Cetta pulled off her underpants and dropped them on the floor. She reached out a hand to stroke Sal’s member.
“No,” he said. He knelt down in front of her, opened her legs, and pushed up her skirt. Then he sank his head into her tuft of black hair. He sniffed. “Spicy,” he said, without raising his head. The low vibration of his voice made Cetta feel a strange tickling. “Rosemary, yeah … pepper,” he went on softly, moving his flat pugilist’s nose in little circles.
Cetta realized that her eyes were shut.
“Somethin’ wild an’ damp … hot from the sun … but it ain’t dried up …”
Cetta never closed her eyes when she was with a client. Not even when they were doing it in the dark and no one could see her. She didn’t know why. It just never happened, she didn’t want to shut her eyes.
“Yeah … rosemary and wild pepper,” murmured Sal, burrowing in the dense hair.
But now Cetta couldn’t keep her eyes open. And Sal’s deep warm voice was resonating between her legs, vibrating as if from within a grotto; and the vibration spread up to her stomach, making it contract. And she listened as that voice kept penetrating her body even before it reached her ears.
“… Wild shrubs … moss …?” and thrusting his nose deeper, it touched her flesh, “… growin’ in a damp place …”
Cetta closed her eyes more tightly; she opened her mouth, not speaking, holding her breath.
“And in the ground … ”
Cetta felt his nose pull back, abandoning the flesh that was growing moist, just as the voice said.
” … in the ground, I’m tastin’ honey …”
Now Cetta could feel his tongue searching inside her, slowly, looking for the honey that she could feel flowing through her belly, wanting a way out.
“Chestnut honey,” Sal continued speaking into her body, making her tremble. “Dark and bitter … but it’s sweet, too.”
Cetta was breathless. Her mouth opened and closed to the rhythm of the heat that was coming through her in waves. Her arms were flung wide now. And her hands also opened and closed as her mouth did as she heard and felt Sal’s voice that never stopped speaking and vibrating deep inside her.
“And down in the honey …” Sal’s tongue penetrated her and moved higher, “a soft little sprout … tender … sweet like almond paste …”
“No,” Cetta said softly, with a long gasp. And she didn’t know why she’d uttered that word that she’d never said while she was being raped. “No,” she said even more softly, so that Sal wouldn’t hear her. “No,” she said again, feeling something unknown to her, something that didn’t hurt, that didn’t tear her apart, only a sensation that something like syrup was flowing inside her.
“A pale sprout …” Sal went on, rolling the tip of his tongue and then spreading it, as if showing Cetta that place she hadn’t known she had, teaching her what she had never known she could feel, “… a pale little sprout in a dark shell … like a oyster, like a pearl in a oyster …” Sal made a low satisfied sound and pressed his head and tongue deeper between Cetta’s legs, increasing the rhythm of his kisses. “Yeah … there … there …”
Cetta’s arms clasped Sal’s big powerful head, her fingers twisted in his pomaded hair, drawing him more deeply into her, so hard she might suffocate him because she herself was suffocating.
“Yeah … now I can taste it. Salt. Salt, down in the honey … come on, little girl, come, come …”
Cetta’s eyes flew open when she felt the salt, just as Sal named it, surging up in her powerfully, contracting her stomach, stopping her breath. And as she whimpered, she knew that only by crying out could she stop that torment in her flesh.
“Sal!” she cried, defeated.
Sal lifted his head. He looked at her and smiled.
Cetta saw that he had the whitest teeth. Straight. Perfect. They didn’t match his ugly damaged face. Filled with gratitude, still shaken by the strange dizziness that Sal’s thick tongue had evoked in her, she flung herself on his trousers, began to unbutton them.
Sal pushed her hands away. “I said no," he said in his deep brusque voice.
Cetta looked at his lips, shiny with the pleasure he had given her. She leaned back on the sofa, closed her eyes and said, “Talk to me again, Sal.”
10
Manhattan, 1910-1911
“Are we engaged now?” asked Cetta, her eyes shining with joy.
Sitting across from her on the bed, his face mostly hidden by a man’s old hat many sizes too big for him, was little Christmas.
