The Brotherhood of the Grape (4 page)

Yes, I knew a great deal about the Café Roma and the rooms upstairs. I could still see the bare mattresses in the cribs and smell the cold loveless rooms and remember the sad, broken, stupid women, for San Elmo was in a prostitution circuit that included Marysville, Yuba City and Lodi, and when the syndicate sent a prostie down to San Elmo she had to be a pig, not even fit to work Yuba City, which was surely the end of the world.

Looking toward the neon sign blinking C
AFÉ ROMA
above the saloon, my mother’s eyes heated with Christian righteousness. “Thank God you’re all married. It keeps you out of those places.”

I laughed and kissed her for this outrageous naiveté. “You go home now,” I said. “I’ll get Papa.”

“Don’t fight.”

“No fighting.”

“Tomorrow I’ll make you a nice fritto misto with
scampi
and cauliflower.”

“Beautiful.”

“You still like new cabbage?”

“Love it.”

“We’ll see. Maybe day after tomorrow. And Sunday, ravioli.” She was working it out in her mind, delicious little schemes to keep me there. I watched her mincing away on fast small feet, carrying her fur-trimmed coat.

T
HE ONLY CHANGE
in the Café Roma in over a quarter of a century was the clientele. The old men I remembered were planted in the graveyard, replaced by a new generation of old men. Otherwise things were as usual. The long mahogany bar was the same and so were the two dusty, fly-specked Italian and American flags above it. A touch of the modern was displayed above the bar, a blowup of Marlon Brando as the Godfather, four feet square, in a frame of gold filigree.

The same propeller fan droned from the ceiling, spinning slowly enough not to disturb the warm air, with sportive flies landing on the propeller blades, enjoying a spin or two, then jumping off. Green shades over the front windows gave the dark interior an illusion of coolness, as did the fragrance of tap beer. But this aroma was knifed by the gut-slashing pungency of olive oil and rancid parmigiano cheese mixed with the piny tang of fresh sawdust deep on the floor.

Something else had changed: when I was a lad the patrons of the Café Roma spoke only Italian. Now the new breed of old cockers spoke English, the English of the street, but English all the same.

Eight or nine of them were crowded around a green felt table in the rear. The low-hanging lamp lit up five card players seated around the table, the others standing about, watching and kibitzing. My father was one of the spectators. They were a cranky, irascible, bitter gang of Social Security guys, intense, snarling, rather mean old bastards, bitter, but enjoying their cruel wit, their profanity and their companionship. No philosophers here, no aged oracles speaking from the depths of life’s experience. Simply old men killing time, waiting for the clock to run down. My father was one of them. It came to me as a shock. I never thought of him that way until I saw him with his own kind. Now he looked even older than the gaffers around him.

I moved to Papa’s side and said “Hi.” He grunted. The bald-headed dealer never took his eyes off the cards as he spoke to my father.

“Friend of yours, Nick?”

“Nah. This is my kid Henry.”

I recognized the dealer: Joe Zarlingo, a retired railroad engineer. Though he had not operated a train in ten years, he still wore striped overalls and an engineer’s cap and sported all manner of colored pens and pencils in his bib pocket, as if serving notice that he was a very busy man.

I looked around and said “Hello” to everybody, and two or three answered with preoccupied growls, not bothering to look at me. Some I remembered. Lou Cavallaro, a retired brakeman. Bosco Antrilli, once the super at the telegraph office, the father of Nellie Antrilli, whom I seduced on an anthill in a field south of town in the dead of night (the anthill unseen, Nellie and I fully clothed, then screaming and tearing off our clothes as the outraged ants attacked us). Pete Benedetti, formerly postmaster. The game ended, the chips were drawn in, and the players finally took time to study me while Zarlingo shuffled the cards. They were not impressed.

“Which boy is this one, Nick?” Zarlingo asked.

“Writes books.”

Zarlingo looked at me.

“Books, uh? What kind of books?”

“Novels.”

“What kind?”

“Take your finger out of your ass and deal the cards,” Antrilli said.

“Fuck you, you shit-kicker,” Zarlingo fired back.

The profanity embarrassed my father, for in his mind I was still fourteen, the kid he dragged around on his tours, and he wanted to shield me from the vulgarity of his more mature friends. He whispered, “Come on,” and drew me away, and I followed him out into the trembling sunshine.

