunday? Why can’t I go down to the Imperial Poolhall? Isn’t God down there, too? His mother always shuddered in horror at this piece of theology, but he remembered how feeble her reply to it was, the same reply he had learned in his catechism, and one his mother had learned out of the same catechism years before. It was our duty as Christians, the catechism said. As for himself, sometimes he went to Mass and sometimes not. Those times he did not go, a great fear
clutched him, and he was miserable and frightened until he had got it off his chest in the confessional.

At four thirty, Sister Celia finished correcting her papers. He sat there wearily, exhausted and bruised by his own impatience to do something, anything. The room was almost dark. The moon had staggered out of the dreary eastern sky, and it was going to be a white moon if it ever got free. The room saddened him in the half light. It was a room for nuns to walk in, on quiet thick shoes. The empty desks spoke sadly of the children who had gone, and his own desk seemed to sympathize, its warm intimacy telling him to go home that it might be alone with the others. Scratched and marked with his initials, blurred and spotted with ink, the desk was as tired of him as he was of the desk. Now they almost hated one another, yet each so patient with the other.

Sister Celia stood up, gathering her papers.

‘At five you may leave,’ she said. ‘But on one condition –’

His lethargy consumed any curiosity as to what that condition might be. Sprawled out with his feet twined around the desk in front of him, he could do no more than stew in his own disgust.

‘I want you to leave here at five and go to the Blessed Sacrament, and I want you to ask the Virgin Mary to bless your mother and bring her all the happiness she deserves – the poor thing.’

Then she left. The poor thing. His mother – the poor thing. It worked a despair in him that made his eyes fill up. Everywhere it was the same, always his mother – the poor thing, always poor and poor, always that, that word, always in him and around him, and suddenly he let go in that half darkened room and wept, sobbing the poor out of
him, crying and choking, not for that, not for her, for his mother, but for Svevo Bandini, for his father, that look of his father’s, those gnarled hands of his father’s, for his father’s mason tools, for the walls his father had built, the steps, the cornices, the ashpits and the cathedrals, and they were all so very beautiful, for that feeling in him when his father sang of Italy, of an Italian sky, of a Neapolitan bay.

At a quarter to five his misery had spent itself. The room was almost completely dark. He pulled his sleeve across his nose and felt a contentment rising in his heart, a good feeling, a restfulness that made the next fifteen minutes a mere nothing. He wanted to turn on the lights, but Rosa’s house was beyond the empty lot across the street, and the school windows were visible from her back porch. She might see the light burning, and that would remind her that he was still in the classroom.

Rosa, his girl. She hated him, but she was his girl. Did she know that he loved her? Was that why she hated him? Could she see the mysterious things that went on inside him, and was that why she laughed at him? He crossed to the window and saw the light in the kitchen of Rosa’s house. Somewhere under that light Rosa walked and breathed. Perhaps she was studying her lessons now, for Rosa was very studious and got the best grades in class.