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from

Christ in Concrete

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A mid-July night Paul and Nazone sat on the fire escape.

“Godson, I implore you; you must help me get work—work that I may go to my wife and children in Abruzzi. The career of builder in this land is done. This land has become a soil that has contradicted itself, a country of Babel where Christians are beginning to wander about in hungry distress cursing each other in strange tongues, ripping their hearts, and possessing no longer even fingernails with which to scratch their desperation. Godson, you must find work for me—that I may return to the beautiful Italia—where I will be content to live and die with a mouthful of bread each day . . . near my family and that dear earth that gave me birth.”

“Godfather, do not worry—this upset should not last. Soon, perhaps, there may be more work than we ever dreamed of. Then, I am sure to be a foreman, and you, you shall always work for me.” Nazone hugged his godson.

“I wish to Dio that will happen. But godson Paul, what is going on today in this America is not a thing of temperament, it is something we cannot understand, it is the beginning, and all shall be shut to the hands that labor. It is like the war that brings itself and for us only suffering awaits.”

“It shouldn’t be like this—there’s no sense to it . . .”

“I pray you, godson, speak for me at the job you work. Be not ashamed to speak for me. . . . I will work like a fighter! . . . Discovered by an Italian—named from Italian—But oh, that I may leave this land of disillusion!”

Paul kept after his foreman and pleaded for Nazone until he got the job for him, and it was understood that he had to turn back ten dollars a week.

Nazone went each morning to work with him. They rode together, they sat side by side in the subway train, they walked to Job together, they went upon the scaffolds together, they troweled and hammered building up together, they lunched together, and together at work-day’s cease they took sore self home.

On the third morning earth had floated down into the white hell of day, and as Paul and his godfather came up from the subway, life stood out in pulsing sunlit photography. Morning-born senses brought vividly the solarized city into ken. Sharp against sky’s light-light blue concave stood the architectural stance of buildings—now sandstoney buff in ornate rolls—now with jail-bar severity—now ugly—and never beautiful.

The few blocks to the job Paul and Nazone stepped along happy for no apparent reason. They looked at each other and smiled foolishly. A precious warm breeze glided down and mingled familiarly with them. Nazone raised his gentle plump face to it and paused for a moment. After a little way he halted, closed his eyes and drank in a long breath caressingly. He put his hand to heart and said:

“Ah, summer sweet, how you do perfume these nostrils . . . !”

He gazed up to the sky admiringly, but then caught at his back and cried:

“Ooch, this cocko of a spine seems poinarded! Ah, godson, this skin is too delicate for the wall. Christian man was never meant to blind the light of his short days with bestial toil. This life of mine is inspired now, right now this very moment, to find itself on the rim splay of sea with one naked foot on warm white sand and the other in ocean’s wet green. I don’t know, but this day is a canzonella of God, a day lucent with colored glass bells. Madonn, with this mood I have a volition for laughing things like this bright circular sun atop our heads, a lust for things natural!”

They were a block from Job when he took Paul by the arm and stopped. “Godson Paul, it is much too beautiful to sweat and stink today! Let us grab two or three paesanos and go with wine flagon and sandwich under arm to some country place or seashore where we may bless the senses with smell of grass and salt of sea. . . . What does one say!”

Nazone’s suggestion came on Paul as a sudden good odor, and he hesitated.

“But it will cost us a day’s pay . . .”

Nazone waved it away with:

“He who works, eats. He who does not work eats, drinks, and dances. Come, we who work with our hands can live a thousand centuries, and yet will we have to work.”

“Is it nice by the seashore? . . . But there, I do not know how to swim.”

“Nice? Why, godson, each wave brings in saline bafts that scour the breathing sacks and impart the appetite of ten Christians, and your skin will consume the touch of sand and sun like a sitting to platter of spaghetti. . . . As for the art of carrying yourself in water, I shall instruct you in the proper European manner—like this—with arms and legs of the frog . . .”

Paul stood consternated and looking to Job near by.

“Godson, come, this day issues as voluptuous woman in heat. It is a rich hour of mammalian desire—a phantasy of Nature—godson, let us disport in dulcent leisure and leave behind Job! Job! Job!”

Two bricklayers went by.

“ ’S matter kid, the weather got ya?”