“What you hanging around here for?” he said. “No place for you.”

“Come on, Papa. I’m fifty years old. I’ve heard just about everything. I came to tell you I’m staying in town for a while.”

It was like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. He squinted at me with his little hot red eyes. “Suit yourself, but don’t do me no favors. I don’t need any of you people. I been working since I was eight years old. I was laying stone on the streets of Ban twenty years before you were born, so don’t think I can’t do it myself.”

“Do what?”

“Never mind.”

I lifted my palms. “Papa, listen. Don’t get sore. Let’s get out of this heat and talk it over.”

His hands plunged from one pocket to another until he found it—the stub of a black cigar. He struck a wooden match against his thigh and lit up, a cloud of white smoke burying his face.

“Okay. Let’s talk business.”

“Business?”

I followed him into the Roma to the bar. They had no hard liquor, only beer and wine. The bartender was the youngest man in the place, a kid of around forty-five, with hair down to the small of his back and a hip mustache that curled over his cheeks like quarter moons.

“Frank,” Papa said. “This here’s my son. Give him a beer.” To me he said, “This is Frank Mascarini.”

Frank drew me an overflowing stein from the tap. He served my father a decanter of Musso claret from one of the wine barrels beneath the bar. Papa took his decanter and a glass to one of the tables and I followed with the beer and we sat down. He sipped his wine thoughtfully. Whatever was on his mind, he was carefully tooling up to speak it.

Finally he said, “I got a chance to make some real money.”

“Glad to hear of it.”

He was a poor man but not a pauper. Social Security and checks from Virgil and me took care of him and Mama. They lived frugally but well, for my mother could make a meal from hot water and a bone, and dandelions were free in any empty lot.

“What’s the job?”

“A stone smokehouse, up in the mountains.”

“Can you handle it?”

He chortled at the foolishness of such a question. “When I was fourteen I built a well in the mountains of Abruzzi. Down through solid rock. Thirty feet deep and ten feet wide. Cold spring water. I did it myself. Carried rock out of the hole, then carried it back. I worked in water up to my ass. It took me three months. I got paid a hundred lira. You know how much that was, in those days? Forty-five cents. Fifteen-cents-a-month wages. Now I got a chance to make fifteen hundred dollars in one month, and you want to know if I can handle it!” This amused him. He laughed. “Of course I can handle it! All I need is a little help.”

“Papa, you’re a liar. Nobody works for fifteen cents a month.”

His fist banged the table.

“
I
did. And I’ll tell you something else. I put away half my wages.”

“What’d you do with the other half?”

“Squandered it. Gambled. Got drunk. Slept with some woman.”

He quaffed a couple of large mouthfuls of the Musso claret as I studied him. There was no questioning the man’s years, especially the eyes. Their sparkle was gone, as if behind a yellowish film and a net of small red veins.

I said, “Papa, I don’t think you should take that job.”

“Who says so?”

“You’re too damned old. You’ll have a stroke, or a heart attack. It’ll finish you off.”

“My mother was ninety-four. My father was eighty-one. All I need is a first-class helper, somebody who knows how to mix mortar and carry stone.”

“You got anybody in mind?”

He sipped the claret. “Yep.”

“Is he reliable?”

“Hell no, but you take what you can get.”

I realized whom he had in mind.

“Papa,” I smiled. “You’re out of your tree.”

“How long can you stay?”

“A day or two.”

“We can do it in three weeks.”

“Impossible.”

“Easy job. Little stone house up at Monte Casino. Ten by ten. No windows. One door. I’ll lay up the walls, you mix the mortar, carry the stone. Nice place. Good country. Forest. Big trees. Mountain air. Do you good. Get the fat off.”

“Fat? What fat?”

“Fat. Out of shape. I pay ten dollars a day. Board and room. Seven days a week. We’ll be outa there in two weeks if you don’t waste time or quit on me. You want the job? You got it. But remember who’s boss. I do the thinkin’.”

“Papa, I want you to listen carefully to what I am about to say. I want you to stay calm, and I want you to be reasonable. My business, as you know, is writing. Your business is building things. All I know how to do is string one word after another, like beads. All you know is piling one rock on another. I don’t know how to lay brick or mix mortar. I don’t want to know. I have certain things to do. I have a commitment. A commitment is a contract. There’s a man in New York, a publisher, who’s paying me to write a book. He is waiting for this book. He has been waiting for over a year. He is losing his patience. He sends me angry letters. He telephones and calls me filthy names. He threatens to sue me. You understand what I’m saying, Papa?”

