“O.K., come on, now you have to learn the business,” the prostitute said.
They came out of the sewing room without saying goodbye to the fat woman, and went into a tiny stuffy room. The prostitute opened a peephole and put her eye against it.
She beckoned Cetta over and made her look. “There you go,” she said, “That’s a blow job.” Cetta squinted through the little hole, and learned.
She spent the whole day spying on her colleagues and their clients. Late that night, Sal came back to take her home. As he was driving, never speaking, Cetta glanced over at him — carefully, so that he wouldn’t notice — and wondered about what the prostitute had said. At last the car pulled up in front of the steps that led down to the basement apartment and Cetta, as she climbed out of the car, turned back to look and the big ugly man who tasted girls. But Sal just kept staring straight ahead.
The two old people were asleep when Cetta came silently into the room. Christmas was sleeping too, between them. Cetta took him delicately in her arms.
“He ate and he shat,” murmured the old woman, opening an eye. “Everything’s fine.”
Cetta smiled and went towards her mattress. There were metal springs under it now. And a blanket, sheets and a pillow.
“Sal thought of everything,” the old woman whispered, sitting up and making the bedsprings squeak.
“Go to sleep,” grumbled her husband.
Cetta placed Christmas on the blanket and felt how soft it was. She turned to the old woman who still sat watching. She went over and hugged her silently. And the old lady hugged her back, smoothing her hair.
“Go to bed now, you’re tired,” she said.
“Go to sleep,” moaned the husband.
Cetta and the old woman laughed softly.
“What are your names?” Cetta whispered.
“I’m Tonia, he’s Vito. Tonia and Vito Fraina.”
“And at night, we like to sleep,” came the husband’s muffled voice.
Cetta and Tonia laughed again. Then Tonia slapped her husband’s rump.
And the two women laughed again.
“Oooh, what fun,” said the old man and pulled the covers over his head.
Then Tonia held Cetta’s face between her hands and looked silently at her. She made a little sign of the cross on her forehead with her thumb and told her, “May God bless you.” And then she kissed her brow.
How beautiful, thought Cetta. She went back to her bed, undressed and got under the covers with Christmas. And very slowly, so that she wouldn’t wake him, she made the sign of the cross on his forehead.
“Your Christmas is a big beautiful baby. He’ll be a handsome man …” said Tonia.
“Basta!” roared Vito. “Enough! Can’t a man get some sleep?”
Christmas woke up and began to cry.
“There, you old fool, you’ve done it,” growled Tonia. “Are you satisfied now? Sweet dreams.”
Cetta soothed Christmas, holding him in her arms and rocking him. She laughed to herself. And all at once she saw her mother’s face, and her father’s and brothers’ too, even the other one’s; all her family — and she realized that this was the first time she had thought of them. But no other thoughts came into her mind. And then she, too, fell asleep.
The next day — after spending a whole morning and a good part of the early afternoon getting to know Tonia and Vito — Cetta prepared to leave for her work. When Sal came to pick her up, she’d been ready for half an hour. She entrusted Christmas to the old couple and silently followed the ugly man with blackened hands, this man who was taking care of her. She came outside to the car with the two bullet holes in the mudguard; she sat in her place and waited for Sal to turn on the motor and leave. In the course of the morning she had asked Tonia to teach her two words in the language she still didn’t know. Two words that she would never hear at the brothel.
“Why?” she asked Sal. That was the first word she’d asked Tonia to teach her.
Sal said something in his deep voice, briefly, without taking his eyes off the road.
Cetta didn’t understand anything he said. She smiled and pronounced the second word she’d wanted to learn: “Sanka you.”
After that neither Sal nor Cetta spoke again. Sal stopped the car in front of the whorehouse door, reached across the front seat, and opened Cetta’s door. He jerked his head to the right, indicating that she should get out of the car. As soon as she was on the sidewalk, Sal put it in gear and drove away.
That evening, Cetta, who was fifteen years old, gave her first blowjob.
