Wait Until Spring Bandini by John Fante Page B

the prayer he kept his aching neck bent, wondering why his mother made no comment. Federico nudged Arturo, then thumbed his nose at the devout August. Maria faced the stove. She turned around, the gravy pitcher in her hand, and saw August, his golden head so reverently tipped.
    ‘Good boy, August,’ she smiled. ‘Good boy. God bless you!’
    August raised his head and blessed himself. But by that time Federico had already raided the chicken dish and both legs were gone. One of them Federico gnawed; the other he had hidden between his legs. August’s eyes searched the table in annoyance. He suspected Arturo, who sat with zestless appetite. Then Maria seated herself. In silence she spread margarine over a slice of bread.
    Arturo’s lips were locked in a grimace as he stared at the crisp, dismembered chicken. An hour ago that chicken hadbeen happy, unaware of the murder that would befall it. He glanced at Federico, whose mouth dripped as he tore into the luscious flesh. It nauseated Arturo. Maria pushed the plate toward him.
    ‘Arturo – you’re not eating.’
    The tip of his fork searched with insincere perspicacity. He found a lonely piece, a miserable piece that looked even worse when he lifted it to his own plate – the gizzard. God, please don’t let me be unkind to animals anymore. He nibbled cautiously. Not bad. It had a delicious taste. He took another bite. He grinned. He reached for more. He ate with gusto, rummaging for white meat. He remembered where Federico had hidden that other leg. His hand slipped under the table and he filched it without anyone noticing the act, took it from Federico’s lap. When he had finished the leg, he laughed and tossed the bone into his little brother’s plate. Federico stared at it, pawing his lap in alarm:
    ‘Damn you,’ he said. ‘Damn you, Arturo. You crook.’
    August looked at his little brother reproachfully, shaking his yellow head. Damn was a sinful word; possibly not a mortal sin; probably only a venial sin, but a sin for all that. He was very sad about it and was so glad he didn’t use cuss words like his brothers.
    It was not a large chicken. They cleaned the plate in the center of the table, and when only bones lay before them Arturo and Federico gnawed them open and sucked the marrow.
    ‘Good thing Papa ain’t coming home,’ Federico said. ‘We’d have to save some for him.’
    Maria smiled at them, gravy plastered over their faces, crumbs of chicken even in Federico’s hair. She brushedthem aside and warned about bad manners in front of Grandma Donna.
    ‘If you eat the way you did tonight, she won’t give you a Christmas present.’
    A futile threat. Christmas presents from Grandma Donna! Arturo grunted. ‘All she ever gives us is pajamas. Who the heck wants pajamas?’
    ‘Betcha Papa’s drunk by now,’ Federico said. ‘Him and Rocco Saccone.’
    Maria’s fist went white and tight. ‘That beast,’ she said. ‘Don’t mention him at this table!’
    Arturo understood his mother’s hatred for Rocco. Maria was so afraid of him, so revolted when he came near. Her hatred of his lifelong friendship with Bandini was tireless. They had been boys together in Abruzzi. In the early days before her marriage they had known women together, and when Rocco came to the house, he and Svevo had a way of drinking and laughing together without speaking, of muttering provincial Italian dialect and then laughing uproariously, a violent language of grunts and memories, teeming with implication, yet meaningless and always of a world in which she had never belonged and could never belong. What Bandini had done before his marriage she pretended not to care, but this Rocco Saccone with his dirty laughter which Bandini enjoyed and shared was a secret out of the past that she longed to capture, to lay open once and for all, for she seemed to know that, once the secrets of those early days were revealed to her, the private language of Svevo Bandini and Rocco Saccone would