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Authors: Tonino Benacquista Emily Read
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weighing more than a pound. I was being asked to choose between a piece of meat of less than five hundred grams, and one of more than five hundred grams. I was pretty hungry after running about twenty-six miles, but still I just took the ‘less than a pound’ and I had to leave half of that.”
The other man leaped on the story in order to cap it with his own, about a lunch in Orlando.
“I had just got in from the airport, I was on my own, I went into a pizzeria and saw on the menu that there are three sizes – large, small and medium. Well, I was so hungry that I ordered the large one. The waiter asked how many people it was for and I said I was alone. He burst out laughing. Take a small one, he said, you won’t finish it. And he was right – it was like the wheel of a truck!”
Warren smiled, exasperated at not being able to answer back. The size of the dishes, that was all they remembered about his country. Just to confirm this, the third man brought them back to New York, to Grand Central Station.
“They told me the seafood there was wonderful. I went to John Fancy’s, which I’d been told was the best fish restaurant in town. Terribly disappointing – totally dull, you find much better seafood at the Taverne d’Evreux. I went to the station to catch a train to Boston, where I was supposed to meet my company’s sales manager. It was one o’clock, I had an hour until my train, so I wandered around below ground in the huge station andchanced on the Oyster Bar. Oysters as big as steaks! The shells were like ashtrays! I never saw such a thing! And in a station! Warren, do you know the Oyster Bar?”
Warren was tempted to say what was in his mind: “I was eight years old when my family was hounded out of the United States of America.” He was finding it less and less bearable to be treated like a future case of obesity with an IQ lower than that of an oyster in the Oyster Bar, someone ready to sacrifice everything to the God of the dollar, an uncultivated being who felt entitled to rule over the rest of the world. He longed to tell them how much he missed his childhood home, the neighbourhood, his local friends and the star-spangled flag which his father had trampled upon all those years ago. Warren found himself caught in a strange paradox: he was moved to tears by the American national anthem while simultaneously imagining himself building a Mafia state within the state, and then settling various problems that politicians could not deal with, and – who knows? – eventually getting himself invited to the White House.
To escape from this conversation, Warren found himself reduced to joining the others in awaiting the only event capable of causing a diversion – the arrival of his father. But the great man was biding his time, shut away on the veranda with the blinds down. Maggie felt her temper rising. Fred had left her to do all the work, and the barbecue wasn’t even lit. Only the guests understood his absence, knowing as they did that writers, whether American or not, always planned their entrances carefully.
They were all wrong.
Fred Blake, in the pose of The Thinker, was rereading, deeply moved, a paragraph that he had struggled withfor several hours. He now felt so close to those memories that the need to recount them had made him completely forget that forty-five people were waiting impatiently to meet him.
In 1931 my grandfather drove one of the two hundred Cadillacs chartered by the legendary Vito Genovese to follow his wife’s funeral procession. In 1957 my father, Cesare Manzoni, was summoned, along with one hundred and seven capi from all over the country for the Apalachin meeting, which ended in a manhunt. Quite frankly, was I really going to grow up strumming guitars with the hippies? Could you see me in front of the jig-borers in a cardboard factory? Was I about to start keeping my retirement coupons in a shoebox? Was I going to rebel against tradition and become an honest man just
The other man leaped on the story in order to cap it with his own, about a lunch in Orlando.
“I had just got in from the airport, I was on my own, I went into a pizzeria and saw on the menu that there are three sizes – large, small and medium. Well, I was so hungry that I ordered the large one. The waiter asked how many people it was for and I said I was alone. He burst out laughing. Take a small one, he said, you won’t finish it. And he was right – it was like the wheel of a truck!”
Warren smiled, exasperated at not being able to answer back. The size of the dishes, that was all they remembered about his country. Just to confirm this, the third man brought them back to New York, to Grand Central Station.
“They told me the seafood there was wonderful. I went to John Fancy’s, which I’d been told was the best fish restaurant in town. Terribly disappointing – totally dull, you find much better seafood at the Taverne d’Evreux. I went to the station to catch a train to Boston, where I was supposed to meet my company’s sales manager. It was one o’clock, I had an hour until my train, so I wandered around below ground in the huge station andchanced on the Oyster Bar. Oysters as big as steaks! The shells were like ashtrays! I never saw such a thing! And in a station! Warren, do you know the Oyster Bar?”
Warren was tempted to say what was in his mind: “I was eight years old when my family was hounded out of the United States of America.” He was finding it less and less bearable to be treated like a future case of obesity with an IQ lower than that of an oyster in the Oyster Bar, someone ready to sacrifice everything to the God of the dollar, an uncultivated being who felt entitled to rule over the rest of the world. He longed to tell them how much he missed his childhood home, the neighbourhood, his local friends and the star-spangled flag which his father had trampled upon all those years ago. Warren found himself caught in a strange paradox: he was moved to tears by the American national anthem while simultaneously imagining himself building a Mafia state within the state, and then settling various problems that politicians could not deal with, and – who knows? – eventually getting himself invited to the White House.
To escape from this conversation, Warren found himself reduced to joining the others in awaiting the only event capable of causing a diversion – the arrival of his father. But the great man was biding his time, shut away on the veranda with the blinds down. Maggie felt her temper rising. Fred had left her to do all the work, and the barbecue wasn’t even lit. Only the guests understood his absence, knowing as they did that writers, whether American or not, always planned their entrances carefully.
They were all wrong.
Fred Blake, in the pose of The Thinker, was rereading, deeply moved, a paragraph that he had struggled withfor several hours. He now felt so close to those memories that the need to recount them had made him completely forget that forty-five people were waiting impatiently to meet him.
In 1931 my grandfather drove one of the two hundred Cadillacs chartered by the legendary Vito Genovese to follow his wife’s funeral procession. In 1957 my father, Cesare Manzoni, was summoned, along with one hundred and seven capi from all over the country for the Apalachin meeting, which ended in a manhunt. Quite frankly, was I really going to grow up strumming guitars with the hippies? Could you see me in front of the jig-borers in a cardboard factory? Was I about to start keeping my retirement coupons in a shoebox? Was I going to rebel against tradition and become an honest man just
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