The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo Read Free Book Online

his sinful death, echoing her mother, who sometimes said, “He didn’t take care of his family. He didn’t take care of his money. He didn’t take care of his life. He was careless in everything.”
    Her father’s death had brought the thin blue-eyed stranger with his slanting, uneven face. The second husband, the stepfather. Even as a child she had never liked him, accepted his gifts distrustfully, stood with Larry in hand, holding him, hiding behind the mother’s back, until he patiently found her. Once he had made a gesture of affection and she shrank away from his hand like an animal. Larry was the favorite until his own children came. He never liked Vincent for some reason, the lousy bastard—hateful, hateful.
    But even now she could not blame her mother for marrying, could not hate her mother for bringing so much sorrow. She knew why her mother married this evil man. She knew.
     
    IT WAS ONE of the most terrible times of Lucia Santa’s life, and much of the distress that followed her husband’s death was the fault of friends, relatives, and neighbors.
    They had, every one, kept after Lucia Santa to let the newborn infant, Vincent, be taken care of by a rich cousin, Filomena, in New Jersey. Just for a little while, until the mother regained her strength. “What a boon to that childless couple. And she can be trusted, Filomena, your own first cousin from Italy. The child would be safe. And the rich Filomena’s husband would then certainly consent to be godfather and assure the child’s future.” And how they had spoken in tones of most sorrowful pity, so tenderly, “And you, Lucia Santa, everyone worries about you. How meager you are. Not yet recovered from the birth. Still grieving over your beloved husband and torn to rags by lawyers over the settlement. You need a rest from care. Treat yourself well for your children’s sake. What if you should die?” Oh, no threat was too much for them. “Your children would perish or go into a home. They could not be sent to the grandparents in Italy. Guard your life, your children’s only shield.” And they went on and on. And the child would be back in a few months, no, a month, perhaps a few weeks. Who could tell? And Filomena would come Sundays, her husband drove a
Forda.
They would bring her to their beautiful home in Jersey to visit the baby Vincenzo. She would be an honored guest. Her other children would have a day in the country, in the fresh air.
La la la la.
    Now. How could she deny them or herself or her children? Even Zia Louche nodded her warty head in agreement.
    Only little Octavia began to weep, saying over and over again with childish despair, “They won’t give him back.” Everyone laughed at her fear. Her mother smiled and patted Octavia’s short black curls, ashamed now of her own reluctance.
    “Only until I am well,” she told the little girl. “Then Vincenzo will come home.”
    Later the mother was not able to understand how she had come to let the child go. True, the shock of her husband’s death and a midwife’s harshness at Vincenzo’s birth had left her weak. But this never excused her in her own mind. It was an act that gave her so much shame, made her despise herself so much that whenever she had a difficult decision to make, she recalled that one act, to make sure she would not be cowardly again.
    And so little Vincent had gone away. The strange Aunt Filomena had come one noon when Octavia was in school, and when Octavia came home the crib was empty.
    She had wept and screamed, and Lucia Santa had given
one
the left hand,
two
the right hand, fine, heavy slaps across the face, making her little daughter’s ears ring, saying, “Now, there is something to make you cry.” Her mother was glad to get rid of the baby. Octavia hated her. She was evil, like a stepmother.
    But then came that terrible beautiful day that had made her love and trust her mother. Part of it she saw herself as a little girl, but the story had been told