“You said it, kid,” said Cetta, lowering her voice to sound like Sal’s, whose role was being played by Christmas. “And from now on, you not a whore any more. I keep you just for me.”
“Really?” asked Cetta in her own voice.
“You betcha ass,” she answered herself, reaching for the lowest notes she could produce and waving Christmas’ little hands. She had rubbed soot on them to make him look more like Sal.
Christmas pushed out his lips and began to cry, just as Tonia and Vito came home. Cetta whipped the hat off Christmas’ head and took him in her arms to comfort him.
“What happened to his hands?” asked Tonia.
“Nothing,” replied Cetta, smiling. “He get in the ashes.”
“Ah, there’s my hat,” said Vito. “I couldn’t find it this morning.”
“It was under the bed,” lied Cetta.
“It’s fuckin’ cold outside,” said Vito, jamming the hat onto his head.
“You keep a clean mouth in front of the bambino,” warned Tonia. “Give him to me,” she told Cetta. She took Christmas in her arms, sat at the table, dipped his hands in the basin of water, and began to clean them. “Do you want to be ugly like Uncle Sal?” she asked the child.
Cetta smiled and blushed. She didn’t believe in her game, but she liked playing it.
“Get ready, Cetta, Sal’s coming any minute,” said Tonia, drying Christmas’ hands. Now he was laughing and happy. She glanced at her husband, who was lying in the bed. “And you, take off that hat.”
“I’m cold.”
“Hat on the bed brings death.”
“It’s on my head.”
“Your head she’s on the bed. Take it off.”
The old man grumbled something incomprehensible. He got up, came to sit at the table across from his wife, and defiantly pulled the hat more firmly over his ears.
Cetta laughed as she changed her dress.
Christmas laughed too, looking at his mother, then he reached toward Vito and pulled at his hat. “Grandpa,” he said.
Vito’s face turned suddenly red. The old man’s eyes filled with tears. “Give him here,” he said to his wife. He took Christmas on his lap, holding him fiercely.
From outside, an automobile horn honked imperiously.
“It’s Sal,” said Cetta.
But Vito and Tonia weren’t paying any attention. Tonia stretched her hand across the table and gripped her husband’s. And both of them, with their own free hands, caressed Christmas’ fine pale hair.
Sal was honking the horn again as Cetta ran down the steps to the sidewalk. She slid into the car. “Sorry,” she said.
They sped away. All along the streets, even in this miserable ghetto, people were preparing for Christmas. The itinerant vendors had varied their goods. In the shop windows, decorations from years past had been dusted off and hung. Glue-splattered boys were hanging posters that advertised cheap parties for New Year’s Eve.
Still gazing straight ahead, Cetta reached out her hand and placed it on Sal’s thigh, who kept on driving without any reaction. Cetta smiled. Then she moved her hand to Sal’s arms. At last she leaned her head against his shoulder. She stayed like that for a few minutes. As they approached the brothel she sat back up in her seat.
When they came to a stop, Cetta, before she got out, turned to look at Sal. But his back was to her; he had already opened his door and was getting out of the car. He followed her up the steps
and into the whorehouse. The girls watched him stride past without greeting them. He grabbed Cetta’s arm and pulled her into a room. He pushed her onto the bed, lifted her skirt, pulled off her panties, and bent between her legs.
It was quick, without words, without any preamble. A pleasure that came unannounced, and left Cetta breathless. Intense, almost brutal. Cetta was still whimpering when Sal stood, snatched up her panties, and threw them at her.
“Get me the Countess,” he told her. “I feel like tryin’ a different flavor.”
Cetta looked at him, bewildered. She didn’t know what to do. She clutched her panties in her hand. She could still feel the throbbing in her womb. She squeezed her legs together.
“Don’t start gettin’ funny ideas. There ain’t nothin’ between you and me,” he said as he went to the door and opened it, jerking his head to show her the way out. “I do all of youse.”
Cetta got up painfully from the bed, humiliated, panties in hand, and started to leave.
“Don’t forget to tell the Countess,” said Sal as he shut the door.
Cetta was still wet when she took that evening’s first client to bed. Later she dried herself, and everything went on as usual.