“Godfather, we dare not leave Job.”

Nazone shrugged.

“You are just. If we lose our jobs—it is the fish without water.”

Job was monstrous-poised on the river front with a wide avenue at its feet, a broad thoroughfare along which were ribboned tracks for railroad trains, and as Paul and Nazone approached it they had their thoughts unconsciously awe-prayered upon it. A white seagull appeared from behind Job. It hovered high above it, winged down,m and rested upon the very peak, a concrete column that stuck up from the roof, many floors above the street. It looked about and then flew itself fast away up into nothing. A long train of freight cars was coming slowly along the avenue.

“Come, if we do not hurry it will block our way to the job.”

“The good Dio,” reflected Nazone, “would have made us with wheels if he had intended for us to hurry so. . . . Aie, but there is at this morning’s young hour a surpassing lovely color. . . . There, I must remove me my jacket and open this shirt at neck. Ahh, what a refreshment. . . . Life-life, this plumpiness cares not for Job today—Hmn tee-re-lala, proverbially with tamborine in hand could I do over the sparkling sands of sea! Godson, godson, again I say let us wrap this tender day in pocket and steal it to the ocean’s side!”

Paul shook his head.

“But godson we sin—beak of gull calls, sands rustle, ocean’s spray waves up, and summer’s blue breath above tries to whisper us there. . . . Look, my own godson grins and believes me not. . . . It really calls to us. Veritably. . . . Soul of honor—I hear it. . . . Then we go . . . ?”

Paul smiled, shaking his head.

“It was so difficult to get you on. How shall you return to Abruzzi? . . . Come, godfather. That train will hold us back.” Nazone, instead, slowed. Nazone, who walked gracefully in the outward swing of his large feet and rolypoly buttocks—the chubby chest on paunch—the open shirt neck revealing read and white of collar-line—and cushioned in at the sides of the great fine nose the kind small milk-blue eyes by the flush cheeks—and the lightness of breath through which he said:

“. . . Also, might the fond hour be

When I, to lie whole free

In grass beneath umbrelling tree . . .

To repose in strength

And dream

Of this me who bent carnated soul

On wall of Job’s long heat and cold . . . ?”

“Godfather! Hurry!”

Toil’s battle herald had blown, and Paul and Nazone ran up the twenty flights in a furious effort that left them aching legs and strained hearts and lungs when they climbed up over a window sill and out onto the swinging scaffolds.

The single Job-brain of foreman Jones pressed itself against two men who had clambered upon scaffold minutes late.

“Hey you Paul take your corner and tell that compara of yours in Chinese to run up the pier next to the corner! Hey Paul yank up that Goddamn line! The bricklayers are standing-waiting’ for it with their pork in their hands—put it up!”

What is he a wise guy—? Watch out or I’ll fix your wagon! Bastard! See . . . them jump! Jones you’ve gotta be a reg’lar son-of-a-bitch! I love you Jones. Me. Here. I’m everything! Up! Up! Up!

As the morning hours were muscled and sweated by, Nazone could not focus his being to trowel and mortar, hammer and chisel, line, block, dowel, rule, slicker, brick, scaffold, men, and foreman. An inner rhythm kept radiating his sense farther and farther beyond his immediate physical identification, as though he, a planet of flesh, were sending out the power of his senses over time and space. The concept of his flesh blended with the sun’s pure white lust and levitated him past Jones who shouted curses at him to run out the line, past the worried warning face of Paul, past his fellowmen on the scaffold, past the concrete decision of Job Almighty before him, past the overrun street and freighted river, past the steelstone hives, the painful geometry of New Babylon, and out to where warm sands caressed him . . . the cool sea . . . celestial kiss of sky . . . and naked perfect womankind . . . entwined him. . . . Yes, that place is . . . But there, where is it?

“Godfather, run out that course, here comes Jones!”

It may be on the shore of Abruzzi near the cove at the bend of the large dune . . . It was there I first saw the little hair ’neath my arms and smelled my flesh . . . perhaps it is there where . . .

He raised his trowel-arm and smelled in the strong sweet wet hair flesh . . .

“Godfather, hurry!”

The sudden message of his flesh told him of earth and sea. He did not hear foreman Jones rushing over the littered scaffold to him.

