Wait Until Spring Bandini (19 page)

‘Something happens but you can’t tell,’ she said. ‘Because if you have faith in God you have to pray, but I don’t go around saying it.’

Their jaws ceased and they looked at her.

Silence.

‘What’d you say, Mamma?’

‘I didn’t say a word.’

Federico and August glanced at one another and tried to smile. Then August’s face turned white and he got up and left the table. Federico grabbed a piece of white meat and followed. Arturo put his fists under the table and squeezed them until the pain in his palms drove back the desire to cry.

‘What chicken!’ he said. ‘You ought to try it, Mamma. Just a taste.’

‘No matter what happens, you have to have faith,’ she said. ‘I don’t have fine dresses and I don’t go to dances with him, but I have faith, and they don’t know it. But God knows it, and the Virgin Mary, and no matter what happens they know it. Sometimes I sit here all day, and no matter what happens they know because God died on the cross.’

‘Sure they know it,’ he said.

He got up and put his arms around her and kissed her. He saw into her bosom: the white drooping breasts, and he thought of little children, of Federico in infancy.

‘Sure they know it,’ he said again. But he felt it coming from his toes, and he could not bear it. ‘Sure they know it, Mamma.’

He threw back his shoulders and strolled out of the kitchen to the clothes closet in his own room. He took the half-filled laundry bag from the hook behind the door and crushed it around his face and mouth. Then he let it go, howling and crying until his sides ached. When he was finished, dry and clean inside, no pain except the sting in his eyes as he stepped into the living-room light, he knew that he had to find his father.

‘Watch her,’ he said to his brothers. She had gone back
to bed and they could see her through the open door, her face turned away.

‘What’ll we do if she does something?’ August said.

‘She won’t do anything. Be quiet, and nice.’

Moonlight. Bright enough to play ball. He took the short-cut across the trestle bridge. Below him, under the bridge, transients huddled over a red and yellow fire. At midnight they would grab the fast freight for Denver, thirty miles away. He found himself scanning the faces, seeking that of his father. But Bandini would not be down there; the place to find his father was at the Imperial Poolhall, or up in Rocco Saccone’s room. His father belonged to the union. He wouldn’t be down there.

Nor was he in the cardroom at the Imperial.

Jim the bartender.

‘He left about two hours ago with that wop stonecutter.’

‘You mean Rocco Saccone?’

‘That’s him – that good-looking Eyetalian.’

He found Rocco in his room, seated at a table radio by the window, eating walnuts and listening to the jazz come out. A newspaper was spread at his feet to catch the walnut shells. He stood at the door, the soft darkness of Rocco’s eyes letting him know he was not welcome. But his father was not in the room, not a sign of him.

‘Where’s my father, Rocco?’

‘How do I know? He’sa your fodder. He’sa not my fodder.’

But he had a boy’s instinct for the truth.

‘I thought he was living here with you.’

‘He’sa live by hisself.’

Arturo checked it: a lie.

‘Where does he live, Rocco?’

Rocco tossed his hands.

‘I canna say. I no see him no more.’

Another lie.

‘Jim the bartender says you were with him tonight.’

Rocco jumped to his feet and waved his fist.

‘That Jeem, she’sa lyin’ bastard! He’sa come along stick hissa nose where she’sa got no business. You fodder, he’sa man. He know what he’sa doing.’

Now he knew.

‘Rocco,’ he said. ‘Do you know a woman, Effie Hildegarde?’

Rocco looked puzzled. ‘Affie Hildegarde?’ He scanned the ceiling. ‘Who ees thees womans? For why you wanna know?’

‘It’s nothing.’

He was sure of it. Rocco hurried after him down the hall, shouting at him from the top of the stairs. ‘Hey you keed! Where you go now?’

‘Home.’

‘Good,’ Rocco said. ‘Home, she’sa good place for keeds.’