“I can come to bordello alone,” Cetta said as Sal drove her home late that night.
“No,” said Sal.
From that day on he never touched her. He came to pick her up and take her home, as he always had. And as always he spoke as little as possible. But he never tasted her. And Cetta never reached over to touch him when they were in the car, and she didn’t lean her head on his shoulder, nor did she rub soot on Christmas’ hands again to pretend that she had a fidanzato. And when one day she remembered that she still had a ticket for Coney Island tucked in her patent leather purse, she got it out and burned it in the kitchen stove.
Two days before Christmas she bought a fake coral necklace for Tonia and a wool cap for Vito. Then she went to a children’s shop at the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Park Avenue and looked in the window for a long time. Everything was impossibly expensive. It was a store for rich people. She watched elegant women as they came out, carrying huge packages. Then at the foot of a cradle, that cost as much as a year’s rent for an apartment on the Lower East Side, she saw two little wool socks in the colors of the American flag, with stars and stripes knitted into them. She looked in her purse to make sure she had enough money, and went inside.
It was the first time she had set foot in a rich people’s store. It smelled wonderful.
“I’m sorry, we don’t need anyone,” a middle-aged man was speaking to her. He had on a dark suit and a gold watch chain across his vest.
“What?” said Cetta.
“We don’t need any sales girls,” explained the man, smoothing his moustache.
Cetta blushed and started to leave, but then she stopped. “I want to buy a gift,” she said carefully, turning back. “I am customer.”
The man looked at her, arching an eyebrow. Finally he made a haughty gesture to a salesman and stalked away without speaking to her again.
When the salesman showed her the socks, Cetta stroked them a long time. She had never felt anything so soft. “Wrap them up nice," she said, “with big bow,” and she pulled out her money with pride. At last she spotted the store manager who was obsequiously showing a hand-embroidered counterpane to an elegant lady. She approached them.
The gentleman and the lady sensed her presence and turned to look at her.
“I already have a job,” said Cetta with a polite smile. “I’m a whore.” Then she left, holding her beribboned package.
When she got back to the house she found Tonia in a state of agitation.
“We’ve always had just three chairs,” the old woman told her. “But this year there’ll be four of us.”
“This year …?” Cetta didn’t understand.
“Sal come for la Vigilia — Christmas Eve — every year,” said Vito. “That why we have three chairs. Two for us, one for Sal at Christmastime.”
“And Mrs. Santacroce, she can’t loan us a chair,” Tonia concluded.
“I find one,” said Cetta. “Don’t worry,” she told the old couple. She hid the American socks under her mattress with the other two gifts and went out again.
As she was roaming through the neighborhood streets, Cetta didn’t understand why the two old people were upset. But then she quickly stopped wondering about it because she realized she was upset, too. The idea of having dinner with Sal made her knees quake. And she didn’t have a present for him. Would he have one for her? For a moment Cetta caressed the image of Sal roughly thrusting a little leather box at her, and inside the box she would find an engagement ring. Then she pushed that foolish idea away. She looked in her coin purse. She still had some money left. She had wanted to save it, but then she stopped in front of a junk store and saw a horrible chair with a high back and carved arms, like a throne. She imagined Sal sitting in it and began to laugh. There’s his present, she thought delightedly, and went into the shop. She haggled fiercely and in the end, for a dollar and a half, she carried off the king’s chair and two glass candlesticks — chipped at the base — with candles included. And a used tablecloth edged with crocheted lace. She bundled everything onto the chair and dragged it home.
“No, the head of the house gets the fuckin’ place of honor,” Sal said later that night, refusing to sit on the throne Cetta had bought for him. “Vito, this here is your place. Either you sit on it or I’m sittin’ on the floor.”
Vito looked ridiculous in that enormous chair. But he wore a proud smile on his face, and on his head the wool cap from Cetta. Tonia was wearing the fake coral necklace. Christmas flaunted his American flag socks.
