Илья Франк - Английский язык с Крестным Отцом

подбрасывать) his head up. Dr. Taza sat on the bed and said almost absently, "You

know, you're a widower. That's rare in Sicily." As if the distinction might comfort him.

Michael motioned to Don Tommasino to lean closer. The Don sat on the bed and bent

his head. "Tell my father to get me home," Michael said. "Tell my father I wish to be his

son."

But it was to be another month before Michael recovered from his injuries and another

two months after that before all the necessary papers and arrangements were ready.

Then he was flown from Palermo to Rome and from Rome to New York. In all that time

no trace had been found of Fabrizzio.

Book 7

Chapter 25

When Kay Adams received her college degree, she took a job teaching grade school

in her New Hampshire hometown. The first six months after Michael vanished she made

weekly telephone calls to his mother asking about him. Mrs. Corleone was always

friendly and always wound up saying, "You a very very nice girl. You forget about Mikey

and find a nice husband." Kay was not offended at her bluntness and understood that

the mother spoke out of concern for her as a young girl in an impossible situation.

When her first school term ended, she decided to go to New York to buy some decent

clothes and see some old college girl friends. She thought also about looking for some

sort of interesting job in New York. She had lived like a spinster for almost two years,

reading and teaching, refusing dates, refusing to go out at all, even though she had

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given up making calls to Long Beach. She knew she couldn't keep that up, she was

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becoming irritable and unhappy. But she had always believed Michael would write her

or send her a message of some sort. That he had not done so humiliated her, it

saddened her that he was so distrustful even of her.

She took an early train and was checked into her hotel by midafternoon. Her girl

friends worked and she didn't want to bother them at their jobs, she planned to call them

at night. And she didn't really feel like going shopping after the exhausting train trip.

Being alone in the hotel room, remembering all the times she and Michael had used

hotel rooms to make love, gave her a feeling of desolation. It was that more than

anything else that gave her the idea of calling Michael's mother out in Long Beach.

The phone was answered by a rough masculine voice with a typical, to her, New York

accent. Kay asked to speak to Mrs. Corelone. There was a few minutes' silence and

then Kay heard the heavily accented voice asking who it was.

Kay was a little embarrassed now. "This is Kay Adams, Mrs. Corleone," she said. "Do

you remember me?"

"Sure, sure, I remember you," Mrs. Corleone said. "How come you no call up no more?

You get a married?"

"Oh, no," Kay said. "I've been busy." She was surprised at the mother obviously being

annoyed that she had stopped calling. "Have you heard anything from Michael? Is he all

right?"

There was silence at the other end of the phone and then Mrs. Corleone's voice came

strong. "Mikey is a home. He no call you up? He no see you?"

Kay felt her stomach go weak from shock and a humiliating desire to weep. Her voice

broke a little when she asked, "How long has he been home?"

Mrs. Corleone said, "Six months."

"Oh, I see," Kay said. And she did. She felt hot waves of shame that Michael's mother

knew he was treating her so cheaply. And then she was angry. Angry at Michael, at his

mother, angry at all foreigners, Italians who didn't have the common courtesy to keep

up a decent show of friendship even if a love affair was over. Didn't Michael know she

would be concerned for him as a friend even if he no longer wanted her for a bed

companion, even if he no longer wanted to marry her? Did he think she was one of

those poor benighted Italian girls who would commit suicide or make a scene after

giving up her virginity and then being thrown over? But she kept her voice as cool as

possible. "I see, thank you very much," she said. "I'm glad Michael is home again and

all right. I just wanted to know. I won't call you again."

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177

Mrs. Corleone's voice came impatiently over the phone as if she had heard nothing

that Kay had said. "You wanta see Mikey, you come out here now. Give him a nice

surprise. You take a taxi, and I tell the man at the gate to pay the taxi for you. You tell

the taxi man he gets two times his clock, otherwise he no come way out the Long Beach.

But don't you pay. My husband's man at the gate pay the taxi."

"I couldn't do that, Mrs. Corleone," Kay said coldly. "If Michael wanted to see me, he

would have called me at home before this. Obviously he doesn't want to resume our

relationship."

Mrs. Corleone's voice came briskly over the phone. "You a very nice girl, you gotta

nice legs, but you no gotta much brains." She chuckled. "You come out to see me , not

Mikey. I wanta talk to you. You come right now. An' no pay the taxi. I wait for you." The

phone clicked. Mrs. Corleone had hung up.

