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1.
Miss Mary Tomasi
63 Barre Street
Montpelier, Vermont
THE ITALIAN GRANITE WORKER
A cold February morning is breaking. A slanting sun
has not yet pierced the winter -thin clouds. Only a chill
grey sky, and a frosty haze bang over the sleeping 'Granite
City.' But for Giacomo Coletti and some 1,300 Italian,
Scotch, Scandinavian, Spanish and French granite workers,
day has begun.
For Giacomo the alarm goes off every morning at 6:30.
It makes a harsh, grating sound, grating enough his wife
Nina says, to call the morti from their graves. So be-
cause Nina needs her sleep, and because Giacomo at first
pooh-poohs his daughter Marta's suggestion that the mama
have a bed of her own, and then lets fly a hot "shut up,
you, -is it your business to tell your father and mother
where to sleeps" at his son Pete who is beginning to get
strange ideas of life from tasting the first year at medical
school so, for these reasons Giacomo tries hard not to
disturb Nina. He keeps the alarm on the floor under the
fat deadness of a pillow. He trains himself to catch the
first muffled sounds. So alert is he that the ringing has
but started before he has slid from the bed and tiptoed
hastily to the bathroom where his work clothes, heavy woolen
pants and warm flannel shirt (condemned by Pete as dust
traps) are waiting to be jumped into. The bathroom is in
the west corner of the house far away from Nina's room, and
now Giacomo sneezes, clears his throat and coughs to his
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complete satisfaction with no fear of disturbing Nina's sleep.
Giorgio, the eldest son who works with him in the shed,
sleeps in a thinly partitioned roam off the bathroom. Giorgio
has no use for alarm clocks. He knows that in his work plenty
of fresh air is necessary. He keeps both windows open summer
and winter, and the 6:30 whistle is enough to wake him up.
On cold winter mornings the whistle at first wheezes,
like the initial attempts of a rheumed throat raising phlegm.
A clearing process. Years ago when Pete was just a kid and
shared Giorgio's room next to the bathroom he said, listen-
ing to papa's homely preparations for work, "Listen, George,
Pa sounds just like the shed whistle. They are both clear-
ing their throats. Do you sepose it's because he's worked
so long in the shed that he sounds like the whistle?"
Giorgio remembers that. And he thinks of it every morning
when he hears his father through the thin wall. But now his
father's morning catighs last longer than ever before, and in
spite of his frequent medical examinations and the doctor's
confident "he's o. k." Giorgio cannot help but worry
Giorgio jumps up as soon as he hears the stairs creak-
ing under his father's weight. He performs a hasty toilet,
and is in the kitchen pouring strong black coffee for him-
self and his father, just as the latter is taking wafer-
thin, racily fragrant slices of salami from the ice -box and
placing them beside the small Italian buns that have been
oven heated to a hot brown crunchiness. Beside Giorgio's
plate is a lone orange, and a dish of cereal which Papa
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Giacomo scoffs at. Papa Giacomo wants only coffee, two or
three big steaming cupfuls, plenty of salami and bread.
Dio, good red meat, that's what makes the muscle for these
hours of hard work. And just before he leaves, a good
double -jigger of grappa in his last cup of coffee to fortify
him against the bone -chilling blasts of these winter mornings.
Good breakfasts, but unlike the breakfasts in the old country.
Those were great bowls of soup warmed over from last night's
supper, coffee homemade from roasted and stone crushed
barley grains,- a slab of polenta and a good sized wedge of
pungent gorgonzola that had lain these three months in a
dark corner of the crotta under swaths of clean sacking,
ripening to a mottled green -white. He has made no gorgonzola
in this country, but he has explained the procedure so many
times that Giorgio, Pete and Marta swear that given the basic
necessities they could make a cheese to please as discriminat-
ing an epicure as Papa.
