Читать книгу Requiem for the Bone Man - R. A. Comunale M.D. - Страница 3

He was eight years old when the dead lady found him.

He and Angelo had been watching the old Mustache Petes playing bocce in front of Myers Tavern, their baggy patched pants held up by suspenders, twisting and turning like grotesque ballerinas, as they pitched the wooden ball while the two boys laughed at the sight. But Youth is easily bored by Age, so they quickly ditched the game to sneak through the trash-filled alleyway between the tavern and the timeworn row houses that fronted the river. They slid down the muddy bank to walk along the shallow waterway toward the concrete bridge abutments. It was fun to hunt there for coins, buttons, and soda pop bottles to redeem at the store for money.

This time, in the shadows of the overhanging bridge, they saw a bundle of rags caught on a raised pylon. The increased speed of the water flowing venturi-like through the passageway stirred the bundle, and he noticed it had arms. One seemed to move, beckoning him forward, almost pleading.

“Angie, look!”

The other boy stared briefly before turning and running away, but he was drawn to it, moth to flame. He moved closer and saw her face. Even in death, belly beginning to bloat from the gas in her bowels, she retained some of her beauty, her long golden hair framing an oval face and narrow nose. Traces of light pink lipstick contrasted the death-blued lips and mottled pasty skin. Her long delicate fingers, artist’s fingers, were a mixed palette of blues, reds, and grays. She registered the final rictus of agony frozen forever in those staring green eyes, with forearms drawn together as if to ward off Death’s scythe.

Why was she here?

Surely she belonged in one of the big houses farther down the river where the people with money lived, not here in his neighborhood of soot-covered brick buildings.

Her eyes would not leave him, sunken, no longer vibrant, but planting within him a cry for help.

Don’t leave me!

He ran back up the riverbank, trousers wet from stepping in the water. As he passed the old men spending their remaining days in pursuit of childhood pleasure playing the ancient game, one of them called out, chuckling:

“Hey, Gallini, you piss your pants, kid?”

He turned toward the old man.

“I’m Galen, Robert Galen.”

“Yeah? You like you papa, boy. He too good now to roll ball with us, con il suo nome Americano. I remember him in old country, boy. Gallini good enough for him there. Good enough for him here!”

He didn’t stop. He had learned early on that you don’t argue with the Old. He began to run the final stretch to the four-story tenement where his mama and papa lived. He knew he wasn’t fast like the other kids with their long, thin legs. His were what his papa called marching legs, thick but not fat—yet. Papa used to tell him about all the marching men back in the old country.

Mama would watch Papa as he told the stories of their former hometown, of the drums beating loudly and the young men marching through the streets, arms raised and waving flags wildly.

“Give us war,” they had cried, and Papa now knew they had gotten what they wanted, and that all it had meant for many of them was death, and he was grateful he and Mama had escaped to America.

That was in 1914, Papa had said.

“Mama, Mama!”

“What’s the matter, Berto?”

She looked at her son with pride. He was strong already and smart, just like his father. Antonio could have been a dottore back home, but they both knew they could not stay there. Now her Tonio ate the fire every day for them.

“There’s a dead lady in the river! She’s under the bridge, and Angie and me saw her! She’s sad, Mama, she doesn’t want to be there!”

“Antonio, come quick, listen what your son say!”

Antonio Gallini sat tired from his evening shift work at the foundry, but he rose from the patched-up chair his Anna had sewed and fixed. He had brought it home from where he’d found it in front of the rich man’s house. His powerful arms, strengthened by countless hours forging the heavy metal tools at work, easily carried the chair atop his stocky body.

“Che cosa, cara mia?”

He listened as his son repeated the sad story. Then he put on his street clothes and walked the four blocks to the police station—they didn’t have a telephone—and returned. Soon the boy heard the wail of the siren as the police wagon headed toward the river. By then his papa, too tired to do anything else, had returned to the old chair, which Anna stood behind rubbing his neck until he fell asleep.

Poor Tonio, she thought, but it was worth telling the police. Her Berto would be a big man, an important man, someday. He would live in a big house. He wouldn’t live like this.

She smiled at her son. Already he looked like his papa did when they first met. She handed him the last apple from the bare table as he ran outside again.

But he wasn’t going to play. He made a beeline for the police station, where he knew they would take the dead lady. That’s where the dottores would examine her and try to find out what hurt her. He had read that in a book in the library, a book he wasn’t supposed to read because it was in the grown-ups’ area, but he had read it anyway.

He saw the police wagon in the driveway behind the red brick building and ran to the large double-door side entrance. It was open and he looked each way before walking along the darkened corridor. He heard the voices of policemen in the different rooms but he was careful not to get caught.

He saw a light shining under another set of big doors. He read the letters on the door: MORGUE.

Like morta, he thought.

Slowly he pushed one of the doors partway open and saw them, two men dressed in long white gowns like the priests at Easter Mass. They moved slowly, talking quietly to each other in words he didn’t understand, their heads covered in white caps, their hands enveloped up to their mid forearms in heavy dark brown rubber gloves.

Then he saw her, lying stretched out on a table in the middle of the room. A sheet covered part of her, leaving her feet, stomach, chest and head exposed. She looked like she was sleeping.

He saw one of the men in white take a big knife and make a cut right into her belly. The other man spoke strange words into a machine:

“From the gas distention, I estimate expiration occurred more than twenty-four hours ago.”

“There it is,” the man with the knife said. “Somebody botched the abortion.”

Then they noticed him.

“Hey kid! Get outta here!”

He didn’t move, his jaw set in determination.

“I found her. She was in the river. What happened to her?”

The two men looked at each other. The shorter man, the one who had been speaking into the machine, laughed.

“Why do you want to know, kid?”

They looked at the stocky little boy standing there in torn brown corduroy pants, tee shirt, and worn brown shoes, looking up at them so intently. Strange little guy, one thought. Then they both smiled as he said, “I want to be like you.”

From that time on, he haunted the clinic where Dr. Agnelli worked. He watched him move from patient to patient, comforting some, scolding others, never stopping to sit or eat. He memorized the suture techniques the doctor used, went to his mama’s sewing box and, putting thread to needle, practiced sewing two pieces of cloth together.

