Wait Until Spring Bandini (20 page)

There was fish for dinner because Grandma Donna had sent five dollars in the mail. A late dinner: it was not until eight o’clock that they sat down. Nor was there any reason for it. The fish was baked and finished long before that, but Maria kept it in the oven. When they gathered at the table there was some confusion, August and Federico fighting for places. Then they saw what it was. Mamma had set up Papa’s place again.

‘Is he coming?’ August said.

‘Of course he’s coming,’ Maria said. ‘Where else would your father eat?’

Queer talk. August studied her. She was wearing another clean housedress, this time the green one, and she ate a lot. Federico gobbled his milk and wiped his mouth.

‘Hey Arturo. Your girl died. We had to pray for her.’

He was not eating, dabbing the fish in his plate with the end of his fork. For two years he had bragged to his parents and brothers that Rosa was his girl. Now he had to eat his words.

‘She wasn’t my girl. She was just a friend.’

But he bowed his head, averting the gaze of his mother, her sympathy coming across the table to him, suffocating him.

‘Rosa Pinelli, dead?’ she asked. ‘When?’

And while his brothers supplied the answers the crush and warmth of her sympathy poured upon him, and he
was afraid to raise his eyes. He pushed back his chair and arose.

‘I’m not very hungry.’

He kept his eyes away from her as he entered the kitchen and passed through to the back yard. He wanted to be alone so he could let go and release the constriction in his chest, because she hated me and I made her shiver, but his mother wouldn’t let him, she was coming from the dining room, he could hear her footsteps, and he got up and hurried through the back yard and down the alley.

‘Arturo!’

He walked down the pasture where his dogs were buried, where it was dark and he couldn’t be seen, and then he cried and panted, sitting with his back against the black willow, because she hated me, because I was a thief, but Oh hell, Rosa, I stole it from my mother and that isn’t really stealing, but a Christmas present, and I cleared it up too, I went to confessional and got it all cleared up.

From the alley he heard his mother calling him, calling out to tell her where he was. ‘I’m coming,’ he answered, making sure his eyes were dry, licking the taste of tears from his lips. He climbed the barbed-wire fence at the corner of the pasture, and she came toward him in the middle of the alley, wearing a shawl and peering secretively over her shoulder in the direction of the house. Quickly she pried open his tight fist.

‘Shhhhhhh. Don’t say a word to August or Federico.’

He opened his palm and found a fifty-cent piece.

‘Go to the show,’ she whispered. ‘Buy yourself some ice cream with the rest. Shhhhhhh. Not a word to your brothers.’

He turned away indifferently, walking down the alley, the coin meaningless in his fist. She called him after a few yards, and he returned.

‘Shhhhhhh. Not a word to your father. Try to get home before he does.’

He walked down to the drugstore across from the filling station and sucked up a milkshake without tasting it. A crowd of collegians came in and took up all seats at the soda-fountain. A tall girl in her early twenties sat beside him. She loosened her scarf and threw back the collar of her leather jacket. He watched her in the mirror behind the soda-fountain, the pink cheeks flushed and alive from the cold night air, the gray eyes huge and spilling excitement. She saw him staring at her through the glass and she turned and gave him a smile, her teeth even and sparkling.

‘Hello there!’ she said, her smile the sort reserved for younger boys. He answered, ‘Hi,’ and she said nothing more to him and became absorbed in the collegian on the other side of her, a grim fellow wearing a silver and gold ‘C’ on his chest. The girl had a vigor and radiance that made him forget his grief. Over the ethereal odor of drugs and patent medicines he scented the fragrance of lilac perfume. He watched the long, tapering hands and the fresh thickness of her strong lips as she sipped her coke, her pinkish throat pulsing as the liquid went down. He paid for his drink and lifted himself off the fountain stool. The girl turned to see him go, that thrilling smile her way of saying goodbye. No more than that, but when he stood outside the drugstore he was convinced that Rosa Pinelli was not dead, that it had been a false report, that she was alive and breathing and laughing like the college girl in the store, like all the girls in the world.

