God granted me an early spring that year. By March, the ground had thawed and by Easter, Pasquale and I had cleared and stumped my land and begun digging, shovelful by shovelful, the foundation for my vitrified brick duplex house.
My house would be
magnifico
—American in front and Sicilian in the back. Each apartment would have seven rooms, two floors, indoor plumbing. Nothing less than a palace for the first
siciliano
property owner in Three Rivers, Connecticut! And out back, a flight of cement stairs would lead to Sicily! I would plant honeysuckle, peach trees, a small grape arbor, a little tomato garden. There would be herbs growing in stone urns, a chicken coop, rabbit I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 588
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cages, and perhaps a family goat to graze the small yard and give a little milk. In the yard behind my big house, I would be home again at last!
As Pasquale and I labored side by side that summer, I spoke about all these plans and about our happy Sicilian childhood and our loving and unselfish mother. In poetic words, I talked of the beautiful renewal of life. We would be the happiest brothers alive once our new home echoed with the giggles of
bambini
—once the aromas of baking bread, simmering sauce, garlic and onions frying in olive oil floated from the open kitchen windows of the home we shared, one brother to a side. And now that I was on the subject, wasn’t it about time for us to find wives?
Pasquale shrugged and shoveled. He said he could still hear Mama’s screaming in his ears but that he had forgotten her face.
I told him I had recently communicated by letter and
telegramma
with Lena and Vitaglio, our Brooklyn cousins. The cousins’
neighbors, the Iaccoi brothers—did Pasquale remember those two plumbers from Palermo? The Iaccoi brothers had big news. Their half-sister, Ignazia, age seventeen, would be arriving that summer from Italy along with a female
cugina
, Prosperine, age eighteen.
Both girls were devout and eager to serve husbands. Good cooks, too! And beautiful in
faccia
and
figura
—plump and just ripe for picking!
All that afternoon, I talked of children and natural male urges and the joys of owning a home and a wife of one’s own. At sunset, as we two walked back to the boardinghouse carrying our shovels, I made a generous proposal: Pasquale and I would take the train to Brooklyn at Christmastime, visit our cousins and the Iaccois next door, and decide whether or not we liked what we saw. It would probably make more sense to match the older bride to the older brother, and
viceversa
, but that could be decided upon at a later date. What did it matter, anyway—when both of the young women were beautiful virgins in the prime of their childbearing years?
Both could equally satisfy male urges, eh? If my beloved brother I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 589
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were to take the Iaccois’ half-sister for a wife, the couple would be welcome on the left side of the duplex. I would charge no rent for an entire year. After that, Pasquale could negotiate a year’s rent, at a modest rate, of course—a sum to be decided at a later date. Why rush things, eh? Pasquale needn’t worry about the dowry, either. As the eldest Tempesta brother and a property owner with a shrewd business sense, it would be my honor to take care of those negotiations for him, ha ha. Get him a nice little bundle. If Pasquale needed some help with wedding expenses, I would be glad to assist there, too. A boss dyer, after all, made more money than a roofer. That was merely a fact of life—ha ha! And once the house was built and our young brides were hanging their bloodstained sheets on the backyard clothesline, Pasquale would want, of course, to rid himself of that foolish, goddamned monkey.
Pasquale let go a mouthful of tobacco juice and shook his head.
Pasquale Tempesta,
a buon’anima
, could sometimes be as mule-headed as his brother Domenico Tempesta was clever! I did not wish to awaken the
mulo
in him that day. Fine, fine, I told my brother, patting him on the back and wearing a smile that showed all my teeth. The monkey can live in a cage in the backyard until its natural death. But while we were on the subject, I said, Pasquale should really stop his foolish practice of bringing Filippa to work with him. People said unkind things, made ridiculous jokes. He would see soon enough: with a beautiful young wife to distract and provide pleasure for him, Pasquale would quickly have “little monkeys” of his own to play with. He would soon forget about that furry little long-tailed rat of his.
That stubborn mule of a brother threw his shovel aside with a clamor and told me he would work no more on a house where Filippa was not welcome inside.
“Inside?” I shouted. “
Inside?
