LITMIR.BIZ

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a peep out of them, never; quiet, American people. But his father wasn’t satisfied with being an Italian, he had to be a noisy Italian.

      ‘Arturo,’ his mother called. ‘Breakfast.’

      As if he didn’t know breakfast was ready! As if everybody in Colorado didn’t know by this time that the Bandini family was having breakfast!

      He hated soap and water, and he could never understand why you had to wash your face every morning. He hated the bathroom because there was no bathtub in it. He hated toothbrushes. He hated the toothpaste his mother bought. He hated the family comb, always clogged with mortar from his father’s hair, and he loathed his own hair because it never stayed down. Above all, he hated his own face spotted with freckles like ten thousand pennies poured over a rug. The only thing about the bathroom he liked was the loose floorboard in the corner. Here he hid Scarlet Crime and Terror Tales.

      ‘Arturo! Your eggs are getting cold.’

      Eggs. Oh Lord, how he hated eggs.

      They were cold, all right; but no colder than the eyes of his father, who glared at him as he sat down. Then he remembered, and a glance told him that his mother had snitched. Oh Jesus! To think that his own mother should rat on him! Bandini nodded to the window with eight panes across the room, one pane gone, the opening covered with a dish towel.

      ‘So you pushed your brother’s head through the window?’

      It was too much for Federico. All over again he saw it: Arturo angry, Arturo pushing him into the window, the crash of glass. Suddenly Federico began to cry. He had not cried last night, but now he remembered: blood coming out of his hair, his mother washing the wound, telling him to be brave. It was awful. Why hadn’t he cried last night? He couldn’t remember, but he was crying now, the knuckle of his fist twisting tears out of his eyes.

      ‘Shut up!’ Bandini said.

      ‘Let somebody push your head through a window,’ Federico sobbed. ‘See if you don’t cry!’

      Arturo loathed him. Why did he have to have a little brother? Why had he stood in front of the window? What kind of people were these wops? Look at his father, there. Look at him smashing eggs with his fork to show how angry he was. Look at the egg yellow on his father’s chin! And on his mustache. Oh sure, he was a dago wop, so he had to have a mustache, but did he have to pour those eggs through his ears? Couldn’t he find his mouth? Oh God, these Italians!

      But Federico was quiet now. His martyrdom of last night no longer interested him; he had found a crumb of bread in his milk, and it reminded him of a boat floating on the ocean; Drrrrrrr, said the motor boat, drrrrrrr. What if the ocean was made out of real milk – could you get ice cream at the North Pole?Drrrrrrr, drrrrrrr. Suddenly he was thinking of last night again. A gusher of tears filled his eyes and he sobbed. But the bread crumb was sinking. Drrrrrr, drrrrr. Don’t sink, motor boat! don’t sink! Bandini was watching him.

      ‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said. ‘Will you drink that milk and quit fooling around?’

      To use the name of Christ carelessly was like slapping Maria across the mouth. When she married Bandini it had not occurred to her that he swore. She never quite got used to it. But Bandini swore at everything. The first English words he learned were God damn it. He was very proud of his swear words. When he was furious he always relieved himself in two languages.

      ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Why did you push your brother’s head through the window?’

      ‘How do I know?’ Arturo said. ‘I just did it, that’s all.’

      Bandini rolled his eyes in horror.

      ‘And how do you know I won’t knock your goddamn block off?’

      ‘Svevo,’ Maria said. ‘Svevo. Please.’

      ‘What do you want?’ he said.

      ‘He didn’t mean it, Svevo,’ she smiled. ‘It was an accident. Boys will be boys.’

      He put down his napkin with a bang. He clinched his teeth and seized the hair on his head with both hands. There he swayed in his chair, back and forth, back and forth.

      ‘Boys will be boys!’ he jibed. ‘That little bastard pushes his brother’s head through the window, and boys will be boys! Who’s gonna pay for that window? Who’s gonna pay the doctor bills when he pushes his brother off a cliff? Who’s gonna pay the lawyer when they send him to jail for murdering his brother? A murderer in the family! Oh Deo uta me! Oh God help me!’

      Maria shook her head and smiled. Arturo screwed his lips in a murderous sneer: so his own father was against him too, already accusing him of murder. August’s head racked sadly, but he was very happy that he wasn’t going to turn out to be a murderer like his brother Arturo; as for August he 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 the street 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

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