CHAPTER 2

 

Rose Donini and her husband, Vito, were the first to reach Chicago.  The moment their eight-seat, executive jet plane landed at the private airport, two long cars drew up and three unobtrusive, well-dressed men got out to supervise the movement of Rose, Vito and their luggage into a gleaming limousine and to send it swiftly off towards the DiStephano house.  When it stopped there, Rose stepped out and stood for a moment looking at the huge, stone building where she had spent three quarters of her life.

She had heard the story a hundred times or more of how her father, Ettore, had bought the small plot of land along the lake over half a century ago on the very day his future bride stepped on the boat at Naples to come to him, and how he told her a year later when Vincent, who was to be a judge, was born, that he was going to work an extra hour a day at his job as a stone mason to buy a little more land so the family would have room to grow.  And he had done so, raising it to two hours extra a day when Michael, who was to be a surgeon, was born, and to three hours extra a day when Anthony, who was to be a priest, came along.  And how her mother had finally put down her foot when Rose was born by saying that if he increased the number of his work hours any further there would be no time left for them to conceive any more children, and that she would rather have a live husband with no land than be a widow with a thousand miles of lonely beach.

And somehow during this time, Ettore had built the house, stone by stone, with its five bedrooms on the second floor and three bedrooms on the third floor so his children and his future grandchildren would have space to sleep, then enlarged his plot of land to two acres for them to play in, had planted apple trees, peach trees, and cherry trees to bear fruit for the children to steal and their mother to make preserves, and had fenced off a long garden to raise tomatoes, peppers, onions and other vegetables to feed the booming family.

And how when Paul, who was to be a soldier, was born, they suddenly found themselves rich from people searching out Papa to bid higher and higher for the land bordering the lake that nobody seemed to want only ten years before, which Ettore had been buying in small parcels each time he could squeeze out enough money from his fourteen hour work schedule each day, six days a week, for on Sunday everyone must be scrubbed to within an inch of his life and dressed in neat, clean clothes to go to early mass.

But the children would grin among themselves at how impatient Papa obviously was to get back to the house and muster them to help add on another room or plant another tree or dig up the dandelions to make wine.

And how when someone asked Papa what all the rush was for, he had merely held out his rough, callused hands before turning back to his work, which explained quite clearly that the calluses were good enough for Papa but not for his children.

And Papa had gotten richer and richer by plowing the money back into additional land, then putting it aside until other people came along to press more money on him to sell it, until it seemed as though Papa would buy land one day and have offers the next.

Then, when the depression came, he found himself in the odd position, as were so many others, of owning all the land a person could hope for, but being unable to raise the funds to pay the taxes to keep it from going under the hammer of an auctioneer.  So Papa prepared himself for a siege, to fight back step by step to salvage whatever he could by searching every place for a penny.  But there was so very little cash about that the steps back became a veritable retreat, for there was no way to dispose of part of the land to obtain enough money to hold on to the rest.  Everything was up for grabs, everything but the fine workmanship of a master stone mason who could barely earn enough to feed his family, let alone throw good money after bad to pay taxes on land which would be taken away and sold a few months hence.

But Papa kept fighting.  He gathered the family in the large kitchen, opened an inexpensive notebook in which he recorded everything of importance, then wrote down a list of the items the family required and ways to obtain them without using hard money.  Most of the food needs were disposed of quite easily, since there was the garden for vegetables and the orchard for fruit.  Mama estimated that there might even be a surplus to barter.  Milk, flour and meat were the critical items, so Papa wrote down the name of a farmer who wanted some work done and a baker who needed a new oven, then he crossed off milk and flour.  Mama said two dollars a week would take care of the meat needs, so Papa reluctantly put it down as a hard money requirement.

They spent much more time on clothing, for there were already five children, Vincent at eleven, Michael at nine, Anthony at seven, Rose at four, and Paul at two.  Vincent and Rose would be the problems, since the younger boys could wear hand-me-downs, for Vincent was growing by leaps and bounds and Rose was the only girl.  Mama said she could get secondhand clothes by trading preserves with the neighbors, and Papa wrote down the name of a shoemaker whom he could approach, for the family wore out shoes in no time at all.

When all the necessities were listed and the methods devised to get them, Papa started on the hard money column.  Vincent and Michael were tasked to sell newspapers after school hours, and Papa took great pains to explain that they cost one penny a copy, sold for two pennies, and that the boys should work opposite sides of the street, but near enough to each other to pass over newspapers in the event one had greater fortune than the other.

Anthony was assigned to the lake, and Papa did not have to give him any advice, since all the boys were expert fishermen.  Even Paul already pretended he was fishing by throwing a string into the water and pulling it out as if he had a great weight on its end.  Papa decided that half of the fish Anthony caught would be eaten by the family and the other half sold for hard cash.  Mama was given the task of determining whether more money would be obtained by selling them to fish stores and street peddlers or dealing directly with housewives.

And so cardboard was inserted into shoes to cover holes which growing children pounded into them until they must be repaired or thrown away, at which time Papa used up some of his credit with the shoemaker that he earned by doing work there, and grade B milk replaced grade A until Papa worked out the deal with the farmer, for the difference in grade saved two cents a quart, and the entire yard was dug up to plant more vegetables, and haircuts were a bowl on the head with Papa laboriously snipping away at the hair below it, and irrespective of the efforts everyone made, conditions just seemed to get worse and worse until Papa reached the point of being forced to let the rest of the land go and concentrate on saving just the house - when suddenly, the miracle happened.

It was Anthony who figured it out years later, for Mama and Papa would change the subject the instant it was brought up and tighten their eyes in that special way which portended a swift clout on the cheek or the sudden whack with a broom handle across the backside if anyone persisted in asking.

“Name one way to earn big money in those days?” Anthony had asked, after having made sure that twelve-year-old Paul and seven-year-old Dominic were out of the room.

“You mean the rackets?” asked nineteen-year-old Michael, already starting his pre-med schooling.

“There’s no doubt of it,” said Anthony firmly.

Twenty-one-year-old Vincent, needing three more years before taking the state bar examinations, sat quietly, thinking it over.

And Rose, fourteen years old, found her heart pumping with excitement.  “Papa in the rackets,” she cried.  “How wonderful!”

Michael held up his hand.  “There are robbery,” he said, turning down one finger, “murder,” down with the second finger,   “dope,” down with the third, “prostitution,” down with the fourth, “and gambling.”  His hand went down.

“If Tony is right,” said Vincent slowly, “it would be none of them.”

Anthony smiled at his favorite brother.  “You’ve guessed, haven’t you? “

“Tell me!” shouted Rose, tugging at Anthony and Vincent.  “Tell me!”

Her three tall brothers grinned at her with the absolute affection one girl would have in a family of five lusty boys.

“Rumrunning,” said Anthony.

“No!” said Rose with awe.

Michael chewed on a thumbnail.  “It makes sense,” he finally said.  “I remember now that Papa had a small outboard motor boat when he stopped working as a stone mason.  Then things got better when he had that larger one.  That was the Christmas he bought the chemistry set for me.”

Vincent nodded.   “And the Encyclopedia Britannica for me, and the Book of Saints and a number of Christmas records for Tony -“

“I got skates,” interrupted Rose.

“I’ve been trying to remember what Papa bought for Paul that year,” said Anthony.

“I remember,” said Michael.  “A set of toy soldiers.”

And as Anthony said, Papa suddenly began to earn big money, and immediately started buying up land again.  In time, though, there was no more cheap land available, so he went smack into the center of Chicago and bought the highest priced buildings he could afford, until......

Rose tried not to think of Mama, for it made her think of Maria, too, since Mama had died bringing Maria into the world.  Papa had kissed Mama’s cold lips and walked out to the small church near the hospital and sat inside on a hard bench for twenty-four hours, and would have kept sitting there without eating or drinking or sleeping if Anthony, who was then a soldier, had not come in and led him out by his hand, like you would lead a lost child.

And when they came home from the funeral, Papa finally saw what Mama had died for, so he picked up Maria in his big hands, leaning over her and crying out all his heartbreak, and for weeks afterwards would not let anyone feed her or change her diapers or wash her but himself.

Then one night, while he was feeding Maria, Papa said that Mama knew she would have to leave him and that’s why she had Maria, so he would remember her clearly as the years went by.

