the man wearing a soldier hat?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘It was the Salvation Army, wasn’t it? I bet Mrs Bledsoe called them up.’
‘What if it was?’ Her voice came through her teeth. ‘I want your father to see that tree. I want him to look at it and see what he’s done to us. Even the neighbors know about it. Ah, shame, shame on him.’
‘To heck with the neighbors.’
He walked toward the tree with his fists doubled pugnaciously. ‘To heck with the neighbors.’ The tree was about his own height, five feet. He rushed into its prickly fullness and tore at the branches. They had a tender willowy strength, bending and cracking but not breaking. When he had disfigured it to his satisfaction, he threw it into the snow in the front yard. His mother made no protest, staring always into the teacup, her dark eyes brooding.
‘I hope the Bledsoes see it,’ he said. ‘That’ll teach them.’
‘God’ll punish him,’ Maria said. ‘He will pay for this.’
But he was thinking of Rosa, and of what he would wear to the altar boy banquet. He and August and his father always fought about that favorite gray tie, Bandini insisting it was too old for boys, and he and August answering it was too young for a man. Yet somehow it had always remained ‘Papa’s tie,’ for it had that good father-feeling about it, the front of it showing faint wine-spots and smelling vaguely of Toscanelli cigars. He loved that tie, and he always resented it if he had to wear it immediately after August, for then the mysterious quality of his father was somehow absent from it. He liked his father’s handkerchiefs too. They were so much bigger than his own, and they possessed a softness and a mellowness from being washed and ironed so many times by his mother, and in them he had a vague feeling of his mother and father at the same time. They were unlike the necktie, which was all father, and when he used one of his father’s handkerchiefs there came to him dimly a sense of his father and mother together, part of a picture, of a scheme of things.
For a long time he stood before the mirror in his room talking to Rosa, rehearsing his acknowledgment of her thanks. Now he was sure the gift would automatically betray his love. The way he had looked at her that morning, the way he had followed her during the noon hour – she would undoubtedly associate those preliminaries with the jewel. He was glad. He wanted his feelings in the open. He imagined her saying, I knew it was you all the time, Arturo. Standing at the mirror he answered, ‘Oh well, Rosa, you know how it is, a fellow likes to give his girl a Christmas present.’
When his brothers got home at four thirty he was already dressed. He did not own a complete suit, but Maria always kept his ‘new’ pants and ‘new’ coat neatly pressed. They did not match, but they came pretty close to it, the pants of blue serge and the coat an oxford gray.
The change into his ‘new’ clothes transformed him into a picture of frustration and misery as he sat in the rocking chair, his hands folded in his lap. The only thing he ever did when he got into his ‘new’ clothes, and he always did it badly, was simply to sit and wait out the period to the bitter end. Now he had four hours to wait before the banquet began, but there was some consolation in the fact that tonight, at least, he would not eat eggs.
When August and Federico let loose a barrage of questions about the broken Christmas tree in the front yard, his ‘new’ clothes seemed tighter than ever. The night was going to be warm and clear, so he pulled on one sweater over his gray coat instead of two and left, glad to be away from the gloom of home.
Walking down the street in that shadow-world of black and white he felt the serenity of impending victory: the smile of Rosa tonight, his gift around her neck as she waited on the altar boys in the auditorium, her smiles for him and for him alone.
Ah, what a night!
He talked to himself as he walked, breathing the thin mountain air, reeling in the glory of his possessions, Rosa my girl, Rosa for me and for nobody else. Only one thing disturbed him, and that vaguely: he was hungry, but the emptiness in his stomach was dissipated by the overflow of his joy. These altar boy banquets, and he had attended seven of them in his life, were supreme achievements in food. He could see it all before him, huge plates of fried chicken and turkey, hot buns, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and all the chocolate ice cream he could eat, and beyond it all, Rosa with a cameo around her neck, his gift, smiling as he gorged himself, serving him with bright black eyes and teeth so white they were good enough to eat.
What a night! He bent down and snatched at the white snow, letting it melt in his mouth, the cold liquid trickling down his throat. He did this many times, sucking the sweet snow and enjoying the cold effect in his throat.
The intestinal reaction to the cold liquid on his empty stomach was a faint purring somewhere in the middle of him and rising toward the cardiac area. He was crossing the trestle bridge, in the very middle of it, when everything before his eyes melted suddenly into blackness. His feet lost all sensory response. His breath came in frantic jerks. He found himself flat on his back. He had fallen over limply. Deep within his chest his heart hammered for movement. He clutched it with both hands, terror gripping him. He was dying: oh God, he was going to die! The very bridge seemed to shake with the violence of his heartbeat.
But five, ten, twenty seconds later he was still alive. The terror of that moment still burned in his heart. What had happened? Why had he fallen? He got up and hurried across the trestle bridge, shivering in fear. What had he done? It was his heart, he knew his heart had stopped beating and started again – but why?
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! The mysterious universe loomed around him, and he was alone on the railroad tracks, hurrying to the street where men and women walked, where it was not so lonely, and as he ran it came to him like piercing daggers that this was God’s warning, this was His way of letting him know that God knew his crime: he, the thief, filcher of his mother’s cameo, sinner against the decalogue. Thief, thief, outcast of God, hell’s child with a black mark across the book of his soul.
It might happen again. Now, five minutes from now. Ten minutes. Hail Mary full of grace I’m sorry. He no longer ran but walked now, briskly, almost running dreading over-excitation of his heart. Goodbye to Rosa and thoughts of love, goodbye and goodbye, and hello to sorrow and remorse.
Ah, the cleverness of God! Ah, how good the Lord was to him, giving him another chance, warning him yet not killing him.
Look! See how I walk. I breathe. I am alive. I am walking to God. My soul is black. God will clean my soul. He is good to me. My feet touch the ground, one two, one two. I’ll call Father Andrew. I’ll tell him everything.
He rang the bell on the confessional wall. Five minutes later Father Andrew appeared through the side door of the church. The tall, semi-bald priest raised his eyebrows in surprise to find but one soul in that Christmas-decorated church – and that soul a boy, his eyes tightly closed, his jaws gritted, his lips moving in prayer. The priest smiled, removed the toothpick from his mouth, genuflected, and walked toward the confessional. Arturo opened his eyes and saw him advancing like a thing of beautiful black, and there was comfort in his presence, and warmth in his black cassock.
‘What now, Arturo?’ he said in a whisper that was pleasant. He laid his hand on Arturo’s shoulder. It was like the touch of God. His agony broke beneath it. The vagueness of nascent peace stirred within depths, ten million miles within him.
‘I gotta go to confession, Father.’
‘Sure, Arturo.’
Father
