LITMIR.BIZ

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keep your eye on him. Effie Hildegarde’s got lots of money.’

      ‘She’s a widow too,’ Craik said, studying the meat scale. ‘Own’s the street car company.’

      Maria watched his face closely. He wrapped and tied the meat, slapped it before her on the counter. ‘Owns lots of real estate in this town too. Fine-looking woman, Mrs Bandini.’

      Real estate? Maria sighed with relief.

      ‘Oh, Svevo knows lots of real estate people. He’s probably figuring some job for her.’

      She was biting her thumbnail when Craik spoke again.

      ‘What else, Mrs Bandini?’

      She ordered the rest: flour, potatoes, soap, margarine, sugar. ‘I almost forgot!’ she said. ‘I want some fruit too, a half dozen of those apples. The children like fruit.’

      Mr Craik swore under his breath as he whipped a sack open and dropped apples into it. He did not approve of fruit for the Bandini account: he could see no reason for poor people indulging in luxury. Meat and flour – yes. But why should they eat fruit when they owed him so much money?

      ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘This charging business has got to stop, Mrs Bandini! I tell you it can’t go on like this. I ain’t had a penny on that bill since September.’

      ‘I’ll tell him!’ she said, retreating. ‘I’ll tell him, Mr Craik.’

      ‘Ack! A lot of good that does!’

      She gathered her packages.

      ‘I’ll tell him, Mr Craik! I’ll tell him tonight.’

      Such a relief to step into the street! How tired she was. Her body ached. Yet she smiled as she breathed the cold night air, hugging her packages lovingly, as though they were life itself.

      Mr Craik was mistaken. Svevo Bandini was a family man. And why shouldn’t he talk to a woman who owned real estate?

       Chapter Five

      Arturo Bandini was pretty sure that he wouldn’t go to hell when he died. The way to hell was the committing of mortal sin. He had committed many, he believed, but the confessional had saved him. He always got to confession on time – that is, before he died. And he knocked on wood whenever he thought of it – he always would get there on time – before he died. So Arturo was pretty sure he wouldn’t go to hell when he died. For two reasons. The confessional, and the fact that he was a fast runner.

      But purgatory, that midway place between hell and heaven, disturbed him. In explicit terms the catechism stated the requirements for heaven: a soul had to be absolutely clean, without the slightest blemish of sin. If the soul at death was not clean enough for heaven, and not befouled enough for hell, there remained that middle region, that purgatory where the soul burned and burned until it was purged of its blemishes.

      In purgatory there was one consolation: soon or late you were a cinch for heaven. But when Arturo realized that his stay in purgatory might be seventy million trillion billion years, burning and burning and burning, there was little consolation in ultimate heaven. After all, a hundred years was a long time. And a hundred and fifty million years was incredible.

      No: Arturo was sure he would never go straight to heaven. Much as he dreaded the prospect, he knew that he was in for a long session in purgatory. But wasn’t there something a man could do to lessen the purgatory ordeal of fire? In his catechism he found the answer to this problem.

      The way to shorten the awful period in purgatory, the catechism stated, was by good works, by prayer, by fasting and abstinence, and by piling up indulgences. Good works were out, as far as he was concerned. He had never visited the sick, because he knew no such people. He had never clothed the naked because he had never seen any naked people. He had never buried the dead because they had undertakers for that. He had never given alms to the poor because he had none to give; besides, ‘alms’ always sounded to him like a loaf of bread, and where could he get loaves of bread? He had never harbored the injured because – well, he didn’t know – it sounded like something people did on seacoast towns, going out and rescuing sailors injured in shipwrecks. He had never instructed the ignorant because after all, he was ignorant himself, otherwise he wouldn’t be forced to go to this lousy school. He had never enlightened the darkness because that was a tough one he never did understand. He had never comforted the afflicted because it sounded dangerous and he knew none of them anyway: most cases of measles and smallpox had quarantine signs on the doors.

      As for the Ten Commandments he broke practically all of them, and yet he was sure that not all of these infringements were mortal sins. Sometimes he carried a rabbit’s foot, which was superstition, and therefore a sin against the First Commandment. But was it a mortal sin? That always bothered him. A mortal sin was a serious offense. A venial sin was a slight offense. Sometimes, playing baseball, he crossed bats with a fellow player: this was supposed to be a sure way to get a two-base hit. And yet he knew it was superstition. Was it a sin? And was it a mortal sin or a venial sin? One Sunday he had deliberately missed mass to listen to the broadcast of the world series, and particularly to hear of his god, Jimmy Foxx of the Athletics. Walking home after the game it suddenly occurred to him that he had broken the First Commandment: thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Well, he had committed a mortal sin in missing Mass, but was it another mortal sin to prefer Jimmy Foxx to God Almighty during the world series? He had gone to confession, and there the matter grew more complicated. Father Andrew had said, ‘If you think it’s a mortal sin, my son, then it is a mortal sin.’ Well, heck. At first he had thought it was only a venial sin, but he had to admit that, after considering the offense for three days before confession, it had indeed become a mortal sin.

      The Second Commandment. It was no use even thinking about that, for Arturo said ‘God damn it’ on an average of four times a day. Nor was that counting the variations: God damn this and God damn that. And so, going to confession each week, he was forced to make wide generalizations after a futile examination of his conscience for accuracy. The best he could do was confess to the priest, ‘I took the name of the Lord in vain about sixty-eight or seventy times.’ Sixty-eight mortal sins in one week, from the Second Commandment alone. Wow! Sometimes, kneeling in the cold church awaiting confessional, he listened in alarm to the beat of his heart, wondering if it would stop and he drop dead before he got those things off his chest. It exasperated him, that wild beating of his heart. It compelled him not to run but often to walk, and very slowly, to confessional, lest he overdo the organ and drop in the street.

      ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ Of course he honored his father and his mother! Of course. But there was a catch in it: the catechism went on to say that any disobedience of thy father and thy mother was dishonor. Once more he was out of luck. For though he did indeed honor his mother and father, he was rarely obedient. Venial sins? Mortal sins? The classifications pestered him. The number of sins against that commandment exhausted him; he would count them to the hundreds as he examined his days hour by hour. Finally he came to the conclusion that they were only venial sins, not serious enough to merit hell. Even so, he was very careful not to analyze this conclusion too deeply.

      He had never killed a man, and for a long time he was sure that he would never sin against the Fifth Commandment. But one day the class in catechism took up the study of the Fifth Commandment, and he discovered to his disgust that it was practically impossible to avoid sins against it. Killing a man was not the only thing: the by-products of the commandment included cruelty, injury, fighting, and all forms of viciousness to man, bird, beast, and insect alike.

      Goodnight, what was the use? He enjoyed killing bluebottle flies. He got a big kick out of killing muskrats, and birds. He loved to fight. He hated those chickens. He had had a lot of dogs in his life, and he had been severe and often harsh with them. And what of the prairie dogs he had killed, the pigeons, the pheasants, the jackrabbits? Well, the only thing to do was to make the best of it. Worse, it was a sin to even think of killing or injuring a human being. That sealed his doom. No matter how he tried, he could not resist expressing the wish of violent death against some people: like Sister Mary Corta, and Craik the grocer, and the freshmen at the university, who

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