He did not belong here. Halfway up Hildegarde Road he knew he dared not confront his father. He had no right here. His presence was intrusive, impudent. How could he tell his father to come home? Suppose his father answered: you get the hell out of here? And that, he knew, was exactly what his father would say. He had best turn around and go home for he was moving in a sphere beyond his experience. Up there with his father was a woman. That made it different. Now he remembered something: once when he was younger he sought his father at the poolhall. His father rose from the
table and followed him outside. Then he put his fingers around my throat not hard but meaning it, and he said: don’t do that again.

He was afraid of his father, scared to death of his father. In his life he had got but three beatings. Only three, but they had been violent, terrifying, unforgettable.

No thank you: never again.

He stood in the shadows of the deep pines that grew down to the circular driveway, where an expanse of lawn spread itself to the stone cottage. There was a light behind the Venetian blinds in the two front windows, but the blinds served their purpose. The sight of that cottage, so clear in moonlight and the glare of the white mountains towering in the west, such a beautiful place, made him very proud of his father. No use talking: this was pretty swell. His father was a lowdown dog and all those things, but he was in that cottage now, and it certainly proved something. You couldn’t be very lowdown if you could move in on something like that. You’re quite a guy, Papa. You’re killing Mamma, but you’re wonderful. You and me both. Because someday I’ll be doing it too, and her name is Rosa Pinelli.

He tiptoed across the gravel driveway to a strip of soggy lawn moving in the direction of the garage and the garden behind the house. A disarray of cut stone, planks, mortar boxes, and a sand screen in the garden told him that his father was working here. On tiptoe, he made his way to the place. The thing he was building, whatever it was, stood out like a black mound, straw and canvas covering it to prevent the mortar from freezing.

Suddenly he was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps his father wasn’t living here at all. Maybe he was just a common
ordinary bricklayer who went away every night and came back in the morning. He lifted the canvas. It was a stone bench or something; he didn’t care. The whole thing was a hoax. His father wasn’t living with the richest woman in town. Hell, he was only working for her. In disgust he walked back to the road, down the middle of the gravel path, too disillusioned to bother about the crunch and squeal of gravel under his feet.

As he reached the pines, he heard the click of a latch. Immediately he was flat on his face in a bed of wet pine needles, a bar of light from the cottage door spearing the bright night. A man came through the door and stood on the edge of the short porch, the red tip of a lighted cigar like a red marble near his mouth. It was Bandini. He looked into the sky and took deep breaths of the cold air. Arturo shuddered with delight. Holy Jumping Judas, but he looked swell! He wore bright red bedroom slippers, blue pajamas, and a red lounging robe that had white tassels on the sash ends. Holy Jumping Jiminy, he looked like Helmer the banker and President Roosevelt. He looked like the King of England. O boy, what a man! After his father went inside and closed the door behind him he hugged the earth with delight, digging his teeth into acrid pine needles. To think that he had come up here to bring his father home! How crazy he had been. Not for anything would he ever disturb that picture of his father in the splendor of that new world. His mother would have to suffer; he and his brothers would have to go hungry. But it was worth it. Ah, how wonderful he had looked! As he hurried down the hill, skipping, sometimes tossing a stone into the ravine, his mind fed itself voraciously upon the scene he had just left.

But one look at the wasted, sunken face of his mother sleeping the sleep that brought no rest, and he hated his father again.

He shook her.

‘I saw him,’ he said.

She opened her eyes and wet her lips.

‘Where is he?’

‘He lives down in the Rocky Mountain Hotel. He’s in the same room with Rocco, just him and Rocco together.’

She closed her eyes and turned away from him, pulling her shoulder away from the light touch of his hand. He undressed, darkened the house, and crawled into bed, pressing himself against August’s hot back until the chill of the sheets had worn away.

Sometime during the night he was aroused, and he opened his sticky eyes to find her sitting at his side, shaking him awake. He could scarcely see her face, for she had not switched on the light.

‘What did he say?’ she whispered.

