Boston a novel
articles. Tresca embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks, Italian
fashion.
The two of them set out down the street: Vanzetti no small man, but
outtowered by his companion, whom the strike-police used to call “the
bull.” In Mesaba, where the Back Bay families of Boston were holding
onto their hills of copper, they framed him for first degree murder,
and kept him in jail for nine months. They put three bullets into him,
at different times. One side of his face was disfigured, and during the
Paterson strike a newspaper published his picture with the caption,
“Who Will Be a Good Citizen and Make the Two Sides of This Face Alike?”
Seven times they arrested him during this desperate strike of the
silk-workers. Now the Department of Justice was anxious to get him
again, and was soon to do it--for the crime of demoralizing Italian
Catholic women by a two-line advertisement of a pamphlet on birth
control!
Carlo and Bart were going to see an Italian lawyer who had been
hired to help Salsedo and Elia; he had offices directly underneath
the Department of Justice rooms--an arrangement that Carlo found
suspicious. But it was a problem how to change, because Carlo could
not get to the prisoners, and Salsedo’s wife had been so terrified by
the detectives that she did not know what to do. They saw the lawyer,
and Carlo wrote a note for the prisoners, and the lawyer took it
upstairs, and came back and reported that Elia had refused to read it,
and Salsedo was “getting crazy” and would not answer any questions.
This confirmed their worst fears, so they consulted an American lawyer,
connected with the Civil Liberties Union, who agreed to seek an
interview. Bart said he would go back to Boston and send fifty dollars
of his own money, and raise more to pay the lawyer.
There was one other thing Bart wanted to do in New York--to see the
Statue of Liberty. He had missed the sight when he had come to this
country, because his steamer had arrived in a fog. And while it was
true that America was not living up to this statue, still it was a
world symbol of the cause to which Bart was dedicating his life. But
they were too late for the boat which goes out to Bedloe’s Island, and
Bart was so much disappointed he almost had tears in his eyes. “All the
years I have wanted to see it!” he said to Carlo.
XII
The day Vanzetti went to New York Cornelia spent packing two trunks.
There had come a quite amazing telegram from Betty in Vienna: “Letitia
married Hubay my color discovered job flooey tired need recreation come
immediately positively summer Italian lake reply Hotel Royal.” Cornelia
called up Deborah, and first read the message and then translated it;
and after Deborah had voiced indignation at the treason of a poor
relation, and horror at the idea of her daughter unchaperoned in a
center of notorious gayety, she asked what Cornelia was going to do,
and actually hinted for her to join Betty. So much had four years of
defeat tamed the family!
Cornelia had been exerting herself beyond her strength. She was
sixty-five years old now--as her daughters never failed to remind
her--and for four months she had not rested a day. A summer on an
Italian lake with Betty for company sounded very good, and she said she
would go, and Deborah undertook to have her husband use his influence
to get some kind of special passport immediately, and to engage passage
on a steamer, and even pay for it. Cornelia and Betty would be taken
back into the family again, and have the services of all-powerful males
to make smooth their paths in whatever part of the world they chose to
roam.
The _Floritania_ was to sail from New York on Saturday afternoon, and
on Friday morning Vanzetti telephoned to Cornelia, still in Boston.
He had just arrived from New York and wanted to tell her the news.
She asked him to lunch with her, and heard from his lips the terrible
story of Salsedo and Elia. She knew the former of these two men, who
had worked as a printer in Boston, and had come to the “picanics”: a
frail little fellow, suffering from tuberculosis--“he very bad now,”
said Bart; “wife she think they keell heem.” Bart had been to the
savings-bank that morning and drawn out fifty dollars and sent it to
Carlo, according to his promise; and Cornelia said she also would
contribute fifty, and wrote a check. She felt quite rich that day,
having several of Rupert’s handsome and impressive bank-drafts.
It seemed a shame to be going away for a holiday in a crisis like this.
But Bart said instantly that Cornelia must not think of it; he agreed
with her daughters that she was an old lady, and needed a rest, and
nothing should interrupt it. He talked about the Italian lakes, not
very far from where he had been born. “Sooch lovely countree! Gooda
people, work hard, live simple, naturale. You be happy, live outdoor,
walk in wood, pick little flower, send to me. I pick you mayflower,
send heem in letter.” Then he added, “Maybe I come, we take little boat
in Italian lake, Comrade Betty she sing little song! I think I like be
deport!”
“Take care of yourself, Bart!” said Cornelia. “If you want to come, pay
your fare, so then you can return.”
Bart laughed, and made his usual answer: “Anarchista musta make
propaganda!” She learned that even in the midst of these perils he was
organizing meetings and distributing literature. He was working with
that Italian, Boda--“you know heem, little feller, macaroni salesman,
he drive us one time for see dramma when we go Nick Sacc’.”
“I remember him.”
“He is got same little car. Is go bust in winter, but now he get
heem fixit, pretty soon he drive heem, we distriboot the books!” And
Bart laughed, like a bad boy. “Book wit’ red cover what so scare
polissman--you remember book is bring Coacci and Orciani one time in
Plymouth?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Is very bad book, molto pericoloso, is red anarchista cover, ‘Faccia à
Faccia col Nemico.’ Is reason for deporting Coacci--they find six copy
by heem, he say is the reason. He is gone two week now, maybe is Italy.
