Streets of Gold (24 page)

“So you’ll go to Fiormonte in hatred? To such a beautiful village? No, Ignazio, that would be wrong.”

“Then I’ll go to Newark, New Jersey.”

“Newark? Why Newark?”

“Goomah Katie lives there.”

“Goomah Katie has five sons of her own.”

“She’d take me in.”

“Maybe. But even so, I don’t think you’d like Newark.”

“You know why this happened?”

“Why?”

“Because somebody put the Evil Eye on me.”

“Who told you that?”

“Aunt Victoria.”

“Aunt Victoria is a fool. There’s no such thing as the Evil Eye.”

“Mama sent me there because I was coughing, and she wanted to find out if somebody’d taken me by eyes, and Aunt Victoria dropped the oil in the water, and held the plate under my chin, and it made eyes.”

“That’s because oil and water don’t mix.”

“It don’t
always
make eyes, Grandpa.”

“No, only half the time.”

“Well, that’s what it was, anyway, Grandpa. The Evil Eye.”

“Ignazio, don’t talk like a greaseball, eh?”

“Miss Goodbody says ‘greaseball’ is a bad word.”

“Miss Goodbody is a Jew like Roosevelt. What does she know?”

“Are Jews bad, Grandpa?”

“Roosevelt is bad.”

“But I
like
Miss Goodbody.”

“That’s right, you
should
like your teacher.”

“Even if she’s a Jew?”

“There are good Jews and bad Jews. Roosevelt is a bad Jew.”

“Why?”

“Because he says bad things about Mussolini.”

“Is Mussolini good?”

“Mussolini is very good.”

“Then why does Miss Goodbody say bad things about him, too?”

“Because she’s a Jew.”

“Grandpa... was Jesus a Jew?”

“No.”

“Miss Goodbody says he was a Jew.”

“She’s lying.”

“He wasn’t?”

“He was Italian.”

That afternoon, I tried everything I knew on my grandfather. First I agreed with him that the only good people in the world were Italians, hoping this would soften him up enough to take me to Italy. I reminded him that in Fiormonte you could eat off the streets, whereas in Harlem you lived in peril of your very life, witness the brutal beating I had suffered at the hands of six hundred Ethiopian savages on Park Avenue that time, remember? My grandfather said that October was not a good time to be going to Fiormonte, and when I asked him why not October, he said, “April is better.” So I asked him to call Goomah Katie in Newark, New Jersey, and tell her he was bringing me there to stay with her, and explain to her that I was no trouble at all even though I was blind, I was just a quiet little kid who played nice piano, and I would be a definite asset to her household, and my grandfather said, “Goomah Katie doesn’t have a piano.”

I then suggested that he could perhaps talk to my mother and convince her either to get Vesuvio back from the ASPCA or else buy me another dog, and I even offered a sort of bribe by promising I’d go to the opera with him sometime if only he would talk to my mother. My grandfather said, “I don’t like to interfere in your mother’s house.” So I said it might be a good idea if he told my mother she was no longer welcome in
his
house if she didn’t get my dog back or get me another dog, and he said, “She’s always welcome in my house, Ignazio, the same as you.” I told him I was a poor little blind kid who needed something furry and loyal to love me, and he said, “You’re not poor and you’re not little, and your mother loves you more than Vesuvio ever could.” So then I hinted that my piano lessons might suffer if I didn’t have man’s best friend around to stroke and pet while I ran over the pieces in my head, and he said, “Professor Passaro doesn’t have a dog,” and finally I said, “Gee, Grandpa, I thought you loved me,” which was my last desperate stab at getting that damn dog back, or getting another dog, or getting out of the city, and my grandfather said, “I do love you, Ignazio. But a dog is a dog, and a family is a family.” I’m surprised he didn’t add, “And a good cigar is a smoke,” because he lit up one of his guinea stinkers at that point, perhaps to signal that the debate was over, and then he said, “Stay home, have a cup of hot chocolate, okay?”

So I decided to stay.

I used to hide a lot. Under the dining room table, or under the bed, or in the closet — I think it made me feel less blind. I’m not sure why that was true. I think an enclosed space, a tight small space, was somehow less threatening to me. I was hiding under my Uncle Luke’s bed on Christmas Day. In the kitchen, the women were doing the dishes, except for my Aunt Victoria, who was playing cards with the men in the dining room. I could hear their voices and the sound of Pino tuning his mandolin, and in the kitchen the rattle of dishes and the metallic clatter of utensils. I lay flat on my back under Luke’s bed, and listened.