Jones leaped over a mortar-tub with hand outstretched to snatch Nazone’s trowel from him.

“Y’bastard you’re’s slow’s the comin’ o’ Christ!”

Paul saw Jones’s mad foot catch the tub and throw him into his Godfather, pitching Nazone violently from the scaffold trowel in hand. He fell to the sill of a wide window, hit it with his stomach and bounded out into the open. Paul looked over the scaffold rail and through staring mouth and eyes sent out his soul to catch his Godfather who flung out his arms and rested on the speed of space that sucked him down. For an electrical instant their eyes met.

Oh, the surprise . . .

Oh Jesus, the misery he poured up!

Christ-Christ hold him back! Give strength to the air! Christ don’t let him drop so fast! Christ have him float gently! Have him land safely! Christ oh Christ he’s spinning faster and faster and getting smaller and smaller! Don’t! No! Christ! No! Noooooo . . . !

The man Nazone rocketed away from Paul and the scaffold through deathed nothing and smashed to the street bridge twenty floors below. Paul shut his eyes, and when the terrible meaty quash sounded up to him it left him stunned and quaking uncontrollably. As his knees pumped he clung to the scaffold crying hysterically: “Get up, godfather—oh move, godfather—Help! Send for the ambulance! Send for help! Save him oh save him!

The men climbed off the swinging scaffolds and began running down the stairwells. Foreman Jones lowered his eyes with stupid bitterness. And Paul felt the world going round and round. He moved to get up from the scaffold and gripped the scaffold-cable but his stricken legs refused to move correctly. His heart slammed and fast tears covered his sight. Reuben, a colored hodcarrier, put his arm about Paul’s waist and helped him up with foot on terra-cotta and hand at cable onto the next floor.

“Doan’ cry, Paulie . . .doan’ cry, sonny.”

“Oh Reuben, I can’t—breathe. . . . I can’t—see . . .”

“Jes’ take it easy.”

“Reuben, my godfather can’t be dead . . .”

“You sick, Paulie. You better go right straight hoame.”

“Reuben, Reuben, the stairs are going all around. . . . Reuben, the earth is spinning so fast . . . so fast! so-so smooth, Reuben!”

“Paulie, sonny, I knows. . . . Here, lemme carry you.

“Lemme take you hoame, Paulie. Please doan’ you go and see.”

“I must . . .”

“You sick boy. You cain’t stand.”

“I must go to him. I must talk with him. Talk with him like a few minutes ago.”

“Paulie, doan’ go. You cain’t talk with him . . . no more.”

“I’ve got to. To tell him to pull through. To live. That I’ll help him—that we’ll all help him . . .”

He lay forward against the men and said faintedly:

“Let me see my godfather . . .”

They made way. He saw. And a ghastly fascination cut across his senses.

Starkly at his feet lay Nazone. A brilliant red wet overalled pulp splotched over broken terra-cotta. Both his feet were snapped off and the flesh-shriven left legbone’s whittled point had thrust itself into a plank, with the protruding kneebone aiming at the sky. His hips and torso was a distorted sprung hulk. His overflung arms were splintered, and glued in his crushed right hand was his trowel. His head, split wholely through by a jagged terra-cotta fragment, was an exploded human fruit. His skull-top was rolled outward, with the scalp, underlayers, and cartilage leafing from it, and his face halved exactly down the centerline of nose, with the left nostril suspended alone at the lip-end, curled out and facing the right nostril. Only the right half of his face remained attached to his neck. His small right eye was filmed with transparent liquid and fixed at the sun. The crescent of his mouth and teeth was wide askew, and mingled over the sweat of his stubble were the marine contents of his blood and brains that spread as quivering livery vomit, glistening on the bluing flesh a tenuous rainbowed flora of infinite wavering fibrins. . . .

One big green fatbellied fly appeared, and then another and another. They buzzed among his bone and tissue and sucked the anatomy of his soul from the homeless ruddy corpuscles and charged into themselves the dispersed electricity that had powered his light in work, home, and his song and arms to heaven.

Every disfigurement of his godfather echoed in Paul with lightning flashes, shuddering and crushing him. His tongue shrunk.

A laborer laid a tarpaulin over Nazone.

“No lunch for me.”