I get hees what you say--address--he got wife and children leav-èd
behind in Brockton. You maybe see heem in Italy.”
“Have you got any of those books in your house, Bart?”
“Shoore, two, t’ree copy, sell heem sometime. Nick Sacc’ is got more.
Nick he is not ’fraid, he go anyhow, is got passport, ticket, all
fixit. You not see Nick in Italy, he live in Sout’, way down in what
you call boot. He is happy feller, go Italy. Is got fifteen onderd
dollar save in bank--wife, she make heem sava ten dollar all week. Now
he go see rivoluzione, maybe help. Is young feller, can not stay here
when sooch great time come, can not be happy for trim edge of pretty
shoe for fine gentleman!”
“You really think there’s a revolution coming in Italy?”
“You watch, maybe see heem! Great sight for Yankee lady--nobody
harm you. Italian worker, he think America is free countree, good
countree--he think he make Italy be countree like America! He do not
know what happen to poor wop in Massachusett, he not read in paper how
Department of Joostice agent take poor seeck printer, torture heem,
beat heem, to make heem tell what Joostice agent want to be tell-èd!”
So it was with Bart--difficult to make jokes, or to plan for a holiday,
because all brain-paths led to these dreadful cruelties and sufferings.
Impossible to enjoy a luncheon, neatly served by a much-puzzled Negro
maid! No, Bart would begin to twist bread-crumbs into little pellets,
which was very bad manners; his look would grow abstracted and far
off, and Cornelia would understand that he was up in the fourteenth
story of the Park Row Building in New York, where two comrades might at
that moment be hanging by their thumbs, or having their arms twisted
behind their backs.--As a matter of fact they were being beaten in the
face with blood-stained shoes, said to have been worn by the bomber
who had been blown to fragments in front of the home of the Quaker
Attorney-General. It was a refinement of imagination difficult for an
uncultured Italian to foresee.
XIII
That night there was a theater-party, given by Rupert Alvin to
serve notice upon the world that all was well between himself and
his departing mother-in-law. They sat, very conspicuous, in a box,
Cornelia, Rupert and Deborah, their daughter Priscilla, Cornelia’s
nephew-in-law, Quincy Thornwell, and her second daughter, Alice
Thornwell Winters, who had given up her latest adorer in deference to
the family’s demands, and was now being rewarded in this public manner.
They saw an expensive and highly sophisticated comedy from New York,
dealing with people of their own social station who did not have to
give up anything, not even one another’s wives. After which the Alvin
limousine rolled to the station, and Cornelia and Deborah took the
midnight train to New York.
Next morning they drove in a taxi-cab, and inspected the fashionable
shops, and Deborah bought a few things, but Cornelia did not buy,
because everything would be so much cheaper abroad. They lunched at one
of the fashionable hotels, and took another taxi to the steamer; and on
the way Cornelia said to the driver, “Where is the Park Row Building?”
“Way downtown, ma’am, by City Hall Park.”
“We don’t go near it?”
“Not unless you want to make a trip.”
“Never mind,” said Cornelia; and her daughter asked, “Why are you
interested in the Park Row Building?”
“Oh, nothing; a couple of friends of mine have been tortured there for
the past three weeks.”
It was like that with Cornelia nowadays--impossible to carry on polite
conversation, to enjoy any sort of holiday. Deborah had to shut
her lips tight together, and pretend she had not heard. And pretty
soon there was the mighty steamer; the crowds, and the partings,
and the waving of handkerchiefs, and the promises to take good care
of yourself, and to write often, and to give my love to So-and-so;
and then a tear or two, and the gangways coming up, and the great
steamer sliding out into the river, and the tugs straightening it for
the journey. And then the long panorama of towering white and gray
buildings, the magical sky-line of Manhattan--
_Did ever a dream-city rise from the sea
That was fairer, more fleeting and fragile than she?_
But Cornelia missed all the poetical ecstasies, because she was
thinking, “Which is the Park Row Building? And which is the fourteenth
story?”
But there was no one to ask, and soon the sky-line faded, and there
was the Statue of Liberty, and she thought of Bart, and what it meant
to him. Then came the ocean, and the rolling of the ship, and she was
in her state-room for two days. When she came on deck again, there was
the daily newspaper, published from wireless reports for the benefit of
the vessel’s leisure class; and Cornelia read that at three o’clock on
the morning of the third of May, an Italian anarchist by the name of
Salsedo, held by the Department of Justice for complicity in the bomb
explosions of a year ago, had committed suicide by throwing himself
from the fourteenth story of the Park Row Building in New York.
No more details of such a horror, to trouble the sleek and contented
passengers of the _Floritania_. But two more days passed, and the
ship’s newspaper contained another item, this time from Brockton,
Massachusetts. Two Italians, leaders of a bandit-gang, had been nabbed
by the police, charged with the murder of the paymaster and a guard
of the Slater and Morrill shoe factory of South Braintree, and the
theft of a payroll of sixteen thousand dollars. It was believed that
this band had been responsible for numerous payroll hold-ups in
Eastern Massachusetts during the past year, and the police expected to
nab the other members within a few hours. Cornelia read this, but it