Giorgio bolts his food. He has a telephone call to
make to his girl Jean. Jean is not Italian. A catastrophe,
Nina and Giacomo at first believe, but one that is slowly
dying behind the girl's sweet sociability. Jean is a stenog-
rapher at the Big Quarry, a good two miles from the shed
where Giorgio works, and this may be the only opportunity
of speaking with her today. Papa eats slowly, determined
to take the whole day in an easy glide, so that he will not
be tired tonight for his friend Pietro's wake. He smacks
his lips over the last sip of coffee-and-grappa, draws a
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gallon of sour, red wine and sets the jug in the ice -box to
cool until time to take it to Pietro's. One needs wine, oc-
casional sips, to keep awake all night. Tonight he does not
feel the wretched guilt that the news of Pietro's death first
brought him. It was Giacomo's glowing letters (22 years ago)
of excellent wages paid in America that persuaded Pietro to
cross the ocean and learn this granite -cutting trade. These
last two nights were an excruciating nightmare of thinking
that if Pietro had stayed in the old country perhaps he
would not now be lying dead from this stone -cutters' TB.
It took Nina and the children to convince him that the Dio's
will called Pietro from this world, and he would have been
forced to answer had he been in Italy, Africa, or the very
ends of the earth. Ah, poor Pietro, he has been a good
friend since they were boys together and stole eggs from
under the chickens of old Don Sebastiano, the priest, for
rock candy which had to be purchased two miles away in the
village store. They were quite willing that black-eyed
Nina eat most of the candy. Small, slim Nina who bestowed
her affection and friendship on the two boys rather than on
little girl playmates. When Giacomo left for America he
begged Nina to wait for him a year or two, until he had
money to come for her or to send for her, but her mouth
would only melt in a non -committal yes -no smile, so that
Giacomo swallowed a sigh and thought: now that I am going
Pietro will have a clear field, he will win her for sure.
But no, the first year rolled away into the second, and
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met the plumpness of his little savings account, and still
the letters from his mother and sister said nothing of Nina
being promised to Pietro. He wrote to Nina and asked her
(yes, in the very first letter) if she would cross the ocean
and become his wife. A prompt answer arrived saying sur-
prisingly, "Si, si, Giacomo, and why did you not ask me a
month ago I could have crossed then with the zio. Now
the mama says I must wait until there is someone to ac-
company me on the boat." Giacomo immediately wrote glow-
ing letters three in three days to Pietro, painting a
beautiful America, an America that lined your pockets well
enough in a year's time to support a wife. And would he
please hurry across right away so that he could watch out
for Nina who was coming to marry him? Like the good friend
that he was Pietro delivered Nina safe and sound. He lived
with the newly weds two months, or maybe three, and then he
married, too. Lucia, it was, the sister of one of the
granite cutters.
As Giacomo waits for Giorgio to shovel the snow from
the tiny driveway, he sits in the rocker by the stove comb-
ing these thoughts that have woven themselves into his life
pattern. Today the frosted air bites too sharply for a long
walk to the shed. He whips a jackknife from his pocket and
slashes a peppery, rope -like stogy into shreds. This he
rams into his pipe. Dio, come now to think of it, his
Giorgio and Pietro's first born, Perina, were of the same
age, or would have been almost to the hour but for those
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two devil of days when the little Perina could not make up
her mind whether she wanted to be separated from her aching
mother or not. Perina lived only two summers. A wasting
away. Nothing the doctors could point a finger to and say,
'Here is a lump, or here the cause.' Just a wasting away.
And for months Lucia more that it was due to the Evil Eye
of the mother of Costanzo Petrulli to whom she was once
promised. He was from the south of Italy, this Costanzo,
and Lucia had heard from his own lips of how his mother had
the power to make one sicken or get well at will. True,
she was in the old country with an ocean between them, but,
and for what other reason did the baby cling to that dark
turbulent womb of her mother if not that the little unborn
angel had presaged the Eye and was doing her weakly best to
avoid it? Giacomo sucked at the stem, drawing the match
flame to shroud the caked walls of the bowl. Dio, that Evil
Eye story chewed hard on the teeth, but who knew, there were
strange things in this world, strange, and who was he to
doubt,- even though he could not truthfully say he believed?
Lucia had a second girl, Lucina, who looked every inch like
her mother. They had hoped Giacomo and Pietro that
Giorgio and Lucina might take it into their hearts to marry.
But no, for Giorgio it was the girl of Scottish parents,
Jean; and for Lucina it was this one and that one, all for
pastime.
Giorgio tapped the kitchen pane with a mittened knuckle
to signify that the car was already standing in the open road
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and it was time to get going. Giacomo lifted the lid from
the stove and rapped the inverted bowl on the rim. The
smoldering tobacco flecked the fiery coals.