And he waited.

“Berto, there’s a fight going down on Hamilton!”

Tomas and Angelo called to him late one Saturday afternoon soon after his tenth birthday party. Mama had saved to buy three cupcakes, one for each member of the family, and had put small blue candles on all three. Even his father had smiled and told him how grown up he looked now that he was ten. He had been so happy when his father reached under the table and pulled out his surprise gift: a brass belt buckle he had made from scraps at the mill, with his name on it! His father had taken the buckle and put it on his son’s belt.

“Siete un uomo, Berto!”

He had run outside afterward to show his friends.

“Berto, come on, let’s go watch the fight.”

He hesitated, looking back at the door to his apartment building. Mama and Papa had warned him to stay away from trouble, but what ten-year-old boy could resist watching a brawl? He turned back to his friends and ran with them to the Hamilton block. Something was always happening there. It was the crux of the neighborhood territories, the nexus point where the different ethnic groups converged, so it served as the natural battleground for the frustrations of the immigrants and their children.

The three boys turned the corner and began hearing the shouts and curses of the older boys and men—spitting, kicking, and lunging at one another. The more vicious held back, waiting for the opportunity to mutilate their enemies with sharpened metal or spring-loaded zip guns.

The boys hesitated at the corner, peering around, afraid to go farther, but then they heard a loud scream and saw one of the teenagers fall to the ground, blood spurting in a narrow stream from his groin. The rest of the fighters stopped and then ran, fearing the arrival of the police or, worse, the neighborhood enforcers.

“Come on, let’s help him,” Berto yelled as he moved toward the fallen young man.

The other two remained transfixed.

He reached the victim and immediately began to press on the site of the stab wound, just as he had seen Dr. Agnelli do.

“Tomas, go get a bottle of your papa’s vino. Angelo, get a needle from your mama’s sewing kit—quick!”

He could feel the pulsation of the artery under his hand. So this was how it felt! How did Dr. Agnelli say it? Blood runs down, walks up. So, the blood was being pushed by the heart from above. He put more pressure above the stab wound.

“Here, Berto.”

Tomas had returned with the wine bottle.

“Pour it over where my hand is.”

Angelo arrived with a big curved carpet needle and a spool of heavy thread.

“Put the thread in it then put your hand where mine is now.”

He had never felt this way before. His whole body vibrated with excitement. With Angelo pressing above and Tomas pouring the wine into the wound, he was able to see the tear in the thick tube that wanted to spill its life-giving contents onto the cracked flagstone sidewalk.

He slipped the curved needle into the blood vessel, first on one side, then the other. He repeated to himself the mantra Dr. Agnelli would recite whenever he watched: “Equal edges come together in prayer.” One stitch, two, three! That should be enough.

“Tomas, give me your knife.”

He knotted the ends of the thread then cut it. No blood coming out!

As he started to stand up he felt a heavy hand on his back. His two friends had disappeared. Turning, he saw an enormously stocky man, a neighborhood enforcer, looking down at him.

“Good job, kid. We’ll take it from here. What’s your name?”

“Robert Galen.”

The big man noticed the belt buckle with the boy’s name on it and smiled, the jagged teeth in his jowly face glistening with gold.

“No, kid. From now on, it’s Dottore Berto.”

“Berto?”

“Si, Mama?”

“Berto, your papa wants to talk with you.”

Uh-oh! All through his younger years he had never liked hearing those words, and it was still the same now. Was it because he had come home later than usual from his high school classes? He had been feeling increasing tension between himself and his father in the last few years, but he didn’t know what to do about it. His father was a strict, hardworking man, short but powerfully built, with penetrating dark eyes framed by years of labor and suffering. His stare alone was sufficient punishment for transgressions. He demanded only the best of his son, no excuses accepted. Speak, read, behave, perform, understand, and just plain do better than the other kids—or else!

“Berto!” his father would typically start.

“Si, Papa?”

“Your report card. You got a B in English!” he would say, always speaking in his native tongue.

“Yes, Papa, but it’s only a mid-term grade.”

“I don’t care. It’s not good enough!”

He sometimes would raise his right hand to strike the boy, who would wince reflexively, and then put it down slowly if he noticed his Anna was watching.

“Antonio, don’t hit the boy!” his mother would call across the room.

“He must learn, Anna. He must always do his best.”

He would turn and walk from the room, his wife following in his wake like a shadow.

“Antonio, why are you so hard on him? He is a good boy.”

“Cara mia, you know what we went through in the old country. Look at me. Am I a hard man? I do it to give him a better life than we have. I don’t want to see him sweat away in the mill, grinding metal, coughing up soot. He should not be like the other boys, hanging out on corners, trying to get in with those Sicilianos and their made men. Not my boy! Never!”

You don’t have to worry about me, Papa, he would think as he listened to them talking about him. I know what I want for my life.

He would remember his first friend, Angie, now dead from a knife to the throat. He had tried to save him, but the wound was too severe. The boy’s blood had spilled onto the street and into his lungs even as he had tried to stop its flow. So many others, his classmates from grammar school, were now dead, in jail, or hanging out. Not him. He knew what he wanted and was willing to work for it, no matter what.

When his father would smile at him, radiating happiness even through the mill-furnace darkness of his face, the boy would feel so proud, almost as if his father was treating him as an equal.

“Berto, go in, your father is waiting for you.”

“Si, Mama.”

He hesitated, then walked into the small front room of their tenement apartment and waited for his father to recognize his presence.

“Figlio mio.”

“Si, Papa?”

His father was standing near the window in a typical pose, facing away from him, then turning his head toward him without shifting his body. It had taken Berto a long time to realize this was the parent-to-child posture of superiority used in the old country. He also knew that he had now grown old enough for his father to speak to him about something he considered a concern.

“Berto, Dottore Agnelli tells me you are spending a lot of time around his clinic. Are you sick, my son?”

“No, Papa.”

“Good. He tells me you ask to watch when he works.”

“Si, Papa.”

Oh yes, Papa. It is like poetry to watch the dottore as he goes from one person to the next, his hands moving to set a broken bone, his fingers singing like Mama’s sewing bobbin as he puts the cut skin back together. And how the little ones laugh as he taps their knees and runs his hand across their bellies to find out where it hurts!

