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from Three Circles of
Light The pomp and furor,
the funeral festival was over. Mother suffered her final birth giving. We won
a cross, a tree with outstretched arms of want. Reason being removed from
love as the earth from the stars, we sought in vain the image of Father. We
found him not in the faces of the street, at church, nor at his wonted haunt
of infidelity, nor on the bricking jobs, and he did not come home. At night the children
demanded him, and could not sleep. Stumbling from out of the din and fog of
fresh tragedy, it was the time for Mother and me to sit in the room of
Sabinella La Zoppa. There was a cot, a harp, an array of dolls, ceramic
figurines, statuettes of saints, burning incense; a portrait of Sister Alma
Serena in her white roses. Perched on the harp was Sabinella’s black parrot,
and on the window sill, her fat orange cat. Sabinella lurched
into her rocker. “Accommodate thyselves, dear ones,” she said. “Would that ye
had not this purpose to visit me.” Mother and I sat
before her. Upon the table at Sabinella’s side was an incense brazier, pipe,
tobacco, bottle of anisette and glasses, a box of chocolates and an ear
trumpet. Sabinella was flaccidly enormous, her pox-eaten features painted,
her long curls dyed black, and there were straggling hairs on her chin. She
wore a red silk dress, ribbons, rings, lavaliere, earrings and patent leather
pumps. She was almost deaf, and though aging, had young, glittering eyes, and
an hypnotic contralto voice. Swaying in the rocker, she smoked her pipe and
poured anisette for Mother and me. “Annunziata, Paolino,
the sad truth of thy visit was foretold me by the soul of the nun Alma Serena
from the world that awaits all who came from the womb.” Of Sister Alma
Serena, this son dreamed on the eve of our woe,” said Mother. Sabinella puffed her
pipe and pondered. “ ’Twas transubstantial, and not dream.” Then she
continued positively: “The appearance of Sister Alma Serena’s spirit to thy
son was not nocturnal fancy. ’Twas the epiphany of God’s will.” She limped to
the harp, the steel brace on her withered leg jarring the floor, and played
and sang the “Ave Maria.” She chose a rose from
the bouquet and resumed the rocker. It was a flower from the legendary
Vastese bush of the Mystic Rose. With the rose she held a holy picture card
of the Madonna and Child, and from it she read: “Fiammis ne urar succensus, Per te, sim defensus in die judicii.”
She stroked the petals of the rose, cupped it and inhaled it. She drank more
anisette and munched sweets. “My dear bereaved ones, ye must now disassociate
from thy frontal sense, which is the flat and limiting mirror of the passing
faultsome moment, and recede to the retreat of the back brain, which
enthrones soul on earth and intuits past, present and future.” Sabinella lapsed into
complete immobility. After a long while, an electric trembling emanated from
her passive bulk. Her joints involuntarily snapped and jerked. Her throat
swelled. She shut her eyes, shuddered spasmodically, and sweat streaked her
face. There seemed to be a rapping, crackling current circling from
Sabinella—to me, Mother, and back to Sabinella. “Spirit—come to me—” she
gasped. “This is that Sabinella who acknowledges flesh is temporary and fallible.
. . . I am she who admits the soul infinite and not beholden to time, place
or matter—Spirit! Find me!” She lifted her voice. “Spirit, hesitate not to
come to me! I say that all is in all, that love is God and concrete
substantiality itself, the one indestructible and eternal being! Dost thou
hear me?” Sabinella convulsed,
relaxed, listened with trumpet to ear, and rocked swiftly. She nodded. “Yes,
Spirit, thy signal reaches me.” She put her hand over her eyes and dropped
her head back somnolently. “The Perfect comes to me as a pictorial
presentation. There are two forms floating toward me from a radiant
cloud—Sister Alma Serena is leading a male spirit—I have not yet achieved
focus of him—but he is bashful and seems to have left the earth prematuredly—his
mien is of joyous amaze—he glances at his wheeling new wings as a child,
desirous but unsure, puts forth his foot in first delighting step—my, he is
gloriously virile and appealing—even to the angels about him—he hears me and
blushes—he is gazing at you, Annunziata, with a fiery passion—why—it—is
Geremio! Greetings, dear Geremio—yes, ’tis I, Sabinella, with thy Annunziata
and Paolino before me—bless thee, dear soul—yes—I respectfully attend thy
words—” Sabinella strained. The veins pushed out from her neck. “Geremio says
. . . ‘Most precious wife, and son. . . .” A thunderstorm tore
the mantle of the night. We were huddled in the bedroom. On the bureau were
the frightened flares of the votives, and father’s crape-shrouded picture.