By the school building which marks half the distance
to the sheds they spy two familiar figures in leather jackets
and mufflers. Giacomo shouts, "Ho, paesani" to the Lazulli
brothers and gestures that they ride with them.
The sheds are a grim, gray line, their wooden bellies
disgorging spurts of steam as if in an effort to warm the
frosted, weather-beaten bodies. Giorgio garages the car,
and when he joins his friends they are already at work,
busy humans under an electric glare that makes a stark
dungeon of the shed. Weary gray of walls, hard gray of
granite slabs, cold gray of machinery, chilling gray of
wet ground. Papa Coletti stands, his overshoed feet planted
firmly, and wide apart; for where he works the earth is the
floor. A damp floor kept moistened to draw and hold to an
impotent, underfoot mass the dread silicon particles. Giorgio
strides along the wooden platform beside the wall to the sand-
blast roam. He yells a greeting to his friends. The cry is
lost between the surging roar of air compressors, and the
deafening clamor of overhead cranes carting massive blocks
of rough granite. But Papa Coletti has made it his business
to see him. He cannot begin his work until he sees Giorgio
enter the blastroom. He is that way. Not that he exactly
A
fears for Giorgio as the tons of stone pass over his head.
"Afraid for that one ho, no not me!" he will tell you.
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Just the same a breath of nervousness catches in his throat,
and until that is swallowed in easy breathing he will not
lay a finger to the delicate work before him. He is carving
a little angel, a round cherub with plump, naked body strain-
ing to the earth. An essence of sweet innocence and of joy-
ful anticipation there must be in the little one's stone
eyes, as if he expects to discover a fragrant bud in the
green of his future cemetery home. To be sure, the picture
the draftsman drew held no such expression. Giacomo shrugs,
that stupid one has no soul, he cannot see beneath the skin
This granite cherub will mark the grave of a baby whose
father is a friend to Giacomo. So Giacomo will do his best.
Now Giorgio has closed the door of the sandblast room,
Giacomo rubs both hands to his face to hide the quick red
of relief. A final ripple of unease laves his muscles to
smooth composure, and he is ready for work. The cherub
smiles vacantly at Giacomo's close scrutiny, and suffers
the light critical touch of the artist's fingertips to its
embryonic eyes. Giacomo releases the lever and z -z -z
he is ready. But no, suddenly he frowns. Uncertainty
presses his full lips to a line. In a second he has snapped
the lever to silence and is winding among the workers to
young Alfredo's corner.
In a dark wedge of shadow Alfredo grips a nozzle and
whistles cheerfully as he sprays the small woodbox markers
with cold water. The final bath, to wash away the last
traces of cleansing acid before the stones are boxed and
shipped to their destination. Giacomo eyes him appraisingly,
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then whacks a greeting to the broad shoulders. "Ho, Al-
fredo," he booms, "last night we were talk' me an' Nina
an' she say sure as anything your baby it will be a girl
for no other reason than that you want a boy so bad. Nina
is so sure of herself, that even I catch her confidence,
and now I am will' to bet you two wines no, three that
it will be a girl. So, what you say?" With elbows digging
into his hips he hitches up his trousers and waits expect-
antly, searching deep into Alfredo's eyes for signs of the
mellow glow he knows will appear when the boy's thoughts
turn to his young wife. They are married only a year, and
so much in love that his friends cannot help but look upon
them always with a half -smile and sigh. Anticipation now
fuses with the glow in Alfredo's eyes for he remembers that
his friend has crazily predicted it will be a girl. "Sure,
I'll bet, Coletti, but you can't win," he warns in good
humor. "Three wines it's a boy."
"Three wines," Giacomo agrees, and jubilantly strides
back to the cherub, carrying with him the memory of that
look in Alfredo's eyes. He works quickly and deftly at
the stone eyes, a light stroke here, a hard black glistening
mica flake to be removed there, a brushing and smoothing of
the rounded surface, and lo,- Giacomo is finally satisfied
that here is enough of innocence and anticipation for all
the world to see.