His father had turned around to him and was smiling.

“What do you want to do with your life, son?”

“I want to be a doctor, Papa,” he responded without hesitation.

The father stared at his son, looking so much like himself at that age, eager to meet the world but not understanding what it would do to him.

Tonio, do you remember how you also wanted to be a dottore?

Indeed he did, but war, lack of money, and his class had blocked him at every turn. Now he wanted to be sure his son was tough enough to deal with the realities of life, not the dreams. He and Anna had come to America for that very reason. So he was determined to administer a dose of hard truth to his young son’s heart and mind, difficult as it would be to do so.

“You make my heart glad, my son. I am sure that you will be a fine doctor, just like Dr. Agnelli. But one question: How will you pay for it?”

His inquiry startled Berto. As he waited for an answer, Antonio Gallini noticed his beloved Anna standing in the doorway, the woman for whom he would do anything. They had crossed an ocean together. He could refuse her nothing.

Even now, as he looked at the timeworn rounded face of his wife, he remembered her sunlit smiles in the old country, her auburn hair glowing against the blue Mediterranean sky. He heard once more the voice that had sung the prayers next to him at Mass so long ago.

...

December 2, 1899, was bitterly cold in the small village in upper Tuscany, but the man was sweating in the candlelit room.

“Easy, Pietro, easy! It will be all right.”

Pasquale Gallini felt the tension in his son’s shoulders and understood. He already had lost one child and now Maria was having trouble again. The women were busy in the other room doing what women were supposed to do when another woman was ready. It was a mystery to the men—except the dottores, and none were here tonight.

“I can’t lose her, Papa. You know she almost died when little Pasquale ...”

“Si, figlio mio, I know.”

The old man remembered when the child who would have had his name had died quickly after birth. It was a double grief piled on both him and his son: losing the baby so soon after their beloved Antonella had died suddenly.

Pasquale was alone now with his memories of her.

No more, caro Dio, no more!

Both men started reflexively as they heard screams in the back room, followed by a deathly stillness that exposed the rasps of their own fearful breathing.

“Dio mio!” Pietro sobbed.

Pasquale held his son, his own heart crying out.

“Antonella, help me!”

Then they heard a second, higher-pitched cry shattering the brief silence, the gasping, angry cry of an infant suddenly ejected from the security of the womb. They stood transfixed as the old wooden door opened and the bent midwife waddled out holding a red-faced crying baby in her hands.

“You have a son, Pietro!”

Father and grandfather rushed into the birth room, followed by the midwife carrying the baby and returning it to the exhausted woman who forever thereafter would be called Mama.

“Maria!” the younger man called out, and the tired young woman turned her face to him.

“We will call him Antonio,” she half-whispered.

Pasquale Gallini smiled at the wisdom of his daughter-in-law.

“Come on, Tonio, we’re going to the festival.”

“No, Sal, my father needs me.”

He was the son and grandson of stonemasons. After school he worked side by side with his father and grandfather, cutting, chipping, measuring—whatever was required for the repairs to the great cathedral. From the time he could walk, he had carried the water to wet the stones to keep the dust down, until they had begun to teach him the craft itself.

When they rested, he would sit at his grandfather’s knee and ask the old man about the great days when Garibaldi and Mazzini united the country, and how the old man had fought to free the land from foreign influence.

His grandfather would show him the two gold medals for bravery that hung above the straw-filled bed along with the black paper silhouettes of Mazzini and Garibaldi ... and Antonella.

Antonio first saw Anna at Mass on Easter Sunday. Like the other girls, she wore a white dress and had blossoms in her hair. But there was a difference to her.

He was twelve and he was curious.

He was noticing things he had never noticed before. Her face did not seem like those of the other girls. It lit up the church more than the candles that stood row on row in front of the statues of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus. Her voice was sweeter than the spring birds now trilling the Resurrection of Christ.

After Mass, she walked outside and sat in the back of a little donkey cart waiting for her family.

He was twelve and he was bold.

“My name is Antonio Gallini. What’s yours?”

“Anna. Anna Abrescia.”

He liked the name.

She thought he looked strong for just a boy.

As their childhood romance flowered in the little Tuscan village, another flower was beginning to bloom that soon would stain the earth red.

Pasquale could feel it in the air. The young men were restive, just as they had been almost fifty years before. The blood lust was rising, even in his son Pietro.

Antonio was now fourteen—almost a man.

Pasquale began to plan.

The town priest knew how to speak and write English, so he called in a favor—the church repairs he had performed but never charged for—and arranged for the priest to teach the boy. He would not permit his grandson to be sucked into the maw of war.

“Tonio, you don’t spend time with us anymore. All you do is moon over the carpenter’s daughter.”

His friends knew him too well.

She would be coming into town today. He would wait for her. It was going to be a busy day. The farmers from the outlying areas would be bringing the cattle to the town for sale. There would be festivities.

He saw her down the street; she was driving the little donkey cart. Then he heard the rumble of hooves, thousands of them: the cattle drive. He saw the cart stop. The girl stood up and looked back in the direction of the noise—she was terrified. He ran, ran, as fast as he could toward her, grabbed the reins from her paralyzed hands and pulled the donkey and cart off the street into a nearby alley just as the cattle thundered through.

He lifted the still-frightened girl out of the cart and then held her for just a moment. He felt strange, like nothing he had ever felt before. Then, as she hugged and kissed him, the strangeness got stronger. She returned to the cart, her face red like the tomatoes in his grandfather’s garden.

He felt the burning in his own face and began moving toward her when he heard the clapping of hands and turned to see a watching crowd. Suddenly he was surrounded by his friends who were laughing and dancing, holding fingers to their heads to imitate the horns of a bull.

“Moo! Moo! Moo! Antonio has the horn!”

A few motioned crudely grabbing their crotches.

He realized it was true, and he ran off embarrassed to the shelter of his home.

“Antonio, the other boys are joining the army. Have you done so yet?”

“No, Papa, not yet. I thought you and Grandpapa needed me here.”

His father scowled and walked away.

Pasquale emerged from the shadows of the stonecutting room.

