PART TWO
FOUR
Nunzio stood at the prow of the ferry with the throng of new immigrants released from Ellis Island. The ferry rocked as it approached the dock in Battery Park, where Nunzio could see a huge crowd of people waiting. Moments earlier, he’d overheard one of the ferry operators say, “You can always tell when we’re releasing eye-talians. There’s five of them at the gate for every one off the boat.”
The boat bumped up against the dock, and both crowds roared. The searching for familiar faces began even before the first person disembarked. The passengers gripped bags and lifted children, nervously inventorying their families and luggage as they jostled forward through the ferry gate as one. Within seconds, people were being hoisted into the air, embraced, and patted on the back. There was uncontrolled weeping and laughing. When all had disembarked, the crowd became a knot of humanity—relatives weaving in and out in search of loved ones, or padrones looking for fresh recruits for the mines and farms. At Ellis Island, Nunzio had been handed a pamphlet warning him of the swindlers that would greet them at the Battery and how much to expect to pay in rent or for a carriage ride. Watching the solicitors swarm the crowd, he wondered what would happen to those who couldn’t read or who hadn’t heard.
With most of the crowd dispersed, Nunzio continued squinting into the sun, looking for Lorenzo. He was trying hard not to be distracted by the tall buildings in the distance. Finally, one hundred yards away he saw a man running, carrying a child with one arm and holding the hand of a small woman with the other. Another child held onto the mother’s skirt and struggled to keep up. He couldn’t see his face, but he hadn’t forgotten that Lorenzo ran like a goat.
Lorenzo reached him, breathless, and caught him in an embrace. “The walk was longer than I remembered. I’m sorry, brother.” He kissed Nunzio’s cheeks. Nunzio had not yet heard Lorenzo call him brother. Lorenzo had always called him cousin, but after Nunzio and Giovanna married, Lorenzo’s letters began to refer to him as “mio fratello.” Seeing Lorenzo made Nunzio miss Giovanna even more. He hadn’t counted on Lorenzo being a constant reminder of his wife. Lorenzo too had smooth, clear skin and was tall and straight, but his face didn’t hold the conviction of Giovanna’s—it was more relaxed.
Lorenzo stepped back. “Teresa, this is my brother, Nunzio Pontillo. Nunzio, this is my wife, Teresa, and my children, Domenico and Concetta.”
Nunzio bent to kiss Teresa and lifted Concetta from the ground as she wiggled back to her mother. He took off Domenico’s cap and tousled his hair.
“Thick hair like your father’s. Are you as strong as your father?” Nunzio asked.
Domenico put up his fists and pummeled Nunzio’s legs. “Ah, stronger! How old are you, big boy?”
“Seven.” Domenico punctuated his age by making a muscle.
Laughing, they gathered the bags and turned to begin their trek to Elizabeth Street.
“It’s not as far as Naples,” teased Lorenzo, who was holding one end of the trunk with Nunzio holding the other. Lorenzo was grateful that Nunzio didn’t question him when he saw other arrivals get into horse-drawn carts with their families. And when Nunzio stared at the elevated track, Lorenzo knew that it wasn’t because he wanted to take the train but because he didn’t know what it was. Nunzio’s head was locked in the up position as they walked underneath the El. The track trembled and there was an enormous roar. Nunzio dropped the trunk, grabbed the children, and rushed from beneath the elevated track. Teresa and Lorenzo ran after Nunzio to assure him they were safe, but before they uttered a word, a train thundered on the track above, explaining everything. Nunzio stood in amazement with the children still clutched to his sides.
“The cars, none fell off! A railroad in the sky! This America of yours, does it always build what you dream?” Nunzio exclaimed.
Lorenzo dragged the trunk to where his brother-in-law stood and greeted Nunzio’s childlike enthusiasm with a parental answer: “Nunzio, I promise we will take a ride soon.” Lorenzo felt guilty again, especially because their route to Little Italy followed the El. He wished they had the extra money for train fare, but they had moved into a three-room apartment in preparation for Nunzio’s arrival and for the third child that young Teresa was carrying.
Nunzio didn’t know whether to look down or up, and if Lorenzo hadn’t been attached to the other side of the trunk, leading him out of the way of carriages, he would have been run over. Nunzio stomped his foot on the pavement and looked down.
“It’s a sidewalk,” said Lorenzo. “They are on some streets.”
“Where does it lead?” asked Nunzio.
“Wherever you want,” answered Lorenzo, smiling.
Nunzio thought his head was going to burst trying to absorb it all. When Lorenzo asked about Giovanna, Nunzio realized that for the first time in his three-week voyage, he wasn’t thinking about her. He was too caught up in the sights, heights, and sounds of this strange city.
More people passed speaking a foreign tongue.
“Does no one speak English in America, Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo laughed. “Even when we all speak English, our accents are so different we don’t know if we are speaking the same language. Language is not so important in this country. If you want to understand one another, you do.”
“This way. We’ll walk up Broadway,” directed Lorenzo.
Concetta and Domenico kept stealing glances at Nunzio, who only occasionally caught them because his head was spinning. A cherry tree was in bloom next to a church with a tall spire that Nunzio was scrutinizing.
“It’s not a Catholic church,” Lorenzo said. “It’s an American church, Trinity, and people think it is very old.”
A streetcar pulled by horses thundered toward them. Not bony horses like the ones in Calabria, but enormous ones that dwarfed the pedestrians. The streetcar carried more people than Nunzio could count—men and women pressed so close together that Nunzio imagined Father Clemente would be outraged. When the car passed, Nunzio had a full view of an even more amazing sight; it was a building taller than he imagined possible.
Lorenzo looked back at Nunzio and smiled. “I knew you would have your head in the clouds.”
“What is it? What is it called, Lorenzo?”
