Tillie and the Tailor Read online

  Universally feared, reviled, persecuted, banished – such has been the fate of this admirable class of men and women.

  What, in the end, do anarchists believe in? What is the essence of anarchist philosophy? For one, the rejection of all government – revolutionary, parliamentary, or dictatorship. For another, the advocacy of a self-organizing society based on voluntary cooperation rather than on coercion. This ideal, to the anarchist, is the real revolution.

  ‘Only that day dawns to which we are awake,’ wrote Thoreau.

  xvi

  It was the anarchists’ stubborn idealism that drew me to them, that made me want to try to model my life on them. To sit alone in an empty room, hunched writing over a typewriter, with nothing but dumb self-belief – what could be more stubbornly idealistic? ‘The writer’, wrote William Saroyan, ‘is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depths of his soul every man is. He neither walks with the multitudes nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.’

  xvii

  Again, on the all-pervasiveness of neighborhood gambling, here’s a dialogue between two young men in a Hanover Street espresso bar:

  ‘What the hell you got that long face for? What troubles you got, you live home with your mother, don’t you?’

  ‘You should have my troubles.’

  ‘What troubles, you live home –’

  ‘Debts, debts. You ever heard of gambling?’

  ‘You, gambling? The shylocks into you?’

  ‘Into me, you kidding? I’m into them.’

  ‘The horses?’

  ‘Horses, baseball, basketball – everything.’

  ‘Who do you owe, the shylocks?’

  ‘Shylocks, banks, finance companies, everybody.’

  ‘Do you own anything?’

  ‘Yeah, lu cazz’ I own.’

  ‘Well, how much do you owe – a thousand?’

  ‘Four Gs.’

  ‘Four Gs? How the hell did you get in that deep?’

  ‘I was young, I started when I was sixteen.’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Twenny-three.’

  ‘Well, are you cured then?’

  ‘Cured? Are you kidding?’

  xviii

  In addition to recording snatches of conversation I heard on the streets, I also kept a folder of snippets – curiosities, odd pieces that amused me – from the local weekly paper, The Italian News.

  But why for over half a century have I kept the three banal paragraphs quoted below that commemorate an old North End couple’s golden wedding? I think because it says all there is to say about the unthinking piety and cultural sterility of the great mass of ordinary Americans of Italian origin in the days of the story I am telling in this book. Here were people whose lives were carefully laid down for them by Church and State, people who saluted the flag and mumbled Hail Marys, people who swallowed and never questioned. The antithesis of those tragic free-thinking, trouble-making anarchists that I so admired for losing no opportunity to pit themselves against superior forces.

  A photograph heads the little announcement. Two rows of people – eight daughters standing and, sitting in front of them, the golden couple, with four sons, two on either hand. The account reads:

  On Sunday, February 18, Mr and Mrs Antonio Sullo of the North End will celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. Married fifty years ago in Foggia, the couple came to this country in 1913. Shown with them above are their four sons (left to right) Nicholas, Marco, Joseph, and Anthony, and their eight daughters, Lucy, Connie, Anna, Rose, Mary, Nancy, Pauline, and Linda. The celebration will consist of the renewal of their marriage vows at the Espousal Retreat House at Waltham. After the blessing, a Mass will be celebrated with Father Joseph Flood as celebrant.

  After the Mass, Mr and Mrs Sullo, their 12 children, 21 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, will have breakfast at home, to be followed in the afternoon with a gala celebration at the Greek Community Center in Watertown, to which 400 friends and relatives have been invited.

  xix

  Eavesdropping on a certain George and Arthur one night in their men’s club around the corner from Hanover Street. The discussion centres on angles of defense when one has been caught red-handed in criminal activity.

  ‘No, George, that’s where you’re wrong. You never admit nothing to the cops. No, sir, nothing. Say I come in here and shoot you, and these four guys are witnesses.’

