The Fortunate Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page A

loaf of Italian bread and sliced off three thick, crusty chunks. Over these he poured red wine vinegar, then thick, yellow-green olive oil. He stood back and scattered salt over all three, inspecting them with a satisfied air. The coarse bread was a lovely red dotted with blots of greasy green. Gino and Sal would be delighted with this bedtime snack. They would all eat together. He waited. From the street, through windows still open and coming down the corridor of rooms between, he heard Gino’s voice in a loud continuous scream.
    That scream froze Lucia Santa with the baby in her arms. Octavia, on the corner of 30th Street, turned toward 31st. Across the Avenue Larry wheeled around on his horse. The father, his temples bursting with fear, started to run and curse. But the child’s scream was one of hysterical triumph. Gino had shot out of the darkness and circled his enemies and was screaming, “Burn the city, burn the city.” So ending the game, he could not stop screaming the magic words or stop running. He aimed himself at his mother’s enormous menacing figure with great leaps into the air, remembered his insult to Zia Louche, and swerved away, through the door and up the stairs.
    Lucia Santa, with every intention of striking him to the ground, stood overwhelmed by a fierce pride and tenderness at her child’s wild joy, the spirit that she must someday break. She let him pass unharmed.
    The Neapolitan Italians dissolved from the dark streets and left the city to the clatter of hoofs on cobblestones as Larry Angeluzzi galloped his horse to the stable on 35th Street.

CHAPTER 2

    T HE ANGELUZZI-CORBO family lived in the best tenement on Tenth Avenue. There was only one apartment to each of the four flights so windows opened to the west on Tenth Avenue and to the east on the backyards, giving cross-ventilation. The Angeluzzi-Corbos, by having the whole floor—and the top floor at that—were able to use the back of the hallway for extra storage space. The icebox, a bureau, countless cans of tomato paste, and boxes of macaroni were stacked against the wall, for though the apartment consisted of six rooms, they were crowded for space.
    The apartment was shaped like a long
E
with the middle prong missing. The kitchen formed the lower shelf; then the dining room, the bedrooms and the living room, with its windows facing on Tenth Avenue, made the long vertical line; and Octavia’s small, doored bedroom off the living room was the top prong of the
E.
Gino, Vinnie, and Sal slept in the living room on a bed that folded up into an upright dolly. This was put in a corner during the day and covered with a made-over drapery. The parents slept in the bedroom first on the line, and Larry in the next one. Then came the dining room, which was called the kitchen—it had a great wooden table, for eating and living—and at right angles to that was the real kitchen, with its boiler, sink, and stove. By the standards of the neighborhood, the apartment was wastefully commodious, and an example of Lucia Santa’s unthriftiness.
     
     
    OCTAVIA PUT BABY Aileen on her mother’s bed and went into her own room to change into a house dress. When she came out the three boys were already sound asleep, their great bed having been unfolded onto the middle of the living room floor. She went down the corridor of rooms to the kitchen to wash her face. Her mother sat in the dining room, waiting, sipping a small glass of wine. Octavia knew her mother would stay up to finish their quarrel and that afterward, like conspirators, they would make plans together for the family’s fortune—a house on Long Island, college for the brightest child.
    Lucia Santa began with intended conciliation, saying in Italian, “The baker’s son, he has his eye on you. Does he give you ices to make sure you won’t speak to him?” She enjoyed her irony, but paused to listen intently at a sound from the bedroom. She asked worriedly, “Did you put Lena in the middle of