“Tonio, I see you with the carpenter’s daughter. You love her.”

He was embarrassed that it had become so obvious to everyone, but he nodded.

“Listen carefully to me, my son. Yes, I call you my son, because you are more like me than your father ever was. You are a thinker. I will not let you become cannon fodder. Here, boy.”

The old man held out a small leather pouch.

“This is for you and your Anna. Take it. It will be enough for you both. Go to Naples, get passage to America. You must leave before the guns start sounding. War is not glory. Many of my friends lie in the ground because of it. Now go, pack your clothes and say good-bye to your mama. She will understand. Do not be upset by your father.”

Antonio took the pouch and could feel the weight of the coins. He hugged the old man and thanked him, knowing they soon would never see each other again. As he left the room, he saw his father standing there, his face darkened with rage.

“Papa, I …”

His father turned his back, and the words echoed off the stucco walls.

“Non ho figlio!”

“Mama, I’m leaving for America with Anna. When we get enough money together, we’ll send for you and Papa and Grandpapa. It’s going to be all right.”

Maria looked at her son. She pulled his head to her chest and rocked him as she had done when he was a baby. She was stricken with grief, but she knew Pasquale was right; her son had to leave in order to live. She turned and took down the small silver crucifix from the mantle and put it in her son’s hands.

“It is all I can give you.”

“Come, Anna, we’ll miss the boat!”

They moved quickly through the crowds at the Naples dock. The great steamship towered over everything as they clutched the two small bags and moved up the gangplank. The steward looked at the young couple, sneered, then pointed toward the steerage section, the cheapest, darkest level of the ship. Crowded and dank, the smell of fear and hope mixed there with incipient seasickness. But it was worth it. They were going to America.

Fourteen days later, they saw the great copper statue rising above the entrance to New York Harbor. It had been a rough voyage until they finally were allowed to stand on deck.

“No deck chairs for this refuse!” the steward had laughed to his co-workers.

Disembarkation was worse. After the rich passengers streamed leisurely down the gangplanks to the waiting arms of family and friends, the steerage masses were herded off and loaded onto a crowded barge for transport across the harbor to a large carved-stone and red-brick building. At the entrance, the men were separated from the women and children, and all were grouped into long lines.

Government doctors quickly screened the new arrivals for diseases, passing along those deemed healthy or shaking their heads in rejection when they detected tuberculosis or a severe defect. They sent those not accepted to special holding areas, more like cages, condemned to a return voyage to whatever land they had left.

Then the final line, the ultimate evaluation for the “Non-English.”

“Hey, Mike, what do I do with these two dagos?”

The older man turned and saw the two standing there: short, rough-clothed, worn high-top leather shoes, tired.

Children! God help them, just kids.

“Send them over, Tim.”

He knew that his partner was always a little too eager to stamp the fatal word UNSUITABLE across the papers of the incoming, but there was something in this couple’s eyes, a spirit he rarely saw among the tired line of people.

He looked at the boy. Strong, determined, fix-jawed. This one could succeed. The girl holding onto the boy—there was hidden strength there, too.

“What are your names? Do you understand me?”

He hoped they did. It would make his decision much easier, and then he smiled inside as he heard the strongly accented English.

“My name Antonio Gallini.”

The man turned to Anna, but Antonio spoke up before he could question her.

“My wife, Anna Abrescia Gallini.”

It was a small lie.

The inspector looked at them.

Married? Right—and I’m Charlie Chaplin.

“Okay, son, here’s a list of what you need to do. Keep it with you. You look strong. I know a place that needs strong men. What do you do?”

“I am stonemason,” Antonio stammered.

He handed the boy a piece of paper.

“Take this card. There’s a metal foundry just outside the city. They can use you.”

He didn’t tell the kid he would receive a commission for sending him, but it was a damn sight better than what his partner would have done.

He offered another card—another commission.

“Here’s a cheap place to stay until you get set up. Now give me your papers.”

The inspector took them, examined them, and then pulled a fountain pen out of his breast pocket and made a change in the names.

“I’m doing you a favor, kid. In America, your name is your ticket. It’s now Galen.”

He took a big rubber stamp and marked the papers: ENTRY ALLOWED.

A few minutes later, they walked out of the teeming building and onto the ferry taking them to the place where they would begin their new life.

Dearest Mama,

Anna and I have settled in a place called Newark. It is not far from the great city of New York. I work at the iron foundry. Anna and I are still living in the boardinghouse that a nice officer told us about. As soon as we put enough money aside, we will move to a boardinghouse near work.

Tell Papa that I love him and meant him no disrespect, but Grandpapa is right. The old country is not for us anymore. How is Grandpapa?

Please tell Father Infante that his English lessons have served us well. Anna and I are studying for our citizenship and we both read the questions and recite the answers in English.

I will write again soon.

Your loving son,

Antonio

There was more, much more he wanted to write, but this was his first letter home and he wasn’t sure if it would even reach the little village. It was August 1914, and the war his grandfather had feared was beginning. Besides, he needed to check on Anna. She hadn’t been feeling well the past few mornings and could not keep down the food she ate. He did not know why. He wished he understood women better.

The postman left letters on a table in the boardinghouse foyer for the residents to sort out for themselves.

She felt a stirring within her as she descended the five flights of stairs and saw the envelope Antonio had sent away several months before sitting on the table. At first she couldn’t understand the words stamped on it: LETTER REFUSED.

Then she realized. Pietro must have seen the return address and handed the letter back to il postino, rejecting it as he had his son.

She did not carry it back up the stairs. Instead, she asked the housemistress for an envelope and piece of paper. She stuffed the first letter inside. Carefully she addressed it to Father Infante at Saint Paolo’s Church and enclosed a note asking him to give it personally to Maria Gallini.

Quickly, while her Antonio was still at work, she walked to the post office and paid the twelve cents to the man behind the window. She used the pennies she had saved from the laundry and sewing work she did for the housemistress and other boarders. She added a silent prayer to go with the letter. She wanted to hurry back. Antonio did not like her being out at all, now that he knew she was carrying their child.

When she turned to leave the building, the pain hit her and she collapsed to the floor.

“Mr. Galen, your wife is very sick. I’m afraid the baby came too soon.”