At another trade the air would perhaps hum with the
voices of Giacomo and his friends, for they are talkative,
impulsive, gay and friendly; but the grayed space quivers
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with noisy machine -made reverberations that knead and whip
their words into immediate nothingness. Conversation must
keep for the noon hour; and for Giacomo, until the four
o'clock whistle. Nina will not hear of his and Giorgio's
carrying a dinner pail. "What," she demands, "work in that
tomb the whole morning and then eat a lunch that has been
tin -vaulted for the same time, no, you come home, the both
of you." So it's home they go, and glad they are, too. Nina
is a fine cook with a conscientious hand for their individual
tastes. During the winter months there is always a hot soup
to warm them, tasty minestrone, shredded sweet tripe in a
tomato broth, noodle soup, or cream soups miraculously
savory concoctions of the most prosaic vegetables cooked in
milk. Often there is a polenta, a golden, steaming cornmeal
mound to be eaten in thick slabs with a tasty stew or morta-
della, or some of Ninats well -seasoned cottage cheese, and
a vegetable salad in its dressing of olive oil and wine
vinegar. Chicken cacciatore, with its delicate wine frag-
rance, and ravioli are the Sunday dishes. Nina finds time
on Saturday nights to tease together a tender, spicy meat
filling for the small squares of yellow ravioli dough. On
week days there are gnocchi, spaghetti or macaroni piled
high with tomato sauce and cheese; a stewed rabbit or fried
partridge, if it is the hunting season and Giacomo has had
a lucky Saturday. Any one of these dishes will satisfy
Giacomo, but the children must have dessert,- a course which
is scoffed at by Giacomo but respected by Nina to the extent
of her taking lessons from her American born neighbors in
pudding, cake and pie making. In the children's younger
years the father maintained that the sweets would soften
their strong bodies. A false prediction, he admits in
some amazement when Giorgiols and Petels hard young bodies
prove themselves the best that local high school football
and baseball have known, and Petels clear brain has won
him a scholarship to the State university. But he con-
tinues to nurse a silent suspicion that if he lives to
see grandchildren,- or better still, great-grandchildren,
their bodies will prove this theory of his.
On the way to work this afternoon Giacomo spies the
section gang at the crossing near the bridge. The boss
is a Neapolitan, as are many section bosses in Vermont;
and Giacomo, true to his northern blood, has no use for
these southern diavoli. But one of the laborers, dark,
jolly, curly-haired Toni, is a friend. He is in poor
straits, and his wife Giovanna has often come to the
Colettils to help with the house work. Giovanna has just
borne her eleventh child, and although Giacomo censures
this southern characteristic of injudicious fecundity,
he must stop and congratulate him.
"Ho, Toni," he greets, "Nina has just toll me. This
is fine business! Come up now to Zabals place an' we will
have a fast vino to the new one."
Tonils simple heart swells gratefully at his friend's
enthusiasm, his mouth parts in a broad grin that reveals
nicotine -yellowed teeth, yet strong and sound. He hesitates
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to accept the invitation, and his mind chl3rns: Santa Maria,
it should be me, Toni, to pass the drink. The new baby,
he is my good fortune, not his. But I cannot afford to
pour drinks. Besides, already today I have had seven, no,
it is eight glasses. First it is Giuglio, then Jo, then
the boss, and bow many more I have lost count. Some more,
and when I go to the hospital tonight Giovanna, she will
be mad at my breath, and those crazy nurses will not let
me once hold the bambino in my arms, not even with the
funny bandage they put around my nose and mouth. Such
fools they are: Now when my first one was born in Italy,
it was in our own kitchen, and it is me myself who washed
the little one, with my back and arms still liquid -brown
from the sweat of the fields... And who can say that Eto
is not as strong and healthy as my hospital born?... For
a moment Toni is torn between a gripping thirst for the
red wine, a natural impulse to accept his friend's kindly
invitation,- and the possibility of forfeiting the soft,
pink, baby hand wriggling in his calloused palm. A feel-
ing that will last longer than the wine, a memory to ease
his tired muscles through the night, soothe him as even
Giovanna cannot. Santa Maria, what was he thinking of to
forfeit that: His cunning Neapolitan mind snatches at a
ruse, he will say that the boss will not tolerate these
drinking excursions. Toni prepares to mouth the words
salutary to his night's peace, but the boss bears down
upon him, thumps a canvas -gloved hand to his shoulder,
and slaps his good intentions into space. "Anoth' glass,
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eh Toni? Well, go ao: Jus' once a year it happen
his laugh sweeps over the steel crew ruffling their work
bent heads erect. Taking advantage of the boss' momentary
laxness, they lean on their picks and light up cigarettes
for a quick puff or two. A Pilate -movement of his hands,
and Toni resigns himself to the will of his boss. Absolved,
he shrugs away a final vision of pink hands. He smacks his
lips over an imaginary wine and jumps into the car with
Giacomo.