“No more work for me today.”

The superintendent pushed back his fedora, put hands on hips, rolled his lips about and said:

“Boys . . . there’s a lotta mortar in the mixer and tubs that’s gotta be used up. There’s a hundred brickies and sixty hodcarriers, and overhead.”

He looked at his watch.

“We’ll go back after lunch. Men on buildings have to stay on their toes and keep their eyes wide open.”

Paul remained by the shattered Nazone. A flame shot through him. “That is your father Geremio!” it cried, “Your father! You!”

Paul bit his hands. He stumbled down into the street. He wandered away, fearing to turn. On the clean sunbathed sidewalk he saw his bloodied crushed father. He bumped into a woman and looked at her dazedly. He turned and saw Job. It pressed upon him and choked him. He held out his hands and gazed at them. That was he. Those were the limbs that stretched their life force against brick. This was the world, that spun and sickened, making him sit on a doorstep, making him want to clasp the earth and shout for it to stop, the world that would crumple him like his father and Nazone! Everywhere were their violated selves, helpless, appealing to him in awful dignity. He got to his feet and ran.

This is the street of Tenement, and he arrives weary. Before him on the stoop sits Gloria. Bundle of blonde animal, she sits the July heat in red cotton and bare legs spread.

“Hullo Paul. Gee, it’s nice an’ hot.”

—And her reality’s smell.

“I gotta party. Birthday party. Tonight, won’tcha come?”

“. . . I have seen a man . . . killed . . .”

“We’re gonner have eats and dancin’—what did y’say, huh?”

Annunziata emerged from the dark hallway with Geremino in hand. Behind Gloria she appeared. Ah mother. So heavy worn and early gray.

He walked up past Gloria, and held to the railing.

“Paul my Paul, why are you home shirtless in cemented overall and face shocked? Are you ill of heat?”

He contemplated her burdened face, and said:

“Godfather Vincenz is dead.”

Annunziata let go Geremino’s hand, and her mouth dried.

“. . . Paul . . .”

“Remember, mama, I am talking to you. Remember.”

Up Tenement’s fetid hallway and into Tenement’s Italian smelling kitchen she led him.

Sit oh son while I wet-clothly cool they hurt self, they dear dear self oh good beautiful son mine.

The children came, and they wondered.

“Mama,” asked Geremino, tugging her apron, “Why is Paul home with overalls, is he sick?”

“Sick, little brother? Geremino, sweet little heart, kiss Paul.”

“Paul sick?”

“Play. Find the sun. Play, play, play . . . play.”

Annina brought a glass of chill wine to his lips, and as Annunziata applied cool vinegary cloths to his forehead the throb pounded slower and slower in the painful veins of his mind. Tired tears came. And Annunziata wept quietly with him. He closed his lids in the salt of weeping, and began to sink.

“. . . Mama, did I tell you what happened today? Yes, I do not believe it. But I saw it. . . . Where is he now? . . .”

Annunziata’s lachry-rhythm lulled. His head drooped back on the chair-rest and his legs relaxed.

“. . . Mama, what is today . . . ?”

“. . . Twenty-eighth . . . July . . .”

“. . . Good Friday, thirtieth of March . . . was papa . . .”

Softly-soft. Annunziata helped her Paul to the children’s bed. It was dark and still there. She carefully removed his clothes and shoes of Job. Dust, cement, and his Job seated flesh. She wetted with tongue her finger and signed the cross upon his forehead and pulsing joints. She covered him with a clean white sheet, and kissed the hand that remained without.

Paul mine.

A vibrating gray cloud looms over him and carries him. He knows it is the whistle of Job. He looks above, and Job leans up over him beyond his sight. Job, he sighs, I am so tired. How did you find me out? The soft pad of feet about him. They keep their faces in the shadow and he does not know them but they are living because their breaths are light pink. Why does he not know them? Quick quick up stairwells feet on steps feet on steps and he cannot keep up. But why do they work in the dark; it is so difficult to plumb and level? Next him works a man with a large nose. He will talk in Italian for the man seems a foreigner. Why does the foreman look dangerously at the man? He wants to tell him about the foreman but the man smiles.