He stammered the question he wanted to scream out: “My wife, Anna, will she…?”

“No, she’ll be all right; she’s a strong woman.”

A little while later he walked out of the charity hospital that cared for the poor and the immigrants of the city.

God is punishing us. We should not have gone to City Hall for a marriage license. We should have gotten a priest’s blessing—and I should have made things right with Papa.

Why hasn’t Mama written?

She sat in the rocking chair on loan from the housemistress. It now had been several months since she had lost the baby. She continued to sew for the lady, and for other boarders who had helped out when she returned home from the hospital. She heard the knock on their door, and then the mistress called out.

“Anna, it’s me, Mrs. Flaherty. I have a letter for you.”

Her heart jumped.

“Come in, Signora Flaherty, come in.”

“Looks important. Got foreign stamps on it, like what my late husband Sean would send me when he went back to Ireland for The Cause. He never returned. Aye, but I’ve told ye that before, haven’t I? Ah me, that man.”

Tears filled the woman’s eyes, but she shrugged, the universal language of women, and wiped them away.

“Maybe it’s from your folks back home?”

She leaned forward to peek at the envelope as she handed it to Anna, who smiled as she took it and saw the name on the upper left corner: Maria Gallini. She opened it quickly and the older lady held her breath as Anna read to herself.

Dearest Anna,

It has been hard here. Your father and my Pietro joined the army four years ago. We have not heard from them. There is a strange sickness, some call it the Spanish flu, and some call it the Hun’s Curse. Please tell Antonio that his grandfather Pasquale caught the sickness. He passed away very quickly. I am not well either. Father Infante is helping me with this.

Go with God, my child.

Another’s handwriting was below.

Maria passed away shortly after this was written.

Pray for us all.

Giuseppe Infante

“Bad news, dear?”

“Si, Signora. Antonio’s mother and grandfather have passed.”

“Oh no! Not after all what’s happened to ye both. I’ll fix something special for when he comes home tonight.”

“Thank you, Signora.”

“Eh, do ye have the sewing ready yet?”

“Si, Signora.”

The Armistice arrived and none too soon. America started drafting eighteen-year-olds less than two months before the war ended, and by then Antonio had come of age. Military service would have moved up his citizenship, but it would have left Anna alone. As it was, though, the foundry was considered an essential industry, and so he managed to avoid the war from which his grandfather had done so much to protect him.

They had moved nearer to his work after Mrs. Flaherty died from the flu that was now raging throughout their adopted country. So far he and Anna had been lucky. Maybe the fumes from the furnaces kept the devils away.

“It is our curse, Antonio.”

His head lay against her chest, his left hand holding hers. Their fourth miscarriage. The loss seared his soul far more than any foundry furnace. Always the bitter taste when you had been so near.

The Roaring Twenties had brought them the hope of minor prosperity. Anna’s scrimping and seamstress work had added enough pennies to their little bit of savings that they had done what their American-born friends had advised them to do: They opened a savings account at the local bank.

Then October 1929 arrived and their meager nest egg vanished when the bank failed.

Now, for the fourth time, she lay on the hard bed in the hospital charity ward run by an order of nuns. The sisters were thorough but compassion was a scarce commodity and she heard them whispering about God’s punishment for living in sin.

“Antonio, I spoke with the priest. He is willing to do the Wedding Mass for us. Please, do this for me.”

His heart had toughened from the hard times and endless workdays. Fortunately, the foundry had stayed open during the years of the Great Depression, and he had risen to senior foundryman. His identification, stamped into each of the tools he made, was Number 3. He was one of the lucky ones because he had a job—though the work was killing him, slowly sucking the very air out of his lungs.

He wanted to pound the walls; he wanted to shout at her, even while she lay there under time-yellowed hospital sheets. His mind screamed as he shook his head. How could his wife still believe in the goodness of God? What kind of God would take children—four angels—from a father and mother?

He buried his face in Anna’s chest. He could not let her see the tears.

Then he felt the touch of her calloused hands on the roughness of his furnace-burnt face and his bitterness dissolved. He could refuse her nothing.

“Si, if it is your wish, cara mia.”

Once more the drums of war resonated across Europe

A voice on the radio announced the news from the Old World that Hitler had annexed the Sudetenland. Austria fell to the charismatic beast without a shot. Soon the world would learn the meaning of the word Blitzkrieg.

She could hardly believe it, but she felt it again, that familiar stirring. She went to the free clinic run by Dr. Agnelli.

“Yes, Anna, you are right, but you are thirty-nine years old. We must watch you very carefully.”

She nodded, dressed, and walked out of the clinic.

A newsboy in knickers shouted, “Peace in our time, Chamberlain says. Peace in our time!”

“Big breaths, Signora Galen. Steady, steady. Nurse, low forceps. Ah, good, the baby’s verted.”

He spoke the magic doctor words to the nurse. The baby had shifted position inside the womb. It would enter the world headfirst.

“Anna, I need one big breath and push—PUSH!”

He didn’t need the forceps. The baby’s head was presenting, now the left shoulder, then the right shoulder. He eased the newborn from the womb and the nurse quickly clamped the umbilical cord in two places and cut it.

This one didn’t need to be whacked on the bottom to breathe. The red-faced baby boy let out a tremendous howl, and the nurse and doctor laughed.

“Anna, you have a beautiful big baby boy, and from the sound of him he’s going to be quite a talker. Nurse, call the father in to the side room.”

Antonio had heard the cry, not in his ears, but in his mind and heart.

He knew!

He had beaten the nurse to the door, and she was startled to see him already standing there waiting.

“Come in, Mr. Galen. Dr. Agnelli is with your wife ... and your new son!”

When he was let in to the birthing room, he stood for a moment looking at his wife lying there, weary.

“Antonio, we will call him Roberto, after my father, and Antonio, after you. Here is your son. Roberto Antonio Galen.”

With his fire-scarred hands he held the son he had always wanted. He whispered gently to the new life in his hands.

“You will be strong and smart, figlio mio, and I will teach you to be tough against the world.”

Their eyes met and forever bonded.

...