“And I knew you would ask me about the buildings, so I found out their names. This one is called Park Row. They finished it last year, and they say it is the tallest. But this seems to me a big competition these Americans have. If they don’t stop, they’ll scratch the sun.”
Teresa smiled at her husband and directed her pride at her children. “See how much your papa knows?” Lorenzo had told her all about Nunzio, how he was a maestro, and how he had gone to school in the north. She was nervous to meet him, embarrassed that she couldn’t read and write. But she was feeling less uncomfortable already; Nunzio had a nice smile, and she liked how he treated the children. Teresa was only fifteen when she married Lorenzo. She had never gone to school, but she had been in the country since she was a little girl, and this gave her the edge to maintain the balance of power in their marriage.
Nunzio stopped in front of Park Row. Lorenzo tugged. “Brother, you will see the sights when I don’t have forty kilos hanging off my arm. Forza.”
They walked through an area with large, wide buildings, not as tall as the others, but mammoth structures that were grouped together. Lorenzo would narrate when he saw Nunzio’s eyes lock onto something. “This is the city hall and the court.”
Nunzio thought about Scilla’s small stone building near the chiazza where they brought the babies and where they recorded their marriages. In his mind, he saw Giovanna at his side as he signed the ledger recording their marriage before the sindaco. Diverted from this memory by the row of skyscrapers that loomed before him, he focused on the one that was bigger than the rest, which had a gold dome.
“Is this the Jewish church?” Nunzio had heard that many Jews lived near the Italians.
“No, a newspaper building. They all are. That one is the New York World building.”
Nunzio sighed. “There must be a lot to write about.”
Conversation about newspapers made Teresa insecure, so she pointed beyond the buildings toward the east. “Nunzio, guarda!”
Nunzio had caught a few glimpses of the structure, but it was distant and too unbelievable. Within range of his scrutiny, he was forced to drop the trunk and marvel at the towers and suspension wires of the Brooklyn Bridge. Lorenzo knew that he had no choice but to stop and rest, and this was as good a place as any. Teresa smiled with a child’s pride that she was the first to point out the most spectacular of all the marvels to him.
Nunzio stood in awe. Had Giovanna been there, she would have been convinced that such reverence proved that Nunzio saw God in the works of man. When they eventually picked up the trunk, it was as if a prayer had ended, and they continued on in silence. Nunzio glanced back at the bridge, and only then were his eyes able to take in the river, the ferries, the barges, and the bustle of waterfront activity.
Their walk had taken them up Park Row, but now Lorenzo led them left onto Mott Street. The English letters on signs turned into Chinese characters. Nunzio knew many different people lived in New York, but he hadn’t expected them to have their own cities. He imagined that China didn’t look much different than life on this street; pigs and hens hung in store windows, people ate with sticks in restaurants, and baskets of clothes were piled to the ceiling in cellar laundries. Nunzio saw a shop with small bottles of every color and shape arranged neatly on shelves over barrels brimming with herbs. He knew Giovanna’s eyes would burn bright if she saw such a place and he envisioned her rubbing the herbs between her fingers, smelling them, and concocting recipes for new poultices and salves.
Two Chinese men in Western dress walked toward them, but when they passed, Nunzio saw that long braids fell from their felt hats. He wondered how you decide to wear the Western suit but keep your hair in a long tail. What would change about him in this l’America? Nunzio thought of the Calabrians who returned home but thereafter were called Americani. There was no time to figure out the answers to these and other questions; he was trying too hard to navigate the strange streets. He simply had to take it all in and have faith that the curious would soon explain itself.
A Chinese peddler, balancing a large wicker basket on a long stick, walked beside them. Nunzio was sure that whatever the teetering basket held would soon fall on his head, and he tugged Lorenzo farther away. They followed the stone path that Lorenzo had called a sidewalk, but many streets, including this one, were also paved in stones, and it made the noise around them deafening. The sounds of wagon wheels, boxes being dragged, water splashing from pots—all were amplified with no dirt to absorb them. There was such a rhythm to the noise and motion of the street that Nunzio’s closest comparison was Scilla’s Feast of Saint Rocco. Life in this New York was a parade without an order of march.
“Lorenzo, is every day like this?” shouted Nunzio.
“It’s quiet today because it is Sunday.”
For the first time, Nunzio felt exhausted.
“Ah, we are on Elizabeth Street,” exclaimed Lorenzo.
The Chinese characters changed to Italian words. Even from the signs, he could tell that much of the dialect was Sicilian.
This street was not paved with stones. Dust and dried manure swirled through the air with each breeze. Some pushcarts, stripped of their inventory, lined the road.
Responding to Nunzio’s glances, Lorenzo said, “On weekdays, there are so many sellers it’s difficult to walk. It can be a good living. This block here”—Lorenzo nodded—“is where all the fish peddlers live. Elizabeth Street is mainly Sicilians. There are more Calabrians on Mulberry Street, but we found a better apartment here.” Since marrying a girl from Puglia, Lorenzo crossed lines more easily.
“Here we are. Home. Elizabeth Street, 176.”
They entered a narrow, dark hall and climbed three flights. The children ran up the stairs ahead. If it weren’t for the strong and familiar smells on each landing, and the laughing and arguing that characterized Sunday dinner echoing in the halls, Nunzio would have thought they had entered a cave. Lorenzo pushed open one of two doors on the third floor. They entered an apartment with not much more light than the hallway.
“We moved in last week,” said Lorenzo nervously. By the expression on Nunzio’s face, Lorenzo knew that Nunzio’s reaction was similar to his own when he first saw the houses of l’America.