When the foreman comes to him the man puts down his arms and surrenders! Do not do it to me, says the man’s face. Come, says the foreman’s eyes, let’s get this over with. The foreman leads the man to the edge of the scaffold. The man looks down and is terribly frightened. The man’s large nose quivers excitedly and he cannot keep it still. Stand still, says the foreman, so that I can push you off. The other men stop working and watch, and the man at the edge of the scaffold is ashamed and says, oh please don’t push me, I’ll do it myself. But he shivers and cannot do it, and he smiles so politely querulous. Now that’s right, says the foreman, smile, take it like a good fellow so I can push you off, see, fall down in this direction, do you understand? Yes, says the man with the quivering large nose, but honestly, I am so afraid, I swear I don’t want to die, I can’t bear it, there is no sense to it, and it will hurt me so. The foreman puts his arm about him and caresses him while tripping him and pushing him off, and says, don’t be a child, we don’t want to hurt you. He sees that it was his godfather who was sent from the scaffold and he tries to hit the foreman but the foreman picks him up and says, oh so you’re on his side, eh? well that’s just what I thought, and the foreman pitches him from the scaffold and out into space. He is falling! And he cries, I didn’t mean it! I give up! You win! I don’t want to play any more! The ground is running up at him faster and faster and he shuts his eyes and makes the sign of the cross. Just as he is about to hit he floats easily and steps to the street bridge.

His godfather is near him with his legs snapped off and kicking the pointy ends about like a woman lying on her back and squirming in desire; he is all twisted, his face chopped in two, and he’s trying to keep the lid of his one remaining eye open with his fingers. Godfather, godfather, he cries, keep the light of your eye open until I get help! I’ll save you! He wants to pick up his godfather’s pieces and put them back on but he is afraid to touch them. I remember, he cries again, I remember who can save you; it is our Lord Christ who will do it; he made us, he loves us and will not deny us; he is our friend and will help us in need! Bear, oh godfather bear until I find Him. His godfather’s disrupted being is in parts that yearn away from each other, and his large nose, divided and curled out, quivers like a beating fish. Godson, he says, I can no longer keep the light of his eye. Paul will seek Christ he will seek Christ for that is his mission. He rushes out into the street. Yes, he will run and run until he finds Him. He now will find Him!

On, on, on . . . on—But he has forgotten where to go.

Is there no one to tell him? And time will not last.

Hey there, people, he shouts, won’t you please tell me which way to go? They do not hear, and he cannot get to them for they are all in passageways as creatures along paddocks. Hey you, hey you and you! But there are no hearings. They stream on. He is lost and knows not the manner of path. Time cannot wait, he will be left behind in a darkness that will not move so that he will not feel himself but will know only that he is waiting and no one will remember to come for him. He must hurry, hurry! And the center of him rushes back suckingly fast. He travels back to the many buildings he helped put up. The men will not speak with him, and when the last brick is laid he wipes his trowel on his overalls and asks, Have you seen Christ? Where may I find him? And they look at the walls. He has built all the jobs and reprinted self on all the brick once before laid. Tired, how tired. He wants to sit, to rest. A slender white Paul-face shakes. It peers from shadow and says, there is not rest, strive and you will find the Job. There is a man approaching. He walks with jaunty and individual grace. He knows it is his father Geremio. Geremio strides along wearing a checkered suit with stiff wing collar, polka-dot bow tie, pork-pie fedora, two-tone buttoned shoes and puffing a Royal Bengal, and his face is a little different, as though he had on heavy make-up. Paul wants to run to him and weep, to embrace his feel and smell, but he does not because his father behaves as an abashed stranger who feigns not to notice him. He wishes so to ask him, Father where have you been this long time? Where have you been living and what have you been doing? What have mother and the children done that you have run away? Have you forgotten you are our father? But when his father comes by he does not ask for he feels that his father is ashamed. He is hurt to think that his father has betrayed Annunziata. He loves his father. He will bring him back to Annunziata and the children without hurting his feelings. He walks with him. He looks up to his face that is turned slightly to the side, and he says naturally, Hello papa, I’ll walk along with you if you don’t mind, I was going this way. His father nods. He wants to say to his father, Papa, you are handsome to my eyes with your white teeth and black wavy hear, and mama always tells that you are the only man in the world for her. He knows by the way his father walks that he is going to Job. He knows the walking-step to Job. He wants to tell his father with pride that he is a full-fledged journeyman bricklayer—oh how he will surprise him when they get to Job.