By the end of her first month there, she’d learned all there was to know about the profession. Expanding her vocabulary enough to do things outside the brothel, however, took another five months.
Every afternoon and every night Sal brought her from the Fraina’s basement home to the whorehouse and back again. The other girls slept there, in one large room. But babies couldn’t stay there. Whenever one of the girls had one in her belly, a doctor came and took it out with tools. The whores’ society didn’t permit procreation, it was one of the rules that Sal enforced.
But for Cetta he’d made an exception.
“Why?” she asked one morning in the car, six months after the first time, but this time ready to understand his answer.
Sal’s deep voice rumbled across the seat, overcoming the noise of the engine. Brief, like the first time. “Mind your own fuckin’ business.”
And, as before, but this time after a much longer pause, Cetta told him, “Thank you.” Then she began to laugh to herself. But out of the corner of her eye she thought she could see Sal’s ugly, grave face soften a little. And his lips had moved almost imperceptibly into something like a smile.
7
New Jersey-Manhattan, 1922
Ruth was thirteen years old, and she wasn’t allowed to go out in the evening. But the house in the country, where she spent the weekends, was too sad and gloomy, thought Ruth. A big white mansion, with handsome columns framing the entrance, built fifty years ago by her father’s own father, Grandpa Saul, who’d founded the family business.
A big white house, with a long driveway that wound through the park, to the main gate. And dark furniture, always polished and gleaming. Soft rugs, some of them American, others Chinese, covering the marble or oak floors. Antique paintings, by artists from everywhere in the world, hung against the tapestried walls. Silver from Europe, and the Orient. And mirrors — mirrors everywhere — reflecting what Ruth saw as only a big, rich, gloomy house.
Not even the servants knew how to smile. Not even when etiquette required that they do it, as when they encountered a member of the Isaacson family, not even then could they manage to smile. They would barely lift the corners of their mouths, lower their heads, and — looking down — go on with their tasks. Not even with Ruth, a girl with dark curly hair and fair skin, with dainty schoolgirl dresses and a delight in being thirteen years old; no, they still couldn’t smile.
No one managed to smile, not in that house and not in the apartment on Park Avenue where they normally lived; not since the curfew that had been imposed because of her mother, Sarah Rubenstein Isaacson, or, rather, because of what people said about her. Had she really had a murky affair with a young man from the Eighty-Sixth Street Synagogue? She, a woman of forty; he a twenty-three-year old? He was brilliant, intelligent, handsome, destined to become a rabbi. At least that was his version of the story.
Ruth’s father had been sickened by the rumors and so had her mother. The twenty-three-year-old’s destiny as the community’s youngest rabbi had now been jeopardized. He had no inclination to be sickened, so he promptly married a nice Jewish girl his own age; herself the daughter of a rabbi. Ruth’s father, Philip, had never doubted his wife, not even for an instant, nor had he ever blamed her for the cruel gossip. But the poison of calumny had crushed him. Ruth’s mother knew she had her husband’s complete trust, but she no longer had the courage to show off her jewels and gowns at the oper
a, at the charity balls organized by the Jewish community, at the open-air concerts patronized by the mayor. She feared being stabbed in the back by stifled laughter. She feared being pointed out as an adulteress, a woman who’d gone to bed with a boy young enough to be her son. Her narrow elegant shoulders, once so proudly lifted, weren’t strong enough to bear the weight of calumny.
“You let a fart knock you down, a nothing,” Grandfather Saul repeated from deep in his armchair almost every evening after dinner, rubbing the bridge of his long thin nose — there where his spectacles had pinched it.
And his son and daughter-in-law cast down their eyes, never speaking. They hadn’t answered him the first time he’d said those words and now there was no reason to try.
No one ever smiled in the great house that Ruth found so gloomy. The mirrors no longer reflected dozens of guests dancing in the ballroom. No little lanterns lit up the surrounding park for Sunday evening parties any more.
No gifted amateurs or professional musicians sat at the grand piano now, improvising, leavening the evenings among friends. It was as if the windows, the front door, and the gate at the end of the driveway had all been sealed.