“Does anybody want more coffee?” my grandmother asked.

“No, thank you, Mom,” Matty said.

“You deal,” my father said.

“Somebody’s light,” Dominick said.

“Me,” Luke said.

“Aunt Victoria? You in?”

“I’m in.”

Aunt Victoria was a chord I would not learn till years later, a D-flat dominant, augmented nine, augmented eleven — shrill, disssonant, sharp, and irritating. She was my grandmother’s other sister, a spinster, as hard and ungiving as Bianca was soft and generous. I didn’t like her. Nobody liked her. My mother said Aunt Victoria was the way she was because she was constipated. When Tony heard this, he suggested that we buy her a tin of Ex-Lax for Christmas. Tony and I both hated Ex-Lax. As a weekly routine in our house we were given one laxative or another each Saturday night before we went to bed. Ex-Lax or milk of magnesia or citrate of magnesia. They were all terrible. But being an American meant being regular.

“What do you say, Aunt Victoria? Can you open or not?”

“I pass.”

“I’ll open for a penny,” Luke said.

“Without me.”

“Cristie, are you bringing in that pastry?”

“Hold your horses.”

“Raise it a penny.”

“Out.”

“I’ll see you.”

“Cards.”

Pino began playing an Italian song. His son Tommy, who was twenty-one years old and reportedly as handsome as his mother had been beautiful, immediately began singing along with his father, and then my grandfather joined in, and the three of them together sang at the tops of their voices while the poker game continued around them. In the kitchen, the women talked above the noise of the game and the doubtful harmony of the singers. For Christmas, my brother Tony had given me a pair of woolen gloves to keep my hands warm when I went up to Passaro’s with him each Saturday, and my Uncle Luke had given me a black leather fleece-lined aviator’s helmet with goggles on it, and my grandfather had made me a brand-new mackinaw, and my parents had bought me electric trains with an engine that whistled, and I was thinking maybe I should get out from under the bed and go play with the trains my father had set up for me in the front room of Grandpa’s house, when all of a sudden I heard the sound of cards being slapped onto the tabletop, and my Uncle Luke yelled, “Son of a
bitch
!”

My grandfather and Pino stopped singing. Tommy’s voice hung in the silence for just an instant longer.

“Hey!” my grandfather said.

“She stays in the game when she hasn’t got anything, and ruins my draw!” Luke said.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

“I hate to play with goddamn women in the game.”

“I put in my money, didn’t I?” Aunt Victoria said, and then very calmy added, “I deal, I believe. If you don’t like playing with women, just drop out, sonny boy.”

“That’s right, I
don’t
.”

“
That’s
obvious.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Take it how you want it.”

“What’d she mean by that crack?”

“Play cards, play cards,” my grandfather said.

“No, what’d she mean?”

“I meant that someone who’s thirty-two years of age should at least be engaged by now.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Luke!” my grandmother called from the kitchen. “That’s your aunt you’re talking to.”

“What do I care who she is? Tell her to mind her own business.”

“Hey, come on, Luke...”

“You keep out of this, Doc!”

“Ah,
now
we’re getting to it!” Aunt Victoria said. “Do you hear how he talks to his own brother?”

“He’s
my
brother, I can talk to him any way I...”

“Certainly. You think I don’t know
why
?”

“Are we playing cards here, or what?” my father asked.

“It’s because you’re jealous of him,” Aunt Victoria said. “
He’s
the one who went to college,
he’s
the one who’s engaged already....”

“Come on, who’s dealing?” Matty said.

“You’re not fooling me, sonny boy,” Aunt Victoria said. “You think I don’t know what’s eating you? You think I was born yesterday?”

“Why the hell don’t you go home?” Luke said.

“Tessie, are you listening to this?” Aunt Victoria said.

“Luke, that’s your aunt!”

“So who asked her to come here?”

“
I
did!” my grandfather said, and suddenly everyone fell silent. “Is this a family?” he asked. “Is this a family on Christmas?” No one answered. “Victoria, you talk too much, you always did. Luke, apologize to your aunt.”

“What for?”

“Because she’s your aunt.”

“She can go straight to hell!” Luke said, and stormed out of the room and into his bedroom, where I was hiding under the bed. He slammed the door, went directly to the piano, and began playing loudly and angrily. In a moment, my grandfather came into the room and closed the door again behind him.

“Hey,” he said. “Stop the piano a minute. Listen to me.”