‘Who?’ But he remembered quickly and sat up. ‘He said he wanted to come home. He said you won’t let him. He said you’ll kick him out. He was afraid to come home.’

She sat up proudly.

‘He deserves it,’ she said. ‘He can’t do that to me.’

‘He looked awfully blue and sad. He looked sick.’

‘Huh!’ she said.

‘He wants to come home. He feels lousy.’

‘It’s good for him,’ she said, arching her back. ‘Maybe he’ll learn what a home means after this. Let him stay away a few more days. He’ll come crawling on his knees. I know that man.’

He was so tired, asleep even as she spoke.

The deep days, the sad days.

When he awoke the next morning, he found August wide-eyed too, and they listened to the noise that had awakened them. It was Mamma in the front room, pushing the carpet sweeper back and forth, the carpet sweeper that went squeakedy-bump, squeakedy-bump. Breakfast was bread and coffee. While they ate she made their lunches out of what remained of yesterday’s chicken. They were very pleased: she wore her nice blue housedress, and her hair was tightly combed, tighter than they had ever seen it, rolled in a coil on the top of her head. Never before had they seen her ears so plainly. Her hair was usually loose, hiding them. Pretty ears, small and pink.

August talking:

‘Today’s Friday. We have to eat fish.’

‘Shut your holy face!’ Arturo said.

‘I didn’t know it was Friday,’ Federico said. ‘Why did you have to tell us, August.’

‘Because he’s a holy fool,’ Arturo said.

‘It’s no sin to eat chicken on Friday, if you can’t afford fish,’ Maria said.

Right. Hurray for Mamma. They yah-yah-yahed August, who snorted his contempt. ‘Just the same, I’m not going to eat chicken today.’

‘Okay, sucker.’

But he was adamant. Maria made him a lunch of bread dipped in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. His share of the chicken went to his two brothers.

Friday. Test day. No Rosa.

Pssssst, Gertie. She popped her gum and looked his way.

No, she hadn’t see Rosa.

No, she didn’t know if Rosa was in town.

No, she hadn’t heard anything. Even if she did, she wouldn’t tell him. Because, to be very honest about it, she would rather not talk to him.

‘You cow,’ he said. ‘You milk cow always chewing your cud.’

‘Dago!’

He purpled, half rose out of his desk.

‘You dirty little blond bitch!’

She gasped, buried her face in horror.

Test day. By ten thirty he knew he had flunked geometry. At the noon bell he was still fighting the English composition quiz. He was the last person in the room, he and Gertie Williams. Anything to get through before Gertie. He ignored the last three questions, scooped up his papers, and turned them in. At the cloak-room door, he looked over his shoulder and sneered triumphantly at Gertie, her blond hair awry, her small teeth feverishly gnawing the end of her pencil. She returned his glance with one of unspeakable hatred, with eyes that said, I’ll get you for this, Arturo Bandini: I’ll get you.

At two o’clock that afternoon she had her revenge.

Psssssst, Arturo.

The note she had written fell on his history book. That glittering smile on Gertie’s face, the wild look in her eyes, and her jaws that had stopped moving, told him not to read the note. But he was curious.

He felt his stomach floating away from him, and a sickly smile played with his trembling lips. He turned slowly and looked at Gertie, his face stupid and smiling sickly. In her pale eyes was an expression of delight and regret and horror. He crushed the note, slumped down as far as his legs would reach, and hid his face. Save for the roar of his heart, he was dead, neither hearing, seeing, nor feeling.

In a little while he was conscious of a whispered hubbub about him, of a restlessness and excitement flitting through the room. Something had happened, the air fluttered with it. Sister Superior turned away and Sister Celia came back to her desk on the rostrum.

‘The class will rise and kneel.’

They arose, and in the hush no one looked away from the nun’s calm eyes. ‘We have just received tragic news from the university hospital,’ she said. ‘We must be brave, and we must pray. Our beloved classmate, our beloved Rosa Pinelli, died of pneumonia at two o’clock this afternoon.’