Five minutes later, standing under the street lamp in front of Rosa’s darkened house, he gazed in horror and misery at the white and ghastly thing gleaming in the night, the long silk ribbons swaying as a gust of wind caressed them: the mark of the dead, a funeral wreath. Suddenly his mouth was full of dust-like spittle. He turned and walked down the street. The trees, the sighing trees! He quickened his pace. The wind, the cold and lonely wind! He began to run. The dead, the awful dead! They were upon him, thundering upon him out of the night sky, calling him and moaning to him, tumbling and rolling to seize him. Like mad he ran, the streets shrieking with the echo of his pattering feet, a cold and haunting clamminess in the middle of his back. He took the short cut over the trestle bridge. He fell, stumbling over a railroad tie, sprawling hands first into the cold, freezing embankment. He was running again even before he crawled to his feet, and he stumbled and went down and rose up again and rushed away. When he reached his own street, he trotted, and when he was only a few yards from his own home, he slowed down to an easy walk, brushing the dirt from his clothes.

Home.

There it was, a light in the front window. Home, where nothing ever happened, where it was warm and where there was no death.

‘Arturo …’

His mother was standing in the door. He walked past her and into the warm front room, smelling it, feeling it, revelling in it. August and Federico were already in bed. He undressed quickly, frantically, in the semi-darkness. Then the light from the front room went out and the house was dark.

‘Arturo?’

He walked to her bedside.

‘Yes?’

She threw back the covers and tugged at his arm.

‘In here, Arturo. With me.’

His very fingers seemed to burst into tears as he slipped beside her and lost himself in the soothing warmth of her arms.

The rosary for Rosa.

He was there that Sunday afternoon, kneeling with his classmates at the Blessed Virgin’s altar. Far down in front, their dark heads raised to the waxen Madonna, were Rosa’s parents. They were such big people, there was so much of them to be shaken and convulsed as the priest’s dry intonation floated through the cold church like a tired bird doomed to lift its wings once more on a journey that had no end. This was what happened when you died: someday he would be dead and somewhere on the earth this would happen again. He would not be there but it was not necessary to be there, for this would already be a memory. He would be dead, and yet the living would not be unknown to him, for this would happen again, a memory out of life before it had been lived.

Rosa, my Rosa, I cannot believe that you hated me, for there is no hate where you are now, here among us and yet far away. I am only a boy, Rosa, and the mystery of where you are is no mystery when I think of the beauty of your face and the laughter of your galoshes when you walked down the hall. Because you were such a honey, Rosa, you were such a good girl, and I wanted you, and a fellow can’t be so bad if he loves a girl so good as you. And if you hate me now, Rosa, and I cannot believe that you hate me now, then look
upon my grief and believe that I want you here, for that is good too. I know that you cannot come back, Rosa my true love, but there is in this cold church this afternoon a dream of your presence, a comfort in your forgiveness, a sadness that I cannot touch you, because I love you and I will love you forever, and when they gather on some tomorrow for me, then I shall have known it even before they gather, and it will not be strange to us …

After the services they gathered for a moment in the vestibule. Sister Celia, sniffling into a tiny handkerchief, called for quiet. Her glass eye, they noticed, had rolled around considerably, the pupil barely visible.

‘The funeral will be at nine tomorrow,’ she said. ‘The eighth-grade class will be dismissed for the day.’

‘Hot dog – what a break!’

The nun speared him with her glass eye. It was Gonzalez, the class moron. He backed to the wall and pulled his neck far into his shoulders, grinning his embarrassment.

‘You!’ the nun said. ‘It
would
be you!’

He grinned helplessly.

‘The eighth-grade boys will please gather in the classroom immediately after we leave the church. The girls are excused.’

They crossed the churchyard in silence, Rodriguez, Morgan, Kilroy, Heilman, Bandini, O’Brien, O’Leary, Harrington, and all the others. No one spoke as they climbed the stairs and walked to their desks on the first floor. Mutely they stared at Rosa’s dust-covered desk, her books still in the shelf. Then Sister Celia entered.

