Full of Life (13 page)

Papa wakened me. It was seven o’clock.

“Somebody wants to talk.”

I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to the phone. It was the hospital. The nurse informed me that Joyce had not yet delivered the baby, but that she was doing fine.

“Is she in pain?”

“There’s always some pain.”

“I’m coming right down.”

“I think you should.”

Papa stood there, listening.

“The baby’s coming, Papa. Any minute now.”

The cigar trembled in his mouth.

“Where’s Joyce?”

“The hospital. I took her there last night.”

I rushed upstairs and dressed. When I went out to the car, there was Papa, waiting in the front seat. We drove to the hospital and took the elevator to the twelfth floor. A nurse ushered Papa into the waiting room. White-faced and frightened, he watched me hurry down the hall to Joyce’s room.

She lay in a small ocean of pain, the vapors of her anguish clouding the room. She lay upon sheets wet and writhing with perspiration, her mouth distorted, her teeth clenched, her eyes like balls of white milk. At first she did not see me, but as I closed the door she lifted herself out of the waves of her suffering, her fingers clutching the iron bar across the top of the bed as she pulled herself into a sitting position. The white balloon was like an enormous blister, shimmering with pain, too heavy for the wild strength in her bloodless fingers. She panted in exhaustion, her breath coming in harsh jerks through lips twisted in torment.

Then she knew I was there at the foot of her bed. She saw me with startled eyes. My heart went out to her in pity for the blinding pain. I could not find words of consolation, only the cliches, the adumbrations and traps of futile language, the miserable inadequacies. As I stood there with a dry throat, pain seized her. Her knees came up and an animal cry, scarcely more than a suppressed howl, came from her lips. It had rhythm and could be measured, a thin coiling ribbon of noise drawn through her teeth. When it was over and the pain had spent itself, she sighed gratefully and pushed back a mass of wet disheveled hair, her eyes fixed at the ceiling. Then she remembered I was there.

“Oh, I’m such a coward!” she moaned.

“You’re nothing of the kind.”

I went to her side. The bed was built like a large crib, with adjustable steel sides. As I bent over to kiss her, I saw her red mouth, the lips thick with the sensuality of pain. I saw the white avid eyes and her suffering overwhelmed me. But there was passion in her mouth, and she clung to me with such ferocity that it took all the strength of my thick wrists to break her arms away. She loved me, she moaned, she loved me, loved me, loved me.

Then the pains took her again, sending her rolling from side to side, her knees up, her fingers pulling at the bar above her, the ribbon of anguish spilling out. As the suffering subsided, the white eyes beat about me like captured birds, and the pain reached me too, and I got a terrible stomach-ache. It nearly doubled me up. I backed into a chair and sat down. She was watching me.

“You’re sick,” she said. “This whole thing has been too much for you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Drink this,” she panted, and she reached for a glass of water on the bed table. But the pains leaped at her as her hand went out, and she twisted and rolled, pouring out the ribbon of noise from her throat. It doubled me up in agony, but I didn’t cry out, I just moaned as a crazy upheaval went on inside me, the pain of green apples.

“Darling,” she was saying. “Call the doctor. I
know
you’re sick!”

“Me? I feel wonderful.”

But I could see my reflection in the wall mirror, and I was white and popeyed and disgusted and enraged with myself.

“Don’t worry about me,” she gasped. “I’m doing
wonderfully. The pains have stopped altogether. Look!” She held out her arms, smiling.

As I turned to see her, the pains were upon her again, and she struggled, her eyes softened now, full of tears, and when it was over again she covered her face with her hands and wept softly.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “I can’t stand it much longer.”

I would have done anything for her, my two arms, my feet, my hands, my life, all of it I would have given to lessen one pang of her anguish, but there I stood, unable to endure a spasmodic bellyache that finally sent me staggering, doubled up, into the hall.

Coming toward me was Dr. Stanley, and a nurse carrying a trayful of bottles and hypodermics.

They looked at me without speaking. Dr. Stanley took a phial of pills from the nurse’s tray and tumbled one into his palm.

“Take this,” he said.

I swallowed it in a fast gulp.

“My wife’s in bad shape, Doc.”

They sailed past me into the room. I waited. My bellyache subsided. In a few minutes they emerged, the doctor rubbing his hands.

“She’s coming along beautifully.”

“I tell you she’s suffering terribly, Doc.”

“Nonsense. She’s had scopolamine. She won’t remember a thing. We’re taking her to the delivery room.”

When they rolled her out of the room and down the hall, I hung back at first, pressed against the wall, afraid my presence would disturb her. But as she floated past I saw that she was asleep. They must have given her something, for her eyes were closed and her face was
transformed into an image of white loveliness. I walked down the corridor at her side. Once she moaned. It was the murmur of one who had achieved ineffable peace after hours in the storm. It brought peace to me too. Now I knew that all was well, that the baby would soon be born, and Joyce would be all right.

