Unto the Sons (72 page)

On the following day, after his uncles had rearranged their factory hours with friends so that they could accompany him to the interview, Joseph was escorted across the railroad tracks and guided northward along tree-lined streets and uphill past rows of gradually more embellished stone houses that would eventually extend to the boulevard running parallel to the walls of Dr. Mattison’s estate. Joseph had on two previous occasions been given a tour of this area, in a milk wagon owned by a man who lived next door to the Rocchinos; both tours had been on Sundays when the avenues had been crowded with carriages and motorcars filled primarily with people on leisurely excursions, and along the sidewalks Joseph had seen processions of well-dressed couples—many homburg-hatted men, nearly all the women wearing crocheted white gloves—either going to or coming from Trinity Memorial Church.

But on this Monday, shortly before noon, there was hardly a vehicle moving anywhere in the streets; and the sidewalks were so empty that all Joseph heard clearly were the unfamiliar sounds of his uncles’ heavy leather-heeled boots on the pavement—sounds ordinarily muted on the dirt roads of the Italian quarter. Occasionally he became aware that they were being watched from the windows of some of the houses. And it made Joseph feel like a trespasser.

He imagined that his uncles were uneasy too, for they were walking more quickly than they normally did, and staring straight ahead as if to avoid making eye contact with what they assumed would be unfriendly faces if anyone did appear. Joseph wished that his uncles had dressed with a bit more care on this day. Not long before, he had taken from their closets, and had sponged and pressed, the double-breasted suits he had seen them wear only in Maida; but still he could not bring himself to drop hints to these kindly men, his mother’s brothers, about how they should dress. Today they were in their usual off-duty outdoor attire—gray peaked caps, heavy dark sweaters and creaseless woolen trousers, and shirts without
ties, buttoned to the tops of their necks. Joseph on the other hand had refused to lower his sartorial standards even
if
he was about to apply for work as a lowly laborer. His uncles had seemed surprised earlier in the morning when they saw him dressed, as was his custom, in suit, vest, and tie; and his uncle Gregory, who was closer to Joseph’s size than his stouter uncle Anthony, wondered aloud if Joseph might want to try on an extra pair of his overalls and one of his work shirts.

“I’m not hired
yet
,” Joseph replied, with a smile.

“You may never get hired if you go dressed like that,” his uncle Gregory responded, also in good humor.

“We’ll see. Maybe they’ll ask me to work in the castle.”

Joseph was immediately sorry he had said that. But Gregory only shrugged, and Anthony also did not appear to interpret the remark as a criticism of them. Joseph was relieved.

The three of them continued uphill, passing homes larger and more widely spaced than before. A Packard convertible drove swiftly past them, cutting near to the curb before screeching to a halt at an intersection. Then it turned sharply to the right.

“There goes Dr. Mattison’s son,” Anthony said, shaking his head slowly, but intoning a paternal tolerance that most workingmen reserve for their bosses’ sons—a tolerance their own sons rarely know. Anthony and his brother watched as the vehicle picked up speed along an adjacent street, then slammed to a stop in front of one of the houses.

“And there goes Dr. Mattison’s son to warm up the bed with his
puttana
,” added Gregory.

“Is
that
any way to talk?” Anthony asked angrily, stopping and turning toward Gregory. Joseph also stopped, confused and surprised. He had never before seen his uncle Anthony so suddenly overbearing. Joseph was reminded of how Sebastian used to talk to
him
. Not knowing his uncles’ ages, Joseph decided that Anthony was older. But Gregory remained indifferent to Anthony’s ill temper, and ignored his question.

“Is it any business of
yours
how Dr. Mattison’s son lives his life?” Anthony went on, demanding a reply.

“No,” Gregory responded sharply, “not if such a faithful husband as
you
doesn’t think so.”

Anthony’s face quickly became red. Joseph had no idea what Gregory had been referring to, but he saw Anthony take a step toward his brother. Joseph immediately rushed in between them.

“Please,”
he said, “I don’t want to be late.”

Anthony, breathing heavily, looked startled at Joseph, as if he had
completely forgotten that his nephew was there. “Yes,” he then agreed, “you shouldn’t be late.”

“We’re less than ten minutes away,” Gregory said calmly. “We’ll get there.”

