Read Online Wait Until Spring Bandini by John Fante - Free Book Online Page A

palm, calloused from a washboard, to realize that she was not, after all, an American woman. Nothing about her, neither her complexion, nor her hands, nor her feet; neither the food she ate nor the teeth that chewed it – nothing about her, nothing, gave her kinship with ‘the American women.’
    She had no need in her heart for either book or magazine. She had her own way of escape, her own passage into contentment: her rosary. That string of white beads, the tiny links worn in a dozen places and held together by strands of white thread which in turn broke regularly, was, bead for bead, her quiet flight out of the world. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. And Maria began to climb. Bead for bead, life and living fell away. Hail Mary, Hail Mary. Dream without sleep encompassed her. Passion without flesh lulled her. Love without death crooned the melody of belief. She was away: she was free; she was no longer Maria, American or Italian, poor or rich, with or without electric washing machines and vacuum cleaners; here was the land of all-possessing. Hail Mary, Hail Mary, over and over, a thousand and a hundred thousand times, prayer upon prayer, the sleep of the body, the escape of the mind, the death of memory, the slipping away of pain, the deep silent reverie of belief. Hail Mary and Hail Mary. It was for this that she lived.
    * * *
    Tonight the beaded passage into escape, the sense of joy the rosary brought her, was in her mind long before she turned out the kitchen light and walked into the living room, where her grunting, groggy sons were sprawled over the floor. The meal had been too much for Federico. Already he was heavily asleep. He lay with his face turned aside, his mouth wide open. August, flat on his stomach, stared blankly into Federico’s mouth and reflected that, after he was ordained a priest, he would certainly get a rich parish and have chicken dinner every night.
    Maria sank into the rocking chair by the window. The familiar crack of her knees caused Arturo to flinch in annoyance. She drew the beads from the pocket of her apron. Her dark eyes closed and the tired lips moved, a whispering audible and intense.
    Arturo rolled over and studied his mother’s face. His mind worked fast. Should he interrupt her and ask her for a dime for the movies, or should he save time and trouble by going into the bedroom and stealing it? There was no danger of being caught. Once his mother began her rosary she never opened her eyes. Federico was asleep, and as for August, he was too dumb and holy to know what was going on in the world anyway. He stood up and stretched himself.
    ‘Ho hum. Guess I’ll get me a book.’
    In the chilling darkness of his mother’s bedroom he lifted the mattress at the foot of the bed. His fingers pawed the meager coins in the ragged purse, pennies and nickels, but so far no dimes. Then they closed around the familiar thin smallness of a ten-cent piece. He returned the purse to its place within the coil spring and listened for suspicious sounds. Then with a flourish of noisy footsteps and loud whistling hewalked into his own room and seized the first book his hand touched on the dresser.
    He returned to the living room and dropped on the floor beside August and Federico. Disgust pulled at his face when he saw the book. It was the life of St Teresa of the Little Flower of Jesus. He read the first line of the first page. ‘I will spend my heaven doing good on Earth.’ He closed the book and pushed it toward August.
    ‘Fooey,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like reading. Guess I’ll go out and see if any of the kids are on the hill coasting.’
    Maria’s eyes remained closed, but she turned her lips faintly to denote that she had heard and approved of his plan. Then her head shook slowly from side to side. That was her way of telling him not to stay out late.
    ‘I won’t,’ he said.
    Warm and eager under his tight sweaters, he sometimes ran, sometimes walked down Walnut