Rose fought desperately not to think of Maria, for she felt sure she would lose her mind if she did, but her thoughts were irresistibly drawn to those days, twenty-four years ago, when she was nineteen and had taken over the care of her infant sister, and how the little fingers closing around her forefinger had suddenly opened her heart.  She had fallen so overwhelmingly in love with the child that only Papa could understand it, for his love was actually as great.  And Papa was hard put to not interfering four years later when Vito asked her to marry him and she said she would do so only if he moved into the house with Papa and Dominic and Maria, for all the others were away building their own worlds, Vincent as an assistant district attorney in New York, Michael doing all kinds of surgery at a local hospital, Anthony ministering to his parish in West Virginia, and Paul a Second Lieutenant with the army in Germany.

And poor, dear Vito, whose family owned half of the state of Massachusetts, had leaped at the ultimatum and moved in, and Rose felt that her heart would burst at the massive amount of love which filled her.  It had been touch and go between Papa and Vito the first few months, as Papa’s hackles had risen when Vito fell under Maria’s spell and began to act like a father, but all had resolved itself when Bob was born the following year, and to Vito’s consternation Papa started to make sounds like a grandfather.

Ten years had passed so swiftly that Rose was dumfounded when Vito told her it was time to take her, Bob, and Bert, who had come along four years later, to Boston, for his father had died and Vito had been called upon to take over the family business.  Rose had rebelled until Vito gave her an inkling of just what he did own and how many people depended on him to keep the far-flung family empire operating.  So, tearfully, she had kissed fourteen-year-old Maria goodbye and moved east, and Vito had felt so guilty that he purchased a speedy plane and hardly a month passed that Maria wasn’t brought to Boston or Rose didn’t come home for a day or two.

And now, Rose looked again at the house, and suddenly it struck her so hard and violently that she felt the ground give way from under her feet.  Vito caught her as she started down and held her upright until she regained control of herself.

“Okay, Rose?” he asked, and she saw the tears in his eyes.

“Okay,” she whispered, and placing her lip between her teeth, as her father had done, she began walking up the path towards the door which bore the wreath of flowers to one side - and the black ribbon of death.

 

Ettore himself opened the door for Rose and Vito.  He took Rose in his arms and kissed her, then held out his hand to Vito, but suddenly he remembered that Vito loved Maria as much as any of them did, so he reached out his arms instead and they embraced as men of their blood will do with full kisses on each cheek.

“She’s at the funeral parlor,” said Ettore.

“Not now, Papa,” said Rose.  “We’ll do it together.”

He nodded and led them into the sitting room, where Clara and Mario, the servants who had been with the family for thirty years, came in to bid them welcome and obtain consoling.

Rose wiped her eyes and took over.  She got rid of Clara and Mario by having them take the suitcases upstairs, then turned to Ettore.

“When did you last eat, Papa?”

Ettore shrugged.  “I don’t remember.”

Rose looked at her watch; it was six p.m.  She opened a cabinet and took out glasses and a bottle of brandy.  “Vito,” she said, motioning towards them, then went into the kitchen to see what Clara had prepared for supper.  To one side of the massive kitchen table, once the center of family life, were three card tables loaded with platters of cold cuts and chicken, pickles, vegetables and fruits.  Beneath them were bottles of wine and beer chilling in buckets of ice.  On the stove was a large frying pan, readied to take thick steaks lying on waxed paper beside the refrigerator.

Clara came in.  “We didn’t have much time to prepare, Rose,” she said by way of apologizing for the number of cold dishes.

“You’ve done just fine.  Do you know when Papa last ate?”

“Probably last night.  He was called to the police station this morning before he had breakfast and refused to eat all day.”

Rose went back to the sitting room.  Ettore and Vito were drinking the brandy.  “Finish your drinks,” ordered Rose.  “We’re having a bite in the kitchen.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Ettore.

“No argument, Papa.  You must eat.”

Ettore swallowed the rest of his drink, then followed her into the kitchen.  Rose prepared platters of food for the three of them, and they sat at the long table to eat.

“Have you heard from the others, Papa?” asked Rose. 

“Vince’s office called that he would be here about seven-thirty or so.  Mike should arrive shortly after him.  Tony will get in late tonight.  He had trouble making connections.  The Red Cross phoned an hour ago that Paul is already on his way, but won’t get here until tomorrow.  I don’t know about Dom.”

“Where is he?”

“He was in a little town near Monterey, Mexico a month ago.  I sent telegrams to the last three addresses, just in case.”

“Did you send money?  You know Dom.”

“Yes.”

They ate only a small amount before they began picking at what was left on their plates.  Rose stood up.  “Lie down for an hour, Papa.”

Ettore shook his head.

“Papa, you’re seventy-five years old.  You’ll need every bit of energy during the next few days.  So, please, take a nap.”

“All right, Rose,” said Ettore wearily.  He got up and started out of the kitchen.  Rose motioned at Mario to go along and take care of him.

“Now you, Rose,” said Vito.

“There’s too much to do.”

“It’ll wait.  Go lie down.”

“All right, I’ll rest on the sofa in the living room.”  She started out, then stopped and turned back to him.  “Vito, I’ve said it often during the past twenty years, but I want to say it again.  You’re the best there is.”

He blew her a kiss.

 

In the taxi on its way from the airport to the house, Judge Vincent DiStephano abruptly felt the years pile up on him.  It was like this twenty-four years ago when he received the same sort of telegram that Paul probably just got, delivered by the Red Cross.  He had been a Captain with the Judge Advocate Generals Office of the First Army when the message came that Mama was dying.  It took a long thirty-six hours to get home from Europe, and he had arrived too late.

He remembered quite clearly what Mama had looked like.  That was one of the reasons why he had fallen in love with Bernice, because she reminded him so much of Mama.  He saw them both in his mind’s eye, tall, serious-faced women, with a glint of humor beneath the staid exterior.  He suddenly realized what it was they had most in common - their unswerving loyalty and devotion towards their husbands.  How many times Mama had explained what a wonderful father he had, as if he must learn the meaning by memorizing it as completely as he did his catechism.

She really loved Papa, he reflected, but most of all when he worked with his hands and came home smelling of slaked lime and cement and stone dust, and sneaked up behind her to place an arm around her waist and squeeze her against him.  For a woman who had been selected as a wife by a man who had never seen her, and who had only the vaguest description of the man she was sent to marry before stepping foot in steerage on a battered ship to travel five thousand miles from her family and friends to an English-speaking country before she could speak ten English words, and there find the dream that each woman carries in her heart, it must all have seemed a miracle.

But loving her husband did not stop her from standing squarely between him and one of the children when she decided that the youngster had enough punishment to fit the offense.  That, however, did not spare the culprit a full week’s extra licking by Mama, who was convinced that the child must respect his father no matter who was at fault, and that obedience is next to Godliness.

“He’s your father,” was heard day in and day out until the refrain became drilled so firmly into the brain that the three words resolved everything.

Vincent decided he loved his father as much as any man could. Papa had never attempted to elicit the affections of his children, for he considered other things as more important, such as them being healthy, good Catholics, and better educated than he, and Vincent knew as surely as he was seated there that Papa would gladly put his hand in fire to save any of his children a tear, yet he was unable to tell them straight out that he cared for them.  He was old fashioned that way.

But Papa had taught him many of the important things in life. Like the time he placed money in a bowl, called all the children around him to say that he would put the same amount in the bowl every month, and that each was allowed to take whatever he wanted, but to leave a little for his brothers and sister.  Someone had taken too much the first week, so there was not enough left for the rest of them to buy their candy or cokes or whatever was important at that time until the end of the month when money was again placed in the bowl.  But this time so very little was taken that they had to organize a system themselves to dispense it.  That is why I have such good brothers and sis..... a sister, thought Vincent.

Maria, Maria.  Murdered by a lunatic who took your throat in his hands and squeezed it until your beautiful, sweet life was snuffed out.

Vincent had most of the available details of the murder delivered to him by special messenger as he was about to board the plane, forwarded by his office which had got in touch with the Chicago police while he was preparing to leave.  He had known Maria less well than others of the family, except for perhaps Paul, who was always stationed at the furthest corner of the world, since Vincent had been so much older and so preoccupied with his work and his own family that knowing her had been garnered in bits and snatches rather than by a solid, knowledgeable relationship.  But he knew his love for her was a deep one, perhaps instinctive and of the blood, and that a vast emptiness had opened inside him at the fact that she was dead.