Kay could have called back and said she wasn't coming but she knew she had to see

Michael, to talk to him, even if it was just polite talk. If he was home now, openly, that

meant he was no longer in trouble, he could live normally. She jumped off the bed and

started to get ready to see him. She took a great deal of care with her makeup and

dress. When she was ready to leave she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Was she

better-looking than when Michael had disappeared? Or would he find her unattractively

older? Her figure had become more womanly, her hips rounder, her breasts fuller.

Italians liked that supposedly, though Michael had always said he loved her being so

thin. It didn't matter really, Michael obviously didn't want anything to do with her

anymore, otherwise he most certainly would have called in the six months he had been

home.

The taxi she hailed refused to take her to Long Beach until she gave him a pretty

smile and told him she would pay double the meter. It was nearly an hour's ride and the

mall in Long Beach had changed since she last saw it. There were iron fences around it

and an iron gate barred the mall entrance. A man wearing slacks and a white jacket

over a red shirt opened the gate, poked his head into the cab to read the meter and

gave the cab driver some bills. Then when Kay saw the driver was not protesting and

was happy with the money paid, she got out and walked across the mall to the central

house.

Mrs. Corleone herself opened the door and greeted Kay with a warm embrace that

surprised her. Then she surveyed Kay with an appraising eye. "You a beautiful girl," she

said flatly. "I have stupid sons." She pulled Kay inside the door and led her to the

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kitchen, where a platter of food was already set out and a pot of coffee perked on the

stove. "Michael comes home pretty soon," she said. "You surprise him."

They sat down together and the old woman forced Kay to eat, meanwhile asking

questions with great curiosity. She was delighted that Kay was a schoolteacher and that

she had come to New York to visit old girl friends and that Kay was only twenty-four

years old. She kept nodding her head as if all the facts accorded with some private

specifications in her mind. Kay was so nervous that she just answered the questions,

never saying anything else.

She saw him first through the kitchen window. A car pulled up in front of the house

and the two other men got out. Then Michael. He straightened up to talk with one of the

other men. His profile, the left one, was exposed to her view. It was cracked, indented,

like the plastic face of a doll that a child has wantonly kicked. In a curious way it did not

mar his handsomeness in her eyes but moved her to tears. She saw him put a snow-

white handkerchief to his mouth and nose and hold it there for a moment while he

turned away to come into the house.

She heard the door open and his footsteps in the hall turning into the kitchen and then

he was in the open space, seeing her and his mother. He seemed impassive, and then

he smiled ever so slightly, the broken half of his face halting the widening of his mouth.

And Kay, who had meant just to say "Hello, how are you," in the coolest possible way,

slipped out of her seat to run into his arms, bury her face against his shoulder. He

kissed her wet cheek and held her until she finished weeping and then he walked her

out to his car, waved his bodyguard away and drove off with her beside him, she

repairing her makeup by simply wiping what was left of it away with her handkerchief.

"I never meant to do that," Kay said. "It's just that nobody told me how badly they hurt

you."

Michael laughed and touched the broken side of his face. "You mean this? That's

nothing. Just gives me sinus trouble. Now that I'm home I'll probably get it fixed, I

couldn't write you or anything," Michael said. "You have to understand that before

anything else."

"OK," she said.

"I've got a place in the city," Michael said. "Is it all right if we go there or should it be

dinner and drinks at a restaurant?"

"I'm not hungry," Kay said.

They drove toward New York in silence for a while. "Did you get your degree?" Michael

asked.

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"Yes," Kay said. "I'm teaching grade school in my hometown now. Did they find the

man who really killed the policeman, is that why you were able to come home?"

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For a moment Michael didn't answer. "Yes, they did," he said. "It was in all the New

York papers. Didn't you read about it?"

Kay laughed with the relief of him denying he was a murderer. "We only get The New

York Times up in our town," she said. "I guess it was buried back in page eighty-nine. If

I'd read about it I'd have called your mother sooner." She paused and then said, "It's

funny, the way your mother used to talk, I almost believed you had done it. And just

before you came, while we were drinking coffee, she told me about that crazy man who

confessed."

Michael said, "Maybe my mother did believe it at first."

"Your own mother?" Kay asked.

Michael grinned. "Mothers are like cops. They always believe the worst."

Michael parked the car in a garage on Mulberry Street where the owner seemed to

know him. He took Kay around the corner to what looked like a fairly decrepit

brownstone house which fitted into the rundown neighborhood. Michael had a key to the

front door and when they went inside Kay saw that it was as expensively and

comfortably furnished as a millionaire's town house. Michael led her to the upstairs

apartment which consisted of an enormous living room, a huge kitchen and door that

led to the bedroom. In one corner of the living room was a bar and Michael mixed them

both a drink. They sat on a sofa together and Michael said quietly, "We might as well go