Nunzio walked between the three small rooms thinking, “How do you get outside? Is the only way out really down those narrow stairs?” Looking for an escape, he ducked his head under the fabric hanging on a string in front of the window. Raising the curtain, he leaned his body on the sill and was startled by all the people looking back at him. Hundreds of people were leaning out their windows above and beneath him, across the street, and up the block. The tenement dwellers stared at the newcomer, and Nunzio nodded awkwardly. A man smoked a cigar; a woman called to her children; but mostly, they leaned forward, watching the seething street with their elbows resting on pillows or burlap sacks. “So, this is how you go outside in l’America,” thought Nunzio. He had heard descriptions of New York apartments, but like everything thus far about l’America, until you saw it, you wouldn’t believe it, and even then it was hard to comprehend.
Upon arriving, Teresa immediately set about preparing a meal in the cramped kitchen. “I was only a child, but I remember the food on that ship.”
Teresa had done most of the cooking before going to meet Nunzio at the Battery. Sunday dinner was always extravagant—they had meat and salad—but today she had prepared all of her specialties with Lorenzo’s blessing. The children lifted the cloth to pick at the pasticcini, but Teresa slapped their hands and shooed them into the hall to play. Lorenzo poured Nunzio a glass of wine and explained that he had traded a few things for a soft mattress to put in the kitchen for Nunzio’s bed.
“The kitchen is not so bad, Nunzio. In fact, in the winter, you may find your niece and nephew joining you,” Lorenzo warned. “Later tonight, Luigi and Pasqualina DiFranco will come by to pay their respects…”
Lorenzo kept talking, but Nunzio wasn’t listening. He was looking at Teresa’s table with as much reverence as he had the Brooklyn Bridge. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so much food. He was ravenous.
Domenico watched his uncle’s eyes follow his mother’s every move. He snatched a meatball and secretly handed it to Nunzio. Nunzio took a breath to protest, but then winked at Domenico and took the meatball.
Lorenzo was chatting nervously, and Nunzio surmised it was because he was avoiding asking a question. Correctly guessing the cause of Lorenzo’s angst, Nunzio said, “Lorenzo, your parents are well.” He continued, and Lorenzo’s shoulders relaxed. “If there was more food, that would be better for everyone. But your mother still sews like no one else in the village, and if there is a fish to catch, your father will catch it.”
Lorenzo’s face radiated relief. “And Giovanna, is there no child?”
It was Nunzio’s turn to be pensive. “I wait for a letter. I wait.”
Teresa ordered everyone to the table, and her pride was evident. Her ink black hair was swept back in a bun, and although her plain face still looked young, she had the weary but confident bearing of an older Italian woman. Teresa stopped fluttering while Lorenzo said a prayer and continued serving when he finished. She refused every entreaty to sit down and instead concentrated on keeping Nunzio’s plate full—something that hadn’t been possible for many years.
FIVE
Lorenzo laid brick in the spring, summer, and fall, and, if he was lucky, sold sweet potatoes in the winter. During the first of his eight years in New York, Lorenzo had had such a difficult time finding work that he had even considered listening to the lies of the padroni and going off to lay track for a railroad or to work in a mine. He knew he would be cheated, but at least he would be working.
In the end, what kept him from indentured servitude was Teresa, who was wise in the ways of finding a job. Teresa made the rounds with Lorenzo to the barbershops, cafes, and markets to chat and listen to rumors of work. Before long, Lorenzo was on the laborer circuit and rarely spent more than a day or two between jobs.
Nunzio now benefited from his brother-in-law’s experience. Lorenzo wrote down the addresses of three places where he could look for work. At the first location, after having trouble finding the place and waiting in line for five hours, he was told he was too late, all the jobs were filled. He cursed himself for getting lost, and the next day woke at three in the morning to ensure he would be at the next site well before six.
After again waiting for hours, he was told they already had too many Italians on the job. A small boy with a pimply face and hands much older than his years explained when he saw Nunzio’s puzzled expression, “They think if there’s a lot of one kind, the unions will get you.” Nunzio had no idea what the kid meant.
On the third day, he hiked down to the Brooklyn Bridge long before the sun came up and walked across to where they were building a waterfront warehouse. There were already three men in line, all Italian, and each had heard a different story concerning how many men were to be hired. Lines were a new experience for the Italians, but they caught on quickly to this American phenomenon. The men had queued up in front of a misshapen small shack made out of scrap wood. It stood alone on a lot strewn with rubble, which had the beginnings of a foundation. They watched in silence as a short, fat man with ruddy skin placed a plank across two crates in front of the shack, making a table for himself. One by one, workers and foremen arrived at the site carrying trowels, buckets, and tins of food. It was hours before the fat man called them forward.
“Hey, this wop says he’s an engineer!” yelled the hiring boss to the foreman. “And he speaks English.”
The tall, thin foreman sauntered over. “So, you’re an engineer.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Nunzio proudly, “I studied in Rome.”
“So, I bet you built that there Col-es-see-um.” The hiring boss laughed heartily at the foreman’s joke.
Nunzio ignored them. “I know how to build. I work hard.”
“You eye-talians haven’t built anything that isn’t falling down. This is America, wop-boy, and you don’t ‘build’ here—you carry brick.” He turned to the hiring boss. “Hire ’im, but keep your eye on ’im. I don’t trust no English-speaking eye-talian with red hair.”
Nunzio twirled his sandwich, which was harpooned on a wire, toasting it over the flame. Six laborers, all paesani, ringed the fire, eating their lunch. Nunzio never thought he’d think of Sicilians, Abruzzese, and Napolitans as paesani, but here in this country they were all Italian. In his most recent letter to Giovanna, he wrote of the irony that, in America, Italy was more united than in Italy.
Two-Toed Nick opened his flask of wine. “Nunzio, where you go after this joba?”
“Joba.” “The job.” The word was always said with such reverence that Nunzio envisioned it as a satin-coated deity. He had been on this job eight weeks, and it was coming to an end. “I don’t know. But I want a big one so I lose no days and return to Scilla.”