Vincent tried to fathom why he felt so deeply about Maria.  Can parents pass on a sixth sense or a chemical reaction that makes one instinctively or unconsciously love another with the same blood.  Or is this some of that gobbledygook which surrounds the superstition of religion.  Tony would be the one to answer that, he thought wryly.  Tony was good at presenting confusion in its proper perspective and serving it up in such fine order that even an idiot could make heads or tails of what he was saying.  But Vincent knew he’d rather discuss it with Paul, as Paul was on his own wave length, so to speak.  And although Tony looked up to him as the oldest, and therefore the wisest, and preferred his company to that of the others, it was awkward to talk to Tony ever since he put on the cloth, for Vincent had seen too much in life to believe that there was a simple answer to everything.

The taxi came to the house.  Vincent stepped out, placed his bag on the sidewalk, and paid off the driver.  As he turned up the flagstone walk, the door opened and Rose and Vito came out to greet him.  He kissed Rose and shook hands with Vito.

“I tried to reach you earlier,” said Vito to Vincent.  “We had hoped to pick you up on the way here.”

“I heard you had called, but I was already at the airport.”  He turned to Rose.  “How’s Papa?”

She took his bag and led him inside.  “He’s upstairs, lying down.  I hope he can get to sleep.”

Mario came up, greeted Vincent warmly, then carried his bag upstairs.

“Have you eaten?” asked Rose.

“Yes, I had supper on the plane.  Where’s Maria?”

“She’s at the funeral parlor.”

“They must have performed a fast autopsy.”

Rose looked shocked.   “Oh, Vince, I never thought of that.”

“Who’s staying with her?”

“Papa has someone from the undertaker watching over her.  We haven’t seen her yet.  I thought we should all go together.”

Vincent nodded.  He filled a glass with brandy, sat down heavily in a deep, silk covered chair, and sipped at his drink.

“Do you have any information about her?” asked Vito.

“Yes.  The police found her body at the edge of town during the early hours this morning.  They suspect she died somewhere else and was placed there.”

“Why?”

“From the position of the body and the arrangement of her clothing.  They also found footprints which seemed to indicate that she was carried, but none of her own footprints.  The report was pretty sketchy, as the police hadn’t brought the facts together yet.”

“Who could have done such a horrible thing?” whispered Rose, placing her face in her hands and sobbing.

The two men waited patiently until she calmed down, then Vito brought over a box of Kleenex for her to wipe her face.

“Have you heard from the others?” asked Vincent of Rose to change the subject.

“Papa said that Mike will be here almost any time, but Tony will be a little late.  Paul certainly can’t make it here until tomorrow.”  She turned to her husband.  “Vito, Paul may not be able to make connections from the coast.  Do you think we should send the plane for him?”

“I’ve already asked my people to check that out.  I’ll know by tomorrow morning.”

“What of Dom?” asked Vincent.

“Papa thinks he’s in Mexico.  He sent telegrams to three places.”

They heard Ettore coming down the steps, so Vincent got up to meet him at the foot of the staircase.  They kissed each other on both cheeks, then looked into each other’s eyes.  Although Ettore was an inch taller than Vincent, his bowed shoulders made him appear smaller, especially since Vincent weighed thirty pounds more and seemed twice as big.

“Are you all right, Papa?” asked Vincent.

“I’m all right, Vince.  You’ve put on some weight since I last saw you.  Six months, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Papa.  Christmas.”

“You look tired.  You must take a vacation.”

“I will, Papa.  As soon as I get back.”

They went into the sitting room.

“Did you sleep, Papa?” asked Rose.

“A little bit.”  He waved away Vito’s offer of brandy and took from the cabinet a bottle of red table wine, poured four small glasses and handed them around.  He raised his glass towards Vincent.  “It’s good to have you home, Vince.”  The others raised their glasses and they drank.

 

Michael DiStephano settled back on the rear seat of the taxi and lit a cigarette.  He chuckled as he put away his lighter at the thought that here he was, forty-eight years old, with an income of over one hundred thousand dollars a year, married to a woman whose trust fund brought in a quarter of a million dollars annually, a famous surgeon who had earned one of the highest reputations in the country, a pillar of the community and state, a man sought by exclusive clubs, civic groups and intellectuals, and here he was,  sneaking in a cigarette before he got home because his father might knock his block off if he caught him smoking.

Michael really loved his father, as most second sons do who have been somewhat ignored in favor of the firstborn.  He loved him for his strength of character and courage and his independence, but most of all because his father understood what was in his heart.  Michael’s deep affection for Ettore started way back there when he was in the fourth or fifth grade and brought home a report card containing a number of poor marks.  Mama whaled him for days trying to beat some sense into his head while shoving under his nose the report cards of Vincent and Anthony, who seemed to learn everything effortlessly.  Ettore finally stepped in with a few quiet words to Mama, then took Michael out to the yard where they squatted in a corner and chewed on blades of autumn dried grass.

“Mike,” he said.  “You’re a lot like me, because you want to work with your hands, and all that geography and history and spelling seems like a waste of time.  Maybe it will be when you’ve found your trade.  But you’re not going to find the right kind of work for yourself until you look around a little.  Going to school is looking around, that’s all.”

“It’s those tests that bother me, Papa.  I always fail them.”

“Do you remember the things the teacher tells you?”

“Yes, before the tests and after the tests, but never during them.”

Ettore thought that over carefully.   “What would you like to be?”  he asked casually, pulling off a new blade of grass to chew on.

Michael did not hesitate an instant.  “A horse doctor.”

“Because of that horse that fell in the street?”

“That’s part of it, Papa.  The man said they were going to shoot it, even though it only hurt its leg.  Why should they shoot it?  It was all right.”

“They probably didn’t think it was worth fixing up.”

“Then they should shoot the man if he hurt his leg.  That would teach him.”

Michael remembered clearly that Papa had got up and walked away without saying another word.  But a few weeks later, at Christmas, Papa gave him a chemistry set and spent a full week helping him figure out what to do with it, watching him carefully when he weighed the chemicals before mixing them and calming Mama when the house began to stink.

Michael never could understand what made his grades suddenly become better.  He somewhat suspected it was because Papa was a stickler for accurate weighing of the substances and made him write out the formulas a number of times before he would allow the chemicals to be mixed.  He also suspected even more strongly that it was Papa’s faith in him, but whatever it was, his mathematic grades picked up a little, then his spelling, which was certainly due to writing out the names of the chemicals a hundred times or more, and like a snowball gathering momentum as it rolls downhill, those of geography, history, general aptitude.  The picking up of his grades meant only that he was no longer on the verge of failing and staying behind in school, for Michael had to admit to himself that he never managed to place higher than the lowest quarter in his class.  The moment his grades improved, Ettore dropped him like a hot potato, as if he had been shown the way and must do the rest himself.

The years had passed quietly for Michael, who remained in the background while Vincent and Anthony ran off with almost every prize the schools gave, and although he studied as diligently as he could, his grades never carried him out of that same quarter of his class.

Michael felt his love for Papa almost drown him on that occasion a number of years later when he was already a surgeon making a name for himself and attended a seminar where he met with the dean of his medical school.  The dean could barely wait to relate the story about the time Ettore came into his office and told him he had a son who had got through pre-med school by the skin of his teeth and had been turned down by every medical school in the country.  He went on to say that although he was a simple stone mason, he could erect a house better than an architect, and that his son had the same kind of hands.  Then he held out a very official looking document which contracted to pay the college an income of twenty thousand dollars each year for twenty years from the rental receipts of one of his buildings, and offered it to the dean with the single condition that Michael be allowed to attend the college for three years.  If he didn’t prove himself by that time, no one would be doing anything unethical, as he would need a fourth year to graduate, and the college would not be obligated to that.  The dean chuckled when he explained that he had answered Ettore by saying it would be taking a slot away from an applicant who might become a pretty important doctor.  Ettore had replied by asking one question; how many young men would his gift put through college?  When the dean figured it out and said about one hundred and fifty, Ettore had taken out a pen from his pocket, uncapped it, poised it over the place he was to sign on the document, and said, “Well?”

“We searched our conscience with utter ruthlessness when your third year was up,” said the dean to Michael, “and to be frank, the opinions were so evenly divided that I think the only reason we allowed you to take your final year was due to the massive upheaval at the conclusion of the War.”