Back at the shed the men are clamping the lids to
their dinner pails, and soberly discussing plans for the
wake tonight at Pietro's. Death. A stone -worker's death.
Giacomo sighs. For a little while its grimness has been
locked from him in the glory of Toni's new happiness. But,
well, that is life. A birth and a death.
The shed -owner, Aldo Rossi, is standing with his son
Americo before Giacomo's newly completed cherub. Aldo and
Giacomo have worked in granite the same number of years,
but Aldo has had only one son, and few expenses of sickness
to gnaw at his savings. A few years ago he invested them,
like so many other Italian laborers, in a shed of his own.
It is a happy arrangement, and affords a friendliness and
understanding between workman and boss.
"A fine piece, paesan'," Aldo enthuses.
Giacomo's face flushes proudly at the compliment. He
nods. "It is good work, yes, but it is an extra good
granite block, too. So fine-grained it is that almost I
could carve the hair on the eyelids."
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Aldo knows this is true. He knows from experience
that a coarse -grained granite is not good for carving, the
large crystals tending to crack.
With the tip of his shoe Giacomo indicates the eight
inch base beneath the cherub. "The name will go here on a
polish' surface, no?" It is a statement rather than a
question. Both know that the square when polished will
render a dark appearance; and the lettering will be en-
graved,- this to break up the minute grains so as to re-
fract light and produce a lighter tone.
Since Aldo has become his own boss he has tried to
learn a great deal about stone, to understand it, and to
make his workers understand it. He has picked up a little
English reading, but much of his information he has re-
ceived from Americo who has taken a course in geology.
Americo says that Barrels granite area, which is four by
one and one-half miles wide, was formed through the cool-
ing and crystallization of molten material forced to the
earth's crust. A fortunate, quick cooling has produced
a stone of fine texture. It is ideal for carving and
polishing, of great strength, and not easily disintegrated
when exposed to the elements. The quarries where Aldo
Rossi's stone is quarried yields a granite of uniform tex-
ture, with few 'knots,' and 'sap' stains which occur in
some quarries where water has oxidized the iron in the
granite and effected a rusty discoloration. As a young
boy Americo had often seen the men channeling great granite
1.5..
blocks from the deeps of the quarries. He had seen the
stone cabled to the rim of the vast pits, and then watched
experienced cutters judging, by eye and hand, the rift and
grain directions for easy breaking, since it breaks with
difficulty the Hard Way. He could never understand it,
not until he had studied the stone microscopically at
school and learned that during the early consolidation
of the molten mass, minute cavities and cracks were con-
veniently left to indicate direction. The well developed
rift and grain in Barre granite renders its quarrying
profitable.
A cacophony of four o'clock whistles shatter the sun
softened winter air. Giacomo and Giorgio pile their car
with friends, and in a few minutes a laughing, boisterous
group pushes into its favorite beer -garden. Giorgio and
a young friend slide into a chromium -and -leather booth be-
side the victrola into which they immediately drop nickels.
And soon they are drinking beer to the gay tune of Ferdinand,
the Bull, and awaiting the arrival of two quarry working
friends with wham they will make plans for a Saturday night
party. Giacomo and his five friends gather around a table
and play a quick game of la morra* to see who will pay for
the first round of wine. Yes, Giacomo and his friends still
prefer red wine to beer.
*La morra contestants raise their closed hands
and then simultaneously lay down any or no number of fingers
of one hand, at the same time calling out their guess at the
total number laid down.