‘Rosa’s parents have asked that you boys of her class act
as pallbearers tomorrow. Those who wish to do so will please raise their hands.’

Seven hands reached for the ceiling. The nun considered them all, calling them by name to step forward. Harrington, Kilroy, O’Brien, O’Leary. Bandini. Arturo stood among those chosen, next to Harrington and Kilroy. She pondered the case of Arturo Bandini.

‘No Arturo,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’re not strong enough.’

‘But I am!’ he insisted, glaring at Kilroy, at O’Brien, at Heilman. Strong enough! They were a head taller than himself, but at one time or another he had licked them all. Nay, he could lick any two of them, at any time, day or night.

‘No Arturo. Please be seated. Morgan, please step up.’

He sat down, sneering at the irony of it. Ah, Rosa! He could have carried her in his arms for a thousand miles, in his own two arms to a hundred graves and back again, and yet in the eyes of Sister Celia he was not strong enough. These nuns! They were so sweet and so gentle – and so stupid. They were all like Sister Celia: they saw from one good eye, and the other was blind and worthless. In that hour he knew that he should hate no one, but he couldn’t help it: he hated Sister Celia.

Cynical and disgusted, he walked down the front steps and into the wintry afternoon that was growing cold. Head down and hands shoved in his pockets, he started for home. When he reached the corner and looked up he saw Gertie Williams across the street, her thin shoulder blades moving under her red woollen coat. She moved slowly, her hands in the pockets of her coat that outlined her thin hips. He gritted his teeth as he thought again of Gertie’s note. Rosa
hates you and you make her shiver. Then Gertie heard his footstep as he mounted the curbing. She saw him and began walking fast. He had no desire to speak to her or to follow her, but the moment she quickened her steps the impulse to pursue her took him, and he was walking fast too. Suddenly, somewhere in the middle of Gertie’s thin shoulder blades, he saw the truth. Rosa
hadn’t
said that. Rosa
wouldn’t
say that. Not about anyone. It was a lie. Gertie had written that she saw Rosa ‘yesterday.’ But that was impossible because on that yesterday Rosa was very sick and had died in the hospital the next afternoon.

He broke into a run and so did Gertie, but she was no match for his quickness. When he caught up with her, standing in front of her and spreading his arms to prevent her from passing, she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, her hands on her hips, defiance in her pale eyes.

‘If you dare lay a hand on me, Arturo Bandini, I’ll scream.’

‘Gertie,’ he said. ‘If you don’t tell me the truth about that note I’m going to smack you right in the jaw.’

‘Oh, that!’ she said haughtily. ‘A lot you know about
that
!’

‘Gertie,’ he said. ‘Rosa never said she hated me, and you know it.’

Gertie brushed past his arm, tossed her blond curls into the air, and said, ‘Well, even if she
didn’t
say it, I have an idea she
thought
it.’

He stood there and watched her primping down the street, throwing her head like a Shetland pony. Then he started to laugh.

The funeral on Monday morning was an epilogue. He had no desire to attend; he had had enough of sadness. After August and Federico left for school, he sat on the steps of the front porch and opened his chest to the warm January sun. A little while and it would be spring: two or three weeks more and the big-league clubs would head south for spring training. He pulled off his shirt and lay face down on the dry brown lawn. Nothing like a good tan, nothing like having one before any other kid in town.

Pretty day, a day like a girl. He rolled to his back and watched the clouds tumble toward the south. Up there was the big wind; he had heard that it came all the way from Alaska, from Russia, but the high mountains protected the town. He thought of Rosa’s books, how they were bound in blue oilcloth the color of that morning sky. Easy day, a couple of dogs wandering by, making quick stops at every tree. He pressed his ear to the earth. Over on the north side of town, in Highland Cemetery they were lowering Rosa into a grave. He blew gently into the ground, kissed it, tasted it with the end of his tongue. Some day he would get his father to cut a stone for Rosa’s grave.