Michael almost wept when he got off by himself, for he knew how Ettore valued money, and the sum he had given the college would have supported ten families in comfort.  But Papa had understood that being a doctor was more important to him than anything could ever be, even to the point of not joining Vincent and Anthony in the army when every fiber in him shouted to do so.

Michael suddenly stopped thinking of Ettore to wonder why his mind was shutting out the fact of Maria’s death.  Of all the boys, only he and Dominic were really close to her, for he got home almost every weekend while at med school, and even more often during his internship at the hospital in Chicago.  No one who knew Maria even half as well could keep from falling in love with her, and Michael had been exposed to the full force of her charms.  Only he was permitted to pick out the many splinters she got in her hands or paint mercurochrome on her cuts or bandage her sprains or tell her what to do when her belly ached.  When she was five years old and her tonsils were acting up, she raised the roof because Rose and Ettore made arrangements with a surgeon in Chicago.  They finally had to telephone Michael at John Hopkins to tell him that his sister absolutely refused to allow anyone else but him to touch her.  Then when he walked into her room that same day after rushing like a madman to catch a plane which was about to take off, the lines of pain in her face had cleared as she smiled and Michael knew he would have come from across the world just for that smile.

Maria had also changed his life, he reflected.  A number of months before going to John Hopkins, he and Carol had met, and if ever opposites were attracted, he and Carol were the ones.  She was the tall, cool, blond daughter of a family so wealthy and firmly entrenched in American society that even Vito Donini whistled when Michael mentioned her name.  Carol told him about it several years later, how her mother and father sat stiff as boards and her mother had snapped, “Marry that dark barbarian!  Why, not only does he eat spaghetti every day, but he worships the Pope!”  She had married him simply because every girl she knew was after him, and it hadn’t taken them more than two months to realize that the marriage was doomed as a result of her social life and his dedication to surgery being a million miles apart.

Maria saved the marriage, albeit unknowingly, but as effectively as if by magic.  It was during the period that he and Carol decided to call it quits when Rose phoned to tell him that Maria was angry at everyone in the house and wanted to spend a day or two with Michael and that ice cube he married.  Michael chuckled and said she would be more than welcome, then drove over from his apartment in center Chicago to pick her up.  At the end of the second day, Carol emerged from her frosty cocoon far enough to tell Michael that she wouldn’t mind Maria staying another day or two, and a week later Michael explained things to Rose in enough detail for her to understand, and to convince Ettore, that Maria should remain with Carol a little longer.

It was two weeks to the day since Maria came that Carol told Michael she had taken no precautions that night, and they had been caught up in the same breathtaking desire for each other which they had at the beginning of their marriage and which they thought was lost.  Michael, Junior had been conceived that night, and there was not a day in the twenty years which followed that Michael did not thank his lucky stars.  If anyone not of the blood truly adored Maria, it was Carol, for not only had Maria shown Carol what happiness a child could give, but she had returned the affection offered by Carol as eagerly as only Maria could.  She had changed Carol, as if her hand held a magic wand, and since that time even Ettore begrudgingly confessed that Mama would have loved Carol as a daughter.

Michael was dismayed to remember that he had neglected to warn Carol to break the news gently to their seventeen-year-old daughter, Eleanor.  Maria and Eleanor were the closest of the young members of the family, since they were actually the only girls, if one discounted the illegitimate daughter of Paul, whom none of the family had ever seen anyhow.  Eleanor thought the sun rose and set in her Aunt Maria, and it was a struggle to think of reasons to keep her from running up to Chicago each month.  Maria felt the same way, visiting them every chance she had.

 

When the taxi drew up in front of the house, Ettore, Rose, Vito and Vincent came out to greet him.  They all embraced as men of the blood will do, with full kisses on each cheek.

And when they had gone inside, Ettore poured five small glasses of the red table wine, passed them around, and held up his glass to Michael.  “It’s good to have you home, Mike,” he said.  They all drank.

 

Anthony DiStephano closed his bible and looked out of the window of the airplane as it began to touch down at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.  How many times he had experienced the same sensation, he thought, at the sudden pounding of his heart with apprehension at the thought of an accidental death. 

He was a man of fear, and it often amused him to ponder how he could reconcile this nigh constant dread with his belief in God.  He was fully aware that it was not a singular reaction for a man of the cloth to feel fear, for many of his fellow priests had spoken quite frankly of the apprehensions, and even trepidations, they had experienced when faced with the prospect of pain or death or, as many were reluctant to admit straight out, the temptations which led to mortal sin.  But Anthony feared only one thing - a qualified death.  He was for all practical purposes immune to pain, because pain could be detached from his mind in its physical sense, be scrutinized from all angles, analyzed, and kept in its place by his iron will.  Temptations were not even worth considering by a man who could concentrate on a point with an almost fixed, hypnotic intensity to the utter exclusion of all else until he rationally, in full agreement with all his senses, decided flatly and logically to permit his concentration to be turned elsewhere.

It was death in a cold, clinical, irresponsible meaning which occupied his thoughts so strongly that he had to force himself to sit in a car which was to be driven on a highway or step inside an airplane that would soon leave the safety of earth. 

Anthony knew exactly when this fixation entered him.  It was during his tenure as a parish priest in Virginia while he was driving along a mountain road and saw a load of logs piled high on a truck roll off and crush a workman to death.  He leaped to action with an almost demented strength, lifting off logs and casting them aside with a power that awed the other workmen.  When they finally uncovered what lay beneath, Anthony fell to his knees and fervently performed the last rites with an intensity so meaningful and personal, with such belief in God, that at the end he wept as if he had prayed for his own brother.  Then, when he looked once more at the corpse and saw the terrible carnage the logs had wrought, he staggered away, shocked to the core, unable to breathe.

“God!” he whispered to himself, “must we come before You like this!  Is there no beauty in the flesh that holds the spirit which is Thine own sweet breath?  Is this the dignity of man!”

And when Anthony had taken out all the pieces from inside himself, examined them, classified them, compared them in texture, weight and structure, and held them alongside the cross that was his life, he had risen from his knees determined to seek another form of devotion to God.  And so he became a teacher of men.

He was destined to be a priest from the moment he looked into the tranquil eyes of Father Graziano when he was but eleven years old.  It was during the first day of school of the new term, and Anthony had walked confidently into his sixth grade homeroom at Saint Paul’s, aware that he had taken almost all the honors the previous year and would repeat his performance this coming year.  He was not a vain person.  Just the contrary.  Actually, he was fond of everyone he met and would go far out of his way to give a willing hand when asked to do so.  And when he saw someone unable to ask or who needed help immediately, he would not wait to be called upon but would jump right in.  His confidence stemmed from the realization that he could solve a problem while others still groped among the facts, that he could read a page of a book and know exactly what it meant without having to deliberate, and that he could remember what he had been told or what he had read from one year to the next.

But when he looked into the eyes of Father Graziano, something seemed to well up inside him with an awesome sound of thunder and proclaim his need to share the peace he saw there.  At that moment Anthony DiStephano became a man of God, although it took six more years before he knew it himself.  Mama, though, saw it that very evening while they were seated at the massive kitchen table having supper, and she stared at Anthony with such wonder written over her face that Ettore asked whether anything was wrong with her.  She had shaken her head and filled Anthony’s plate with great care.

So Anthony grew to manhood and gave himself to God, but his growing was a thing apart from the family, for he was so perfectly attuned to the others that he was not a member in the sense that Vincent was the slow, deliberate one, or that Michael could be trusted with anything that had to be cared for with his hands, or that Paul would set fire to whatever he touched, or that Dominic would take it apart to see what made it tick, then walk off to look for something else to disassemble, or that Rose would make everything right.  Anthony coated everything and blended and soothed and permeated into every pore so thoroughly that he seemed a conglomerate of all that is good and wholesome.