They’d had to fold the tablecloth in half because it was too big for the table, but all in all the effect was elegant, Cetta thought. The candles glowed in the candlesticks. Sal had brought food and drink. There was baked pasta, a “fish” molded out of potatoes and tuna; cheeses, salami, and wine. Cetta drank some and felt light-headed. She dipped a finger in her glass and let Christmas suck it, causing him to make a disgusted face. They all laughed, even Sal, showing his white and perfect teeth. Cetta had been watching him furtively all evening. She had served him his food with particular care, playing at being a wife. She never left his wineglass empty. Then came time for the cake, and Sal uncorked a bottle of Spumante from Italy. Cetta had never tasted it before. It was sweet and fizzy, she liked the way it made little explosions against her palate. She closed her eyes and felt her head spinning too much. When she opened them, Sal was holding his glass high, and his face was serious.
He was making a toast. “To Mikey,” he said.
“Who’s Mikey?” asked Cetta, laughing, until she saw that Tonia and Vito’s faces were grave, too, and that the old woman’s eyes were brimming with tears.
There was an embarrassed silence.
“Michele was my son,” Tonia said softly.
“To Mikey,” Sal said again, and he clinked his glass against Tonia’s and Vito’s, but not Cetta’s.
She sat with her glass still raised, looking at Sal, Tonia and Vito who were drinking slowly. She felt a weight on her heart. The party was over.
Sal pulled a silk scarf out of his pocket for Tonia, with a magician’s flourish, but there was no joy in it. He put it around her shoulders. For Vito he’d brought a pair of fingerless gloves. “Cashmere,” he said, “Warmest wool there is,” he said to the old man. Then he fished out a fine chain with a little cross and held it out to Cetta.
“Oh! Gold?” she asked him excitedly.
He didn’t answer her.
Tonia put her arms around Sal, but joylessly. Vito stared unfocusedly with eyes red with drink. He stood up, swaying a little. Sal led him over to the bed and helped him lie down. Then he kissed Tonia on both cheeks, tilted his head at Cetta and left.
Cetta followed Sal out of the windowless room. She walked beside him down the dark corridor and together they descen
ded the stairs to the sidewalk. Sal opened the car door.
“Don’t get no ideas,” Sal told her.
“What happen to Mikey?” she asked.
“I’m telling you, don’t get no ideas. There ain’t nothin’ between us.”
“I know,” said Cetta, clenching her fists behind her back. And in one of her fists was the chain with its little cross.
Sal looked at her for an instant without speaking. “Ya get what I’m sayin?”
“Yes. You lick my pussy, e basta.”
“Right. But only when I feel like it.”
Cetta lifted her chin, not moving. The streetlight lit the dark fire in her eyes. She didn’t look away; she didn’t show how deeply she was wounded. “How Mikey die?”
“Murdered.”
“Yes? That’s it?”
“That’s all I’m sayin’.”
“So you spend Christmas with parents of murdered man?”
“Mind your own business.”
“You always say same thing.”
Sal got into the car and closed the door.
“Then I ask Tonia!” Cetta shouted at him.
He flung open the door, got out of the car, and grabbed her hair, jerking her over to the wall, banging her head violently against the red bricks crumbling from the frost.
Cetta spat in his face.
Sal lifted his right hand and slapped her.
“What you want to know, kiddo?” he asked her, not bothering to wipe off the spit or let go of her hair. He brought his mouth close to her ear and spoke softly: “They stuck a icepick in his throat, in his heart and in his gut. And afterwards, they shot him in his ear, yeah, right here,” and he stuck his heavy tongue into Cetta’s ear. “Half his brains come out the other side, an since he was still movin’, they strangled him wit’ some wire. So then they put him in a stolen car. The cops found both of ’em, him and the car, at a buildin’ site over in Red Hook. Mikey was the only friend I had. And you want to know who drove that stolen car?” Sal forced Cetta’s head around so that she had to look into his eyes. “Me!” he shouted, and he punched the red brick wall with his huge fist. He let go of Cetta’s hair. “After I dumped the car I come back through the yards,” he went on, speaking quietly now, without fury, without rage. And also without sorrow. As if he were speaking about someone else. “I didn’t want nobody to see me. I followed the El tracks, hidin’ in some bushes whenever I heard a train comin’. I sneaked through a tunnel, and when the sun come up, here I was, downtown. I rented me a safe room and I went to sleep. End of story.”