Wait Until Spring Bandini Read Online Free PDF

that he wasn’t going to turn out to be a murderer like his brother Arturo; as for Augusthe was going to be a priest; maybe he would be there to deliver the last sacraments before they sent Arturo to the electric chair. As for Federico, he saw himself the victim of his brother’s passion, saw himself lying stretched out at the funeral; all his friends from St Catherine were there, kneeling and crying; oh, it was awful. His eyes floated once more, and he sobbed bitterly, wondering if he could have another glass of milk.
    ‘Kin I have a motor boat for Christmas?’ he said.
    Bandini glared at him, astonished.
    ‘That’s all we need in this family,’ he said. Then his tongue flitted sarcastically: ‘Do you want a real motor boat, Federico? One that goes put put put put?’
    ‘That’s what I want!’ Federico laughed. ‘One that goes puttedy puttedy put put!’ He was already in it, steering it over the kitchen table and across Blue Lake up in the mountains. Bandini’s leer caused him to kill the motor and drop anchor. He was very quiet now. Bandini’s leer was steady, straight through him. Federico wanted to cry again, but he didn’t dare. He dropped his eyes to the empty milk glass, saw a drop or two at the bottom of the glass, and drained them carefully, his eyes stealing a glance at his father over the top of the glass. There sat Svevo Bandini – leering. Federico felt goose flesh creeping over him.
    ‘Gee whiz,’ he whimpered. ‘What did I do?’
    It broke the silence. They all relaxed, even Bandini, who had held the scene long enough. Quietly he spoke.
    ‘No motor boats, understand? Absolutely no motor boats.’
    Was that all? Federico sighed happily. And all the time he believed his father had discovered that it was he who had stolen the pennies out of his work pants, broken thestreet lamp on the corner, drawn that picture of Sister Mary Constance on the blackboard, hit Stella Colombo in the eye with a snowball, and spat in the holy water font at St Catherine’s.
    Sweetly he said, ‘I don’t want a motor boat, Papa. If you don’t want me to have one, I don’t want one, Papa.’
    Bandini nodded self-approvingly to his wife: here was the way to raise children, his nod said. When you want a kid to do something, just stare at him; that’s the way to raise a boy. Arturo cleaned the last of his egg from the plate and sneered: Jesus, what a sap his old man was! He knew that Federico, Arturo did; he knew what a dirty little crook Federico was; that sweet face stuff wasn’t fooling him by a long shot, and suddenly he wished he had shoved not only Federico’s head but his whole body, head and feet and all, through that window.
    ‘When I was a boy,’ Bandini began. ‘When I was a boy back in the Old Country –’
    At once Federico and Arturo left the table. This was old stuff to them. They knew he was going to tell them for the ten thousandth time that he made four cents a day carrying stone on his back, when he was a boy, back in the Old Country, carrying stone on his back, when he was a boy. The story hypnotized Svevo Bandini. It was dream stuff that suffocated and blurred Helmer the banker, holes in his shoes, a house that was not paid for, and children that must be fed. When I was a boy: dream stuff. The progression of years, the crossing of an ocean, the accumulation of mouths to feed, the heaping of trouble upon trouble, year upon year, was something to boast about too, like the gathering of great wealth. He could not buy shoes with it, but it had happened to him. When Iwas a boy –. Maria, listening once more, wondered why he always put it that way, always deferring to the years, making himself old.
    A letter from Donna Toscana arrived, Maria’s mother. Donna Toscana with the big red tongue, not big enough to check the flow of angry saliva at the very thought of her daughter married to Svevo Bandini. Maria turned the letter over and over. The flap gushed glue thickly where Donna’s huge tongue