The mailman stepped off the Gleason porch across the street and approached the Bandini house. Arturo arose and
took the letter he offered. It was from Grandma Toscana. He brought it inside and watched his mother tear it open. There was a short message and a five-dollar bill. She pushed the five-dollar bill into her pocket and burned the message. He returned to the lawn and stretched out again.

In a little while Maria came out of the house carrying her downtown purse. He did not lift his cheek from the dry lawn, nor answer when she told him that she would return in an hour. One of the dogs crossed the lawn and sniffed his hair. He was brown and black, with huge white paws. He smiled when the big warm tongue licked his ears. He made a crook in his arm, and the dog nestled his head in it. Soon the beast was asleep. He put his ear to the furry chest and counted the heartbeat. The dog opened one eye, leaped to his feet, and licked his face with overwhelming affection. Two more dogs appeared, hurrying along, very busy along the line of trees bordering the street. The brown and black dog lifted his ears, announced himself with a cautious bark, and ran after them. They stopped and snarled, ordering him to leave them alone. Sadly the brown and black dog returned to Arturo. His heart went out to the animal.

‘You stay here with me,’ he said. ‘You’re my dog. Your name’s Jumbo. Good old Jumbo.’

Jumbo romped joyfully and attacked his face again.

He was giving Jumbo a bath in the kitchen sink when Maria returned from downtown. She shrieked, dropped her packages, and fled into the bedroom, barring the door behind her.

‘Take him away!’ she screamed. ‘Get him out of here.’

Jumbo shook himself loose and rushed panic-stricken out of the house, sprinkling water and soap suds everywhere.
Arturo pursued him, pleading with him to come back. Jumbo made running dives at the earth, whizzing in a wide circle, rolling on his back, and shaking himself dry. He finally disappeared into the coal shed. A cloud of coal dust rolled from the door. Arturo stood on the back porch and groaned. His mother’s shrieks from the bedroom still pierced the house. He hurried to the door and quieted her, but she refused to come out until he had locked both front and back doors.

‘It’s only Jumbo,’ he soothed. ‘It’s only my dog, Jumbo.’

She went back to the kitchen and peeked through the window. Jumbo, black with coal dust, was still rushing wildly in a circle, throwing himself on his back and rushing off to do it again.

‘He looks like a wolf,’ she said.

‘He’s half wolf, but he’s friendly.’

‘I won’t have him around here,’ she said.

That, he knew, was the beginning of a controversy lasting for at least two weeks. It was so with all his dogs. In the end Jumbo, like his predecessors, would follow her around devotedly, with no regard for anyone else in the family.

He watched her unwrap her purchases.

Spaghetti, tomato sauce, Roman cheese. But they never had spaghetti on weekdays. It was exclusively for Sunday dinner.

‘How come?’

‘It’s a little surprise for your father.’

‘Is he coming home?’

‘He’ll be home today.’

‘How do you know? Did you see him?’

‘Don’t ask me. I just know he’ll be home today.’

He cut a piece of cheese for Jumbo and went out and called him. Jumbo, he discovered, could sit up. He was delighted: here was an intelligent dog, and not a mere hound dog. No doubt it was part of his wolf heritage. With Jumbo running along, his nose to the ground, sniffing and marking every tree on both sides of the street, now a block ahead of him, now a half behind him, now rushing up and barking at him, he walked westward toward the low foothills, the white peaks towering beyond.

At the city limits, where Hildegarde Road turned sharply to the south, Jumbo growled like a wolf, surveyed the pines and underbrush on both sides of him, and disappeared into the ravine, his menacing growl a warning to whatever wild creatures that might confront him. A bloodhound! Arturo watched him weave into the brush, his belly close to the earth. What a dog! Part wolf, and part bloodhound.

A hundred yards from the crest of the hill, he heard a sound that was warm and familiar from the earliest memories of his childhood: the plinking of his father’s stone mallet when it struck the dressing chisel and split the stone asunder. He was glad: it meant that his father would be in work clothes, and he liked his father in work clothes, he was easy to approach when in work clothes.