That is not to infer that Anthony was a model of meekness and lacked spunk.  Just the opposite.  A few years after Dominic graduated from The Sacred Heart High School, where all the boys had gone after completing the courses at Saint Paul’s, the priests discussed the five brothers, and it was agreed upon unanimously that Vincent was by far the strongest, that when he hit someone, once his slow-to-ignite temper was aroused, that someone went down and stayed down;  that Michael was the weakest in fighting ability, but would keep getting up so consistently after being knocked down that his opponent would give up in despair;  that Paul was far away the most deadly efficient and would ruthlessly rip to pieces anyone who annoyed him;  that Dominic would fight solely for the love of combat, but that Anthony was actually the most violent, combining a strength only slightly less than Vincent’s with a persistency more stubborn than Michael’s and a ruthlessness more icily truculent than Paul’s and a love of combat greater than Dominic’s.  The priests were surprised to discover during their analysis of the brothers that Anthony had been in more scrapes than any of the others, for the school bullies just couldn’t believe that a boy with his attributes was capable of standing up under sustained pressure.  Anthony would take only a little of their harassment before seeking them out and punishing each one so thoroughly that only those bullies who hadn’t seen the fights, or their results, and therefore felt that Anthony’s reputation had been deliberately built up beyond his true capabilities, would dare to step out of line.  Anthony punished them all, even though some of them had never caused him trouble, beating each to the degree he felt was deserved.  One priest nicknamed him “Little Torquemada” in jest, but in a sense it fitted him aptly.

Anthony left the plane, walked through the terminal, and entered a taxi.  He disliked coming back to Chicago since Mama died, as everything of sorrow seemed to begin or end here.  First there was Mama, and him getting out of a hospital bed on Saipan, where he was recovering from wounds suffered on Okinawa, to try desperately to reach home before she died.  Like Vincent, he had gotten back too late to see her alive.  Then Vincent’s wife and sons, brought home from their accident to be buried in the family plot which Papa had established some years before.  Then the time he was called to Chicago to help Ettore settle that business with Paul over the woman in Germany.  And now.....Maria.

Anthony had been far too oriented towards his ministry to come under her spell, for directly after her birth and his recovery from the shrapnel wounds incurred as a medical corpsman in the infantry, he had returned to the seminary to complete his courses for the priesthood.  When Maria was old enough to walk and talk, his long black cassock had estranged her because of its identification with the priest of the neighborhood church, who must be regarded with dignity and a touch of awe.  So Anthony felt towards her the deep compassion he held for all of the blood, that his heart was heavy from the thought that she was dead, that a part of him had died with her.  He could not suffer the same loss at the death of a priest with whom he had worked a lifetime, for the blood was something special, something that transcended comradeship or years of close association or having given a life for the religion.

Anthony also disliked coming home because of his relationship with Ettore since Mama died.  Ettore continued to treat him exactly as he had ever since he could remember, and, he had to admit, the same as he treated the other boys.  But Ettore did not realize that Anthony was no longer really his son, for Anthony now had a Father who demanded an absolute subservience that was holier even than the blood.  Ettore would say, “Hello, Tony,” and Anthony would be made to feel that Ettore considered his cloth to be the same as any other black material.  But it would not be fitting for Ettore to kneel or to call him Father.  He was placed in an unpleasant position and it made him uncomfortable.

He wondered whether Maria had died without sin.  He would say masses for her each day along with those for Mama, and he prayed with all his heart that she came to the Lord clean and pure.

 

They were all waiting when the taxi drew up in front of the house.  Mario bowed as he took Anthony’s bag from the driver.  Anthony blessed them all swiftly, then clasped Ettore in his arms and kissed him on each cheek, and after Ettore he kissed Rose, then Vincent, then Michael, and finally shook hands with Vito.

When they were inside the house, Ettore filled six small glasses with the red table wine, passed them around, and held up his glass to Anthony. “It’s good to have you home, Tony.”  They drank.

 

Dominic DiStephano paid off the pilot of the dilapidated, four-seater airplane, lifted out his worn suitcase from the baggage compartment, and trudged towards the airport office.  He saw a light glowing inside and banged on the door, but when no one came, he hoisted the suitcase onto his shoulder and started walking down the deserted road in the direction of Chicago, twenty miles away.

The lights of a car gleamed from behind him.  Dominic turned and gestured vigorously for a lift, but the driver took one look at his battered appearance and pressed down on the accelerator.  A mile or two further on, another car passed, also not at all inclined to stop for him.

His watch showed it to be almost two in the morning when a vehicle drew alongside.  The rays of a powerful flashlight came on, blinding him.  Dominic shielded his eyes with his free hand and made out the figures of two police officers seated inside.

“Cut that damned thing off!” he snapped.

“Just stay put, fellow,” growled an officer as he climbed out of the patrol car.  He lowered the light only enough to clearly see Dominic’s hands.   “Who are you and where are you going?”

Dominic was sorely tempted to answer with a wisecrack, such as him being Little Bo Peep out looking for her sheep, but then he remembered what he looked like.  “If you promise not to blow off my head,” he said to the officer, “I will lower this suitcase very slowly to the ground, reach very slowly into my pocket, and show you proof that my name is Dominic DiStephano and that I live in Chicago.”

“Do it, then,” said the police officer.  “Exactly as you said,” he added.

Dominic set down his suitcase and offered his wallet, keeping his hands in plain view.

“You open it and show me,” said the officer.

Dominic took out his driver’s license, a number of credit cards, and two hundred and eighteen dollars.

The officer lowered the light a little further.  “Where are you going?”

“Home.  I just came in by private plane and am trying to find a taxi.”

The driver leaned over to the window.  “Are you any relation of that girl who was found yesterday?”

“I’m her brother.”

The flashlight was switched off.  “Jump in back,” said the officer who had gotten out.  “We’ll run you to town.”

They let him off at a taxi stand on the outskirts of Chicago.  Once inside a taxi, Dominic settled back with a great sigh.  He was bushed, for since receiving the telegram, he had rented a car in Monterey, driven like a wild man to El Paso, and made the deal with the kid who owned that hiccupping plane which had delivered him to the private airport.  It was fortunate that Ettore had sent money, as he had given Carmen his last twenty dollars to pay the rent for the fleabag she lived in and to buy some grub.  She had cried like a crazy woman when he said he was leaving, but what the hell, she should have known better.  Anyway, with her looks, she wouldn’t be lonely for long.

Dominic didn’t want to think too much of Carmen.  He wanted to think about killing a man.  He planned to kill him as slowly as a man could be killed, not with gas or electric or at the end of a rope, but with his bare hands.  Somebody had murdered his Maria, and that somebody was not going to sit out his life in a warm prison cell or eat broiled steaks in a nuthouse or walk the streets a free man.  Oh, no, he was going to be executed as painfully as a person could die, and Dominic decided he would spend a lot of time considering the ways before selecting one.

Dominic had to think of killing the murderer to take his mind from the mental picture of Maria’s cold body, for he became ill each time he thought of her being dead.  She was his Maria, and someone had taken her away.  He could see her in his mind’s eye, crawling into his bed on Sunday mornings to have him read the funnies to her, bugging him nearly to distraction to repeat over and over again with whom he had gone out the night before, what had he done, why is a shortstop called a shortstop, and when can he fix her doll, Susie, who has a leg broken off.  Maria allowed only Dominic to repair her dolls and toys, since that was his department, like Michael’s job was treating her cuts and bruises.  And Dominic never experimented with her dolls and toys, but used extreme care to fix them to a condition as perfect as new, for Maria was a hard taskmaster who brooked no foolishness.  And when he had completed his chore, Maria would wrap her arms around his neck, kiss him on the cheek, then lay her face against his and hug him so tightly that he would have trouble breathing.

There was absolutely nothing that Dominic could do which would not find favor with Maria, and in a sense she adopted him, making certain that his room was properly cleaned by Clara or Mario, sitting next to him at mealtimes, running errands whenever he seemed to want something.  Her heart almost broke when Dominic came home one afternoon after completing high school to tell Rose and Ettore that he had enlisted for three years in the infantry and to explain to Maria that he would have to go away for a while.  She was only six years old then, but seemed to possess a maturity which made her realize that his leaving was more than just visiting Vincent or Michael or going away to college.  She had cried in her quiet manner in a corner of her bedroom, and Dominic was hard put to start off for his training camp.

When it was time, a few months later, for him to leave for Korea, Maria told him she would not miss a mass to pray for him, no matter whether it rained or snowed or if she was sick, and she hadn’t missed one even though it had rained and snowed and she had been sick.