“You Calabresi, always thinking you’re going home.”
“Sicilians are so different?” Nunzio nodded to another man at the fire. “Saint Carmine told me he counts the days on his bedroom wall.”
Two-Toed Nick looked offended. “Saint Carmine is not Siciliano. He’s Napolitano. And besides,” he said with a smile, “he’s not right in the head.”
“Don’t tell that story.” Carmine didn’t move as he spoke and continued puffing on his cigar.
“Nunzio, didn’t you ever wonder why they call him Saint Carmine? It’s certainly not because he worships at a certain house on Mulberry Street.”
The laughter started.
“It’s not funny,” protested Carmine, who got up in a dramatic huff and pretended to go back to work.
Two-Toed Nick took Carmine’s exit as permission to continue.
“Like I said, Saint Carmine is Napolitano and every few years the Napolitanos have to deal with Vesuvius coughing up hot lava. One time the lava, it was coming straight for Carmine’s village. Carmine went to the church, and he ripped the statue of Saint Gennaro from the altar and carried it halfway up the mountain. Then he takes Saint Gennaro, and he puts him down in the path of the lava.”
Two-Toed Nick stood to reenact the story, shaking his finger and mimicking Carmine’s gruff voice. “Carmine says, ‘Saint Gennaro, we pray to you, we give you a big festival, we give you money. Now, you do your job—make this lava go away from our village.’ Then Carmine, he stood and waited as the hot rock flowed. The lava, it headed straight for Saint Gennaro and Carmine’s village. Carmine, he sees the saint is doing nothing, and he goes pazzo. He starts throwing rocks at the statue screaming, ‘You dirty bum! You freeloader!’ Carmine keeps throwing those rocks as he’s running for his life down the mountain.”
The men, despite having heard the story before, cried from laughing so hard. Nunzio, who kept trying to catch his breath, laughed hardest and at the same time debated whether to write Giovanna to tell her this story. He knew she would let loose the throaty laugh that he loved, but he could also imagine her crossing herself, filled with guilt for laughing when a saint was involved.
When Nunzio caught his breath and ended his silent debate, he asked, “And what of the village? Cos’è successo?”
“Who knows? Carmine, he kept running right onto a boat and came here!”
The men collapsed again into laughter as the foreman walked by. “Hey, you gang-o-dagos, enough lounging around. Get your sorry garlic asses back to work.”
Nunzio had started on the job as a laborer. He mixed mortar and loaded wheelbarrows with piles of bricks, delivering them to the bricklayers. He hadn’t done such mind-numbing, backbreaking work since he was a child.
The foreman who had hired Nunzio called him to his “office,” the misshapen wood shanty. “So, hotshot, you can drive a wheelbarrow. Now we’re gonna see if you can lay brick.” The foreman stood up, and Nunzio almost smiled, not because he was being “promoted,” but because the man so lived up to his nickname. Carmine called him “Linguine con Pomodoro” because he was tall and thin with red splotches all over his white skin. Linguine con Pomodoro handed him pointing and bricklaying trowels. “Borrow these today; tomorrow you bring your own.”
Nunzio had spent two weeks watching the fluid movements of the bricklayers, so it didn’t take him long to master the bricklayer’s art. He stayed out of Linguine con Pomodoro’s eyesight until he could dip his trowel and ice the brick like a seasoned artisan. He missed the freedom of movement he’d had as a laborer, but he loved climbing the scaffolding and working high off the ground. This warehouse was only six stories, but that was three stories higher than most of the buildings in Scilla.
Nunzio could also see everything that went on around and below him. He could see the inspector coming even before Linguine con Pomodoro, who always had the inspector’s favorite scotch waiting. The inspector would enter Linguine con Pomodoro’s “office,” and after an hour or so, the two would emerge singing songs or laughing at the punch line of a joke.
Accidents on the job were to be expected. There were the petty nuisances of the trade—skin burned and chafed so badly by mortar that the only way to relieve the pain and heal the wound was to urinate on your own skin. Or the sore and bent backs that needed both hot and cold to straighten them out. But these were the daily annoyances, not the events that earned workers their nicknames.
Two-Toed Nick was simply Nick before a pile of brick crushed his foot. One-Legged Paul, who sold fruit from a Mulberry Street pushcart, was formerly Paul the Riveter. Uno Occhi (One-Eye) Nardone, who lived in Lorenzo’s building, used to set the dynamite to build the tunnels. Now he dug them, because you didn’t need good eyesight to shovel dirt in the dark. Nunzio prayed that his nickname would not change. His paesani had taken to calling him “Professore,” and it was his hope that he did not become the Professore of a missing piece of anatomy.
Sundays were the only day of the week that “Joba” was not worshiped. The women went to church and cooked, and the men gambled and relaxed in the cafes. It was also the one day of the week to be an individual. The man in the apartment on the first floor played his mandolin when the Sunday meal ended until the first of the bambini were put to sleep. Carmine, not surprisingly, loved the theater and was a vocal member of the audience at performances in Little Italy. Lorenzo made extra money by painting idyllic landscapes in tenement foyers. Apartment seekers rarely saw the actual rooms for rent and instead met the landlord in the foyer. The effect of scenes reminiscent of the Italian countryside apparently made the potential tenants feel at home, and it allowed the savvy landlords to charge even more for the airless dark rooms that were more reminiscent of railroad cars than open villas.
So on Sundays, Teresa cooked, Lorenzo readied his paint box, and Nunzio would kneel and say a prayer of apology to Giovanna for missing church before scrubbing himself and the children clean. He would fuss over little Domenico and Concetta, making sure that their Sunday clothes were pressed properly and that their hats were on straight. The three would leave the house on their weekly adventure, brimming with excitement, and Teresa, who was large with child, would smile and shake her head.
