remember a dying girl who held his hand and begged forgiveness; only for a few seconds would he linger with that memory, and then he would turn to the women in the crowd and nod, his women, not an Italian among them; blondes they’d be, tall and smiling, dozens of them, like Effie Hildegarde, and not an Italian in the lot.
So give it to her, Papa! I’m for you, old boy. Some day I’ll be doing it too, I’ll be right in there some day with a honey like her, and she won’t be the kind that scratches my face, and she won’t be the kind that calls me a little thief.
And yet, how did he know that Rosa wasn’t dying? Of course she was, just as all people moved minute by minute nearer the grave. But just suppose, just for the heck of it, that Rosa really was dying! What about his friend Joe Tanner last year? Killed riding a bicycle; one day he was alive, the next he wasn’t. And what about Nellie Frazier? A little stone in her shoe; she didn’t take it out; blood-poison, and all at once she was dead and they had a funeral.
How did he know that Rosa hadn’t been run over by an automobile since he saw her that last awful time? There was a chance. How did he know she wasn’t dead by electrocution? That happened a lot. Why couldn’t it happen to her? Of course he really didn’t want her to die, not really and truly cross my heart and hope to die, but still and all there was a chance. Poor Rosa, so young and pretty – and dead.
He was downtown, walking around, nothing there, only people hurrying with packages. He was in front of Wilkes Hardware Company, staring at the sports display. It began to snow. He looked to the mountains. They were blotted by black clouds. An odd premonition took hold of him: Rosa Pinelli was dead. He was positive she was dead. All he had to do was walk three blocks down Pearl Street and two blocks east on Twelfth Street and it would be proven. He could walk there and on the front door of the Pinelli house there would be a funeral wreath. He was so sure of it that he walked in that direction at once. Rosa was dead. He was a prophet, given to understanding weird things. And so it had finally happened: what he wished had come true, and she was gone.
Well, well, funny world. He lifted his eyes to the sky, to the millions of snowflakes floating earthward. The end of Rosa Pinelli. He spoke aloud, addressing imagined listeners. I was standing in front of Wilkes Hardware, and all of a sudden I had that hunch. Then I walked up to her house, and sure enough, there was a wreath on the door. A swell kid, Rosa. Sure hate to see her die. He hurried now, the premonition weakening, and he walked faster, speeding to outlast it. He was crying: Oh Rosa, please don’t die, Rosa. Be alive when I get there! Here I come Rosa, my love. All the way from the Yankee stadium in a chartered airplane. I made a landing right on the courthouse lawn – nearly killed three hundred people out there watching me. But I made it, Rosa. I got here all right, and here I am at your bedside, just in time, and the doctor says you’ll live now, and so I must go away, never to return. Back to the Yanks, Rosa. To Florida, Rosa. Spring training. The Yanks need me too; but you’ll know where I am, Rosa, just read the papers and you’ll know.
There was no funeral wreath on the Pinelli door. What he saw there, and he gasped in horror until his vision cleared through the blinding snow, was a Christmas wreath instead. He was glad, hurrying away in the storm. Sure I’m glad! Who wants to see anybody die? But he wasn’t glad, he wasn’t glad at all. He wasn’t a star for the Yankees. He hadn’t come by chartered plane. He wasn’t going to Florida. This was Christmas Eve in Rocklin, Colorado. It was snowing like the devil, and his father was living with a woman named Effie Hildegarde. His father’s face was torn open by his mother’s fingers and at that moment he knew his mother was praying, his brothers were crying, and the embers in the front-room stove had once been a hundred dollars.
Merry Christmas, Arturo!
Chapter Eight
A lonely road at the West End of Rocklin, thin and dwindling, the falling snow strangling it. Now the snow falls heavily. The road creeps westward and upward, a steep road. Beyond are the mountains. The snow! It chokes the world, and there is a pale void ahead, only the thin road dwindling fast. A tricky road, full of surprising twists and dips as it eludes the dwarfed pines standing with hungry white arms to capture it.
Maria, what have you done to Svevo Bandini? What have you done to my face?
A square-built man stumbling along, his shoulders and arms covered by the snow. In this place the road is steep; he breasts his way, the deep snow pulling at his legs, a man wading through water that has not melted.
Where now, Bandini?
A little while ago, not more than forty-five minutes, he had come rushing down this road, convinced that, as God was his judge, he would never return again. Forty-five minutes – not even an hour, and much had happened, and he was returning along a road that he had hoped might be forgotten.
Maria, what have you done?
Svevo Bandini, a blood-tinted handkerchief concealing his face, and the wrath of winter concealing Svevo Bandini as he climbed the road back to the Widow Hildegarde’s, talking to the snowflakes as he climbed. So tell the snowflakes, Bandini; tell them as you wave your cold hands. Bandini sobbed – a grown man, forty-two years old, weeping because it was Christmas Eve and he was returning to his sin, because he would rather be with his children.
Maria, what have you done?
It was like this, Maria: ten days ago your mother wrote that letter, and I got mad and left the house, because I can’t stand the woman. I must go away when she comes. And so I went away. I got lots of troubles, Maria. The kids. The house. The snow: look at the snow tonight, Maria. Can I set a brick down in it? And I’m worried, and your mother is coming, and I say to myself, I say, I think I’ll go downtown and have a few drinks. Because I got troubles. Because I got kids.
Ah, Maria.
He had gone downtown to the Imperial Poolhall, and there he had met his friend Rocco Saccone, and Rocco had said they should go to his room and have a drink, smoke a cigar, talk. Old friends, he and Rocco: two men in a room filled with cigar smoke drinking whiskey on a cold day, talking. Christmas time: a few drinks. Happy Christmas, Svevo. Gratia, Rocco. A happy Christmas.
Rocco had looked at the face of his friend and asked what troubled him, and Bandini had told him: no money, Rocco, the kids and Christmas time. And the mother-in-law – damn her. Rocco was a poor man too, not so poor as Bandini, though, and he offered ten dollars. How could Bandini accept it? Already he had borrowed so much from his friend, and now this. No thanks, Rocco. I drink your liquor, that’s enough. And so, a la salute! for old times’ sake . . .
One drink and then another, two men in a room with their feet on the steaming radiator. Then the buzzer above Rocco’s hotel-room door sounded. Once, and then once more: the telephone. Rocco jumped up and hurried down the hall to the phone. After a while he returned, his face soft and pleasant. Rocco got many phone calls in the hotel, for he ran an advertisement in the Rocklin Herald:
Rocco Saccone, bricklayer and
stonemason. All kinds of repair
work. Concrete work a specialty.
Call R.M. Hotel.
That was it, Maria. A woman named Hildegarde had called Rocco and told him that her fireplace was out of order. Would Rocco come and fix it right away?
Rocco, his friend.
‘You go, Svevo,’ he said. ‘Maybe you can make a few dollars before Xmas.’
That was how it started. With Rocco’s tool sack on his back, he left the hotel, crossed the town