  Arthur gives a dramatic look around, his gaze pausing from face to face. He now switches point of view and tone of voice and speaks to the imaginary judge to whom North Enders address all legal pleas.

  ‘“Your Honor, I didn’t do it. These gentlemen don’t like me, Your Honor.” You see, George, when you’re caught you never admit nothing.’

  George rushes to answer. ‘Arthur, Arthur, you don’t know, Arthur. The cops are coming up your stairs, two cars of them. You got a room full of stuff – radios and TVs –’

  Arthur takes the cue and cuts in. ‘Good evening, officers. Right this way and help yourselves, officers. Take it all, I don’t want anything. I’ll help you carry it to your cars, officers. “Where did you get all them TVs?” I don’t know, Your Honor, they were given to me.’

  ‘Oh, Arthur, you would have liked my cousin Louise. Her right hand don’t know what her left one’s doing.’ Later, when the talk moves on to abortions, George turns to his thirteen-year-old son, who is sitting nearby. ‘Here, Joey, go buy yourself a banana split.’ The boy dashes out. With a broad grin, the father announces, ‘Joey had four banana splits tonight. Right, Fishcake?’

  xx

  However commonplace the life, each man has a story. Nicky Sullo, one of the sons listed two chapters back, was a colorful, ubiquitous presence along Hanover Street. He figured each April as Chairman of the North End Civic Committee’s celebrations of Patriot’s Day, which commemorated Paul Revere’s 1775 ride. On these occasions, Nicky’s smiling, cherubic face, in his VFW garrison cap, adorned the front page of The Italian News. He was also affiliated, again as chairman, with North End Post No. 53 of the American Legion. I got to know Nicky, and he recounted to me his life story. Much about him was touching, much representative. He was good-natured, had a neck that came down from his ears like the trunk of an oak, and he also sported a boxer’s flattened nose. Here, from notes, is some of what he told me and some of what I glimpsed of him:

  I met him at the back of Caggiano’s, the florist, playing gin for nickels and dimes. Inviting him for a drink, I went with him to the European, where he ordered a VO and water.

  In 1944, at the age of twenty-five – after eighteen months in Iceland – he lands in Normandy on D-Day. All that day planes going overhead dropping bombs. ‘We hit the beach and they were clobbering us. Where the hell was it coming from?’ Wounded, he was sent back to England, then into combat in France again, and once more to England. On each occasion his outfit was decimated; on each occasion he rejoined it after a spell in a replacement depot.

  ‘I started making sub sandwiches before the war. Eggs were nineteen cents a dozen, peppers I robbed from the markets. We made peppers and eggs, potatoes and eggs, and sold them to the longshoremen for fifteen cents apiece. I sold a hundred of them and made fifteen bucks. At the time, my old man was on the WPA. After the war, in 1949, I sold 4,000 sandwiches a day to the Navy Yard. The secret of my success was to make the sandwiches the same morning as they were to be sold. Fresh. If you make sandwiches at four in the morning, where are you going to find bread at that hour? Naturally, only from the day before. We had a long table, four feet wide, where we’d split and spread the French loaves. One girl would lay on the salame, one the capocollo, one the provolone, one the lettuce, one the tomatoes, one the olive oil. I’d come along and put the top on and slice the loaf in half and then each half again. Then the girls followed up sealing the subs with cellophane paper and an iron. We’d lay out several rows the length of the table and in half an hour we’d make four hundred sub
s.’

  Nicky got in with the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Massachusetts legislature.

