IV
I
At about this time Gian-Luca developed his first real signs of temper. This may have been due to heredity, of course, but Teresa certainly contributed. It struck him one day that even a goddess could not be quite indifferent to devotion; the thing to do, therefore, was to worry her with love, and Gian-Luca acted accordingly. He evolved the idea of climbing into her bed, and when ordered to desist, cried loudly. He constantly followed her round the house, never very far from her heels, like a puppy, or running just ahead in the region of her toes until she fell over him. If she went into her cash-desk Gian-Luca would be there, squatting by her stool; if she went into the shop to help Fabio with the serving, out would come Gian-Luca like a jack-in-the-box, and she would find him clinging to her skirts. But these signs of devotion were only a beginning, there was more, much more to follow, for Gian-Luca decided that he wanted to be petted continually, all the time. Not an evening now but he would sidle up to Teresa and stand there waiting to be petted; sometimes he would reach up and gently stroke her arm; once he got as far as stroking her cheek. When this failed to elicit the proper response, he would hurl himself into her lap. She would say: “Gian-Luca! What are you doing?”—not crossly, but in a voice of surprise; and then, while he still clung, her thin arms would go round him and her hands would continue their knitting on his back, he would hear the clicking of the needles. Fabio would call him.
“Come here to Nonno, caro.”
But Gian-Luca, would reply: “I want Nonna!”
And at that, as like as not, Teresa would put him down: “Run away, Gian-Luca, Nonna wants to go on knitting.”
And when he made to clamber on her knee again, she would shake her head and say: “No, no, Gian-Luca.”
One morning he gallantly offered her his jam on a half-consumed slice of bread and butter.
“Please eat my jam, Nonna.”
“No, thank you, Gian-Luca.”
“Please, Nonna.”
“But I do not want your jam, my child. You eat it, it is nice cherry jam.”
Of course he knew that it was nice cherry jam, that was why he wanted her to eat it. She never allowed herself butter and jam, and this pained him as unworthy of a goddess.
When she told him, as she often did, to run away upstairs, he now invited her to follow: “You come, Nonna.”
“No, I cannot, Gian-Luca, I must go and help in the shop.”
“Oh, please.”
“Do not worry me so, Gian-Luca.”
And then he would begin to cry. His crying would reach Fabio, who would hurry from the shop to see what was happening in the parlor, and he and Teresa would argue in Italian in order that Gian-Luca should not know what they said; but as Rosa had been busily teaching him Italian, their little ruse was often unsuccessful. He understood enough to know that Fabio sympathized and considered that he ought to be petted, and, or course, at this discovery would come yet more tears, the rather pleasant tears of self-pity.
“Dio!” grumbled Rosa. “You nearly five years old, and yet you cry and cry like a baby; you soon will be all washed away with your tears—Gian-Luca will be melted, like the sugar.”
The thought that he might melt like the sugar was attractive; he now took much more interest in the sugar in his coffee. If he could melt away before Nonna’s very eyes! “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he sobbed in a kind of ecstasy, choking himself with his tears.
“You shut it!” scolded Rosa, who was again nearing her time, and whose Mario was making her jealous with a barmaid. “You shut it up at once, you make such dreadful noise, I think my poor head split in two!”
But well launched, Gian-Luca found it very hard to “shut it,” for his crying would become automatic; a series of chokings and gulpings and coughings that went on independently of any will of his.
Then one day he made his most stupendous effort; he had sixpence, and with it he bought a bunch of flowers. He carried them with unction, using both hands in the process.
“Why you want?” demanded Rosa who felt cynical and cross.
But Gian-Luca would not answer that question.
Nonna was not in the shop on his return, she happened to be knitting in the parlor. He approached her very slowly with the offering extended; his face was rather red and his breath came rather fast. Nonna looked up.
“For you!” said Gian-Luca. “I bought them myself—”
And he waited.
“Thank you,” said Nonna. “What very pretty flowers—it was kind of Gian-Luca to buy them.” But she did not even smell them, she put them on the table and quietly returned to her knitting.
Still he waited. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen, no rapture, no expressions of delighted gratitude, no clasping, and no kissing of himself. There lay the fading flowers, and there sat Nonna, knitting, and there stood Gian-Luca, always waiting … Then suddenly he broke, something went snap inside him. He looked about him wildly for what he might destroy. His eyes came back to Nonna, to her long brown hands, her knitting, the thing that she preferred before his flowers. His arm shot out, he seized it and tore it from her hands; he hurled it to the floor and stamped upon it: “Bestia!” he choked, as though the thing had ears. It parted from its needles and unraveled as he stamped; at the sight of this his fury increased beyond control, and hurling himself down he tore and bit the wool, like a small wild beast that worries at a victim.
Teresa sat very still; her empty hands were folded, they did not strike, nor did they rescue. When she spoke she did so gently, and quite without emotion:
“Gian-Luca, you will go at once to bed.”
He looked up at her: “I hate you! You do not love my flowers—you do not kiss me, not ever—”
“You may take away your flowers, I do not want them now,” she told him. “I find you a very naughty child.”