“Leave me alone, Pop.”

“Come on, what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Just leave me alone, Pop, okay?”

“You want to go to college?” my grandfather said.

“No,” Luke answered. His hands stopped, the sound of the piano stopped.

“If you want to go to college, I’ll send you to college.”

“I’m thirty-two years old, Pop,” Luke said. His voice was very low. From where I lay under the bed I could barely hear him.

“So? Your brother is twenty-five.”

“He’s a lawyer already. Anyway, that ain’t it.”

“Then what?” my grandfather asked. “Tell me.”

“The hell with it.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s just...” Luke said, and hesitated. I held my breath in the silence. “Pop,” he said at last. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t want to be a presser, that’s for sure. I’m sorry, Pop, but...”

“All right. What do you
want
to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can be anything you like. In this country, you can be anything.”

“Sure,” Luke said. “Do
you
believe that, Pop?”

My grandfather did not answer. There was another long silence. Then my grandfather said, “What is it,
figlio mio
, what?”

“You think I don’t
try
to get girls?” Luke said suddenly and passionately. “Look at me, Pop. I’m a skinny marink, I’m cockeyed without my glasses; you think I don’t try?”

“You’re a very handsome boy,” my grandfather said. “You take after my cousin Rodolfo in Fiormonte, may he rest in peace. He was very tall like you, and very handsome.”

“Yeah.”

“In Fiormonte, the girls would go crazy for you.”

“This ain’t Fiormonte, it’s Harlem. You know what they call me?”

“What?”

“Stretch. They call me Stretch.”

“So?”

“So how would you like to be called Stretch?”

“What does that mean, Stretch?”

“Well... skinny, I guess.”

“You know what they called
me
when I was young?”

“What?” Luke said.

“
Ciuco
. That means donkey. It means jackass.”

“Why’d they call you that?”

“I have big ears. Listen, you see your mother? She was a beauty, even more beautiful than Angelina, may she rest in peace, who was Pino’s wife. Do you think your mother cared about my ears?” My grandfather paused, and then said, “You want to go to college?”

“It’s too late, Pop,” Luke said.

“If you don’t want to work in the tailor shop, you don’t have to.”

“What would I do, Pop?”

“What do you
want
to do?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said.

From under the bed, I wanted to shout, “Tell him, Uncle Luke! Tell him you want to have a band! Tell him you asked my father for a job in the band! Please, Uncle Luke, tell him!”

Luke did not tell him. He simply said, again, “I don’t know.”

“All right, don’t worry,” my grandfather said. “You’ll find something. Something will please you. And you’ll find a woman, too, and she’ll love you, don’t worry. Now come in the other room. Make up with your aunt. She doesn’t realize.”

“Do
you
realize, Pop?”

“Maybe,” my grandfather answered. “Come,” he said. “It’s your family in there.”

They went out of the room, and I lay still arid thoughtful under the bed. Pino began playing his mandolin again, and soon there was laughter.

There are many different ways of approaching the same tune. I usually play it the way I
feel
it, but I try nonetheless to keep in mind the composer’s intent. I would never, for example, take the outrageous liberties Barbra Streisand took with “Happy Days Are Here Again,” however spectacular the result may have been. Nor would I rob any tune of its emotional content by imposing upon it a technical virtuosity that might be dazzling but essentially false to the mood. It’s one thing to know your tools; it’s quite another to use those tools so cold-bloodedly that they render the tune meaningless. There are thousands of tunes in my head, a veritable catalog of chord charts and melodies. Pick a tune, any tune (almost), and I will sit down at the piano and play it for you in all twelve keys. In fact, I don’t feel I really
know
a song unless I can play it in all twelve keys. To a jazz musician, that’s not a particularly impressive accomplishment. Once he knows the chart, he can transpose it to any key and tack on the melody in that new key. The melody is unimportant to the jazz musician. When you hear him say, “Oh, that’s a great tune,” he’s not referring to the melody. He is referring to the chord progression. He will, in fact, play the melody in the so-called head chorus only to orient the audience, and then will improvise entirely
new
melodies in the second chorus and each succeeding chorus. But I’ll immediately turn a deaf ear to those musicians who try to transmogrify a keyboard or a horn into a laboratory. At the piano, I could give you (though it would pain me) a fair demonstration of a coldly antiseptic atonal style, and you might even enjoy it, who knows? But music to me is something quite more than a sterile unraveling. For example, I would never play “Tina in the Closet” in the following manner: