The John Fante Reader, Page 2

  “But it did! Why should I lie to you? There’s nothing to hide.”

  “Didn’t he do anything to you? Didn’t he kidnap you, or something?”

  “I don’t remember being kidnaped.”

  “But you were kidnaped!”

  She sat down, the broom between her knees, her two hands clutching it, and her head resting on her hands. She was so tired, and yet the fatigue melted from her face and she smiled vaguely, the ghost-smile of the lady in the picture.

  “Yes!” she said. “He did kidnap me! He came one night when I was asleep and took me away.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Yes!”

  “He took me to an outlaw cabin in the mountains!”

  “Sure! And he was carrying a gun, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes! A big gun! With a pearl handle.”

  “And he was riding a black horse.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I shall never forget that horse. He was a beauty!”

  “And you were scared to death, weren’t you?”

  “Petrified,” she said. “Simply petrified.”

  “You screamed for help, didn’t you?”

  “I screamed and screamed.”

  “But he got away, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he got away.”

  “He took you to the outlaw cabin.”

  “Yes, that’s where he took me.”

  “You were scared, but you liked it, didn’t you?”

  “I loved it.”

  “He kept you a prisoner, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he was good to me.”

  “Were you wearing that white dress? The one in the picture?”

  “I certainly was. Why?”

  “I just wanted to know,” I said. “How long did he keep you prisoner?”

  “Three days and nights.”

  “And on the third night he proposed to you, didn’t he?”

  Her eyes closed reminiscently.

  “I shall never forget it,” she said. “He got down on his knees and begged me to marry him.”

  “You wouldn’t marry him at first, would you?”

  “Not at first. I should say not! It was a long time before I said yes.

  “But finally you did, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Finally.”

  This was too much for me. Too much. I threw my arms around her and kissed her, and on my lips was the sharp tang of tears.

  —The Wine of Youth

  THE STILL SMALL VOICES

  YOUR BROTHER SHOOK YOU BY THE HAIR until you were awake. It was about two o’clock in the morning.

  He whispered, “Wake up. Mama and Papa’s started in again.”

  In the next room you heard the voices of the two. The door was open, but there was no light. The whole house was dark. The bitterness in the voices was the same as on the other nights. The fire in the voice of your father made you and your brother reach for the skins of one another as you lay listening to the inscrutable words of the two, sometimes inaudible English words, but mostly Italian you had never heard.

  Your brother Pete, who lay beside you, who was ten, said, “This is a hell of a house.”

  In the next room your father said, “I’m through, that’s all. I’m through.”

  Your mother said, “And what about the kids?”

  Your father said, “Take them and get the hell out.”

  Your sister in the room beyond theirs began to cry. She called out to you in the darkness of the old house, and you answered, “What?” And your mother and father became quiet so that they could hear what your sister was wanting, and she called out again, her voice weaving through the doors to where you lay, “Go see why Mama and Papa are fighting, Jimmie. Please go see. I’m scared.”

  And your youngest brother Tommy, who slept in the bed with your sister, shouted to you who were twelve and the oldest, “I ain’t scared, Jimmie. She’s eight too, and I’m only six.”

  Your father roared, his voice vibrating the whole house, “If you kids don’t shut up, I’ll give you something to be scared about.”

  The brother who slept beside you said, “Tommy is sure a nervy little guy.”

  Your mother said to your father, “Now you woke up everybody.”

  Your father said, “Let ‘em wake up. See if I give a damn.”

  Your room was between that of your mother and father and that of your grandmother, and now you heard your grandmother rising from her bed. She would come to your room as she always did when your mother and father quarreled in the night. With every step she took, she moaned a strange “oh oh oh.”

  The brother beside you said, “Now here comes Grandma to butt in.”

  The door creaked, and your little grandmother was standing beside the bed, her very dry hand pawing the pillow in search of your head.

  She whispered, and she was always crying on nights like this, “Go see, Jimmie, go see. You must make them stop. Your father will kill her.”

  Braggadocio, you said loud enough for your father to hear, “Aw, Papa’s all right.”

  The house was quiet except for the “oh oh oh” from your grandmother’s old bosom.

  You said, “See? There ain’t no more fighting.”

  Your father heard. There was the known sound of whining bedsprings, and your father sat up in bed and sputtered rapid angry words at your grandmother. It was that Italian of which you knew nothing. You did not catch a single ascertained word. Your grandmother went slowly on tiptoe back to her room, and her door closed, and the springs in her bed creaked.

  Your mother said to your father, “That was a fine thing to say to your own mother.”

  From the room beyond, your sister said, “Mama, Mama, please don’t start again.”

  Your little brother Tommy said to your sister, “Scaredy cat.”

  The brother beside you said in a whisper, “What did Papa say to Grandma?”

  You said, “I don’t know. Go to sleep.”

  The walls around the room were of lath and cracked plaster, and you could hear your grandmother in her bed. The strange “oh oh ohs” were round sobs that shook the bed now.

  The brother beside you said, “Grandma’s crying.”

  You said, “I’m not deaf. I hear her.”

  Your brother who was six said to his sister, who slept beside him: “Hey Jo, Grandma’s crying.”

  Your sister said, “Well, you’d cry too, I bet, if you was her.”

  Your brother said, “Aw, how can I be her?”

  The brother beside you said, “Listen to Tommy.”

  Your father asked in the darkness, “Who’s crying?”

  “Grandma’s crying.”

  Your mother said, “His own mother.”

  Your brother Tommy said, “Papa, why’s Grandma crying?”

  Your father said, “You go to sleep, Tony. It’s awful late.”

  The brother beside you said, “Tommy sure asks questions.”

  Your mother got out of bed and put on her kimono. You heard her scrape through the room in her raggedy red slippers with the holey toes.

  Your father said, “Where you going now?”

  Your mother said, “Don’t talk to me.’”

  The moon was shining through the dining room windows, and you saw your mother pass them by. You heard the creak of the good rocking chair, and you knew your mother had seated herself by the stove. The embers in the stove were going out now, but she would not pour in coal because it made a kind of desecrating noise. The chair purred sweetly as your mother rocked to and fro, and pretty soon all was very quiet, and your mother was asleep in the dining room.

  In the yard next door you heard the tumble of boxes, behind the grocery store. It was the neighborhood cats looking for meat scraps.

  Your grandmother was asleep now. There were no sounds from her room.

  Your father sighed. The springs in his bed whined angrily. Your father was fighting for sleep.

  The brother at your side snored in the fresh sleep of boys.

  Your little b
rother Tommy and your sister Josephine were soundless.

  And after a little while, you heard your father whisper to your sister.

  He called softly, “Jo, Jo … Josephine.”

  She did not answer, and your father got up from his bed and went to the room where she slept.

  Your father shook your sister until she woke up.

  He whispered to her, “Josephine, will you be Papa’s nice little girl and go sleep with Grandma?”

  She said, “Oh, I like to sleep with Grandma.”

  “All right, you go. Just tell Grandma you wanna sleep with her.”

  Your little brother Tommy was awake now, and he said, “I wanna sleep with somebody. I’m scared to sleep alone.”

  Your sister said, “Scaredy cat.”

  Your father said, “You come and sleep with Papa, Tommy—just you and Papa all alone.”

  And before they went to their different beds, you too were asleep.

  —The Big Hunger

  THE ODYSSEY OF A WOP

  I

  I PICK UP LITTLE BITS OF INFORMATION about my grandfather. My grandmother tells me of him. She tells me that when he lived he was a good fellow whose goodness evoked not admiration but pity. He was known as a good little Wop. Of an evening he liked to sit at a table in a saloon sipping a tumbler of anisette, all by himself. He sat there like a little girl nipping an ice-cream cone. The old boy loved that green stuff, that anisette. It was his passion, and when folks saw him sitting alone it tickled them, for he was a good little Wop.

  One night, my grandmother tells me, my grandfather was sitting in the saloon, he and his anisette. A drunken teamster stumbled through the swinging doors, braced himself at the bar, and bellowed:

  “All right, everybody! Come an’ get ‘em! They’re on me!”

  And there sat my grandfather, not moving, his old tongue coquetting with the anisette. Everyone but he stood at the bar and drank the teamster’s liquor. The teamster swung round. He saw my grandfather. He was insulted.

  “You too, Wop!” said he. “Come up and drink!”

  Silence. My grandfather arose. He staggered across the floor, passed the teamster, and then what did he do but go through the swinging doors and down the snowy street! He heard laughter coming after him from the saloon and his chest burned. He went home to my father.

  “Mamma mia!” he blubbered. “Tummy Murray, he calla me Wopa.”

  “Sangue della Madonna!”

  Bareheaded, my father rushed down the street to the saloon. Tommy Murray was not there. He was in another saloon half a block away, and there my father found him. He drew the teamster aside and spoke under his breath. A fight! Immediately blood and hair began to fly. Chairs were drawn back. The customers applauded. The two men fought for an hour. They rolled over the floor, kicking, cursing, biting. They were in a knot in the middle of the floor, their bodies wrapped around each other. My father’s head, chest, and arms buried the teamster’s face. The teamster screamed. My father growled. His neck was rigid and trembling. The teamster screamed again, and lay still. My father got to his feet and wiped blood from his open mouth with the back of his hand. On the floor the teamster lay with a loose ear hanging from his head. … This is the story my grandmother tells me.

  I think about the two men, my father and the teamster, and I picture them struggling on the floor. Boy! Can my father fight!

  I get an idea. My two brothers are playing in another room. I leave my grandmother and go to them. They are sprawled on the rug, bent over crayons and drawing-paper. They look up and see my face flaming with my idea.

  “What’s wrong?” one asks.

  “I dare you to do something!”

  “Do what?”

  “I dare you to call me a Wop!”

  My youngest brother, barely six, jumps to his feet, and dancing up and down, screams: “Wop! Wop! Wop! Wop!”

  I look at him. Pooh! He’s too small. It’s that other brother, that bigger brother, I want. He’s got ears too, he has.

  “I bet you’re afraid to call me Wop.”

  But he senses the devil in the woodpile.

  “Nah,” says he. “I don’t wanna.”

  “Wop! Wop! Wop! Wop!” screams the little brother.

  “Shut your mouth, you!”

  “I won’t neither. You’re a Wop! Wop! Woppedy Wop!”

  My older brother’s box of crayons lies on the floor in front of his nose. I put my heel upon the box and grind it into the carpet. He yells, seizing my leg. I back away, and he begins to cry.

  “Aw, that was sure dirty,” he says.

  “I dare you to call me a Wop!”

  “Wop!”

  I charge, seeking his ear. But my grandmother comes into the room flourishing a razor strop.

  —The Wine of Youth

  HE CAME ALONG, kicking the deep snow. Here was a disgusted man. His name was Svevo Bandini, and he lived three blocks down that street. He was cold and there were holes in his shoes. That morning he had patched the holes on the inside with pieces of cardboard from a macaroni box. The macaroni in that box was not paid for. He had thought of that as he placed the cardboard inside of his shoes.

  He hated the snow. He was a bricklayer, and the snow froze the mortar between the brick he laid. He was on his way home, but what was the sense in going home? When he was a boy in Italy, in Abruzzi, he hated the snow too. No sunshine, no work. He was in America now, in the town of Rocklin, Colorado. He had just been in the Imperial Poolhall. In Italy there were mountains, too, like those white mountains a few miles west of him. The mountains were a huge white dress dropped plumb-like to the earth. Twenty years before, when he was twenty years old, he had starved for a full week in the folds of that savage white dress. He had been building a fireplace in a mountain lodge. It was dangerous up there in the winter. He had said the devil with the danger, because he was only twenty then, and he had a girl in Rocklin, and he needed money. But the roof of the lodge had caved beneath the suffocating snow.

  It harassed him always, that beautiful snow. He could never understand why he didn’t go to California. Yet he stayed in Colorado, in the deep snow, because it was too late now. The beautiful white snow was like the beautiful white wife of Svevo Bandini, so white, so fertile, lying in a white bed in a house up the street. 456 Walnut Street, Rocklin, Colorado.

  Svevo Bandini’s eyes watered in the cold air. They were brown, they were soft, they were a woman’s eyes. At birth he had stolen them from his mother—for after the birth of Svevo Bandini, his mother was never quite the same, always ill, always with sickly eyes after his birth, and then she died and it was Svevo’s turn to carry soft brown eyes.

  A hundred and fifty pounds was the weight of Svevo Bandini, and he had a son named Arturo who loved to touch his round shoulders and feel for the snakes inside. He was a fine man, Svevo Bandini, all muscles, and he had a wife named Maria who had only to think of the muscle in his loins and her body and her mind melted like the spring snows. She was so white, that Maria, and looking at her was seeing her through a film of olive oil.

  Dio cane. Dio cane. It means God is a dog, and Svevo Bandini was saying it to the snow. Why did Svevo lose ten dollars in a poker game tonight at the Imperial Poolhall? He was such a poor man, and he had three children, and the macaroni was not paid, nor was the house in which the three children and the macaroni were kept. God is a dog.

  Svevo Bandini had a wife who never said: give me money for food for the children, but he had a wife with large black eyes, sickly bright from love, and those eyes had a way about them, a sly way of peering into his mouth, into his ears, into his stomach, and into his pockets. Those eyes were so clever in a sad way, for they always knew when the Imperial Pool-hall had done a good business. Such eyes for a wife! They saw all he was and all he hoped to be, but they never saw his soul.

  That was an odd thing, because Maria Bandini was a woman who looked upon all the living and the dead as souls. Maria knew what a soul was. A soul was an immortal thing she k
new about. A soul was an immortal thing she would not argue about. A soul was an immortal thing. Well, whatever it was, a soul was immortal.

  Maria had a white rosary, so white you could drop it in the snow and lose it forever, and she prayed for the soul of Svevo Bandini and her children. And because there was no time, she hoped that somewhere in this world someone, a nun in some quiet convent, someone, anyone, found time to pray for the soul of Maria Bandini.

  He had a white bed waiting for him, in which his wife lay, warm and waiting, and he was kicking the snow and thinking of something he was going to invent some day. Just an idea he had in his head: a snow plow. He had made a miniature of it out of cigar boxes. He had an idea there. And then he shuddered as you do when cold metal touches your flank, and he was suddenly remembering the many times he had got into the warm bed beside Maria, and the tiny cold cross on her rosary touched his flesh on winter nights like a tittering little cold serpent, and how he withdrew quickly to an even colder part of the bed, and then he thought of the bedroom, of the house that was not paid for, of the white wife endlessly waiting for passion, and he could not endure it, and straightway in his fury he plunged into deeper snow off the sidewalk, letting his anger fight it out with the snow. Dio cane. Dio cane.

  He had a son named Arturo, and Arturo was fourteen and owned a sled. As he turned into the yard of his house that was not paid for, his feet suddenly raced for the tops of the trees, and he was lying on his back, and Arturo’s sled was still in motion, sliding into a clump of snow-weary lilac bushes. Dio cane! He had told that boy, that little bastard, to keep his sled out of the front walk. Svevo Bandini felt the snow’s cold attacking his hands like frantic ants. He got to his feet, raised his eyes to the sky, shook his fist at God, and nearly collapsed with fury. That Arturo. That little bastard! He dragged the sled from beneath the lilac bush and with systematic fiendishness tore the runners off. Only when the destruction was complete did he remember that the sled had cost seven-fifty He stood brushing the snow from his clothes, that strange hot feeling in his ankles, where the snow had entered from the tops of his shoes. Seven dollars and fifty cents torn to pieces. Diavolo! Let the boy buy another sled. He preferred a new one anyway.