There was a crashing of thickets at his left and Jumbo rushed back to the road. Between his teeth was a dead rabbit, dead many weeks, reeking the stench of decomposition. Jumbo loped up the road a dozen yards, dropped his prey, and settled down to watching it, his chin flat on the ground, his hind quarters in the air, his eyes shifting from the rabbit to Arturo and back again. There was a savage rumble in his throat as Arturo approached … The
stench was revolting. He rushed up and tried to kick the rabbit off the road, but Jumbo snatched it up before his foot, found the mark, and the dog dashed away, galloping triumphantly. Despite the stench Arturo watched him in admiration. Man, what a dog! Part wolf, part bloodhound, and part retriever.

But he forgot Jumbo, forgot everything, even forgot what he had planned to say as the top of his head rose above the hill and he saw his father watching him approach, the hammer in one hand, the chisel in the other. He stood on the crest of the hill and waited motionless. For a long minute Bandini stared straight into his face. Then he raised his hammer, poised the chisel, and struck the stone again. Arturo knew then that he was not unwelcome. He crossed the gravel path to the heavy bench over which Bandini worked. He had to wait a long time, blinking his eyes to avoid the flying stone chips, before his father spoke.

‘Why ain’t you in school?’

‘No school. They had a funeral.’

‘Who died?’

‘Rosa Pinelli.’

‘Mike Pinelli’s girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s no good, that Mike Pinelli. He scabs in the coal mine. He’s a good-for-nothing.’

He went on working. He was dressing the stone, shaping it to lay along the seat of a stone bench near the place where he worked. His face still showed the marks of Christmas Eve, three long scratches traveling down his cheek like the marks of a brown pencil.

‘How’s Federico? he asked.

‘He’s okay.’

‘How’s August?’

‘He’s all right.’

Silence but for the plink of the hammer.

‘How’s Federico getting along in school?’

‘Okay, I guess.’

‘What about August?’

‘He’s doing all right.’

‘What about you, you getting good marks?’

‘They’re okay.’

Silence.

‘Is Federico a good boy?’

‘Sure.’

‘And August?’

‘He’s all right.’

‘And you?’

‘I guess so.’

Silence. To the north he could see the clouds gathering, the mistiness creeping upon the high peaks. He looked about for Jumbo but found no sign of him.

‘Everything all right at home?’

‘Everything’s swell.’

‘Nobody sick?’

‘No. We’re all fine.’

‘Federico sleep all right at night?’

‘Sure. Every night.’

‘And August?’

‘Yep.’

‘And you?’

‘Sure.’

Finally he said it. He had to turn his back to do it,
turn his back, pick up a heavy stone that called for all the strength in his neck and back and arms, so that it came with a quick gasp.

‘How’s Mamma?’

‘She wants you to come home,’ he said. ‘She’s got spaghetti cooking. She wants you at home. She told me.’

He picked up another stone, larger this time, a mighty effort, his face purpling. Then he stood over it, breathing hard. His hand went to his eye, the finger brushing away a trickle at the side of his nose.

‘Something in my eye,’ he said. ‘A little piece of stone.’

‘I know. I’ve had them.’

‘How’s Mamma?’

‘All right. Swell.’

‘She’s not mad anymore?’

‘Naw. She wants you home. She told me. Spaghetti for dinner. That isn’t being mad.’

‘I don’t want no more trouble,’ Bandini said.

‘She don’t even know you’re here. She thinks you live with Rocco Saccone.’

Bandini searched his face.

‘But I
do
live with Rocco,’ he said. ‘I been there all the time, ever since she kicked me out.’

A cold-blooded lie.

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘I told her.’

‘You told her.’ Bandini put down his hammer. ‘How do you know?’

‘Rocco told me.’

Suspiciously: ‘I see.’

‘Papa, when you coming home?’

He whistled absently, some tune without a melody, just a
whistle without meaning. ‘I may never come home,’ he said. ‘How do you like that?’

‘Mamma wants you. She expects you. She misses you.’