Mother held the infant who would never know his father and spoke as in a
spell: “They father, through
Sabinella La Zoppa, told he left thee hurriedly and without warning, to work
on God’s mansion, and to construct the foundation of our very true home. He
was especially selected and honored by God, the Master Builder, because thy
father is the best of bricklayers. The walls of God’s house are to be plumb
and level, and each brick in bond. Thy father was not killed by falling
walls, nor did he die; he was transferred to the better job. He did not
agonize as he went; he left his fleshly self behind to lighten and speed his
flight; high into the beautiful sky the angels bore him, and his sins were
cleansed from him on the way up. At the summit of Paradise he was met by
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the constellation of saints. All the while he
has not forgotten us; his eyes are upon us. When we weep, he weeps, and when
we smile, the sun illumines his heart. That is why we must not weep.” “Thy father said to
set a place, his place, at the head of the table for him, and bless whatever
bread, for it will come from the harvest of the divine field. We are not to
worry or fear, as on our paths he holds our hands. They father will not send
for us until he completes our final home; until ye are men and women with
children of thy own, and I thy mother have snow-white hair. Thy father said,
to make him happy, ye must be obedient, and work and play and sing and dance,
and to ceaselessly pray. He said ye have lost an erring father on earth, but
have won an angel in Heaven, who is here this moment, and by thy side.” Strengthening rapture
displaced cruel wonder in the children. Mother whispered:
“Thy father said he lives where there is neither heat or cold, nor want or
hurt. He said he dwells blissfully in the aura of the Rainbow within the
Three Circles of Light, which is the vision of our Lord, and in that oneness
of wish and will with God Who Himself is Love. And that if we listen with our
souls, we will hear him singing with the angels. And thy father said for me
to give his kisses to his loves.” The children kissed
and held Mother, then prayed: “I clasp my hands, I bow my head, I thank thee,
Father, in this, our sacred bed. Good night, Father. Amen.” Signing the
cross, they soon slept peacefully. The storm quieted,
and a full streaming, lulling rain fell. Mother took the infant to her bed.
Mother reached over the infant, and moaningly pulled Father’s pillow to her. As I stared into the
night, I saw a trowel in my hand, and wall after wall to lay up. Before me
was Father, silent in his coffin, and Grazia La Cafone trampling my BB rifle,
radio and Father’s guitar. I saw Stella stifling a sob, running away from me,
and I was never to see her again. I saw my uncle The Horse driving three
spikes into the lid of the piano down upon the keyboard, and as he hammered I
heard the taut steel strings of the shocked harp vibrate out of tune. I was no child, and
could not accept Sabinella’s message, and I wondered if Mother had. Father
had been killed on the job against his will. Don Pietro’s raging sermons on
sin came to me, and so did the tribal judgment of the paesanos about
infidelity. We had been punished by Heaven for Father’s immorality, as
religion constantly cried that the wages of sin was death. That night, the sense
of sin, and the fear of God, was born within me, the definition of sin that
made the memory of Father’s affair with Godmother Delia ugly, and the
remembrance of Stella and Pasqualino in the hayloft, an unclean picture, and
my beauteous Stella was now an evil, carnal woman, and my pure desire for
Stella, a dread thing imperiling my mysterious soul. The darkness, which
was to remain for decades about me, lowered to envelope the sunshine of the smiling,
early, free, happy, laughing days, and my priceless boyhood fled in terror
from me without lingering look or farewell. The God of my mother
and people, who was before but a motionless statue on a cross, beckoned to me
and embraced me. All that had been beautiful was now wrong, sinful,
grotesque. I was afraid, deeply afraid, of Christ and the world of man. As I stared into the
many-yeared night ahead, the side entrance of Pellegrini’s drugstore came to
me, and from the brick jack arch over the doorway, the keystone head of the
genial, grinning, behorned satyr whispered: “Paolino, thy boyhood hath sought
refuge with me. Paolino, I cannot rescue thee from humility and pain, from
fear and sin. Paolino, we part. Thou goest into the kingdom of the night. And
I remain in the sunlight of the happy young, the unblighted innocents of the
earth. Farewell, Paolino, until thou becomest enamoured of Nature—childlike
once more. And then again I shall recall with thee thy sinless urgent hours,
thy fond distant dreamings.” Paolino, farewell. |