Dominic came back from Korea a Technical Sergeant, with a row of decorations for bravery and a purple heart and cluster for his wounds, and that was a great deal for a boy who was still half a year from being twenty.  He did not come back hard or bitter or with a blood thirst; he returned almost exactly as he had left - a young man in perfect physical condition who enjoyed a scrap whether it was with fists or with weapons.  He was not surprised to learn that killing people did not affect him, for he expected as much, since to him battle was more or less a ball game.  He was not afraid during combat, although he admitted to himself a few times that he would rather be somewhere else when one of his superiors placed him in a position not to his liking.  And when he began leading men as a Platoon Sergeant commanding as many as forty American and Korean soldiers during periods when his Lieutenants were disabled or being rotated, he tried to remember how he had felt when placed in an unhappy situation and thought often of keeping his men out of danger.  But that was somewhat rare, as Dominic usually went out looking for trouble and, due to the nature of infantry, those who sought trouble always found it.

He met Paul a couple of times in Korea, and learned that Paul, who was on his second tour there, was carving out the kind of reputation which generally carried a professional officer through the remainder of his career.  He was already a Major, although not yet twenty-four years of age.

For a while Dominic considered making a career of the military.  Paul collected all kinds of information to prepare him for entry to West Point.  But once Dominic returned to the United States and the army interfered with his amorous conquests by sending him here or there, as it is also in the nature of infantry to do, he turned thumbs down on the idea of soldiering any further.

When his tour with the army was completed, he went to college simply because he decided that that’s where all the good-looking girls were, and as Dominic had pretty much the same sort of intelligence as Vincent and Anthony, he was able to both graduate and break the hearts of two or three scores of coeds without the least effort.  Maria shared all his conquests by insisting that he write her at least two letters a week and responding with five.

For the next thirteen years they were the two buddies of the family, Dominic writing only to Maria and she answering him with two and three letters to each of his.  His letters came from Texas, Florida, Italy, France, Panama, Columbia, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, and a dozen points between.  Frequently, when he quit a town or a country, letters in poor English or in exquisite Spanish would arrive at the house from girls asking for his present whereabouts.  When Maria wrote to Dominic, she spoke of what was in her heart, confiding most of her dreams to him.  He wrote back with great tenderness and understanding and with advice that Maria always found to be exactly what she needed.  In those thirteen years, Dominic made his way home less than half a dozen times, not telling tales that he had struck it rich, although he had done so on a few occasions and gambled it away or spent it on women as fast as he gained it, but just came home, kissed everybody, then slept around the clock for two or three days.  Once recovered, he spent most of his waking hours drinking Ettore under the table and squiring Maria about, to the utter envy of her high school chums and later her college friends, who did everything but swoon in his presence to be noticed.  Then one morning Maria would find a farewell note tacked to her door or pinned to her pillow, and she would moon about sadly until the mail brought a letter from Timbuktu or from a village in the jungle, and Dominic would tell her what had happened each day - within limits.

Dominic had never married.  He knew perfectly well why he had never done so, and he was quite content with his status.  Women were too important to him.  He found each one to be a little different, each one taught him a little more, and he was too fond of learning to just stay put.  He loved almost every woman he lived with, fully and without reservation, and he treated each one as if she were the only woman in the world.  He never cheated, and each woman who lived with him knew it and loved him all the more for it.  But all of them knew that he would get up some morning and start walking, and no matter whether they cried or begged or proved that their swelling bellies were due to loving him, he would keep right on walking.

 

When the taxi carrying Dominic drew up in front of the house, he shut out of his mind all of the miles he had traveled, all of the women he had known, all of the events he had experienced, and focused his thoughts only on the fact that he was here to bury a sister - and to kill a man.

The lights were still on in the house.  As he slipped the key into the lock, the door opened and Rose came into his arms.  When she took him inside, he saw Vincent, Michael, Anthony and Vito.  They kissed each other and motioned for him to be quiet because Papa was asleep on a chair in the living room.  But Ettore must have heard the low sounds or sensed that the brown one had returned, for he woke up.  He and Dominic kissed as men of the blood will kiss, and when Ettore saw the tears in Dominic’s eyes, he held him closer than he had held any of his sons, for he saw there exactly what was in his heart.

“Mike,” called Ettore, when they drew apart.  “Look him over.”

Michael examined the six stitches in Dominic’s brow, the black and blue cheek, the cuts in the lips.  He shook his head, chuckling.  “He’s all right, Papa.  Just a few love taps.”

So Ettore poured seven glasses of the red table wine, passed them around, and raised his glass to Dominic

“It’s good to have you home, Dom.”  And they drank.

 

Paul DiStephano stepped off the airplane at San Francisco International Airport and walked into the terminal.  A young, well-dressed man was waiting for him.

“Colonel DiStephano?”

Paul stopped.  “Yes.”

“I’m Donald Williams, one of Mr. Donini’s western representatives.  His plane is here to fly you to Chicago.  If I may have your baggage checks, I’ll see that everything is taken care of.”

Paul handed them over.  “Thanks.  When can we leave?”

“We should have your baggage through customs and permission to take off in half an hour to forty-five minutes.  A vehicle will be waiting for you upon your arrival.”

Paul nodded, continued his clearances, then walked about the terminal building to stretch his legs.  All this special attention was somewhat commonplace to him now, especially since the time he won his eagles as a full colonel, for it was written in his bearing, and his formal file in Washington, that he was the type material from which generals are selected, and being a bird colonel was analogous to that of a general in so far as people rushing about to do everything but wipe his nose.  Paul didn’t even attempt to determine whether he liked or disliked people making a fuss over him.  He had been waited upon and pampered since graduating from the Military Academy at West Point, and field officers in the infantry are generally too occupied with directing the destinies of men to be bothered with the day to day details handled so efficiently by their subordinates.

He found it difficult to concentrate on his sister, Maria.  She was of the blood, so the thought of her having been murdered was enough to raise a lump of sorrow in his throat.  But his initial cry of grief was now dulled by the professional army man’s ability to absorb the sadness of death and prepare to attend to the living.  He had come these thousands of miles for more of a reason than paying his respects to a sister;  he had come to search for the love of her which he knew was rooted deep inside but which had never flowered enough to have the same meaning as the agony of Dominic or the poignant heartbreak of Rose.

He loved her in a residual manner, since the times he had been exposed to her had been far too few and brief for him to be permanently affected by her character.  His was an instinctive love, except for that one occasion three years ago when Maria told him she would be glad to watch over his daughter, Ingrid, if he wanted her to.  Paul was on the verge of exploding when he abruptly realized that her comment had been prompted from the warmth of her heart rather than an attempt to pry.  He had kissed her and gently declined her offer - or even to discuss it further.

The representative sent by Vito interrupted his reverie to say he could now board the airplane.  Once inside, he was fully impressed by the luxuriousness of its interior, of the deep carpeting and large comfortable armchairs, of the uniformed co-pilot acting as steward, politely asking whether he would like to see a motion picture or hear music, pointing out a rack of the latest magazines standing to one side, offering choices from a menu that would have done justice to a one-star restaurant and drinks from an incredibly well-stocked bar.

When the airplane was off the ground, Paul settled for a scotch and soda, plugged in the earphones, tuned the selector knob to the music of Wagner, then leaned back contentedly.  The overture of Tannhauser hit him like a blow in the face.

What would he be thinking if he were coming back to a funeral for Ingrid?  He considered this without the least shred of superstition, for he was too logical and practical to hem and haw when it came to matters of life and death.  In a sense Ingrid was Maria and Maria was Ingrid, both being his flesh and blood, whose lives he had touched fleetingly, but whom he could love only to a limited degree.  He lacked a true, fatherly feeling which could be used as a measure of sorrow at the thought of losing a child, or a sister who was not much older than his daughter.  Perhaps he was unable to truly love.  Kristine was beyond the pale of comparison due to the unique place she occupied within him.

 

Ingrid.  She was nineteen years old now.  He had last seen her a year and a half ago when she was sent by her mother to join him at St. Anton in Austria during the Christmas vacation.  Kristine herself had managed to get down for a few days, and after the blinding experience of losing themselves completely in each other, they had turned their attention to Ingrid with the pride that lovers of long standing find in the child of this love.