Now fifteen, Berto Galen had come to understand he could realize his dreams only through his own hard work. His father had instilled in him the need to drive himself to be the best, and consequently he had made only one friend in high school—and even that one purely by chance.

The school’s public address system vibrated and hummed as the afternoon announcements began.

“The following after-school activities will be offered this year…”

Saved by the PA!

He started to sink back into boredom as he listened to the familiar list of athletic and social activity clubs.

Then he heard it:

“The Radio Club will have its first meeting today in room 215 at 3 p.m.”

Something different! Give it a try, at least once.

The 2:50 bell rang.

He grabbed his book bag and headed for the west staircase, the nearest to 215, which as an upper classman he was permitted to use.

He lumbered down the hallway, watching his classmates putting the new freshmen through their ritual hazing: Coats reversed, walking backwards, books balanced on heads, and worse—all to “welcome” the “little brothers and sisters” to the school.

No one had attempted anything like that with him the previous year. His stony stare had seemed to intimidate even the older kids.

He pushed open the fire door and started up the steps when he saw Thornton about to slam a smaller kid against the wall.

His classmate, Greg Thornton, wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, but he was the meanest. Freshman Hazing Day was like a high holy day for him. The unofficial rules didn’t permit physical abuse, but that never stopped him.

“Cut it out, Thornton!” he shouted, surprising even himself.

“Back off, lard face! I was just explaining to this lowly frosh why this stairway is off limits to him.”

Thornton raised his arm to strike the younger boy, who was trying to protect himself with his book bag, but then Thornton felt such a tight grip on his arm that he couldn’t move. The pain intensified and he fell to his knees.

“For future reference, Greg, leave the freshmen alone. Oh, and by the way, did you know that lard used to be the major ingredient in soap? It’s very useful for cleaning up bad situations.”

Thornton felt the pressure release on his arm and he was able to stand again. He glanced at his classmate, glowered at the younger boy, and then walked away.

Galen examined the scrawny younger boy, with his crew cut, somewhat cross-eyed, looking like a deformed, de-furred rabbit.

“What’s your name, little brother?”

“Robert Edison,” the boy replied, then like a machine gun, he rattled off “and I know who you are, you’re George Orwell!”

Dear God, he thought, not another jokester.

“Okay, I’ll take the bait. Why is my name George Orwell?”

“Because you’re my big brother! Get it?”

Maybe he should call Thornton back and let him torture the kid, but in a silly way it was funny.

“Okay, I asked for it. Where are you headed?”

“Radio Club meeting and we’d better hurry.”

The boy was a quick thinker to assume Galen was going there, too.

“Lead on, Edison.”

“Uh, George, what’s your real name?”

“Galen, Robert Galen.”

They had begun calling each other by their last names, because it became too confusing for both to use Bob.

Appropriately enough, Edison was a whiz at electronics, albeit a bit spastic in his movements. They had agreed they would try for their amateur radio licenses together, so they quizzed each other on theory and practiced Morse code by speaking out the dashes and dots in what sounded like demented baby talk.

They each took their licensing exams and easily passed. They became hams, able to use communication equipment, to understand its theory, and to be able to build and repair it.

Both felt immensely proud, although unlike most of the mid-teenagers of the day, they couched their enthusiasm in subdued tones to conceal the emotion.

“Good job, Edison.”

“Likewise, Galen.”

Their shared interest made high school much more tolerable for them. Each knew he was a misfit, not the outgoing sociable type, but each had special knowledge and abilities the kings and queens of the prom lacked.

...

It is said that time is a turtle when you wish it to race and a rabbit when you wish it would dawdle. In some ways school couldn’t finish fast enough for Berto, and in other ways he never wanted it to end. Soon graduation approached. He had grown to love electronics, but he held tightly to an even greater love. When he wasn’t tinkering with Edison or hanging around Dr. Agnelli in his free time he would visit the town clinics and ask to follow the doctors on their rounds. He knew deep down that being a doctor was a siren call to him. The name Dottore Berto still echoed in his mind.

He had won scholarships to attend university, so his father’s troublesome question about affording it all had been partly answered, at least for this first big step.

Galen had expected his father to share his happiness about being able to go to university, but the closer he came to leaving home the quieter his father became, and his mother had no answer when his father summarily rejected all conversation. Then, as graduation day approached, he realized this might be the end of spending time with his only friend, Edison.

He also knew Edison could take care of himself now. The scared rabbit was gone. The young man had gained the confidence and strength of knowing he could do something really well: electronics.

They promised to stay in touch, a promise they both fully intended to keep.

...

A little more than three years later a much-anticipated letter reached Galen, as he was now called in his days at university.

He had breezed through his studies, so he could always find time for extra lab work and experimentation. As an undergraduate he had published eight papers and more kept filtering through his mind, but that all-important letter had dominated his consciousness ever since senior year had begun.

Galen hesitated to open it for fear of what it might not say. Boyle, his roommate, watched him clutching the envelope, not moving, almost not breathing, so he snuck up from behind, snatched the envelope away, but after a second thought and a sheepish grin, he handed it back to the man with those powerful arms.

Boyle had gotten along fine with Galen most of the time, but he had heard what The Bear—as Galen also was known—could do when provoked, and he was not about to tempt fate, not after what Trish had told his girlfriend Mary about her date with the big guy.

Come on, Freiling, finish up. You’re not saying anything new.

Galen sat bored witless listening to his physiology professor drone on, repeating the obvious in less than understandable terms.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, just remember that beneath the surface we are what our distant ancestors were. Or, to use a catchy phrase, Ontology recapitulates Phylogeny.”

Score another dried-up conundrum for the prune face! Come on! I’ve got a lot to do before seeing Trish tonight.

“We think ourselves superior to the lower animals, and yet, when we are threatened, we revert. We become that lower order of animal whose prime motivation is survival. Then that wonderful powerhouse, the autonomic nervous system, kicks in and floods the body with stimulants, even rage-producing hormones and other chemicals that precipitate the possible alternative reactions of fight or flight.”

… or fucking.

“Just remember that when you think you are the rational beings the philosophers say you are. When you are cornered, you are nothing more than a reptile. Have a nice weekend, and don’t forget your fifty-page paper is due Monday.”

Okay, that’s more like it. I finished your stupid paper last week, so no sweat.