“So let’s get going, then,” Anthony said, not looking at Gregory, but trying to match his brother’s composure while taking charge.

Anthony led the way, but Gregory was soon beside him, keeping pace although Anthony was moving even faster than earlier. Joseph struggled to keep up. They walked on in silence, their arguing now behind them, but it appeared to Joseph that the heels of his uncles’ boots were hitting the sidewalk with unnecessary force.

Joseph could see the tower of Trinity Memorial Church rising above the distant treetops. He knew that the castle was located a short distance behind the church on the far side of the boulevard. He heard some harsh, strange noises coming from the corner house they were now approaching. As they reached it, he saw a parrot perched on a pole suspended from ropes that were attached to the ceiling of a stone-walled porch. The pet had green, yellow, and red feathers, a thick hooked bill, and a long pointed tail. Its claws were strapped to the pole. Joseph had seen a parrot once; it belonged to a priest in Maida, and it chanted in Latin. But this parrot was twice as large, and it became agitated as they passed, flapping its wings, straining against the claw straps, and thrusting its head in their direction as it called out:
“Dago, dago, dago, dago, dago!”

Joseph’s uncles stopped and stared at the bird. It remained silent for a second. But as they were about to continue on their way, the bird repeated the words as clearly and boldly as before:
“Dago, dago, dago, dago, dago!”

Anthony’s face was red once more, and, brandishing a fist toward the parrot, he shouted: “Shut your dirty mouth, you stupid ugly animal, or I’ll come up there and break your neck!”

“Dago, dago, dago, dago, dago!”

Anthony left the sidewalk and ran toward the porch steps, but his brother grabbed him from behind, urging him to remain calm; in the tussling, however, both men tripped and fell on the muddy brown grass of the lawn.

“I’m going to kill that fucking thing!” Anthony yelled, flat on his stomach, while Gregory—immediately assisted by Joseph—prevented him from getting up and rushing onto the porch. Although Joseph was as bewildered by this latest flare-up as he had been by the earlier one—he had never heard the word “dago” before, and would not know it as an insult to Italians until Gregory explained it that night—he realized that
many people were now frowning down upon them from the windows of the neighboring buildings. The third-floor window directly above them had just opened, and a round-faced woman with red hair thrust out a rolling pin and screamed down: “Get away from here, you brutes, or I’ll get the police!”

“C’mon, Uncle Anthony,” Joseph pleaded, leaning low into his uncle’s muddy ear, “we must get away from here.”

Anthony nodded. No longer resisting Gregory’s grasp, he got to his feet. Joseph wiped the dirt from Anthony’s face with a handkerchief, and Gregory with his free hand brushed some of the mud from his brother’s clothing. Having landed
on
his brother, Gregory was largely unsoiled and dry. Next door another window opened, and an elderly man poked his head out and began to shout; but his frail voice could not be understood. Anthony looked at him, and then at the woman waving the rolling pin in the air, but he said nothing as he turned toward the sidewalk with his brother and nephew beside him. The parrot, equally silent, watched them as they departed. They did not look back at the parrot. Five minutes later, outside the north gate of the castle, they heard Dr. Mattison’s growling dogs.

Joseph took his application form out of the pocket of his jacket and held it up to be seen by the armed guard who stood on the other side of the bars with a snarling mastiff on a leash. A second guard, who was dogless, came forward to inspect the document, and after opening the gate he pointed Joseph and his uncles in the direction of the gazebo. Joseph recognized Mr. Devine standing behind the gazebo, talking to a circle of workmen. Turning, Joseph quickly glanced at the towers of the castle rising in the fog, and he noticed that the estate’s grass was green, not brown as it was on the lawns of the homes they had passed. One of the men who had been standing with Mr. Devine was now coming forward to greet Joseph and his uncles, and Gregory waved as he recognized him. He was a large gray-haired man wearing overalls and a black sweater, and as he got closer Gregory whispered to Joseph: “This is Nicola Muscatelli from Maida. He’s worked as a foreman on many road gangs in America, and if he’s on this job with Mr. Devine, you might be in luck.”

Joseph recognized the name as being that of the family who owned the bar in Maida’s town square, and he remembered his grandfather Domenico speaking fondly of the Muscatellis, although claiming they owed him a bit of money.

