Document text
Mari Tomasi
Necordect !r"
Writers' Section Filcr.
DATE: SEP 1 4 1940
VETERAN ITALIAN CARVER
A handful of stonecutters, less fortunate than their steady
working brothers, live in the dingy south -end settlement.
Genoroso Bonti sat old and brown on his granite doorstep, his
shoulders protected by a patchwork quilt even though it was a
warm July evening. A gray, tobacco stained moustache hung limp
over his mouth. A middle-aged woman sat in the window darning
socks. "The wife of my son," Old Bonti explained. His voice
was deep, a choked vibrancy that shook his difficult English
speech into an almost unintelligible drone.
"My boy Elo is sixty-one. Me, I am 'bout eighty," he said.
Forty-six year I work in stone twenty-two in the old country,
twenty-four over here. I stop work fifteen year ago. The
rheumatist, it get me in the hands. See?" They were brown
and gnarled, the little finger of the left hand crooked and
grotesquely swollen from years of work. From chisel rubbing
against flesh.
"I come over here in 1903. In the fall, almost winter
it was. I lwsve Italy with the sun shining warm. I take this
boat from France, the sky is blue and warm. I get to New York,
it is cold and gray. And always rain. Rain. For two week
it rain cold. I come with a faintly of four. The wife and two
boys. Biz boys, eighteen and twenty-one. Thii boys pay their
own fare. I come from RIAU, in the Lazio country. 'Bout half-
2.
way down the leg of Italy. I want to come, I come that's all.
I guess I glad I come* Who can tell for sure?" He shrugged,
and stared into the thickening dusk*
"The young's' boy die long time ago. Only my son Rio left
and his granIchildron* Over there they play, over there near
the river. Two of them, his own children, they ard all dead.
No good luck with them. One is a bootleg, he got kill in New
York a few year ago. The rest —he have no good luck with them,
neither.
"Rio is no longer in the shed. No more. The doctor, say
no, Old Bonti tapped his chest. "A little sick here. Now,
he work out whenever he can. 4*. little. Not too hard work.
Mostly W. P. A. Anyway, we live. Today he is up there over
the hill to help a farmer. I dunno. They all go fast in this
country. The children, and their own children. I guess we
are make stronger in the old country. We last longer. Ha,
old I am, but my health I guilts it is bettor than Elo'a.
"The first month I am here I think this Barre is a mad
place. Dangerous. People hate each other because they do not
think the SAMS. Anarchists and Socialists, just like some
places in Italy. It was that year, just the month before I
get here that the man was kill. A stonecutter. Corti. I
remember the talk. I remember better because Elo was just talk
about it the other day, he see a picture in the paper. A
picture of the Corti monument, and it make him think about it.
The monument, like life it is. So real. Like this, with his
chin in his hand, like he is think hard. Even the stonecutt
tools are there* His brother make that monument to him, A
4.
Not so many get sick in the old country. Always fresh air
around you, no walls. No need for the sponge mask around the
nose like we wear here before they get the machinery to suck
away the dust. Bah, those mask almost choke the breath in
yout I wear one five minute, then I throw it away. If they
would work here only in the summer, in the open shed like in
the old country', and pay the men double, it would be fine.
"Over there I carve all by hand. I learn it from my father.
Just before I come to America I carve the best piece of my life.
A little Baubino, the Ora you see at Christmas in the crib.
Everything is fine, fins the nose, the mouth, the little
fingers. I get much praise for that work, and when I hear
they need good carvers in barre, I think sure I will become
the great artiste in licorice and make plenty money. I come.
Twenty year before, there is only 100 men to cut stone in Barre;
in 1003 there is twenty time that. Three year before I get
here they build the railroad through Barre. That help boost
the granite business. kore men come. Italian. Scotch. Spanish.
Irish. The track to the. quarry go up 1000 feet above Barre.
The steepest one here in the east. I used to see fifteen,
twenty flat car come down three time a day, heavy with granite.
A special engine it had. It push the load uphill; when it come
down the engine is first to hold it back easy. The road was
make like a V to help the heavy load."
Old Bonti drew the quilt closer. "I never become the
great artists. My hands the rheumatise. Somstire I think
they get stiff because here the dirt floor in the shed is al-
ways wet to hold down the dust. I dunno. .Aliyway, I do a few
5.
good piece. A cross with a fins Christ on it. In a Burlington
cemetery that one i3. My fingers get stiff 'bout the time they
get the pneumatic tools. I like to know it is my own strength
that make the beauty in stone, not the power of air. Maybe
if I really learn to use the pneumatic tools I would not say
that. I dunno.
"Four day my Elo work this week, and today on the farm.
Not much. Today they strike in every business. Wednesday
night they have a meeting in the park. WPA meeting. Moo he
go down, too. He say there is one hundred and fifty there.
Good talk, he say. Some of the top Union men are there. The
mayor, no. But he send a letter that say the WPA does goe)d
work and he in satisfy with it. Only few at the meeting be-
cause there is too much go on that night. A picnic at Berlin
Pond, The Italian Pleasure Club. Almost one hundred and seventy
go to that. I guess they like better to eat chicken and polenta
than to listen to WPA talk. Rio dc4ps It belong to the Club.
Once he doss. It cost too much. He is ask to go, to take cur*
of the fire. But no, he like better to go to this meeting."