And all because of a fart.
Ruth was thirteen and she couldn’t leave the house in the evening. But the house was so sad and lifeless, she thought. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not one single person ever smiled at her. Except for the gardener, a lad of nineteen who had been looking after the terraces of the Park Avenue apartment for a few months. Now that he’d bought a little van, he also came to work at the New Jersey estate. He was always laughing. Ruth noticed him right away. Not because he was handsome, or intelligent, or young; not because there was anything special about his physique or his eyes. Only because of the laugh that came bursting out of his throat. She wasn’t attracted to him but she was charmed by that laughter, which exploded without anyone understanding why, violating, and profaning the grim atmosphere of the house. He might be trimming the ivy on the garage and suddenly, unexpectedly, he might see his own distorted reflection in the polished chrome fender of one of the household’s cars and then he’d start laughing. He laughed when Ruth brought him a glass of lemonade halfway through the hot afternoon, as if lemonade were something witty. And he laughed — quietly, without being noticed — when her bad-tempered Grandfather Saul scolded him about something. And he laughed when the cook, who, old as she was, still couldn’t make a roast turkey as good as his mother’s. He laughed at the unexpected rustle of spring raindrops and at the sun shining out of puddles after the rain; at a flower born crooked or a clump of grass caught in the mower’s wheel; at a blackbird hopping on the gravel walk with a worm in its beak; at a frog croaking from the pond in the park; at an oddly shaped cloud or the butler’s scanty whiskers; at the maid’s vast buttocks and the sagging breasts of the woman who came every day to help with the laundry.
He laughed at everything and his name was Bill.
One day he said to Ruth, “Hey, what if you and me was t’ go out some evenin’ and have a few laughs?”
And so, that night after dinner — even though she was only thirteen and they’d never let her go out if she asked them, let alone with the gardener — Ruth pretended to go up to her room, leaving her parents and grandfather to their lugubrious and silent evening, and she slipped down to the laundry room unseen. From there she went out the service entrance where Bill was waiting for her, laughing. And she, laughing too, because she was thirteen, spoiled, and bored with her life, climbed into Bill’s van.
“I got a car too, see?” he said proudly.
“Yes,” said Ruth and she laughed, not knowing why. Perhaps just because she was with Bill, someone who laughed all the time.
“Not many folks got a car,” said Bill.
“Really?” she said, not very interested.
“Dumb, huh? You think everybody’s rich like your grandpa and your daddy? What, a van ain’t good enough for you?” Bill said in a rough voice, his eyes like two slits, dark in the dark night. But then he laughed, in his light funny way, and Ruth shook off the shiver that had left goose bumps on her pale arms.
Bill changed gears noisily, stepped on the gas and the van rocked along the road that led to the city. “Now we’re goin’ t’ see the real world,” he said, still laughing.
And Ruth laughed with him, excited at such an adventure, twisting the emerald ring she’d borrowed from her mother without asking. She’d thought it would make her feel pretty and more grown up when she went out with Bill. It was only now that she realized that her mother’s fingers were slimmer than hers, and that the ring was stuck.
“See that?” Bill pulled the van to the side of the road and turned off the engine, after they’d been driving for half an hour. “A speakeasy. We can get a drink in there, we can dance.” He pointed to a smoky-looking bar at the corner of two dark streets, where men and women were going in and out, staggering, arm in arm. ”Bring any money?” he asked the young girl.
“But alcohol’s against the law,” said Ruth.
“Not in here, it ain’t” said Bill. “Like I said, the real world. You got money or not?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, pulling two ten dollar bills out of her purse, immediately forgetting about the ring. She had eyes only for the bar, where everyone was laughing like Bill. Where life looked so different from the chill and silent domain she knew.
“Twenty bucks?” said Bill, holding the two banknotes up to his eyes, “Shit, twenty bucks!”
“I took it out of papa’s pocket,” Ruth told him, laughing.