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Arm -arc gestures, an emphatic fist against the table,
and loud Italian voices fight for supremacy over the blare
of the victrola. Any topic is a good topic. Next week
they vote and, Giuseppe Torti announces sadly, if only he
knew which candidate would be quickest in laying a side-
walk before his home, he would stir every neighbor in his
favor even if it cost him a glass of wine each. Dio, you
should see the mud holes there in the spring. You should
see the road and His voice trails good-naturedly
into silence, for 'Sandro has taken the floor. "You speak
of roads, listen. Yesterday I have a letter from my Sister
Louisa in the old country, and what do you think? This
Mussolini has widened and hardened the old village path to
a good road. He has sent skilled engineers from Turin and
Milan, and the work of digging he has given to needy local
farmers. It will be easy going now on market days."
"My daughter writes often to a cousin in Rome," Giuglio
Bersconi interrupts, "and the cousin says there are many
Romans who resent but not too openly Mussolini's half-
hearted adoption of Hitler's Jewish policy. There is her
own teacher, a fine intelligent man, who was asked to re-
sign from the staff." 1Sandro draws from his mackinaw
an oblong folder of shiny, square samples of paint. Against
a patch of warm biscuit yellow, a faint lupine blue, and a
deep mulberry, are little pencil checks made by 1Sandro's
daughter. He admits in a half -penitent, confessional tone,
"She and Nita have my promise that at the first slack period
17.
in the shed, I will stay at home and paint all the down-
stairs rooms."
"And you will not go with us to camp?" Giuglio shoots,
with a sharp look from his bright eyes, and at the same
moment is sorry, for beside an alluring picture of green
cedars steeped in snow, a pan of browning, sizzling fish,
a rustic room with firelight playing far into the night on
wine glasses, cards, and man -talk, 1Sandro murmurs in
sheepish frustration, "I have promised them, no?"
It is a sacrifice for 1Sandro to spend a slack period
day within four walls. Like other Italian granite workers,
he loves his hunting and fishing. Game dogs are his house
pets. Lop-eared rabbit and bird dogs laze in his neighbor-
hood. His splendid Latin physique grown to clean maturity
in the opens of an Italian countryside is quietly rebellious
to the dust -threaded atmosphere of the sheds, thrills to the
cool of forest depths, and the laving caress of a dewy
morning or slow dusk moving over his favorite fish pond.
And, too, there is a taste of conquest for him in a day's
fine catch of fish, rabbits or partridges.
Another round of wine, and tongues swing to the Union,
to strikes. "Strikes, pah, they are poison:" Giuseppe Torti
exclaims. "I will give no names, but a friend of mine with
a large family has only last year finished paying the grocer
and butcher for keeping them alive with food during the
strike of '33. And can you blame the storekeepers today if
they turn up their noses when they smell a strike?"
18.
Si, the comrades agree, strikes are bad, but what can
you do? You join the Union for wage and health protection,
no? In Italy last year the stone workers were paid
than
for there the sheds are open. But look at the fine
removing equipment our sheds must have today. Dio,
less
3.00 a day. To be sure, the health hazard is less,
dust
another
generation will not have so much to fear for their lungs.
Si, you join for protection. Then what will you do, be a
man without honor? Desert the Union in a crisis? No, you
have to follow the leader. You take what is handed to you,
along with the rest. If you don't, well, you never can
tell. In the last big strike Guido Bertanots shed decided
to scab. He was sadly punished. He woke during the night
to the din of breaking glass and splintering wood, and in
the morning his shed across the road was a veritable sieve
of gaping windows
"We waste our energy when we talk of the Union and
strikes. Right now our granite industry is facing a fast
downhill ride," Giuglio complains. "There is too much
unfair competition with this limestone and inferior stone
from Indiana, and other Western and Southern states. Sure,
they can put out stone at a lower figure, much of their
labor is non-union. Madonna, today New York and Boston
markets are flooded with finished monuments, shipped even
from across the ocean. From Finland. For the last three
years the memorials imported into America have been doubled.
But what can you do? You cannot blame the people for buy-
19.
ing with their eyes on their pocketbooks. Only a short
time ago a quarrier offered to furnish the widow of one
of his former employees with a stone, absolutely free,
and have it cut at cost which would approximate $100.00.
What does she do? She looks around, and finds that she
can get a finished monument of the same size from Finland,
ready for erection, and for only $70.00. So she says to
the quarrier, 'No, thank you.' It makes no difference to
the buyer that our workmen are skilled, and that the granite
is the finest, they want to save money...."
