V
It was natural enough that the small community gathered together in Old Compton Street should have found a fruitful source of scandal in the open withdrawal of Gian-Luca from the Church. Of late years the Bosellis had kept all tongues wagging; there had been Olga’s trip to Italy, her misfortune, her death, and now this almost unheard-of happening—a child that they looked upon as one of themselves, was being sent to a Board School. They were stranger-people, all just a little homesick, all slightly misfits and thus on the defensive; and because of this they belonged to each other, bound firmly together by four most important things, their cooking, their religion, their will to make money; and last but not least by the love of their language—they came together to speak it. No one approved of naturalization, yet in Fabio’s case they forgave it; had he not been naturalized to help on his business? And this, though they might not follow his example, they could at least understand. Fabio had long been lax in his religion—this they also understood up to a certain point, and Teresa’s disaffection after Olga’s death they pitied rather than condemned; but to take Gian-Luca and put him at a Board School, to dump him willy-nilly among purely foreign children, quite apart from the religious aspect of the case—no, this they did not understand.
Rosa, who was pious, had often said to Mario: “All will be well when Gian-Luca goes to school; the good little Sisters will teach him how to pray, and presently he will make his first Communion, then all will be very well.”
And Mario had nodded: “That is so, my Rosa.”
For although her Mario was occasionally weak in regard to the sins of the flesh, he was nevertheless a good son of Holy Church, attending Mass with Rosa every Sunday morning; accompanying her to Confession every Easter, when he underwent a kind of spiritual spring-cleaning—after which he would be good for a little.
Nerone’s religion, like his love of Italy, was purely an accident of birth. Nerone was a man who clung to early associations as a child may cling to sucking its thumb long after it has left the cradle. Nerone had been poor, disastrously so; as a boy he had often gone hungry. His natal village had consisted of one street whose chief characteristic was a smell. Its church had been tawdry and shamefully neglected, its priest discouraged and untidy, its population hard-bitten to the bone by ceaseless poverty and toil. In the summer Nerone had grilled in his attic and in the winter he had frozen. Italy had given him nothing but hardships, whereas England had provided comparative ease. But Italy had bred him, her soil was the first that his flea-bitten feet had trodden; her religion had grown like him from that soil, and both she and her religion stood for associations that Nerone worshipped in his mind. If he did not always worship them in his business—oh, well, a man had to live!
Nerone loved his country, but he lived in England above his tobacco shop; Nerone loved his Church, but he gave her very little; when approached for subscriptions his attitude was that of a man who was well acquainted with God and was not to be taken in. Nerone loved his people, but refused Italian money, even from new arrivals. To Lucrezia, in her lifetime, he had been wont to say:
“You be careful, Lucrezia, you never take the lira, you always ask for the shilling. We send the shilling home, and behold, he has children! We make him an Italian, and when he is a lira he has little centesimi!”
So the shillings all went home to a bank in Siena, where they promptly bred offspring for Nerone. Some day Nerone would follow the shillings, but not before the uttermost farthing had been squeezed from the place of his temporary exile. And Nerone had his dreams—he was very full of dreams in spite of his astuteness in business. He dreamt of the village with one long, straggling street; he dreamt of the church where he had served his first Mass; of the candles, the Madonna with her faded tinsel flowers, the smell of dust and garlic and stale incense on the air, the kneeling figure of his mother. And because of his dreams which might some day come true, Nerone sold tobacco at a shop in Old Compton Street; and because of his dreams, he refused Italian money and had never been known to lend; and because of his dreams he was bigoted and proud and detested all things English. But, because of his dreams—and this was so strange—he had ordered white roses for Olga’s funeral; he had said: “I will have them all white.” Nerone loved Fabio and small caged birds and risotto and Amarena. He bullied Fabio and petted his birds; their perches were too narrow and so were their cages, but he fed them with groundsel and lettuce. He also loved children, even little English children who laughed at his wooden leg, and Gian-Luca he very particularly loved; had not Gian-Luca called him “Nonno”? It was therefore a personal outrage to Nerone that Fabio’s weakness had permitted, and for more than a month he never spoke to Fabio without bitter allusions to Gian-Luca’s soul, to the fact that Fabio was a traitor to his country and had once sold salame with a worm thrown in. Their evenings together had ceased abruptly, they no longer played dominoes now; but at nine o’clock every night Fabio sighed, and Nerone down the street became terribly restless. Nerone would go to a little cupboard and get out his dominoes; he would throw them on the table and begin to stir them as though he were making zabaione. “Mache!” Nerone would pick up his dominoes and put them away in their box; he would try to read the paper, or go for a walk, or find fault with the dutiful Rosa.
In the little back parlor behind his shop Fabio’s sighs grew louder; he would presently get up and begin touching things, until even Teresa, so calm since Olga’s death, had been known to look up and scold. On the thirty-fifth evening of this mutual torment, came Nerone stumping on his wooden leg.
“Good evening, Fabio!”
“Good evening, Nerone.”
“You come and play a little game of dominoes, Fabio?”
“Ecco! Perhaps I will.”
“Of course I beat you, but that you expect …”
“And perhaps you do not beat me!”
“Very well, then, suppose we go now and see.”
“I am ready—I am not at all afraid!”
It was over; Gian-Luca’s soul might be lost, but not Nerone’s game. Arm in arm they hurried out into the fog. “You old fox!” said Fabio, by way of endearment.
“You old brigand!” chuckled Nerone.
Rocca took his Church in a swinging, jaunty stride, and occasionally slapped it on the back. His oaths were lewd and varied and most personal to God; he sharpened his wits on priests and nuns. Rocca had been a soldier and now he was a butcher—he was pleasantly familiar with death; and as the Church, to Rocca, stood more for death than life, he was pleasantly familiar with the Church. He thought it a great pity that Gian-Luca should be sent to a Board School, because he mistrusted new ideas—vegetarianism and the like. Roccas’s only comment had been short and to the point:
“Give me the devil I know!” he had remarked. Beyond this he would not discuss the subject except when in a fury with his wife. On such occasions Rocca lifted up his voice: “Giurabbaccaccio! But leave them in peace; is he your grandson? Alas, no!”
And at this Signora Rocca was forced to be silent; she was childless, a reproach among women.
Rocca jeered at priests, but he continually fed them, and many were the sirloins and legs of English mutton that found their way to the Old Italian Church. Rocca jeered at nuns, but the little “Flying Angels” had good cause to bless him on more than one occasion, for the wherewithal to brew beef-tea for their poor. Rocca jeered at God, but when one bitter winter, Rocca had managed to get double pneumonia, when he had lain there gasping and despairing—fearful of living because of his anguish, fearful of dying because of his transgressions—Rocca had invited God into his house, and God, being what He is, had not refused to come.