Nunzio, his niece, and his nephew would retrace their steps back to the Battery, stopping at each skyscraper to explore the building and to ride the elevator. The first time Nunzio charmed a watchman in the Park Row building and they rode the elevator to the top, Domenico emerged from the gilded marvel with his hand cupped under his chin, holding the contents of his stomach. Undeterred, Nunzio took them on every elevator he could sweet-talk his way into until Domenico’s stomach adjusted to life in the twentieth century. When the watch-men weren’t watching, Concetta and Nunzio would run their hands along the marble in the lobbies to feel the cool of the stone. Nunzio would point out details in the carvings, and if there were paintings, they would memorize the colors and scenes to describe them later to Lorenzo. Sometimes while waiting for the elevator, Nunzio would show them how to measure the lobby with their strides. They did all of this in silence. The rule of thumb was “no talking” for fear they would broadcast their immigrant status more loudly than their appearance already did.
On the way home, Nunzio would buy the children sugared almonds and pistachios. They would sit on the bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge that they had claimed as their own and discuss the merits of all the buildings they saw. Concetta chattered about the animals she saw in the marble patterns; Domenico bragged that someday he would carve the greatest gargoyle; and Nunzio imagined Giovanna was on the bench with him and these were their children.
The trio would make their way home just in time for Teresa’s feast. The children would collapse into chairs as Lorenzo rubbed the paint off his hands with turpentine. The music of the mandolin player—whose family ate one hour earlier—filled the exhausted silence. By the time Teresa piled the table with nuts, fruit, and pasticcini, they would have revived and would all be talking at once. When the meal ended, Lorenzo would smoke his pipe with his children on his knees before leaving for the cafe. “The Goat”—Nunzio wasn’t the only one who noticed that Lorenzo ran like a goat—would try and persuade Nunzio to go with him, but Lorenzo knew that Nunzio would opt for his solitary walk instead.
After Sunday dinner Nunzio would walk up to Twenty-third Street and stand at the intersection of Fifth Avenue to assess what work had been completed since the previous Sunday. These men, how lucky they were! They were building the most marvelous building in the entire world. They had shaped it like a triangle, and it was going higher than Nunzio could have ever imagined before stepping foot on the Battery. But this building was different from the others. It had poetry. Its shape mimicked the crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and it played with your eye. This was a masterpiece. And the way it was being built! This building was not held up by its walls, but by the steel of its interior. Nunzio marveled that the exterior of the building was like skin; it merely served to cover the interior structure. The middle of the building was covered in its facade first. Nunzio wondered whether they did this for any engineering reasons or if it was just to prove to the world that they could. He yearned to work on such a building.
SIX
“Giovanna must be praying for me,” Nunzio thought on his last day at the warehouse job. Carmine had gotten a tip that they were looking for laborers for a project in Brooklyn that could keep them employed for a year or more. Nunzio had already calculated what he could save and had determined that he could return to Giovanna at the end of the year with enough money to move north so she could study.
“It’s a tank to hold the gas for the lights,” said Carmine, knowing that this explanation would appeal to Nunzio—the job might not be building a skyscraper, but it was about progress. “They’re hiring tomorrow morning. But it’s even farther north than here; we’ll be dead before we get there,” pronounced Carmine dramatically.
Nunzio picked up Carmine at three in the morning from Mulberry Street for the three-hour walk to Wythe Avenue and North Twelfth Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
“Brutte Americane waters!” cursed Carmine, as they followed the river south to the Brooklyn Bridge. “With no current, we could swim there in half the time.”
Nunzio looked at the stocky, bald man from the mountains and thought, current or not, he’d sink like a stone. But Carmine’s comment stoked his yearning for the turquoise waters of Scilla. They walked past another bridge being built that, if finished, would cut their walk in half. Nunzio studied the construction and could tell that this structure would not be as grand as the Brooklyn Bridge. Still, he’d love to work on it, and if that wasn’t possible, he simply wished it would open quickly and lessen his commute—were he lucky enough to get this job.
They weren’t dead, but they were exhausted by the time they reached Wythe and North Twelfth. There was already a line, but not a long one. Joining the line, Nunzio shifted the weight of his canvas bag holding his chisels, level, trowels, and hammer, which he brought in case the foreman wanted them to start right away.
Carmine gave Nunzio a disapproving look. “For me, no job, no tools. They give me a job, I bring my tools,” he blustered.
Nunzio suspected Carmine’s bravado had more to do with laziness than conviction. Nunzio had always thought there was a lazy streak in Carmine, but of course he had never voiced such a thing. It would have been the ultimate insult to an Italian. Poor, okay, but lazy—never.
TAYLOR, WOOD & CO., BALTIMORE was printed on a sign above the building housing an office. This was good. Nothing makeshift; it meant they planned on being around a while. Nunzio looked at the barren land and imagined the tank they would build there. Carmine said he heard it was to be a giant cylinder. Nunzio thought of building curves, not angles, and was intrigued. Approaching the office, he instinctively straightened up.
The men entered one by one. An Italian translator stood next to a balding man in a suit. Nunzio had never seen a man wear a suit at a job site. The translator addressed Nunzio.
“Come si chiama?” asked the translator.
“Nunzio Pontillo. I speak the English, sir.”
The man in the suit looked up. “What’s your experience?”
Nunzio rattled off a progression of jobs, some true and others not, that took him from laborer to skilled mason. He had learned they didn’t check, and he had also learned not to say he was an engineer.
The boss looked approvingly at his tool bag. “You start tomorrow as a laborer. If you work out, you’ll be on this job at least six months, could be longer.”
“Grazie. No, thank you…”
“Sign up over there,” interrupted the translator.