  ‘One night he came down to the North End, a nobody rep from Springfield, John Turner, with two other reps,’ Nicky told me. ‘This took place at Mother Anna’s. Turner had a few drinks and raised his voice and caused a lot of trouble. The next day Mother Anna came to me and said do something for me. I went up to Turner at the State House and I said, “Hey, did you eat down the North End last night? Well, you didn’t behave like a gentleman.” “I’ll pay for the damage,” he said. “There was no damage, but you insulted the Italian people.” “I’m sorry,” he said. “My wife’s Italian, but when I’ve had a few too many I go berserk. What can I do?” “Go down and apologize.” “Okay,” he said. “You hang around the State House till four o’clock and then come with me.” When he sees Mother Anna he kisses her and everything. After that he says to me, “Hey, I could use you.” Then when Furcolo came in as governor he says he wants Turner for Speaker of the House. So this booby goes right to the top and he takes me with him. I drove him around. They abused Furcolo. He was too easy; he couldn’t say no to nobody. His wife was Irish, but he got elected by the Italian people. If he hadn’t been Italian he never would of been elected.’

  There was a credible sincerity to everything Nicky told me. He was feeding me facts. He went on to explain how he got the submarine sandwich concession at the State House.

  ‘I never paid anybody anything. It was all legit. Aboveboard. I never made a payoff to nobody. I had my own victualer’s license. The only payoff I ever made was when they were campaigning for re-election. I’d send them sandwiches for their headquarters and I never wanted anything for it. They offered me Clerk of Court, but that paid a lousy 6,000 bucks a year.

  ‘What did I want that for when I was picking up 6,000 a week with my subs. I had four kinds of sandwich bread – white, bucky roll, rye, and sub. Egg salad I had rye and the roll. I had twenty different kinds. The whole secret of sandwiches is the bread. My bread bill one month with Bora was $3,100. That’s not counting Bond bread and Kasanoff’s and another Jewish outfit and sometimes if I ran out I’d trot around to Louie’s to pick up some more French bread loaves.’

  Nicky concluded by saying, ‘The profit margin is close. If I sold wholesale at fifteen cents, I’d sell retail at twenty-five. Of course, I had my mother cooking and my wife and daughters making the sandwiches. The meat – that was the expensive thing.’

  Another time, Nicky told me of his State House sub sandwich concession – without bitterness or recrimination – ‘First they gave it to me, then they squeezed me out.’

  The last time I saw Nicky was at Caggiano’s, which had become his hangout. I bumped into him on Hanover Street and asked about seeing him the next day at the florist’s.

  ‘What time will you be in?’

  ‘From the time the door opens,’ he informed me. When I arrived I was told to wait, he was out getting sandwiches and drinks for the help.

  ‘He’s taking a long time,’ one of them remarked.

  ‘He’s getting a lot of sandwiches,’ someone else pointed out.

  Soon Nicky appeared, shot me a big grin, and began to say something.

  ‘Hey, give us the sandwiches, Nicky, and let us eat,’ one of the others said. ‘Then you can bullshit with the guy.’

  xxi

  I mentioned that on my perambulations about the North End I had singled out the old undertaking establishment, Langone’s, that served in 1927 as Sacco and Vanzetti’s last resting place. My father, a year after arriving in America in exile from fascist Italy, had attended their wake. He was barely seventeen at the time, but already he knew a thing or two about oppression and repression. His mother had been a Protestant and a militant Socialist in a small mountain village of the Abruzzi, where Mussolini’s bully-boys had taken revenge on him with an obligatory beating and their customary dose of castor oil.

  At home Sacco and Vanzetti were mythic figures, our heroes, shining knights, and my family never tired of discussing them and their case from every possible angle. My father, their fervent admirer, had remarkable insights into their character and behavior. He saw that intransigeant Sacco was the anarchist’s anarchist, and that Vanzetti, with all his eloquence and dignity, was the pacifist’s anarchist. Theirs is a story, almost a fairy tale, which is immediately appealing, for here were two noble souls – a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler, as Vanzetti defined them – pitted against purely evil forces of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They were accused on trumped-up evidence of gang-style armed robbery and murder and after seven tortured years in prison died in the electric chair. To my family, Sacco and Vanzetti represented the very best of the collision of Italians on American shores; to me, they became a fathomless source of inspiration.