Kristine was still the most beautiful woman in the world to Paul.  A classical Nordic of thick blond hair worn braided and rolled at the back of her head, a long, firm body that was poised and elegant, crisp blue eyes, skin that gleamed with good health, deep breasts which grew sensually hard under his touch, hips that were invitingly large, a body that fit Paul’s to perfection.  It was incredible that Baroness Kristine von Hohenstein was only three years away from being fifty, and Paul was fully aware that no other woman could ever affect him so strongly or make love to him so completely and overwhelmingly.  His body grew taut and his loins ached at the mere thought of her.

Their daughter, Ingrid, was as beautiful a girl as her mother was a woman.  A lot of Paul was evident there in the tawny hair, the straight, narrow DiStephano nose which avoided the slight upturn at its tip that her mother had, the brown eyes and golden skin to contrast with Kristine’s lighter color, and even a bit of Paul’s hard leanness.

“When she smiles,” Kristine explained over and over, “I see you so clearly that it is as if you are here with me.”

There was no shyness when Paul and his daughter met during his periodic visits to Europe.  She knew well enough the circumstances of her birth, and loved Paul with the intensity of a teenager who had found her Prince Charming and was assured by the fact that he could never love another girl more than her.  Paul loved her in return, to the limit of his capability for affection, because she was of the blood created from his seed planted in the only woman he ever loved without reservation.

Although he was a man of decision, he had asked himself countless times whether he had done right in the affair with Kristine.  He did not even consider pointing the finger of reproach at anyone else, since it was not in his nature to lay the blame elsewhere when he himself had been free to make the final choice.  But during the twenty years which had elapsed, he had kneeled in front of the altar of his faith many times when loneliness had become nigh unbearable and asked himself whether he should have taken her.

As the strains of Tannhauser filled his ears, the memory of the night they met flooded his mind, and he saw again the lobby of the makeshift opera building in Frankfurt in nineteen fifty when he was one of the army’s newest Second Lieutenants just out of West Point on duty nearby.  He stood in the lobby during the intermission, trying to retain his loyalties to Puccini but aware that Wagner was actually the master and had struck a chord within him that was in mood with his martial air.  During this contemplation, he glanced covertly at the Germans over twenty-five years of age.  They would have been his enemies just a few short years ago.  He was surprised to find them looking exactly like the men he knew in Chicago or New York, except that their hair was worn longer, their suits were much too large and rumpled, and they seemed entirely too explosive to be anything but violent people who needed to be bashed every so often to be kept in line.

Then he saw Kristine and his heart skipped a beat.  She was accompanied by an older woman, her tall figure in a green, evening gown, her hair piled high on her head, set off by a tiara of rhinestones and long forest-green emeralds dangling from her ears, with a huge matching emerald ring on her finger.  He stared at the utterly fascinating movements of her hips as she walked - no, glided, would be more appropriate, for she was a superb horsewoman above all, and her body swayed with the deft rhythm of all expert riders.  As she passed, two American officers standing to one side gave low whistles and one of them remarked loud enough for those nearby, including Kristine, to hear, “Will you look at that fantastic ass!”  Paul turned to them with a fury boiling up inside that he never knew was possible and snapped, “Keep your filthy mouths shut!”  The Captain and First Lieutenant looked at the gold bars on Paul’s shoulders and bristled with the intent of cutting him down to size.  Then they came under the glare of Paul’s furious black eyes and decided that rank might be no deterrent whatsoever if that fierce-looking man exploded, so they wisely moved off.  Paul turned back to watch the woman who had won his heart in an instant.  She had continued on to the refreshment counter, had ordered a champagne, then had glanced at him and raised her glass in a half salute before occupying herself totally with the older woman.

He did not return to his seat after the intermission, for he feared she might leave early.  Instead, like the resourceful person he was, he stepped outside to hire a taxi for the evening.  Ordering it to remain poised at the curb, he walked back inside, secured his cap from the checkroom, then took up a position near the doors.  When the performance was over, Paul watched her walk out of the building and step into a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.  He leaped into the waiting taxi, shouting at the driver in his broken German to follow that car and not to lose it on penalty of a fractured skull.  The driver had entered into the spirit of the chase by remaining almost bumper to bumper with it until the sleek, black Mercedes deposited the two women at the exclusive Frankfurter Hof Hotel.  Paul obtained her name and room number from an alert desk clerk only minutes after passing over a sum of money, then registered himself at the hotel with the peace of mind of a soldier knowing it was Saturday night and he was not required back on duty until Monday morning.

He took no chances that she might leave later that evening by occupying a seat near the elevators.  When he concluded that she had gone to bed, he turned in also.  At the crack of dawn he was up, had rented shaving gear from a bellboy, made his toilet, then went back on duty at the elevators.  He prayed that she would not take breakfast in her room.  At eight, his vigil was rewarded by seeing her step out of the elevator without the older woman and walk into the dining room.  Paul gave her only ten seconds to be seated before striding up to her table, bowing, and saying breathlessly,

“Madam, if you don’t allow me to join you for breakfast, I shall step outside and throw myself under the wheels of the first car that comes by.”

Suddenly, the awful thought struck him that she might not understand English and his reserve immediately melted away.  He blushed and his eyes darted about the room looking for a vacant table to which he could rush to hide his mortification.

As she told him months later, “I looked up and saw this utterly beautiful savage who had championed me at the opera, and who was evidently so much younger than I that I didn’t know whether to laugh or to scold him.”

Instead she smiled, and Paul sat down at once.

They had time for only a few words before she drank her coffee, nodded her head politely, then left the table.  He followed her chauffeured Mercedes by taxi to a small village in the Taunus Mountains nearby and saw the huge estate where she lived with her husband, a man twenty-five years older than she, who had recently been released from prison as a high ranking Nazi party member.  He also saw the number of servants who tended the house and grounds, but none of these things seemed important enough to his love-smitten brain to keep her out of his reach.  Every moment he was free from duty, he raced a car he had purchased from a fellow officer to the village in the Taunus Mountains and mooned about in the local Gasthaus, waiting for a glimpse of her.  Now and then she emerged from her estate to be driven to Frankfurt or Wiesbaden to shop.  Paul followed, but made no attempt to approach her.

It became the talk of the village, and once the townspeople decided that they liked this audacious American, who learned their language in no time at all, they joined the conspiracy, gossiping about the Baron and his wife, of him being a pompous ass who didn’t know his elbow from his rump, of Kristine having married him when she was only eighteen or nineteen years old, and that she didn’t seem a bad sort of person except for keeping to herself pretty much, since there were no children to occupy her time.

The regular customers of a Gasthaus situated directly across from the entrance to her estate went even so far as to call about for him when she started out, contacting the various Gasthaüser and Weinstuben until they located him, where he was usually challenging everyone to a chug-a-lug.

Upon hearing the magic words, and followed by a rousing cheer from his drinking companions, he would race out to his car and take off after her with a great squeal of tires.  The conspiracy even extended to a servant in the mansion, who tipped off a friend in the nearby Gasthaus when she made plans to go shopping or riding.

For nearly two months Paul just watched her from a distance, making no attempt to force himself on her, nor getting so far underfoot as to be tripped over, and it is quite likely that he would still be following her about with his usual tenacity if one day she had not ridden her handsome, long-legged brown mare towards where he was seated in his car by the side of the road.  He got out promptly, a sudden intuition springing up inside him that things had come to a head, and she did not disappoint him.

She stopped her mare just a few feet away and flicked her riding crop against her boot as she gazed long and hard at Paul.  “How much longer do you intend to pursue me?” she finally asked in her precise, but accented English.

“Till I win you,” answered Paul, instantly feeling like a clod for blurting out such an inane cliché when his big chance had arrived.

“A woman of the streets would be of more use to you,” she said.  He was surprised to see a sad expression cross her face.  It struck him that, despite everything she possessed, she was a lonely woman, who perhaps in a way might envy the girls who walked the streets.

“No,” he said.  “I could not love them as I love you.”

She made the mistake of laughing.  Paul reached up and pulled her off the horse.  He fastened his lips to hers, drawing her body so close that he felt her full breasts and flat stomach through her clothes.  Pressed together from chest to thigh, there could be no doubt that she was aware of the boiling desire inside him.

By instinct, as she was drawn from her horse, she had slipped an arm through the reins to anchor the animal.  When the horse tugged at them to reach for some tufts of grass, it broke the spell his lips had wrought.  She placed a hand on his chest and pushed him away.  They stood looking at each other, their faces crimson with confusion and blood of lust, their breathing rapid and heavy.  She raised her crop and struck Paul across his cheek.  Then, without a word, she mounted her mare and rode off.