Job!

It is a maze of caught stone and steel. His heart is quailed. His father rolls up his coatsleeves and quietly begins laying bricks. Paul tries to lay bricks with him but finds his trowel is very heavy, the handle is hardly big enough to gasp, and the mortar will not stick to the trowel. He struggles to keep up with his father but the bricks fall from his fingers and will not lay straight. Fear swathes him. He looks about Job. He is in a huge choir loft with scaffolding about the walls. In niches are Saints. They wear overalls and look like paesanos he dimly recalls. They step down and carry hods and push wheelbarrows. But what Saints are they? The little fellow and the curly-headed scaffolder and the mortarman look like Tomas, Lazarene, and the Snoutnose who once visited the house. The boss is coming, the boss! A great big man dressed like a priest punches his father on the bricklaying muscle of his trowelhand forearm and shouts, Wop! get it up! That man is Mister Murdin! Paul points at him and cries, I spy! you are the boss Murdin! The man turns around like a magician and each time he revolves and shouts at Geremio and Paul he has on a suit and mask of a general, a mayor, a principal, a policeman, but Paul keeps crying, I spy! I spy!

Mister Murdin sticks his tongue at him and disappears.

Father, Father, calls Paul, why are we here? His father eyes his brickwork and does not listen. Father, I know now that Mister Murdin is our enemy! His father smiles and winks at him. Then Job begins to tumble in gentle silence. Cornices, arches and walls crack apart and roll down. He shouts with all his might to his father to beware, but his father keeps interestedly laying bricks, leaning his head to a side as though listening to flowing music. Huge walls fall out of plumb and cannonade down toward his father and he flies up to meet them holding out his hands to protect his father and the walls break over his arms without hurting him. He hurls himself frantically from scaffold to scaffold to stay the oncoming walls and girders. Father! Men! why don’t you try to save yourselves! But they are apathetic and lend themselves dreamily to disaster as fatigued actors. don’t give up! he shouts. Father! Men! Refuse to die! Say no! His father raises a graceful hand, and in defeated chorus they sing, Good Friday . . . Thirtieth of March . . . Sainted Friday. The words steal his strength and he cannot keep up with the whelming downthunder of floors and walls, then feels himself giving way and blanketed as sleepy child. He spins through the solids of brick and steel and comes to crucified rest in the concrete forms; concrete pours through him as through soft cotton, and is he Geremio? A slender white Paul-face tells him he is Paul.

A fog carries him to the Cripple, and she awaits him in her rocker. I knowed youse was comin’, she says. She clutches her fingers and strains and her neck swells, and from the dark corner of the ceiling behind her whorls out a whiteness that forms into his father. His father is beaten, pale and sublimated. The Cripple writes and her eyes bulge. Sonny, she says, your father says he’s happy in paradise and everything’s all right. Let me kiss my father. No, she answers, you can’t. But he surges over her shoulder and embraces his father. His father’s man-face bristles strongly against his own and his father whispers quickly, I was cheated, my children also will be crushed, cheated. His father begins to absolve and sighs faintly, Ahhh, not even the Death can free us, for we are . . . Christ in concrete . . .

Paul bolted up in darkness, his heart racing and his consciousness groping painfully in resurging maelstrom.

“I am Paul, Paul, Paul, I am Paul.”

His blood drained and left him trembling.

“I too, will die . . . and disappear . . .”

And a quiet prisoning terror came into him.

Annunziata weeping with Ci Luigi and the paesanos in the kitchen heard him and hurried into the bedroom. She struck a match and lit the gaslight. His face frightened her. She took the crucifix from the wall and placed it in his hands.

“Paul mine . . . Paul, mother’s own . . . what has happened?”

He pushed the crucifix aside and stared into her eyes.

“Mother,” he said fearfully, “Papa is not coming back—we shall never meet again.”

She was impaled. She shut her eyes and moaned.

He gripped her hands.

“Who nails us to the cross? Mother . . . why are we living!”

She opened her eyes. She remained pierced.

He dropped his head on her shoulder and tearfully whispered:

“Unfair! Unfair!—Our lives—unfair!”