“I’ll tell you one thing about Monte Casino,” he said. “You’ll feel better. You’ll get healthy. What are you worrying about? Did I say anything about not writing? Bring some pencils and paper. Ask Mama: she’s got lots of paper in the closet. Write any time you want. Write something about the mountains. Write at night, after work. It’s quiet up there. You know the owls? You can hear them. And the coyotes. Peace, quiet, purify the mind. You’ll write better.”

I groaned. “What about Garcia, your old hod carrier?”

“Dead.”

“What about Red Griffin?”

“Dead.”

“That black man, Campbell.”

“Dying.”

“There’s got to be somebody alive around here besides me? There’s got to be!”

“Gone, all gone.”

“What about Zarlingo, or Benedetti, or one of these bums at the card table?”

“They’re pretty old. Benedetti is eighty.”

A sigh, like a sigh coming out of the centuries, spilled from his wine-moist lips. He seemed to crumble, as if his skeletal bones were falling apart beneath the weight of despair, his chin settling on his chest.

“Nobody wants to work for Nick Molise,” he said. “I been looking for two weeks, but I can’t find nobody. Not even my own son.” He fought back a sob.

“Good God, Papa, don’t start crying on me.”

“Ten, twenty generations of stonemasons, and I’m the last, the end of the line, and nobody gives a damn, not even my own flesh and blood.”

It was time for reasonableness, for patience and soft words, for restraint, for goodness and charity and filial generosity. I said I was sorry, Papa. I said there were some things I would not ask him to do, and there were other things he should not ask me to do. I said I was not against carrying a hod or laying stone. I said masonry was an honorable profession, the best record of the nobility and aspiration of mankind. I spoke gratefully of the Acropolis, the Pyramids, of Roman aqueducts and the Aztec ruins. Then I began to be annoyed by this irascible, stubborn old man, and my impatience spilled over and the Molise rashness swept through me, the truculence, the bad temper, the frenzy.

“Frankly, old man,” I said, “I hate the building profession. I’ve hated it from the time I was a little kid and you used to come home with mortar splattered all over your shoes and face. I think painters and bricklayers are drunks, and I think plumbers are thieves. I think carpenters are crooks and I think electricians are highway robbers. I don’t like flagstone or marble or granite or brick or tile or sand or cement. I don’t care if I ever see another stone fireplace or stone wall or stone steps or just plain stones lying on a field, and if you want the truth stripped clean I don’t give a shit about stonemasons either.” I took a deep breath. “Something else I don’t like is mountains and forests and owls and mountain air and coyotes and bears. I never saw a smokehouse in my life and, God willing, I shall never see one, or build one.”

The more I shouted and pounded the table the more he drank, and the more he drank the more the tears busted from his eyes. He pulled a polka-dot kerchief from his pocket, blew his nose, and had another gulp of wine. He was pitiful, wretched, embarrassing, revolting, shameless, stupid, gross, ugly and drunk—the worst father a man ever had, so loathesome I spat my beer in the spittoon and got up to leave.

From the back of the saloon came the bellow of a voice, the roar of a bull speaking like a man.

“Just a minute, wise guy. Just who the hell you think you’re talking to?”

I turned. The patrons of the Café Roma were glaring at me with cold amorphous eyes, their faces repelled by the presence of an outsider in their midst. Zarlingo got to his feet. The many pens and pencils in his bib were like battle decorations on a colonel.

“That man’s your father,” Zarlingo declared, pointing at Papa. “And he’s my friend. You show some respect, understand?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Cavallaro stood up threateningly, pushing back his chair. “You want some help, Nick? You want me to take care of this punk?”

“I’m okay,” Papa faltered, his voice trembling. “I’m just fine, boys. Tired, that’s all. Very tired. Alone in the world. Trying to do the right thing. You do your best for your family. You feed them, buy them clothes, send them to school, and then they turn around and throw you out. I don’t know what happened…what I done wrong. Maybe “cause I was too good. I don’t know. God help me. I tried. I tried hard…”

I said “Oh, balls!” and walked out.