As she cantered down the path, Paul leaned back against the car, his eyes gleaming as he touched the welt on his face.  He knew quite well that the blow was a release of her anger for feeling the same passion as he himself.

The following day brought word from the conspirator on the estate that she had suddenly become impossible to live with.  She snapped at the least thing, raged at the slightest fault of the servants, and left the house only to ride, bringing back her mare covered with sweat.  In time her attitude towards the pompous ass even altered.  Whereas she had been respectful in each word and action, her manner cooled, grew distant, and her bedroom door was closed to his periodic visits.

For a month Paul saw neither hide nor hair of her, although he ran his car far into the woods where she usually rode, and the list of damages to the sturdy, uncomplaining vehicle made the Germans wince.  A car was a sign of prestige, to be polished, babied and maintained like a family heirloom.  A lesser person than Paul would have been totally discouraged.  Instead, he rented a room in the village, secured maps of the road network and forest bordering the estate, then made his patrols as diligently as he would expect from the men he commanded.

One day the answer came from the mansion:  she was riding deep into the forest towards the mountains rather than over the bridle paths she was accustomed to take.  Paul promptly made a reconnaissance in his battered car and was rewarded with a torn oil pan.  A farmer and two horses towed the car back to civilization.  An attempt to pierce the forest by borrowed motorcycle ended up with him nursing a wrenched knee that soon became black and blue.

Fearing serious injury to their crazy American, a committee of drinking companions from the various Gasthaüser and Weinstuben went into conference.  They reached an answer by locating a horse so placid that even a child could manage it, assigned one of the elders, who had served as a cavalryman during World War I under von Hindenberg at the battle of Tannenburg, to give him an hour of instruction, then, with loud cheers, they smacked the animal across its ample rump and sent it lumbering towards the mountain.  As a precaution, however, before permitting Paul to leave, the conspirators filled him so full of beer that he feared nothing.  So he made his way far into the forest in the vicinity where Kristine was reported to be riding.

He came to a deserted pasture, distraught to find it enclosed by a long fence which portended a wide detour unless he cut across it.  As he had no intention of getting off his horse, since it was hard enough to climb on its back when he started, he searched about until he located a gate.  He leaned down to lift off the wire holding it shut.  The next moment he found himself lying flat on the ground, looking up at the horse gazing down dolefully at its rider unable to lean forward without falling off.

Then he heard Kristine’s peal of laughter.  He sat up to find her twenty yards away seated as straight as a ramrod on her mare.  Climbing to his feet, he walked up to her, and suddenly he began to laugh too.  He held up his arms, and she slid off her horse into them.  Tying their animals to branches, they walked into the forest and sat on a fallen tree, speaking of a thousand things until the sun was low in the sky.  When she mounted her mare, she leaned down and kissed him so lightly that he wasn’t certain her lips had actually touched his mouth.  Then she whirled her horse and galloped off homeward while Paul climbed laboriously onto the back of that monster and returned to the village.

That night he sat in his favorite Gasthaus like he was a zombie, staring at the walls, the conspirators crowding about him, chuckling and nodding their heads, for success is often seen in the face even though the words are not spoken.

They met again the next afternoon at the same spot.  Tying up their horses, they sat and talked until she rose to depart.  But this time they held each other tightly, their lips not satisfied with one kiss, but coming together again and again until the heat grew so intense in their bodies that she had to tear herself away, leap upon her mare, and race off to keep from thrusting her hips against the hardness of his loins.

The week which followed was an agony to Paul.  He performed his duty with his unit each day as if nothing else occupied his mind, but the moment retreat sounded, he was in his car racing to the village, sitting in this Gasthaus or that Weinstube, waiting for the weekend to come, realizing that he could not see her until then, but unable to bear being anywhere else except near her.

On the next Saturday afternoon they met, and both knew at once that the other had passed a tormented week.  She told him to get back on his horse, then led him deeper into the forest to a clearing where stood a small, log hut to store hay.  Not a word was spoken as she undressed.  He tore at his clothing.  He took her on a bed of hay with the violence of two thunderbolts striking in mid-air.

When they lay back resting, their naked bodies still entwined, Paul felt no relief, and his instinct told him that she likewise was not fulfilled.  After a while they got up, dressed, and went their separate ways.

They met again at the hut the next afternoon, sitting and talking as if they planned to wait another week before making love. Then suddenly, in a frenzy, they undressed and threw themselves at each other, peaking at the same moment, her high shout of ecstasy mingled with his deep moan of release and triumph, stopping only a few minutes to exclaim how beautiful it was and continuing to kiss, until, without having withdrawn from each other, they started anew, their bodies perfectly matched, their thrusts whetting their appetite, the thunderous explosion of flooding together at the same moment overpowering them again.  This time, though, they knew exactly what was in the heart of the other - that they were truly, irrevocably mated to the end of their lives.

Within a week Kristine had rented an apartment in Frankfurt for them to be together when Paul was free.  By the end of a month, the inevitable confrontation between her and her husband took place.  Although she demanded a separation, he prevailed upon her for appearance’s sake to remain at the estate, to which Paul acquiesced, as his commanding general was especially adverse to any form of scandal.  In time, though, she spent most of her nights at the apartment with Paul, and returned to the mansion less often.

She became pregnant three months later, and their dilemma must at last be faced.  They knew the seriousness of the matter, both being devout Catholics, but nevertheless they reached the decision that Kristine should obtain a civil divorce so they could marry.  Paul wrote to Ettore, explaining the situation.

Ettore’s reaction was immediate.  Paul never learned how he managed to pull such strings, but orders came overnight transferring him back to the United States.  When he walked into the house, fuming, ready to resign his commission in the army and cut himself off from whomever was responsible, he found himself surrounded by every member of the family.  The dispute lasted two days, Ettore raging and roaring, Vincent using his most persuasive arguments, Michael being practical, Rose weeping at the thought of a divided house, and even Dominic, the wild one, already having his affairs although he was but sixteen years old, registering disapproval.

Anthony had made the most profound impression.  “Paul,” he said softly, in the privacy of the library of the house.  “I know you are a very religious person, and that you believe in God.  He is here and in Germany and everywhere we will ever go.  If we could compare your heartbreak with the agony of Christ for our salvation, you would have an inkling of how great is the love of God.  You can defy Him, and your family, and even your conscience, but you cannot alter His commandments.  You and the woman you love have committed sin, a grave sin, and soon a child will be born from this transgression.  God in His glorious mercy will permit this child to be born free of your sin, but you must sin no more, for it will not be just you who will be punished, but many others whom you love.  Her husband is not a young man, and I would be the last to wish for his death to clear the path for you and the woman to marry, but God works in ways beyond our comprehension.  Therefore, you must not attempt to circumvent Him.  There will be only hell on earth and eternal damnation after death if you try to do so.  I beg of you to go to church and pray to God to show you the way, for He will not forsake you.”

Paul had done so, then had left the house to report to his next duty station.  Soon afterwards, Kristine came to the United States to join him.  After much soul searching, they reluctantly decided to allow her husband to be named as the father, which he was more than willing to do to save himself the full name of cuckold, and to wait a little longer before taking any action.

Within two months, Paul was fighting for his life in Korea........

 

He leaned forward and shut off Tannhauser, then rose from his chair to mix another scotch and soda, waving back the co-pilot who started in to serve him.  As he resumed his seat, he realized that the story had really ended there, in its sense of going forward.  He and Kristine met whenever possible, their love growing deeper with the years, and they both knew that once the pompous ass died they would marry, no matter how old they were.

So Paul understood that his coming home at this time was mainly to search for himself, to seek what else was inside him besides the love for Kristine and the lesser one for his daughter.  For he knew that his conscience would allow him to shun Maria’s funeral, as there were three thousand men who were alive and dependent upon him, and that death is final with no need of the living.  Perhaps Maria in death would provide the key to unlock himself.

 

They were all waiting at the airport when the plane landed in Chicago.  Paul kissed Ettore, then the others, and shook hands with Vito.  When they had been driven to the house, Ettore took out the red table wine, poured eight glasses, and raised his towards Paul.  “It’s good to have you home, Paul.”  And they drank.

Then Ettore put down his glass and said, “Now we will go to the funeral parlor to see your sister.”