  Over the years I got my father to repeat every detail of what he saw and remembered of those moments among the crowds on Hanover Street and I made him tell the story time and again, until one day from my rooms above Uncle Dave’s – in the shadow of where the event had taken place – I wrote an account of Sacco and Vanzetti’s wake and funeral. The short piece, an emotional paean, ran something like this:

  The bodies were laid out in a one-room funeral parlor near the end of Hanover Street, and mourners jammed the roped-off sidewalks ten across all the way to Scollay Square. That August, usually a month of scorching sun and suffocating heat, ended dull and dismal. The crowds lined up at six in the morning and reached past the markets, just then opening to unfold their dim wares and pungent odors to the stream of indifferent viewers, and past the Casino Theater into the square itself.

  By open shopfronts and stalls and the rank hallways of brick tenements, inching and shuffling along (hazy waves of human fug rose from the throng; eyes and heads watched from the windows overhead), the mourners took four hours to reach the coffins less than a mile away near the corner of Fleet Street. At last, from stores on both sides of the funeral parlor that had been hired for their display, came the sweet, sweet smell of flowers. They’d been sent from everywhere in the world, each one blood-red. Wreaths, garlands, cascades of crimson blossoms, and the streets of the North End filled with hundreds of blue-coated police, ready with tear gas, some astride horses and more on the roofs with (it was said) machine guns.

  And the anarchists, you could pick them out by their stern faces and black hats and the black butterfly ties that they wore with an air of defiance. They were everywhere, impeccable, inexorable. They too were ready, and in their eyes you saw looks that could kill. It was arranged so that you walked in on one side and without stopping passed behind one, then between both coffins, and out again. Sacco lay on the right, Vanzetti on the left. The caskets were heavy, rich, costly. To the ceiling the room was banked with flowers. The two men’s faces – and here a shudder fanned through you – were the color of bronze, though drawn and hollow. Their hair was black as night. No one wept. On one floral spray a ribbon read: Aspettando l’ora di vendetta – ‘Awaiting the hour of vengeance’. Another ribbon read simply: ‘Revenge’. Some read: ‘Massachusetts the murderer’.

  Then the funeral. The whole week long it was feared the Board of Health would not allow the bodies to be displayed until Sunday (the executions had taken place just past midnight on Monday), but a hundred thousand people filed past, so many that the funeral parlor’s terrazzo floor and white marble threshold were worn away and later there was a lawsuit for a new floor and threshold.

  On that Sunday afternoon Hanover Street became a river and a sea of people in black ties of mourning and of anarchism, with red carnations and flaming arm-bands. All this despite the thin, cheerless drizzle, which glazed the cobbled streets and made treacherous the trolley tracks.

  With mounted police flanking, the two hearses went side by side, flowers in front – some of the floral pieces so heavy it took six men to carry them – flowers behind, followed by two hundred thousand people. Across Hanover Street from sidewalk to sidew
alk the mourners marched with locked arms. The curbs were lined with crowds mile after mile, clustered heads peered from windows, and everywhere as the hearses passed hats were removed. Through Scollay Square the crowds were so packed they caved in shop windows, and at one point the whole road turned red when blossoms were strewn. But all streets approaching Beacon Hill had been dug up and blocked by big trucks loaded with sand in order to keep the hearses from passing before the State House.

  At the last, as they neared the crematory at Forest Hills Cemetery, columns of mounted police moved in to rout the crowds. There were riots and blood and arrests. The only justice that day was the weather. The sun refused to shine.

  It happened in August, 1927. To this day there are some Italians – to whom revolution had always been imminent though less than half understood – who on what they deem fateful occasions burn with nostalgic heroism and theatrical bravado, demanding an answer to what they regard the test question for the socially conscious: ‘Where were you at the funeral of Sacco and Vanzetti?’ While others who were present and ready and armed, real men, weep – have sadly been reduced to weeping – in their memory.

  What a memory, that agony of triumph. When for the last time Boston was hub of the universe. Two copper cylinders with silver name-plates were left, inside each ten pounds of ash. Their bodies died. They live.