And so talk flows on, ebbing when Giacomo's daughter
Marta is seen through the plate glass window homeward bound
from the library where she works. Someone suggests a third
wine but no,- he shakes his head and struggles into his
mackinaw.
A wind has come up. Giorgio leads his car carefully
over ice -hard roads beneath naked maples that protest the
cold with stiff creaks. As always on late, winter after-
noons it seems to Giacomo that these trees are the source
of night, its first darkness creeping from them furtively,
slowly, like some wary forest creature. They pass Pietro's
house of mourning. The window shades give thin perimeters
of light, dim in the half -night. The men accept Giugliols,
"We will meet outside at nine, yes? And go in together?"
It is pleasant to open the door to Nina's warm kitchen.
Appetizing vapors envelop him. A kettle bubbles steam in
fitful cheer. Giorgio dashes upstairs; Giacomo washes up
20..
at the kitchen sink, splashing about in great quantities
of hot water, ears cocked to Marta's chatter of the day's
work, her nebulous plans for a spring wardrobe, and her
indecision as to whether to spend the evening with John,
or Dan.
After supper Giacomo dresses in his dark grey suit.
His silky grey -black hair is wet into place, red -veined
cheeks are clean shaven. Nina admonishes with a helpless
glance of soft brown eyes an the gallon jug of wine, "Now
remember, Giacomo, if you must take the wine, then have
the grace to enter by the back door. And," she calls
after him, "tell your friends the same."
The friends meet in front of Pietro's. They file
past the box -like lawn with its snow-capped granite urn,
a decoration Pietro fashioned years ago from waste material,
and along the kitchen path flanked by grout pieces pro-
truding their jagged grayness from the snow. The wine and
grappa they leave in a kitchen corner while they go to pay
their respects to the dead Pietro.
In the subdued light of the living -room, with the
flame of a blessed candle flickering over his stilled
features lies Pietro, unperturbed by the muted commotion
and grief this very stillness has effected. A silver tray
at the head of the coffin is piled high with Mass cards,
his friends! small efforts for his soul's peace. The at-
mosphere is heavy with flowers. Tonight some twenty-five
Sodality girls kneel around the coffin reciting the rosary
21*.
in low voices. Lucina, Pietro's daughter, is one of them.
During those first years in America, Pietro was not as
active a church member as he had been in Italy. Perhaps
it was the confessional, it was hard to confess your sins
in a language you knew nothing of. Perhaps it was the new-
ness and strangeness of America that confused him. Perhaps
the making of his home occupied him to the exclusion of out-
ward religious fervor. Outward, for at heart Giacomo has
always loved the faith he was born into. Of late years the
children have helped. They attended the local Catholic
school; Giorgio is a member of the Knights of Columbus;
Lucina, of the Sodality.
Although Italy is the generator of Catholicism, it
cannot be said that all Italian granite workers' families
are as fervent exponents of the faith as Pietro and Giacomo.
At the time of the early immigration of Italians to this
State, North and Central Italy mainly through the efforts
of extremists and anti -religious propagandists was suffer-
ing a religious decline. Consequently, it is not surprising
that many immigrants were not a church/1 going type. However,
the recent concordat between church and state in Italy has
influenced a Catholic awakening in the northern Italian
.provinces, and, indirectly perhaps, in various American
Italian settlements such as the one in Barre.
Pietro's swollen -eyed widow Lucia, completely in black,
presses Giacomo to the dining room to see Pietro's brother
Massimo. He has just arrived fram Michigan where he has
worked in the mines ever since he came to America twenty
220
years ago. Massimo is two years older than Pietro; in
Italy he was a good friend to Giacomo. Massimo's vigorous
health stabs Giacomo with a pang of guilt. Again he wonders:
if I had not written such glowing letters to Pietro, perhaps
today he would be enjoying his brother's health But, Dio,
he must not think that.
Massimo is capable. He takes the funeral arrangements
from Lucia's helpless hands to his own. Massimo figures on
a great many cars. A granite worker's funeral procession
is usually very long, winding from the church up the side
streets. The men from his shed, and representatives from
the seventy odd manufacturing firms in the city, attend.
Massimo hands a list of the cars and people to Giacomo.