He stopped by the dorm, glanced at what he did have to finish, and decided Saturday would be soon enough. Meanwhile, a quick shower and change, then off to pick up Trish at her room. What a sharp girl—decent-looking and smart, kind of fun to talk with. He checked his finances. Enough put aside from tutoring the freshmen having difficulty with organic chem to have a nice meal at the Alpine in town, then maybe a stroll around the park before the movies.

Let her pick what she wants to see. It can’t hurt to build some brownie points for later.

He was feeling good as he did his shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits knock on her dorm door. He could hear giggling on the other side. The female guardian of coed virtue, who looked like Freiling’s twin and stared at him as if he were vermin, had to relent on her special Power of No to any boy attempting to trespass the girls’ dorm. This was Friday night.

She was standing in the hallway, a few of her dorm mates nearby. He stared at her: saddle shoes, solid gray poodle skirt, and light pink sweater that accentuated her, uh, front-to-back dimensions. Her light brown ponytail topped a strawberry-freckled face.

Oh, yes, he was feeling good tonight!

“How’s the Alpine sound to you, Trish?”

As he had hoped, it sounded great: burgers, cherry Coke, and something new to the college town, pizza. Not the real stuff like the nanas in the old country would make, but none of his classmates would know the difference.

Satisfied, they headed out for a quick walk around the park, then the Hitchcock movie down the street, then … who knows?

The old streetlights cast multiple shadows as the couple rounded the monument to Oliver Wendell Holmes. They were about to do the return half-circle when two of the shadows separated from the darkness and stood blocking their way.

“Looka what we got here, a broad and a pig! Maybe we oughta make pork chops and save the broad for dessert!”

The bigger one laughed, his eyes staying focused on Galen and Trish, his hand wrapped around a snub-nose .38.

The shorter one started to laugh as well. “Let’s see how much pork the pig has!”

He held a metal pipe and started to wave it around in front of the couple, who stood there staring in shocked silence.

Galen felt strange, almost as if he were standing to the side watching what was happening to him. He felt a flush beginning to burn in his face and a fine trembling in his entire body as the short mugger kept waving the pipe closer and closer. He suddenly recalled the part of his physiology paper on the flight/fight syndrome:

When you are fighting for your life there is a weird transformation into the limbic-brained beast that resides within all of us. You function (“you” meaning a person, not you specifically) on two levels, almost standing outside of yourself as you descend into the darkness within. You feel the other person’s life. The rational ghost denies the truth of the outcome while the limbic beast howls both rage and conquest. Then you physically collapse. The difference between that action and the premeditated action of a trained killer is the overwhelming chemical surge as the sympathetic nervous system floods you with all the rage-producing chemicals it can. Then you lash out at those who seek to kill you and return the favor.

The surge that erupted within him could not be controlled. His left hand shot out, grabbed the shorter man’s wrist in an iron grip and swung the pipe down across the hand of the gunman. His ghost image felt the bones break and heard the agonized scream as the pipe clattered to the street.

His right arm moved forward, his hand grasping the shorter man’s neck and tightening until he could feel the cartilage start to give way.

The larger mugger picked up the pipe and started to swing it. Galen dropped the other man, blocked the pipe wielder’s arm and twisted it until an audible crack sounded; again the man let out a guttural scream. Galen started to reach for the screamer’s neck.

“Stop, for God’s sake, stop! You’re killing them!”

He suddenly froze at her words. God, it was real! He was living the prophetic words of his own paper!

He leaned against the lamppost, staring down at the two men writhing in pain on the grass-bordered walk.

Then he turned to her and saw her staring at him—not in relieved gratitude but in fear and horror. He saw it in her eyes: To her, he was the beast incarnate, someone capable of killing, even though he probably had saved her life, or at least her honor.

“I’m going home,” she said softly, then turned and walked away.

“Come on, Galen, fish or cut bait. It’s not going to change if you keep staring at it. Let me open it for you. If it’s not good, I’ll put it down and leave you alone for awhile, okay?”

Galen took a deep breath and handed the envelope over, then sat down on the edge of his bed.

Boyle carefully opened the letter, glanced over it, looked up mournfully at his roommate, put the letter on his desk, opened the door and took a half-step into the hall.

Galen’s heart fell, just before Boyle broke into a big grin.

“You got in, you big ape!” he yelled, taking off as fast as he could down the hallway before Galen could grab him.

He went to the desk and picked up the heavy linen paper letter with the gold-embossed seal at the top.

Dear Mr. Galen:

It is with great pleasure that we notify you of your acceptance to the Class of 1965 of the university’s Medical School. Your exemplary academic record and test scores indicate the potential for a great career in your chosen future field of medicine.

We welcome you. Please submit the enclosed matriculation forms as soon as possible. You have also been granted scholarship status. You will report for introductory orientation session next August 1.

It was signed by the dean.

He ran outside and stood in the middle of the quad, arms outstretched, eyes turned up to heaven.

“I made it!” he shouted, to everyone and no one.

He felt on top of the world as he walked the main corridor of the science building where he had spent most of the last three years. As he passed by one of the labs, he heard his name being called.

“Mr. Galen, may I see you for a moment?”

It was Dr. Freiling, professor of physiology. Galen had gotten the only A ever granted by the shriveled old man. It must have royally pissed him off, but Freiling couldn’t have done anything else. Galen’s papers and exams were perfect, and he had even caught a mistake in one of the solutions the professor himself had explicated.

“Yes, Dr. Freiling?”

“Mr. Galen, I hear by the grapevine that you’ve been accepted to medical school. Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Galen, I know that you are brilliant, but to be honest, you don’t have the personality to be a good doctor. I wouldn’t want to be under your care.”

Galen knew he was being baited. It was Freiling’s style, a last-resort attempt to gain the upper hand.

“Yes, sir, thank you for your confidence in me. Is there anything else?”

Freiling shook his head, frowned and walked away.

Galen felt as though he had just been shot down by the Red Baron. He knew Freiling was a bitter man, but even so, he had done well in his class and had hoped that would be all that mattered.

He walked to the pay phone halfway down the hallway and called his parents. It had only been two years ago that they had finally installed a telephone.

