The Good Left Undone(79)
“Papa, now!” Piccolo said urgently from the doorway.
Mattiuzzi followed Piccolo to the back. He handed the gold watches to his son. As Piccolo went down the ladder, Mattiuzzi scattered worthless paperwork on the desk and tools on the worktable that he had planned to sell. He knelt and crawled under the worktable, following his son to the crawl space and basement below. Mattiuzzi placed his feet on the ladder. He took a final look around, making certain he had removed everything of value.
“Papa. Andiamo!” Piccolo whispered from below. Amedeo pulled the trapdoor shut over his head, locked it, and descended the ladder with his son’s help.
Mattiuzzi had covered the trapdoor overhead with a piece of woven carpeting that matched the rug under the table. He’d rigged the pedal of the bruting wheel to snap into place over the carpeting so the trapdoor would hopefully go undetected. He prayed the ruse would work.
Carolina made the sign of the cross as her husband took a seat on the bench next to her in the dank hole. Piccolo snuffed out the tiny flicker of the oil lamp. Mattiuzzi’s twelve-year-old daughter, Gloriana, was terrified in the void, but less so as her mother pulled her close.
The girl sat on the hamper of food covered with a blanket. There was a large flask of water, a lone tin cup dangling from its neck. There were more blankets and pillows stuffed underneath the bench. They brought the radio below and a spare can of oil for the lamp. Amedeo’s wife had packed their dishes and crystal from Italy in crates, which cramped the basement room. He was too frightened to be angry with her. Their money and personal papers were stored on Mattiuzzi’s person. Their cat, Nero, mewed.
“The cat?” Amedeo clucked. His daughter picked up the black cat and held her. The cat stopped mewing, as if she understood.
“What if they set a fire?” his wife whispered.
“They won’t burn their own property.” He pointed left and right to indicate the emporium and the bar, Scottish-owned.
Piccolo held his fingers to his lips and pointed above.
The Mattiuzzis heard the shatter of their glass storefront. They heard the repeated whack of an ax as it battered the front door down. They heard the voices. The chant of “Dirty Tallies” from the street was followed by the smashing of the display cases, one by one. Amedeo’s wife closed her eyes and clung to their daughter. She silently prayed the rosary as their life’s work was destroyed. Piccolo became enraged; his father had to restrain him from going up the ladder and confronting the looters.
“Matt-uh-zee,” one of the men called out in a singsong fashion. “Matt-uh-zee?” The mispronunciation of their family name told the Mattiuzzis that the mob did not know them. The floor above them shook violently as the looters trampled through the workroom. Their footfalls were so loud the Mattiuzzis believed they might come through the warped floor.
The Mattiuzzis froze, barely able to breathe. They heard laughter, which sent a chill through them.
“Smash the wheel,” one man said.
“Can’t get it to move,” another said.
“Take the papers.”
The ordinary sounds of the workroom, the hum of the wheel and the tinker of the tools, were replaced by an ugly overture of violence, the swing of wooden bats destroying their worktable. The looters picked up the tools the jeweler had staged and destroyed Mattiuzzi’s property with them too. Mattiuzzi felt the blows to his shop in his body as they smashed the window and shattered the glass in the picture frames and mirrors. They even swung at the lightbulbs overhead until nothing was left but wire.
“Go upstairs!” a man barked. “Make work of it!”
The apartment was his wife’s domain. She took her husband’s hand and gripped it as she imagined their feather beds ripped at the seams and the destruction of the wooden rocker her husband had made for her before Piccolo was born. She pictured the hand-carved spokes of the chair ripped from their sockets and the tongue-and-groove skis that curved the supports snapped in half. Ruined. Carolina thought of Gloriana’s room and her dollhouse. She had made her daughter a rag doll when she was little. “I have Fissay,” she whispered to her mother. Too old to play with dolls, Gloriana treasured her childhood toy because her mother had made it especially for her. The girl was not about to allow a group of thugs to destroy her mother’s handiwork.
More men poured into Mattiuzzi’s building, tramped up the stairs, only to return to the shop moments later, once again shaking the floor overhead. The family heard the footfalls cross from the back of the store to the front. They heard the tinkle of the bells over the front door as the mob left through the open frame. Mattiuzzi put his head in his hands. The front door of the shop had been a work of art, inlaid with the finest Scottish lead glass made in the mills of Edinburgh. They are destroying their own creations, Mattiuzzi thought.
After a few minutes of silence, certain they were gone, Piccolo whispered, “Let’s go up, Papa,” as he lit the oil lamp.
Mattiuzzi shook his head no, blew out the lamp, and looked up when the workroom floor creaked over their heads. Someone figured out where they were hiding.
More footsteps clomped through overhead as several men joined the man in the workroom.
In the basement, the Mattiuzzis dared not move. Soon the lingering footsteps crossed the workroom and followed the rest out the front door. They heard the jingle of the bells again as the door shook and the looters climbed through it.