Bill laughed too and took Ruth’s pretty face in both his hands, scraping her delicate skin with the money and his hands callused from gardening. Laughing, he pulled her face towards his and kissed her lips. Then he let go of her, and went back to contemplating the money. “Shit, twenty bucks,” he said. “You know how much I had t’ pay for this broken down van? You got any idea? No? Forty bucks. A fortune. And you, you stick a hand in daddy’s pants pocket and pull out half of it, like it was nothin’.” He laughed loudly, louder than usual. “Twenty bucks for some contraband booze,” and he laughed again, but it sounded strange.
“Don’t do that again,” said Ruth, in a serious voice.
“What?”
“You mustn’t kiss me.”
Bill looked at her in silence, with a dark heavy gaze that contained not the slightest trace of all the laughter he had dispensed until that moment. “Get out,” he said, opening his own door. He came around the van, grabbed Ruth’s arm roughly and shoved her along to the speakeasy without saying another word to her. He tried to buy a bottle of whiskey but they didn’t have enough cash to make change for a twenty. So he made them give him one on credit — they knew him there — and, after listening to one filthy song, he laughed and dragged Ruth back to the van.
“That place was a morgue,” he said smiling, starting the engine again, with the bottle tucked between his legs. “I know some better ones.”
“Maybe I’d better go home,” Ruth suggested timidly.
Bill braked in the middle of the street. “What, ain’t you havin’ a good time with me?” he asked her, with the same dark look he’d had a while before. The same look he’d always seen on his father’s face whenever he felt like belting him for no reason, just because he was drunk. But then he smiled, once more becoming the Bill Ruth knew. He stroked her worried face — the face of a little girl who’s afraid she’s done something wrong — and he said, “We’re gonna have a nice time, I promise,” and he smiled at her again, sweetly. “An’ I promise I won’t kiss ya.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart,” he said, putting his hand on heart with a solemn gesture. And he laughed the way he always did.
For the second time, Ruth forgot the unpleasant feeling she’d had, and laughed with him.
Bill kept drinking from the bottle while he drove. He offered it to Ruth. She put it to her lips, and hardly had one drop slipped down her throat th
an she began to cough. And the more she coughed, the more she felt like laughing. Bill laughed with her, and drank, and drank, until the bottle was empty, and flew out the window.
“There’s nothing here,” said Ruth, wiping the tears she’d wept from coughing, and laughing so hard, looking around when Bill stopped the van.
“Here we are,” said Bill. And once more he had that heavy look. Dark, dark as the deserted street where they’d stopped.
“You promised not to kiss me,” said Ruth.
“Yeah, right, I swore to it,” said Bill. “Me, I always do what I say I’m gonna do,” and he thrust a hand between Ruth’s legs, lifting her skirt and ripping off her thick cotton panties, a little girl’s underpants. Ruth tried to push him away but Bill punched a fist into her face. He did it again, and then a third time.
Ruth heard the sound of bones breaking in her mouth and in her nose. And then nothing. When she opened her eyes she was lying in the back of the van. Bill was over her, panting; pushing something hot between her legs. And as he pushed he kept repeating, laughing: “See? I ain’t kissin’ ya. Bitch, didja notice? Not one fuckin’ kiss!”
At last Ruth felt a new, sticky, hotness and she saw Bill arching his back, his mouth gaping. As he pulled out, he punched her face again. “Shitty Jew,” he said. “Shitty Jew, shitty Jew, shitty Jew,” he said it once for every button he was doing up on his pants. Then he took her hand and tried to pull off the ring with its big emerald. “I been lookin’ at this all night, bitch,” he growled. But the ring wouldn’t come off. He spat on the finger and pulled it hard, cursing. He stood up then, and began kicking her. In the ribs, in the belly, in the face. A fist to her jaw. Now he knelt on her chest, immobilizing her, and leaned forward, rummaging in a canvas sack. “The real world, right? That’s what you want t’ see?” He pulled a pair of pruning shears out of the sack, the ones he used to trim the roses. He opened the sharp blades and set them at the base of Ruth’s ring finger. “Well, Jewgirl, here comes the real world,” and he squeezed the shears.