He whirled the dial wheel once, and when he heard the operator he gave her the number. A moment later, his mother’s quiet voice said, “Hello?”

“Mama, it’s Berto. Tell Papa when he comes home I got accepted to medical school!”

The phone was quiet for a few seconds, then his mother responded, still strangely quiet.

“Si, Berto, I will tell him. This is wonderful news.”

He hung up the phone. He had expected her to be as happy as he was, but he sensed the reserve in her voice. What was wrong?

It was true he and Papa hadn’t seen eye to eye on a number of things since he had started college. His father still dealt with him in the old way, never acknowledging his growth as a person or his reaching adulthood. He understood the cultural imperative of the old country, deference to parental authority being the highest level of respect a child could demonstrate.

Yet he had grown tired of the petty arguments over everything, the endless fault-finding and criticism. It seemed as though his father was trying to drive him away.

He would call later when his father had come home from work.

He walked slowly across the campus and sat down on one of the benches outside the main library, which had served as his sanctuary.

“Mr. Galen, are you all right?”

He looked up and saw his favorite professor, Dr. Basily, chairman of the anthropology department and curator of the school museum. His back ramrod straight—the result of a war wound from Korea—he was never too busy to talk over class points or just about anything else.

Galen wished he could talk to his father the way he did with Basily.

“I just got accepted to medical school, Dr. Basily.”

“And this is what gives you the long face? Spill it, Galen.”

He told the older man about his encounter with Dr. Freiling and the strangely unenthusiastic response from his mother.

“That old fart Freiling isn’t happy unless he’s making someone else miserable. Listen, Galen, let me give you some advice that took me twenty years to learn. In your life you will meet two types of people of whom you should be very wary: dream eaters and soul stealers.

“Freiling is a dream eater. He will tell you that what you strive for is not for you, and that you don’t have the ability so you shouldn’t even try. Dream eaters can be teachers, friends, counselors, or even family. These people, like Freiling, are emotional vampires, manipulators, control freaks. Later, when you become the fine doctor that I know you will be, you will run into the soul stealers. These will be your colleagues, your bosses, collateral individuals who will try to sabotage what you do. They also are emotional vampires who live off your misery. Unfortunately, your worst enemies will be yourself and those closest to you—your family. This is when your guard should be at its highest, and you should resist with all your might.”

Basily reached over and ruffled the hair on Galen’s head.

“C’mon, let’s go to the student union. I’ll buy you a soda to celebrate the good news.”

“Dr. Basily, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”

“Shoot.”

“Your back must hurt quite a bit. Can anything be done for it?”

“Mr. Galen, it hurts like a sonofabitch. And no, I’ve been told it’s as good as it will ever get. That reminds me of a third point I need to share with you.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Shit happens, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try to prevent it.”

Galen smiled, the muscles of his own shoulders visibly relaxing—for a short time, anyway.

“Antonio, we have to tell him.”

“Cara mia, it is not his right to know. It is his duty to obey. I will tell him when he comes home. He will not go away until it is over. He must respect our wishes. That is the way it must be.”

...

On the day of his graduation, as had been the case in high school, Galen was alone—without family—a disappointment that dampened what could have been a wonderful moment for him. He had achieved summa cum laude, and his life was spread out before him, a full plate of promise and opportunity.Dr. Agnelli had invited him to help out at his clinic over the summer, taking Galen under his wing once more. Except now that he had been accepted into medical school, Agnelli treated him as one of the brotherhood and talked frankly about the life Galen would face.

“I’m not sure you know what you’ve signed on for, Berto. If you’re foolish, like me, you’ll let it take over your entire life, even to the point of neglecting your wife and children—if you’re lucky enough to have any.”

He looked at the tired old doctor he had known all of his life—the doctor who had delivered him. Galen felt comfortable talking with him, just as he had with Professor Basily.

“Dottore, you know me better than anyone except my parents. You know how much I love what you do, what you represent. I just don’t know how to get my father to understand that.”

“What’s the matter, Berto? Isn’t your father proud of you and what you’ve accomplished?”

“I think he is, but he never says so anymore, and now he wants me to put off going away to school. He won’t tell me why. He just says it is my duty to obey his wishes.

“Dottore, I’m twenty years old and my father doesn’t treat me as an adult, with thoughts and goals of my own. I’ve worked so hard to get to this point in my life. I thought that’s what he wanted, what he expected of me. And now…”

Agnelli just shook his head. This did not sound like the Antonio he knew. There had to be something wrong. He looked at Galen and gave him the only advice he could.

“Berto, whatever your father says, follow your dreams.”

“Anna, I must do it. He must not go, not now.”

He looked at his wife, the scars and wrinkles of age and economic hardship dissolving as he remembered the sweetly singing girl he had fallen instantly in love with so many years ago. They had been young, so young back then, with dreams of conquering the world, but as with everyone else the world had fought back and taken its toll. Now he was dying. The foundry soot and flames had given conception to their devil spawn, the thing that grew within his lungs and liver.

Antonio Galen knew he was being eaten from within, that soon his beloved Anna would be alone. The boy had to stay, at least until after.

She started to ask again: Why not tell him? But then she remembered her own father and the men of the village where they were born. It was a loss of face to show weakness, to admit it even to one’s children and sometimes even to one’s wife.

She knew her husband and she knew her son. They were so alike. She feared the outcome of the impending contest of wills. The very thought of it worsened the chest tightness she had told no one about. The women of her village were not so different from the men: They kept their vulnerabilities to themselves.

His bags were packed. It was his last day at home.

“I have to go, Papa.”

“A son must respect his father’s wishes.”

“Papa, you’re not listening to me!”

Then he did something he had never done before. He was a man now, stocky, muscular, and full of the electricity of his prime. He reached out and touched the now-shorter, gray-haired man. He meant it as an entreaty, a way of breaking through the wall between them.

For the first time, his father turned and faced him. The old man’s fire-darkened eyes stared at his son for a moment that would haunt the young man forever. He saw his father’s jaw muscles tighten and his facial expression harden as he spoke to him for the last time.

“Non ho figlio!”

As Antonio Gallini uttered those words, Pietro Gallini’s ghostly laughter echoed in his mind.