He hitched up his belt.

‘So she misses me! And what of that?’

Arturo shrugged.

‘All I know is that she wants you home.’

‘Maybe I’ll come – and maybe I won’t.’

Then his face writhed, his nostrils quivering. Arturo smelled it too. Behind him squatted Jumbo, the carcass between his front paws, his big tongue dripping saliva as he looked toward Bandini and Arturo and made them know he wanted to play tag again.

‘Beat it, Jumbo!’ Arturo said. ‘Take that out of here!’ Jumbo showed his teeth, the rumble emerged from his throat, and he laid his chin over the body of the rabbit. It was a gesture of defiance. Bandini held his nose.

‘Whose dog?’ he twanged.

‘He’s mine. His name’s Jumbo.’

‘Get him out of here.’

But Jumbo refused to budge. He showed his long fangs when Arturo came near, rising on his hind legs as if ready to spring, the savage gutteral muttering in his throat sounding murderously. Arturo watched with fascination and admiration.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘I can’t go near him. He’ll tear me to ribbons.’

Jumbo must have understood. The gurgle in his throat rose to a terrifying steadiness. Then he slapped the rabbit with his paw, picked it up, and walked away serenely, his tail wagging … He reached the edge of the pines when
the side door opened and the Widow Hildegarde emerged, sniffing precariously.

‘Good heavens, Svevo! What is that awful smell?’

Over his shoulder Jumbo saw her. His glance shifted to the pines and then back again. He dropped the rabbit, picked it up with a firmer grip, and strolled sensuously across the lawn toward the Widow Hildegarde. She was in no mood to caper. Seizing a broom, she walked out to meet him. Jumbo raised his lips, peeling them back until his huge white teeth glistened in the sun, strings of saliva dripping from his jaws. He released his gurgle, savage, blood-curdling, a warning that was both a hiss and a growl. The Widow stopped in her tracks, composed herself, studied the dog’s mouth, and tossed her head in annoyance. Jumbo dropped his burden and unrolled his long tongue in satisfaction. He had mastered them all. Closing his eyes, he pretended to be asleep.

‘Get that goddam dog outa here!’ Bandini said.

‘Is that your dog?’ the Widow asked.

Arturo nodded with subdued pride.

The Widow searched his face, then Bandini’s.

‘Who is this young man?’ she asked.

‘He’s my oldest boy,’ Bandini said.

The Widow said: ‘Get that horrible thing off my grounds.’

Ho, so she was that kind of a person! So that was the kind of a person she was! Immediately he made up his mind to do nothing about Jumbo, for he knew the dog was playing. And yet he like to believe that Jumbo was as ferocious as he pretended. He started toward the dog, walking deliberately, slowly. Bandini stopped him.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Let me handle this.’

He seized the hammer and studied his pace toward Jumbo,
who wagged his tail and vibrated as he panted. Bandini was within ten feet of him before he rose to his hind legs, stretched out his chin, and commenced his warning growl. That look on his father’s face, that determination to kill which rose out of bravado and pride because the Widow was standing there, sent him across the grass and with both arms he seized the short hammer and knocked it from Bandini’s tight fist. At once Jumbo sprang to action, leaving his prey and prowling steadily toward Bandini, who backed away. Arturo dropped to his knees and held Jumbo. The dog licked his face, growled at Bandini, and licked his face again. Every movement of Bandini’s arm brought an answering snarl from the dog. Jumbo wasn’t playing anymore. He was ready to fight.

‘Young man,’ the Widow said. ‘Are you going to take that dog out of here, or shall I call the police and have him shot?’

It infuriated him.

‘Don’t you dare, damn you!’

Jumbo leered at the Widow and showed his teeth.

‘Arturo!’ Bandini remonstrated. ‘That’s no way to talk to Mrs Hildegarde.’

Jumbo turned to Bandini and silenced him with a snarl.

‘You contemptible little monster,’ the Widow said. ‘Svevo Bandini, are you going to allow this vicious boy to carry on like this?’