"You think that will be enough cars?" And of a sudden
Giacomo is reminded of a superstition, and of a funeral
years ago in the old country. It was a little girl who
had died. Little Carmita, a playmate to Pietro, Massimo
and Giacomo. In the hill country in those days the under-
taker's duties extended little beyond washing and dressing
the body. After Carmita had been laid in a plain wooden
box, she was carried by six young men down the hill road
to the village called La Villa. The procession of family,
aunts, uncles, and friends followed. At the junction of
the hill road with La Villa, the coffin was set on a fresh
green spot under a tree, while one from the procession ran
to bring the priest. He came, soberly clad in black soutane
to lead the band of mourners to the church. But it was
23..
while they were standing there waiting that Carmitals
brother Rodrigo took it into his head to count the people.
Massimo told him it was bad luck to do that, that it was
tempting the Dio for another funeral. But Rodrigo said,
"No, there is a big crowd here. I want to count them so
that tomorrow I can tell the mama, and it will make her
happy to know that so many came to say good -by to the little
Carmita." Count them he did, and the next month he himself
was dead, struck by lightning as he crouched under a tree
waiting for a storm to pass. Giacomo believed with the
villagers that his death could be blamed to the counting
of the mourners; but now, it is a hard thing to believe.
Nevertheless tonight, with death in the roam beyond, he
counts the number to the last quarter page, and prudently
lets it go at that.
Towards midnight when the majority of women have left,
the men take turns, in threes and fours, sitting beside the
corpse. The others gather in the dining roam and kitchen,
sipping an occasional wine or grappa-and-coffee to keep
them awake, relating stories in which Pietro alive had
been an important character.
Every type of laborer necessary to a granite manufactur-
ing firm may be represented in these rooms tonight, from the
productive labor class earning $8.50 a day to the non-pro-
ductive ;.80 an hour workers. The productive class includes
A
skilled carvers like Giacomo; sandblast operators like Giorgio
who letter finished memorials by means of an abrasive blown
24..
against the stone by air pressure; polishers; surfacing
machine cutters, operating machines to work stones to an
even surface; sawyers; lathe operators; and carborundum
edger operators. In the non-productive labor class are:
the tool sharpeners, commonly termed 'blacksmiths;' der-
rick or crane operators; lumpers who rope or chain the
stones later to be moved by the cranes; and boxers em-
ployed in packing the finished product for transportation.
A 'grouter' like Alfredo keeps the shed tidy, picks up
chips and waste material, and is an odd -job man for his
$.50 an hour. More than a half of these men arrived in
4
America skilled workers from the granite and marble centers
of northern Italy, or from districts bordering upon Rome
where a soft stone of volcanic origin is used extensively
in building. The rest have come untrained to learn the
trade, and through years of patient work to become artists
in their particular field.
It is nearing 2 o'clock. Giacomo and Massimo per-
suade Lucina and her mother to go upstairs for a little
rest. Alone, they reminisce freely, and drink, but seldom
to drunkenness. In a comfortable rocker sits Mario Bassi.
He is a skilled cutter, convalescing these three months
from pneumonia which has left his silicon invaded lungs
weak and sick. He coughs. An undercurrent of tenseness
sweeps through the room. Each cannot help but ask him:golf
in grim secrecy: will Mario be the next whose life is to be
shortened? Will I? But neither by look nor word do they
betray their emotion. And as if in defiance to death, talk
becomes gayer, more arrogant.
Towards 4 o'clock a group of quarry men who will idle
until the dangerous icy film disappears from the quarries'
walls, come to relieve Giacomo. It has been a long day
for him. He trudges home wearily. Sub -zero air stings
his nostrils. But Giacomo walks slowly, eyes riding his
shadow that slips easily in front of him. Death was like
that. Unavoidable, whether yours was a spirit of defiance,
or of perfect submission. And a granite worker must resign
himself to a shortened life. He shrugs: Dio, when it comes,
it comes. Nina is provided for. My earnings have bought
her a house, an insurance, the children are educated and
grown No, it is no time now to complain. Years ago
Nina had pleaded with him to find other work, but with grow-
ing children he could not afford to waste time looking around.
Now he is too old to learn another trade. Besides, he has
come to like and understand granite. His hands have touched
beauty to the strength of stone, and he glories in it. And,
he tells himself with a smile, there is something of the
Creator's pride in fashioning monuments to keep alive the
memory of his fellowmen.