I turned back to the waiting room. Papa sat in one of the big chairs, his arms folded, an iron silence holding him.

“Soon now,” I said.

“What?” he whispered. “Nothing yet?”

“They’ve taken her to the delivery room.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re doing all they can.”

This made him growl, and I knew he felt I was conspiring with the hospital to keep the baby from being born. He stared ahead, saying no more.

A new crop of fathers sat in the waiting room, but their words were the same, the old wives’ tales out of the mouths of baffled men. I couldn’t stay there. Thinking of coffee, I left Papa in the waiting room and took the elevator to the hospital restaurant on the ground floor.

The place was full of nurses, doctors and internes. I sat at the counter and studied the menu. But I didn’t want anything. In spite of everything, I was deeply worried. I walked out the side door to the street.

It was a dismal morning, the fog heavy and warm. I lit a cigarette and followed the sidewalk around the hospital grounds. The path was lined with tall eugenia hedges, immaculately clipped, a corridor of green that led to a garden where a fountain sprayed water among big red stones. I walked around the fountain, and the spray kissed my face
with cool lips. Through the mist I saw the outline of a Gothic door. It was the hospital chapel. Suddenly, inexplicably, I began to cry, for here was the Thing I sought, the end of the desert, my house upon the earth. Eagerly I ran to the chapel.

Pax vobiscum!
It was a small place, with only a crucifix at the main altar. I knelt as a tide of contrition engulfed me, a thundering cataract that roared in my ears. There was no need to pray, to beg forgiveness. My whole being lost itself in the deep drift, like waves returning to the shore. I was there for nearly an hour, and full of laughter as I rose to go. For it was a time for laughter, a time for great joy.

Ten minutes later I saw the boy. He lay naked in the arms of a masked nurse. I couldn’t touch him because they were behind a plate glass window. He was pinched and ugly like a gnome dipped in egg yolk. With a mustache, he would have looked just like his grandfather. He shrieked as the nurse exhibited him. I counted ten fingers, ten toes, and one penis. Certainly a father could ask for no more. I nodded and the nurse covered his dreadful little body with blankets and carried him somewhere into the complex machinery of the great hospital.

Then they wheeled Joyce out of the delivery room. She was very tired, smiling heavily.

“Did you see him?” she whispered.

I squeezed her hand.

“Don’t talk now, darling. Sleep.”

“It was wonderful,” she sighed. “No pain, nothing.”

She closed her eyes and they wheeled her down the hall.

Papa was standing at the window in the waiting room. I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned. I didn’t have to say anything. He began to cry. He laid his head on my shoulder and his weeping was very painful. I felt the bones of his shoulders, the old softening muscles, and I smelled the smell of my father, the sweat of my father, the origin of my life. I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living.

I took him by the hand and we walked down the hall to the desk of the chief nurse. He covered his eyes with a red bandana into which his tears poured, and as he stood there crying, I told the nurse he wanted to see his grandson. He did not look at her, but his anguished joy was more than she could bear.

“It’s against the rules,” she said, “But…”

We followed her through swinging doors, Papa’s hand in mine. She disappeared and a moment later she was on the other side of the glass, her face masked, holding the baby. Papa did not see the baby, for his two hands in the red handkerchief covered his eyes, but he knew the baby was very near, and he was struck with reverence, as if afraid to look upon the face of God. Even if he had raised his eyes, he would not have seen the baby for he was blind with tears. After a few moments the nurse took the baby away and I led Papa down the hall. He cried until we reached the car.
The ordeal had drained all his strength. He was in a kind of stupor as I drove home, his head against the car seat, his hands limp in his lap.

“I want to go home,” he said.

“We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“To San Juan. To Mama.”

I looked at my watch. “The San Joaquin Daylight leaves in an hour. It’s a fast train.”

“I’ll get my tools. You take me to the depot.”

We drove on in silence. Gradually his strength returned. I parked the car in the street, before my house. We got out and he paused there to study the high peaked roof, the arched doorway.

“Good house,” he said.

“Floor sags a little.”

“Pooh. Don’t mean nothing.”

“We got a few termites.”

“Everybody’s got termites.”

“But nobody’s got a fireplace like mine.”

He grinned and lit a cigar.

“It’s a good one, kid. Plenty room for Santa Claus to come down the chimney.”

“Papa, you know that piece of land near Joe Muto’s place? You think I should buy it?”

“You stay right here and raise your family,” he said.

We entered the house and I could hear him singing as he packed his things.

FULL OF LIFE.
Copyright © 1952, 1988 by John Fante.

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EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01307-1

First Ecco edition 2002

Previously published by Black Sparrow Press

The Library of Congress has catalogued a previous edition as follows: Fante, John, 1909-1983

Full of life / John Fante.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3511.A594F85          1988

813’.52 – dcl9

87-27630

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