“Greetings, my friends,” Muscatelli said, speaking in Italian as he embraced
Gregory and Anthony, “but don’t tell me you’re looking for a little outdoor work?”

“Not us, but our nephew here is,” Gregory said, introducing Joseph. Muscatelli looked wonderingly at the way Joseph was dressed, at the slenderness of his shoulders, and then he looked back at Gregory and Anthony with a smile, as if they were indulging in a friendly joke.

“Don’t worry,” Anthony spoke up, “he’s a good worker. And he has clothes at home. And he’ll be on time.”

“He’s thin,” Muscatelli said.

“His suit makes him look thin,” Gregory said. “He’s got lots of energy. I give you my word.”

As Joseph stood listening uncomfortably, looking out at the group of heavy-shouldered older men who were gathered around Devine at the gazebo, Muscatelli reexamined Joseph.

“Who’s the boy’s father?” he asked Gregory.

“My father is dead,” Joseph himself answered. “He was Gaetano Talese.”

Muscatelli’s face softened. Saying nothing, he continued to look at Joseph with an intensity that only added to his discomfort. Then there were tears in Muscatelli’s eyes.

“He was my friend,” he said finally. “We worked together many years ago in Delaware.” There was silence as Muscatelli wiped his eyes. “A wonderful man,” he added. And then he asked: “When can you begin?”

“This afternoon,” Joseph said.

“How about tomorrow morning,” Muscatelli said, “at six o’clock? Your uncles will show you where we’ll be working.”

Joseph thanked him, as did his uncles.

“You’re welcome,” Muscatelli said to Joseph before turning back to Devine and the other men. “And don’t show up wearing that suit.”

36.

O
n the following day, and throughout the winter of 1922, Joseph served as a part-time employee with Nicola Muscatelli’s gang of Italian laborers. He pushed wheelbarrows filled with rocks, drove a horse wagon
loaded with timber, and, as the gang’s junior member, was responsible for supplying and refilling the men’s buckets of drinking water. Although Muscatelli privately favored him, the foreman was careful not to show it until Joseph had gained acceptance from the others. Very quickly, however, Muscatelli minimized Joseph’s involvement with hard labor and shifted him to logistical chores. Joseph was told to examine the daily delivery of building material at the job site, and to verify that it was what Muscatelli had ordered and in the amount listed on the billing. If the men’s hand tools had become broken or lost, or if the heavy machinery malfunctioned, Joseph was dispatched to arrange for replacements and repairs. Soon, and without expressed disagreement from the men, Joseph was functioning as Muscatelli’s record-keeper and construction assistant. Whenever Muscatelli was summoned to report to Mr. Devine’s office a mile away at the estate, Joseph drove him there in the wagon. One morning as Joseph stood waiting next to the horses near the castle’s north gate, he noticed glimmerings of light coming from one of the turret’s upper windows. When he realized it was caused by the sun reflecting off the upraised binoculars held by a woman staring down at him, Joseph took a step forward for a better look. The woman at the window quickly vanished.

Years later, long after Joseph had established himself elsewhere as a tailor and clothier, he would remember much of the strangeness he had felt during this period of life in Dr. Mattison’s domain—the sheer irony of his having left his village in the crumbled medieval kingdom of southern Italy for a town in Pennsylvania run by a man who behaved in ways like a medieval king.

But during the fifteen months that Joseph lived in his uncles’ boardinghouse—from Christmastime 1920 until his departure in the spring of 1922—he concentrated less on Ambler as an idiosyncratic place in the “New World” and more on Ambler as a source of economic enrichment, particularly after he had been promoted to Muscatelli’s assistant. Although Joseph continued to work only part-time in construction—he arrived six days a week at six in the morning, and returned home after one in the afternoon to whatever clothing jobs awaited him in his bedroom tailor shop—Muscatelli saw to it that Joseph’s earnings were between twenty-five and thirty dollars a week. Equally gratifying to Joseph, although initially quite mystifying, was that as soon as he began earning good money from Muscatelli, his tailoring business increased almost beyond his capacity to keep up with it. Joseph recalled the maxim of his uncle Francesco Cristiani in Maida: “You’ll always have more customers
than you need when you need them least.” But Joseph later concluded that the main factor in his rising popularity as a tailor during early 1922 was that a significant number of Ambler Italians had put on weight.