”
The negotiations went on over supper and well into the night, at one point so loudly that several of the other boarders complained and
Signora
Siragusa descended the staircase in her I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 590
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long braids and untrussed bosom and demanded that Pasquale and I either whisper or be evicted. My brother, that stubborn jackass, sat in the
signora
’s parlor chair and shook his head like a metronome. Whatever I may or may not have promised the Iaccoi brothers, he said, he was not interested in a wife and that was that.
He would break his back helping me build my house. He would even die for me. But he would not give up his little Filippa for some wife and he would work no longer on a house where his monkey was unwelcome.
When Pasquale and I rose, finally, from
Signora
Siragusa’s parlor chairs in the middle of that long and difficult night, I was hot in the face and soaked with sweat. I swore and spat into the
signora
’s spittoon and then reluctantly shook my brother’s hand. Ha! Should I say I shook that stubborn mule’s front hoof? In exchange for his labor on my
casa di due appartamenti
until its completion, Pasquale had secured for himself two of the seven rooms on my side of the house, free of rent not for one year but for all eternity! One room would be his and Filippa’s to sleep in, the other a playroom dedicated solely to that goddamned shitting monkey’s
ricreazione!
But what could I do? Pay two or three lazy workers to do what my brother would break his back doing for free?
After a night’s sleep, I was calm again. Already, a new plan had hatched inside my superior brain. I would continue in private my negotiations with the Iaccois, marry the beautiful cousin, and bring the beautiful half-sister to Three Rivers to stay with us. Nature would take its course. As a happily married husband, I would, as usual, be my younger brother’s good example. The half-sister would surely awaken Pasquale’s sleeping male urges. At long last, my stubborn brother would come to his senses.
1 August 1949
All that summer and fall, I worked in the mill by night and I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 591
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labored on my new house by day, stopping only in late afternoon to eat and sleep. Pasquale roofed houses for Werman until four o’clock each day, then worked on Hollyhock Avenue until dark—always with that goddamned monkey chattering nearby or shitting from her place on his shoulder. My brother and I ate cold suppers together in the
signora
’s kitchen before he went down to the boardinghouse cellar to sleep and I walked to the mill for work. On Sundays, Pasquale and I labored side by side on my house. These were the best days: two strong, young brothers bringing a dream to life, board by board, brick by brick. . . .
When winter froze the ground that year and stopped construction until springtime, I went with Pasquale to the taverns where the builders drank—not to waste my money on beer or whiskey, but to sit on stools and at tables and pick away at the brains of the workers.
Installatori, elettricisti:
I got those hibernating builders to talk and draw pictures on paper napkins, to share with me the details of their past victories and mistakes. All that winter, I asked, listened, and learned what I needed to know. And none of it cost me a penny!
Sometimes, after a night of dyeing wool at the mill, I would walk the long way back to
Signora
Siragusa’s, up Boswell Avenue and Summit Street to Hollyhock Avenue, where the early morning sun shone on the brick and wood and stone of my half-built house.
I would think of Papa’s lifetime of labor in the hot, filthy sulphur mines of Giuliana and imagine him standing beside me in this clean, cold Connecticut air. I would imagine him seeing what I saw—shaking his head with pride and disbelief. But it was not Papa’s blood I felt rushing inside of me as I looked at my house and my land. I felt Ciccia blood—the blood of my mother’s people—landowners like me, Domenico Tempesta, who had been conceived while a volcano rumbled and readied its spew!
Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, whom the
Vergine
herself had selected!
In December of that year, I received
telegramma
from the Iaccois I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 592
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in Brooklyn. They wondered when we Tempesta brothers would be coming to claim our brides-to-be. “Our sweet young relatives wait patiently,” the message said, “but it is only a matter of time before
’Mericano
influences begin to turn their heads.” The garment industry in Manhattan cried out for female laborers, the brothers wrote. It was only fair that one or both of the young women begin to bring money into the house, unless Pasquale and I were planning to act soon.