Carmine was put on a “reserve line”—if no one better came along, he would be hired. Nunzio waited in the shade of one of the few trees and watched. It was July, and the sun was high at noon. He knew Carmine was on the verge of cursing them for keeping him waiting in the scorching heat, so Nunzio shot him an occasional look that said, “Behave.” At two in the afternoon, when the line had dwindled, Carmine was pulled from the reserve and signed up.
They were halfway back to Little Italy before Carmine calmed down. “They take all of those jerks right away and they don’t take me? Stronzi. They are all stronzi.”
Nunzio ignored him. “Carmine, let’s celebrate. When we get to Mulberry Street, we’ll eat clams.” Nunzio was not usually so extravagant. Buying clams on the half shell from a pushcart was standard fare for some men, but it was an unnecessary expenditure for one with big plans.
That night, lying in bed, Nunzio wrote to Giovanna in triumph. In all of Giovanna’s letters to Nunzio, she found a thousand ways to tell him not to worry and not to be disappointed at how long it was taking them to achieve their goals. Nunzio saw through every line. He knew when Giovanna was trying to be strong, although he was sure that no one else could pick up on this because Giovanna’s voice and body spoke with such conviction. But Nunzio could see what others could not, like the tiny flutter beneath Giovanna’s left eye. When she was suppressing emotion, Nunzio saw that twitch in Giovanna’s letters, but tonight, he imagined her reading his good news with a smile creeping across her face. She might even allow herself an open grin before she ran off to church to give thanks.
Unable to sleep because he was so happy, Nunzio got up and wrote Giovanna another letter, this time drawing what he imagined the tank would look like. And maybe because he was delirious or because he again wanted to imagine Giovanna’s laugh, he did a second drawing of the tank. This time it was situated on Scilla’s north coast and looked like a pasta pot.
They were building two tanks, one at a time. Nunzio couldn’t understand why they weren’t being built at the same time, and although he asked as politely as possible, he got a stinging rebuke from the foreman and a raised eyebrow from the supervisor. The first task was to dig a circular hole 10 feet deep and 192 feet in diameter. When the ground was excavated, they were to lay the concrete floor on which the tank would rest. The month of July was spent mixing and laying concrete in three-foot-square sections to cover the floor area.
Nunzio was lead man in a crew that included Carmine, “Pretty Boy,” “Meatball,” and “Nospeakada.” He liked to imagine that he was in charge because he was the most skilled, the engineer, but he knew it was only because he spoke English. Nunzio had a hunch that Nospeakada spoke English, but whenever he was asked a question not in Italian, his quick reply was “Nospeakada eenglish.” Pretty Boy was both pretty and young. He was lean with thick eyelashes and delicate features, but Nunzio could count on him to work the hardest. Meatball, an older man, had indulged in one meatball too many, which earned him his nickname and a stomach he struggled to bend over. Carmine was only useful when he knew the supervisor or foremen were watching, which left most of the work to Nunzio, Pretty Boy, and Nospeakada.
The supervisor, Mr. Mulligan, no longer wore a suit to work, but he was always impeccably clean and often on the telephone in the office. He communicated with the men through his foremen, who made a big show of shouting orders after Mr. Mulligan had quietly given them instructions. To get his information, Nunzio stole glances through Mr. Mulligan’s windows at the plans for the tanks tacked on his wall.
Before they had finished laying the concrete floor, large pieces of wrought iron, five by twelve feet and three-eighths of an inch thick, were delivered to the site. Nunzio’s spirits lifted when he saw the iron, and he urged the men on to finish the floor. He could imagine the largest gas tank in the world taking shape.
With the concrete set, it was time to build the tank. Supervisor Mulligan had a short meeting with the foremen, who broke from the circle, shouting to their lead men. The first step was to build the bottom of the tank. Over the next few days, they erected scaffolding on the concrete floor. When that was completed, the men hauled the sheets of iron into place, which would then be riveted together. Nunzio peered at the drawings through the windows, looking for clues as to why large numbers of jacks and timbers were showing up on the job. Unable to figure it out, he approached one of the foremen during a lunch break.
“Mister, why all the jacks? What are we going to do with them?”
“What’s it to you, wop?”
Mr. Mulligan heard the exchange, gave his foreman a look of disapproval, and answered Nunzio.
“That’s how we’re going to get her down, son.”
Nunzio was so fascinated he forgot he was just a laborer talking to the supervisor. “But how are we going to use the jacks without making holes?”
“We will make holes, but we’ll seal them when it’s lowered.” The supervisor walked on, and the foreman angrily waved Nunzio away.
“Your job’s not to ask questions, you hear?”
Nunzio couldn’t follow the supervisor’s logic—they were riveting the plates of iron on scaffolding to ensure tight seals, but then they would compromise the metal by piercing its surface. After thinking it through, he came to no conclusions but dismissed his doubts. This was America. They knew how to build with metal, and Nunzio didn’t know metal like he knew wood, stone, and brick. He would watch and learn.
There was creaking as Nunzio climbed into his cot in Lorenzo’s kitchen, but it was his body, not the bed. Settling on top of the sheet, he cursed his complaining joints and tired muscles. All was quiet in the apartment, except for the muffled sounds of Teresa’s new baby suckling at her breast. Nunzio had waited until everyone had gone to bed to read Giovanna’s letter, wanting to savor it without interruption. He unfolded the paper and marveled at her steady, fluid hand, thinking that if she didn’t become a doctor she could work in the office of the sindaco recording the births, deaths, and marriages. He excitedly refocused on her words, lingering on “Caro Nunzio” for a moment. Nunzio’s eyes skipped through the sentences with Giovanna’s voice echoing in his mind. The letter opened with reassuring words about the health of their parents, as it always did, and went on to chronicle the news of the village.
“Ah, she got my letter!” he thought delightedly, reading further.
I am so proud that my Nunzio is shaping this America.