And that was all—she found him a very naughty child—he was conscious of wanting her to hit him. If Nonna would not kiss him, then he wanted her to hit him; he wanted to try and make her hit him. Words, heard, but half-forgotten until that moment leapt from him, he screamed them at her: “Vipera! vipera! Vecchia strega!” And screaming still, he waited for the blow. But Nonna did not strike, did not raise her eyes or voice—she merely raised her finger and pointed to the door. And Gian-Luca, exhausted now in spirit, mind and body, left her and went stumbling upstairs to put himself to bed.
II
It was just as well, perhaps, that the following winter Gian-Luca had to go to school, for though beaten in his one supreme contest with Teresa, he still clung to the hope of imposing himself upon her, if not by one means then by another. Thus it happened that his active and versatile mind concocted quite a new scheme; the scheme was simple, it consisted in the main of becoming extremely naughty, and in this, it must be said that Gian-Luca succeeded beyond his own expectations. Just as his weeping had become automatic, so now did his naughtiness; once launched he found it difficult to stop, and scrape followed scrape with such startling rapidity that even Teresa had to put down her knitting in order to interfere; and in this lay Gian-Luca’s miniature triumph; Nonna no longer ignored him.
The shop was a fruitful source of mischief, there were so many things you could do. For instance, you could dip into the huge jar of pickles and consume large quantities of onions and gherkins, after which—with an effort—you could make yourself sick, an arresting form of disturbance. Then, of course, there were the cheeses; the hard, manly cheeses could be surreptitiously bitten; the more feminine kind that swooned on wooden platters, could be prodded or partly consumed by the tongue. Salame, when eaten in course brown chunks, was an almost infallible cure for digestion, and the essence of peppermint that Nonna administered, when properly sweetened and diluted with hot water, was really rather in the nature of a treat—you sipped it out of a spoon.
And then there was Rosa. Rosa, grown cross, could easily be induced to make scenes. One could always torment Rosa and Rosa’s watch, especially the watch, which was very ornate. If, as sometimes happened, she would take it off while she swept and forget to put it on again, it was almost sure to attract your attention, and then—well, you naturally wound it up, whereupon it had a habit of stopping. This suggested that you might not have wound it enough, so you wound it again with more vigor—
Rosa would scream: “Mascalzone! birbone! I tell Nonna, you see if I not tell Nonna!”
And as this was precisely what you hoped she would do, you laughed, not in malice but in pleasure.
When it rained, as, of course, it did constantly—you could dart away from Rosa and plump into a puddle. There was also Rosa’s Berta who grew uglier every day, and whose yells when pinched were most gratifying.
Then would come the longed-for evenings when Nonna would look grave, and when Nonna would say:
“Come here, Gian-Luca.”
You went at once, and standing very still beside her knee, you tingled with excitement and pleasure at the sound of her voice, retailing all your sins. Nonna might remark upon the fact that you were smiling:
“There is nothing whatever to smile about, Gian-Luca.” Nothing? There was everything! You were smiling because Nonna had at last been brought to recognize your sins. The more you sinned the more you swelled with pride and self-importance, the more you knew that you were brave. With this knowledge of your prowess came a knowledge of yourself, a very soul-satisfying knowledge. In your mind’s eye you saw Nonna being rescued from a dragon, and you were her rescuer. Once rescued, how she wept on you for love and gratitude! With what humbleness she kissed you, and with what timidity she asked to be allowed to hold your hand while crossing streets—
There was just one thing, however, that you simply could not do—you could not pass Rocca’s, the butcher’s; and this, while it figured in the list of your sins, had nothing at all to do with sin. It bewildered you a little, you yourself were not quite clear as to why you felt so tearful at the thought; you would shut your eyes, because a dragon-slayer never cried, and then up would come the picture of those goats! Rosa would try persuasion, she might even apply force—no good, you simply could not do it. You kicked and screamed and finally lay flat down on the pavement, but—you did not pass Rocca’s the butcher’s.
“You wicked, you do it all on purpose!” blubbered Rosa, distracted by the scene that you were making.
But you answered: “No—I hate it! It bleeds—I hate the dead-shop!” That was what you called it: “The dead-shop.”
III
Strange days; Gian-Luca himself thought them strange, filled as they were with new excitements; indeed, when he finally had to go to school it seemed rather flat by comparison. He was naughty at school, but not really very naughty, there being no Nonna there to see, and on the whole he liked it, there were lots of other children; not small, fat, silly children like Rosa’s ugly Berta, but large, thin, clever children like himself.
It had been arranged to send him to the Board School, which was undenominational and took all creeds alike—only Gian-Luca had no creed. Beyond Scripture lessons therefore, which left him rather cold, his mind was quite undisturbed by doctrine. Teresa shrugged her shoulders.
“Can it matter either way?”
“I am not quite sure—” said Fabio doubtfully.
“In that case I will judge, and I say it cannot matter.”
And as usual Teresa decided.