I sent back
telegramma
urging the brothers to send both girls to work, by all means, and to put half or more of their wages aside to increase the price of their dowries, which remained to be negotiated. I felt no sense of urgency. I was, after all, a boss dyer and the owner of a spectacular and half-completed
casa di due
appartamenti
. I was also a man who—if the full-length hallway mirror in
Signora
Siragusa’s front hallway did not lie—cut a dashing figure in a three-piece suit. What was the point of false modesty, after all? It did no harm to keep women waiting; it let them see who was the boss and who was not. Waiting was good for a woman’s constitution. Good for the Iaccoi brothers, too. It would make them better appreciate the gifts Pasquale and I would bestow on their women in our own time. A little nervousness might, besides, raise the price of the dowries. I would ask for seven hundred dollars in exchange for marrying Prosperine and four hundred for Ignazia on my brother’s behalf. (Of course, I would have to negotiate my reluctant brother’s marriage without his knowledge.) The Iaccoi brothers would no doubt balk at the price, but I would remain firm.
With all the indoor toilets being flushed in America, those two plumbers could probably afford three times as much.
In the early spring of 1915, Pasquale and I resumed our work on my
palazzo
, laying the brick tiers of the second story and hauling into place the granite windowsills, the stoops of Sicilian marble, front and back. We hammered window and door frames and joists, bricked the chimney, partitioned rooms. High into the house’s second-story front wall, I laid brick diagonally in the shape of two I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 593
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three-foot-high
T’
s for all of the town to see! This I did to honor my father and to raise high the proud name of Tempesta. By the fall of that year, the house’s brick, stone, and wooden skeleton was complete. The roof would be on before wintertime.
Throughout that building season, other Italians in Three Rivers stopped by to visit and congratulate me on my nearly finished
“palace.” Pasquale and I were presented with cakes, cheeses, and jugs of homemade wine for good luck. Ha! Everyone wished to be in the good graces of a successful man.
I weep to remember what happened next. On 12 October 1915,
tragedia
struck at 66-through-68 Hollyhock Avenue!
I was mixing cement in my wheelbarrow for the front sidewalk.
Pasquale was seated on the porch steps, finishing his lunch-for-three-workers. “Look, Domenico, two crows,” he grunted, pointing with his chin toward the road. Monsignor McNulty and
his
little monkey, that skinny Father Guglielmo, stood staring at us in their black robes. Best to ignore them, I told myself, and continued my cement-mixing. If that old monsignor had uncovered another
bastardo
of Vincenzo’s, what did that have to do with me? Vincenzo was dead and gone,
a buon’anima
. Whatever brats he had left behind were not my responsibility.
The two approached; the old priest began with compliments. The building of this impressive house, and my status as a factory boss, had made me a leader in the Italian community. Did I realize that?
Yes, I realized that, I told him. All my life I had served as a good example for others to imitate. My brother Pasquale chewed quietly on a heel of bread and nodded in agreement.
Yes, yes, yes, Domenico Tempesta was a man both respected and emulated, the monsignor agreed. He covered his words with so much sugar that the bitter thing he said next took me by complete surprise.
McNulty came close enough for me to see the veins in his cheeks, the pockmarks in his nose. “Therefore,” he whispered, I Know[566-612] 8/19/02 1:21 PM Page 594
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“yours is the greater sin—this flagrant ignoring of Sunday Mass!
This failure to honor the Lord on His given day! This flying in the face of holy law.” Here, Pasquale belched up liquor from his pickled peppers—a long, slow rumble that climaxed like a clap of thunder as it traveled up his throat and out. Little Father Guglielmo’s eyes widened with fear at the distraction and he put a silencing finger to his lips. Attendance at church by the “Eye-talians” of the parish had fallen off, the monsignor said, and both he and God Almighty held me personally responsible. McNulty told me my failure to attend Mass on Sunday had left me with my own sins and the sins of all nonchurchgoers on my overburdened soul. I must put the Holy Spirit before a pile of bricks, confess my transgressions, and return to Mass as a communicant the following Sunday for all to see. At this juncture, Pasquale rose from the steps, walked to the side of the house, and pissed a river. Then he made a kissing sound at Filippa, and prepared to go back to his work.