I think of you on this job and know that all the men must look up to you. I imagine that there is a chorus of ‘Ask Nunzio’ all day long. I have my own question: what does the name of this job, Brooklyn Union Gas Company, mean?
Oh, but how I wish you did not have to travel so far to get there! Nunzio, you must send less money and pay to take a cart, at least for the trip home. I can’t bear to think of you working so hard all day and having to walk home. I would do anything to take those steps for you.
At least I know that Lorenzo is giving you plenty of wine with dinner. I have not showed your drawing to anyone for fear they would say that America has made Nunzio soft in the head.
I did laugh, very hard, and then, of course, I tried to imagine how much pasta we could cook in such a pot.
Nunzio smiled, pleased with himself. After commenting on Nunzio’s letter, Giovanna usually would end with assurances that time was passing quickly, even though it didn’t feel that way, and they would soon be together in Scilla. But this letter did not follow its usual course. Nunzio could see the speed in Giovanna’s writing, and he reacted by sitting up on his elbows.
Nunzio, today I delivered a little girl. It was a difficult birth, and the baby’s lungs are infected. I don’t think she will live. I was frustrated during the delivery, because if I knew more I could have helped that child. I have always relied on my instincts, which have served me well, but today, as other days, I faced my ignorance. Until this moment, I thought that if I were to study further, it would be because Nunzio wanted me to. Now I share your dream, improbable as it may seem. Thank you, my dear Nunzio, for knowing what is in my heart even before I do. Sometimes I feel like you inhabit my soul.
“Brava, Giovanna, brava,” whispered Nunzio, running his hands across the page, caressing Giovanna in its surface. He wondered how he could feel such a connection with a woman an ocean away. Carmine had tried to bring him to the house of the puttane, and he had allowed himself to go through the door. A dark-haired woman approached him, but even with her breath on his face, he felt physically closer to Giovanna. He turned and left Carmine to his comforts; and now, he folded the letter, laid it on his chest, and fell into a satisfied sleep.
Nunzio became lead man for three crews because so many men had quit during the next phase of construction. The metal bottom of the tank sat on wooden stilts thirty-two inches above the concrete floor. The metal plates were being riveted from above—and below. The first time he crawled into the dark beneath the disc, he sympathized with his countrymen who had become miners. But within days, he was jealous of the miners, for while the miners had to endure the soot, he believed that at least they labored standing in the cool beneath the earth. Nunzio and his co-workers entered hell each time they slithered under the tank bottom. The August sun baked the iron and the noise from the hot rivets being pounded into the metal from above created an ear-piercing, broiling torture chamber.
Nunzio’s job was to crawl on his belly to the plate that was being riveted and position the anvil to take the blows and steady the tank bottom’s weight of two hundred tons. He felt like a worm. His mind flashed back to his fantasies of building the Flatiron Building. If he weren’t so miserable he would have laughed at the irony. He tried to cheer himself by imagining this project as one part of the web that was being spun throughout New York, spanning rivers, reaching into the sky, burrowing tunnels, and stretching in every direction. He tried even harder to convince himself that he was an important piece of this puzzle and not simply cheap Italian labor.
Meatball had a heart attack the first week they worked under the disc, but he survived. He was now helping to sell fruit on Mulberry Street at half his paltry laborer’s wage. In the late afternoons, when Carmine and Nunzio made it back to Mulberry Street, they would head for Meatball’s cart. The garage behind his fruit stand housed Meatball’s friend’s ice truck, and he would take Nunzio and Carmine there to sit inside its cool walls and eat the bruised fruit that he had saved for them.
Near the end of August, they finished riveting together the plates of the tank’s bottom. “Ah, just in time for winter, we’ll come aboveground,” Carmine mocked.
They drilled holes in the plate to insert the jacks. The plan was for the scaffolding to be removed and for the jacks and screw logs to hold the bottom of the tank above the concrete floor. Nunzio noticed that Mr. Mulligan looked more worried than usual and was making many phone calls. When Nunzio couldn’t contain himself any longer, he asked what the procedure was going to be for lowering the structure onto the floor. One of the foremen grabbed him by the shoulders and yelled inches from his face, “Stop asking stupid questions!”
In that instant, Nunzio realized the question wasn’t stupid, and he was not the only one who didn’t understand the mechanics of how this disc was to be lowered. Work slowed for a day or two, and another man in a suit showed up. Supervisor Mulligan and the man went into the construction office. Supplies were stored near the office door, so Nunzio walked over pretending to need a new drill bit.
“Mulligan, we’ve got six jobs to worry about. If you can’t handle this one, let us know,” was the first and last thing Nunzio heard before a foreman walked by and snapped, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to have a runner get that.”
Lowering the disc to its surface could be put off no longer. On the morning of September 2, the men arrived at work and were surprised to see an additional crew of twenty-five laborers on site. Mulligan called all the foremen and lead men together.
“Alright, we’re going to lower this baby to the bottom today. I want one man to every two jacks and one to every screw log. We got extra men here to help. Take it down. Slow as you need to. And we’ll need a few men underneath to oil the cups of the jacks.”
Go underneath when it was being lowered? Even the company’s foremen were stunned. Mulligan answered the silence. “The head engineer says that unless those jacks are oiled she’s not going to come down smooth and easy.” The silence continued, and eventually so did Mulligan.
“Okay, let’s try it without men below the disc and see how it goes.”
The men, including Nunzio and Pretty Boy, who was now also a lead man, broke from the circle relieved and went to round up the crews to work the jacks and screw logs. By ten o’clock the disc had been lowered two inches in a tedious, arduous process. The jacks and men groaned from the weight. Nunzio overheard the foremen calculating that it could be three to four days before they got the tank floor to the ground. Supervisor Mulligan nervously circled the disc when he wasn’t being summoned to the phone. At noon the men were promised an extra hour’s pay if they took ten minutes to eat and skipped their lunch. They were hot and exhausted, but it was too good an offer to pass up.
