The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo

Lucia Santa, her sallow skin darkening, held back her tears by pressing her fingers in her eyes.
    Zia Louche, too frightened to speak to the mother, scolded the infant. “Come, weep,” she said. “Ah, how good it feels. How easy it is, eh? You have the right. Ah, how fine. Louder. Louder.” But then the child became still, laughing at that toothless, wrinkled face mirrored from the other side of time.
    The old crone shouted in mock anger, “Finished so soon? Come. Weep.” She shook the baby gently, but Vincent laughed, his toothless gums a mockery of hers.
    Then the old woman said slowly, in a sad, singsong voice, “
Miserabile, miserabile.
Your father died before you were born.”
    At these words the mother’s control broke. She pressed her nails tightly into the flesh of her face, and the great streaming tears mingled with the blood of the two long gashes she made in her cheeks. The old crone chirped, “Come, Lucia, some coffee now.” There was no answer. After a long time the mother lifted her dark face. She raised her black-clad arm to the stained ceiling and said in a deadly earnest voice filled with venom and hate, “I curse God.”
    Caught in that moment of satanic pride, Octavia loved her mother. But even now, so many years later, she remembered with shame the scene that followed. Lucia Santa had lost all dignity. She cursed. Zia Louche said, “Shh—shh—think of the little girl who listens.” But the mother rushed out of the apartment and down the four flights of stairs, screaming obscenities at the kind neighbors, who immediately locked the doors she pounded on.
    She screamed in Italian, “Fiends. Whores. Murderers of children.” She ran up and down the stairs, and out of her mouth came a filth she had never known she knew, that the invisible listeners would eat the tripe of their parents, that they committed the foulest acts of animals. She raved. Zia Louche gave baby Vincent into Octavia’s arms and went down the stairs. She grabbed Lucia Santa by her long black hair and dragged her back to her home. And though the younger woman was much stronger, she let herself descend into howls of pain, collapsing helplessly by the table.
    Soon enough she took coffee; soon enough she calmed and composed herself. There was too much work to do. She caressed Octavia, murmuring, “But how did you know, a child to understand such evil?”
    Yet when Octavia had told her not to marry again, saying, “Remember I was right about Filomena stealing Vinnie,” her mother only laughed. Then she stopped laughing and said, “Don’t fear. I’m your mother. No one can harm my children. Not while I live.”
    Her mother held the scales of power and justice; the family could never be corrupted. Safe, invulnerable, Octavia fell asleep, the last image flickering: her mother, baby Vincent in her arms returning from Filomena’s, raging, triumphant, yet showing guilty shame for ever having let him go.
     
    LARRY ANGELUZZI (ONLY his mother called him Lorenzo) thought of himself as a full-grown man at seventeen. And with justice. He was very broad of shoulder, medium tall, and had great brawny forearms.
    At thirteen he had quit school to drive a horse and wagon for the West Side Wet Wash. He had complete responsibility for the collection of money, the care of the horse, and the good will of the customers. He carried the heavy sacks of wash up four flights of stairs without loss of breath. Everyone thought him at least sixteen. And the married women whose husbands had already gone to work were delighted with him.
    He lost his virginity on one of these deliveries, cheerfully, with good will, friendly as always, thinking nothing of it; another little detail of the job, like greasing the wagon wheels, half duty, half pleasure, since the women were not young.
    The job of dummy boy, riding a horse and leading a train through the city streets, appealed to his heroic sense; and the money was good, the work easy, and advancement to