“In the house of an Italian or a Greek the father is king. He says—‘do this or that,’ and this or that is done. There may be grumbling behind the door. All right, let it pass! There is no grumbling in his presence. I’m talking now of the lower classes, the peasants. That’s the kind of blood I have in my veins. Oh, I admit there is a kind of brutality in it all but there is kindness and good sense in it, too. Well, the father goes out of his house to his work in the morning and for the woman in the house there is work too. She has her kids to look after. And the father—he works hard all day, he makes the living for all, he buys the food and clothes.
“Does he want to come home and hear talk of the rights of women and children, all that sort of bosh? Does he want to find an American or an English feminist perhaps, enshrined in his house?”
“Ha!” The story writer jumped off the bed and began again walking restlessly back and forth.
“The devil!” he cried. “I am neither the one thing nor the other. And I also am bullied by my wife—not openly but in secret. It is all done in the name of keeping up appearances. Oh, it is all done very quietly and gently. I should have been an artist but I have become, you see, a man of business. It is my business to write football stories, eh! Among my people, the Italians, there have been artists. If they have money—very well and if they have no money—very well. Let us suppose one of them living poorly, eating his crust of bread. Aha! With his hands he does what he pleases. With his hands he works in stone—he works in colors, eh! Within himself he feels certain things and then with his hands he makes what he feels. He goes about laughing, puts his hat on the side of his head. Does he worry about running an automobile? ‘Go to the devil,’ he says. Does he lie awake nights thinking of how to maintain a large house and a daughter in college? The devil! Is there talk of keeping up appearances for the sake of the woman? For an artist, you see,—well, what he has to say to his fellows is in his work. If he is an Italian his woman is a woman or out she goes. My Italians know how to be men.”
“Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I cannot bring you now. It is too early and I am not footloose yet.”
VII
The story writer again sat down on the edge of the bed. There was something feverish in his eyes. Again he smiled softly but his fingers continued to play nervously with the pages of my book and now he tore several of the pages. Again he spoke of the three men of his New England town.
The fish-seller, it seemed, was not like the Yank of the comic papers. He was fat and in the comic papers a Yank is long and thin.
“He is short and fat,” my visitor said, “and he smokes a corncob pipe. What hands he has! His hands are like fish. They are covered with fish scales and the backs are white like the bellies of fish.”
“And the Italian shoe-shiner is a fat man too. He has a mustache. When he is shining my shoes sometimes—well, sometimes he looks up from his job and laughs and then he calls the fat Yankee fish-seller—what do you think—a mermaid.”