By two o’clock the disc had been lowered to twenty-six inches. After another phone call, Supervisor Mulligan brought the foremen and lead men together once again.
“We’re going to oil the cups; it’s going too slowly. I figure if eight men go underneath, that should do it. At twenty-six inches, they need to work on their backs, so the skinnier the better.” Mulligan walked away, leaving them in stunned silence.
It took a few moments for the chief foreman to speak. “There’s eight crews. Each lead man should pick one person from their crew to oil the cups.”
The eight lead men stared at the Irish foreman, who knew them well enough to know that they would pick themselves. It was a matter of honor. They were the lead men; they were making five cents more an hour. It was their responsibility. Nunzio looked around at the other men and wordlessly asked the question. The lead men all nodded.
“We’re the men,” intoned Nunzio.
They gathered again at the bottom of the disc to discuss positioning. The foremen figured they needed five men in the interior and three along the perimeter. The chief foreman called off names. “Lagato, Fiero, Constantino, Romano, and Idone will work toward the center. Pontillo, Amato, and Jones will handle the perimeter.”
Pretty Boy, whose real name was Mariano Idone, tried to control the shaking in his hand as he reached for his oilcan. Nunzio noticed and offered, “Pretty Boy, I positioned most of these jacks, why don’t you stay around the edge and I’ll go in.”
Pretty Boy stared at Nunzio and quietly said, “Alright Profes sore, if you think so.”
Nunzio slithered on his back under the disc and headed for the center. He used his heels on the concrete and his palms on the metal tank bottom to propel himself through the space. He held the oilcan in his mouth. It was dark, and the few inches that were lost with the lowering of the disc made a huge difference in the amount of air and anxiety that flowed through his body. To keep going, Nunzio was forced to use a mental trick Giovanna had taught him that she used with women in labor. His body was sandwiched between sun-scorched steel and concrete, but he visualized himself sitting with Giovanna on the cliffs of Scilla. A sea breeze cooled them, carrying the smell of lemons.
The laborers above were instructed to lower the tank an inch while the men underneath oiled the cups and checked the jack pins to ensure they were working. The strain of the jacks on the metal was amplified beneath the disc. Nunzio’s head felt like it was going to explode from the noise and the heat. It was almost pitch dark under the disc, but when Nunzio saw how the pins played loosely in the cups, he knew he had found the problem. He decided to check one other jack cup before telling the foreman. Nunzio shimmied over to the next jack. He glimpsed the bottom of a boot and called out.
“Do the pins seem okay to you?”
“I can’t see a thing, I’m getting out of this goddamn inferno,” came Lagato’s voice.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Aboveground, Supervisor Mulligan noticed that the strain on the jacks and screw logs had not changed. He was furious with the engineer for backing him into this problem. It wasn’t his fault it was taking so long; the engineers had come up with a lousy idea. Mulligan decided to tell them he was stopping the job until they came up with a better plan and marched off to the office to call.
Nunzio had checked a second jack cup and found the pin just as loose. “No oil is going to help this situation,” he thought. “They’re strained.”
It was going to be a long crawl out from under the disc. His panic worsened, making it harder to get out, so he narrowed his mind’s focus to the blue of Scilla’s water, skies, and Giovanna’s eyes. He stared at the blue and heard the rushing sound of the tide through small stones that seemed to sing “Ssh-illa.” Within seconds his concentration was shattered by a strange creaking sound.
“Forza!” yelled Nunzio into the dark. Curses and the sounds of desperate scrambling came in reply. Nunzio ripped the skin on his elbows, hands, and legs as he frantically tried to move his body faster along the concrete. The next few moments, like the metal inches above him, hung in the air. Nunzio felt the disc lurch westward and heave a heavy groan. He had a split second of recognition that he was going to die, and he let his mind flash onto the blue before all two hundred tons of steel heaved, fell, and crushed his body.
The police, firemen, and the laborers identified a few areas with minor elevations and worked in teams with heavy sledges and chisels to rip up the plates. An hour after the metal jacks and timbers had snapped like toothpicks and the tank bottom had crashed to the concrete, one rescue team had ripped up enough metal to locate a body. Work stopped and there was a hush when they brought Lagato into daylight. It was his clothes that held the pulp of Lagato’s body together. At the sobering sight of the first body reduced to a fleshy mass, work slowed, perhaps because it was evident that survival was impossible or the thought of finding another man was too gruesome.
Carmine, however, refused to give up his urgency. He urged his crew on. Pretty Boy, whose leg was cut open from the ankle to the knee, wouldn’t allow them to take him to the hospital until they found Nunzio. He lay by the edge of the disc muttering, “Nunzio, he yelled, ‘Forza.’”
The rescue crew took advantage of the void left by the removal of Lagato’s broken body and wedged long sticks underneath, poking to pinpoint the location of the other men.
Several thousand people had gathered at the scene, including a number of reporters and a priest. To Carmine, the priest looked like a black crow waiting to pounce on a corpse, and he spit in his direction without interrupting the swing of his hammer on the chisel.
Work stopped briefly again when Constantino’s body was removed and taken, as Lagato’s had been, to the police station to be examined by the coroner. Finding Constantino made Carmine work faster, because he was now sure it was Nunzio beneath the slight elevation where they were working.
Near six o’clock, Carmine’s crew removed their fourth panel and found Nunzio. His legs were visible, and although they knew he was dead, Carmine made the men lift the final metal plate as gingerly as possible. He wanted to keep his friend’s body intact. With the last bloodstained metal plate removed, Nunzio’s body, every bone broken and arms and legs at unnatural angles, faced the sky.