New York - The Novel

the same village as her own. And that he had a liking for sugar-coated almonds.
    But why had she chosen that day of all days to send Salvatore to his house with a bag of sugared almonds? Who knew? It must have been fate.
    Salvatore hurried through the Jewish quarter as quickly as he could. Not that he was afraid, but he always felt uncomfortable over there. The men with their black coats and hats, their beards and their strange language seemed so different from everyone else. The boys were mostly so pale, and as for the ones with ringlets, he tried not to look at them. But they didn’t give him any trouble. He’d never had to fight them. Making his way through the crowded mass of pushcarts and stalls, he soon came to Rivington Street, and saw the Catholic church ahead.
    That was another strange thing about the Jews. They didn’t seem to have parish churches like the Christians. Even the larger synagogues were squat little buildings, squashed between tenements, without a churchyard or a priest’s house. Some were just announced by narrow doorways leading to single rooms; you might see three or four in a block. His mother did not approve of the Jews. She said they were heretics, and that God would punish them. But his father only shrugged.
    “Haven’t they been punished enough before they came here? There are no pogroms in America, Concetta, thank God.
Basta
. It is enough. Leave them be.”
    The priest seemed delighted with his mother’s gift, and told Salvatore to thank her.
    Salvatore was so anxious not to be late that he ran all the way back. Crossing the Bowery into the Italian quarter, he went three blocks before turning left into Mulberry Street, where his family lived. They were waiting in the street already, dressed up for the great occasion. His parents and Giuseppe, his brother Paolo, his face scrubbed. His older sister Anna was still doing little Maria’s hair.
    “At last,” said his father, as Salvatore arrived, “we can go.”
    “But where is Angelo?” cried his mother, while his father made a sign of impatience. “Anna, where is Angelo?” As the eldest daughter, expected to help her mother, Anna was in charge of Angelo most of the time.
    “Mama, I’m doing Maria’s hair,” said Anna plaintively.
    “Salvatore will find him,” said his mother. “Quickly, Toto, get your brother Angelo.”
    “We did not know it,” his father liked to say, “but when we arrived at Ellis Island, Angelo was already one of the family.” He’d been born eight months later. Angelo was six now, though still the baby of the family. They all loved the little boy, but his father couldn’t help being impatient with him sometimes. He was small for his age and rather frail. And he wasso dreamy. “He’s like his Uncle Luigi,” Giovanni Caruso would sigh. Anna used to defend Angelo. “He is sensitive and clever,” she would declare. But it didn’t impress anyone much.
    Salvatore ran into the house. It was a typical tenement house of the Lower East Side. Originally it had been a five-story row house with steps up to the door. But long ago, the owner had realized that he could double the small rents he received by a simple expedient. Building out as cheaply as possible into the small yard behind, he had been able, for no great outlay, to double his rentable space. And since both the owners of the house next door and of the house in the next street that backed onto his had done the same thing, the only ventilation for the back part of the house now came from two sources: a narrow air shaft between this house and the one beside it, and the tiny yard remaining at the very back, where a pair of latrines served the needs of all the tenant families.
    When their cousins had first shown them the place, the day after they’d come through Ellis Island, Giovanni and Concetta Caruso had been disgusted. Soon they discovered they were lucky. They had three rooms on the top floor, at the front. True, you had to climb up the stinking stairwell to get there, but there was fresh air from the street, and you could go onto the roof above, where the washing was hung out to dry.
    Angelo was standing in the back room when Salvatore burst in. He had his shirt on, but he had not tucked it in. And he was looking down at his feet miserably.
    “You’re six years old and you still can’t tie up your bootlaces?” Salvatore cried impatiently.
    “I was trying.”
    “Keep still.” He’d have dragged his little brother down the