Fabio was rather tired, life was tiring him a little, and the business was growing every day. He had long since ceased to take an active part in his religion, that had been the duty of Teresa in the past; religious forms were made, he felt, for women. Teresa’s secession from the Church had grieved and shocked him, he had grown to depend on her prayers. He suspected that Teresa’s prayers had been both loud and fierce, the kind that would be heard for the sake of peace alone, if for no other reason. Fabio could not pray like that; perhaps he lacked conviction, he had always been a shy and doubtful man; it had solaced him, however, to know that his Teresa stood up to God and asked for what they wanted. At times, of course, Teresa prayed only for herself, as when she knelt beside the bed demanding God’s forgiveness. She had done continual penance, and so, via her, had Fabio; and although this had contributed to wearing down his manhood, at the same time it had brought him more in touch with God, by proxy; that is with Teresa’s God. Left to find God for himself, by reason of Teresa’s disaffection, he could only grope for something that was kind; something that was softer and more loving than Teresa, something that would understand his needs. Freed from her religious spells he no longer liked her God, though the fact that he disliked Him made him fearful. He felt angry with Teresa, who had thus disturbed his peace, who had suddenly left him in the lurch. So, partly in anger, partly in pity, and a little in superstition, Fabio had baptized Gian-Luca. It had been his final act of defiance against Teresa, there would never be another—not now.
Fabio had grown much older—it was Olga’s death that had aged him—this winter he had suffered from pains across his back. The pains had been lumbago, or so the doctor said, and when they caught him, Fabio had some ado to move, had just to stand quite still and call Teresa. For some reason the lumbago would make him think of God. God—lumbago, lumbago—God; that was how it came to Fabio.
“I do believe He is kind—” thought Fabio in self-pity, clinging to the counter in acute distress.
He was frightened when he thought of God, and when he got lumbago he was even more frightened of the pain across his back—that, no doubt, was why he coupled them together.
There had been a final argument about Gian-Luca’s school, when Fabio, lying prostrate with red flannel round his middle, had suggested that they might consult a priest.
“That I will not,” said Teresa. “You may if you wish, my Fabio, but the time is short, the child must go next week.”
“Corpo di Dio!” bellowed Fabio, who had tried to move in bed, and whose face was bedewed with agony. “I care not what you do—only bring my liniment! I care not where you send him, so you rub me!”
IV
Rosa was deeply shocked and so was Nerone, while the Signora Rocca was appalled. She announced her intention of calling on Teresa for the purpose of expressing her disgust.
“Leave them in peace, for God’s sake!” advised her husband. “Have they not already had their troubles?”
“And have I not had mine?” inquired his wife severely, and whenever she said this, Rocca’s tardy conscience smote him, and he thought it wiser to be silent.
Rosa spoke to Mario, who, although not very pious, had been known to make Novenas for his bunion. “Is it not dreadful, Mario, the little Gian-Luca—no father and now no religion, not at all!” And finding her Berta, she began to kiss her warmly, whereupon her Berta yelled.
Rosa gave Gian-Luca a little Rosary and taught him to say his beads; but Gian-Luca sucked and bit the beads until they came apart, and one of them got swallowed by mistake.
Nerone stumped round to Fabio on an angry wooden leg: “First you naturalize yourself, then you neglect yourself the Church, then you take Gian-Luca away, what next I ask? You become a Protestant perhaps? No wonder you sell us bad salame.”
Except for Signora Rocca, they all attacked poor Fabio; not one of them dared tackle Teresa. The butcher’s wife was different, she had money of her own, she went to Mass in purple silk on Sundays. Teresa was busy in the cash-desk when she arrived, but together they went into the parlor.
“A little glass of wine?”
“No, I thank you.”
“What a pity, we have some such excellent Chianti!”
“I have come,” said the signora, taking the easy-chair, “to discuss the wine of the spirit.”
“Ah!” murmured Teresa. “Do you think that we should stock it?”
“I have come,” said the signora, “to speak about Gian-Luca, whose soul is in the greatest peril.”
“How so?” inquired Teresa.
“Can you ask?” Signora Rocca opened her enormous eyes as far as they would go. “Can you ask, when I hear that you have sent him to the Board School where they teach the worship of the devil?”
“I have not heard that,” said Teresa very mild, “but no doubt it will come in useful.”
“You appal me, signora!”
“Do not let that be so—I wish only to reassure you.”
“But I beg you to listen—a child born in our midst, and a child already at so grave a disadvantage—through the misfortune of his birth—”
“But should not that recommend him to God—if, as they say, He takes care of the afflicted?”
“God works through His Church alone, signora—would you snatch Gian-Luca from the Church? Consider!”
“ ‘Consideration is a constant source of error,’ ” murmured Teresa gently.
But Signora Rocca was also versed in proverbs. “ ‘You give the lettuce into the keeping of the geese!’ ” she quoted in her guttural Genoese.
“I do nothing,” said Teresa, and her tone was quite unruffled. “ ‘He who does nothing makes no blunders.’ ”
“ ‘He who does evil never lacks for an excuse,’ ” retorted the signora promptly.
“It is also said,” Teresa reminded her, smiling, “that: ‘The elephant cannot feel the biting of the flea.’ ”
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.