Chapter Eight: Tree of Knowledge
Being a ward of the Frederic’s offered Argo, aside from being able to attend Rutgers, a family life he would not otherwise have been able to experience. Living, even part time, with a well-balanced family proved that the dysfunctional family life of the Machiarolla’s was aberrant. That the Frederic’s were Christian not only in name but also in manner provided both the evidence that it was possible to live as good Catholics and a model against which he could compare other families. Their standing in the community of the educated, their generosity, and their respect for the law were instructive for the young man. The mutual love of parents and children informed their daily life and were comforting to Argo even as he knew he was different from them.
Argo knew a harsher side of life, one in which physical torment was standard and suffering to be expected. Seeing his mother force herself to go to work despite her pain was a torment for the sensitive boy, and he grew to hate the father he never knew. His surrogate father, the brutish Tommy M., was not only a criminal but also a poor father to Joe. He was continually hollering and was as likely to hit his son as explain how the boy misbehaved. What was wrong one day was tolerated the next. The desultory Tommy M., it seemed, ruled the family by whim.
Yet Argo was always treated well by the Machiarollas, if a bit condescendingly, and they were indeed the most respected family in the neighborhood --- even by Monsignor Gioffi. And they were, of course, most generous both toward Argo and the community they controlled.
It was at the home of the Frederic’s, however, that Argo felt most at ease. There was no hollering or hitting, and when the family gathered every evening at dinner, there was conversation. Unlike the life he had known, there were no crises or threats, unnamed, always waiting to pounce. Donald Frederic had created a secure, if not mundane, situation for his girls, and Argo felt fortunate to be a part of it.
The Frederic’s home also offered a retreat from the crowded and impersonal hurly-burly of the state university. Rutgers, only a 20-minute car ride to midtown Manhattan, is a cosmopolitan school which offers its students a well-respected education, but the Georgian architecture belied the modernism which for Argo seemed precisely what was wrong with the direction of the nation.
For the conservative mind, challenges to the status quo are threats to stability and order. Much that was attractive to Argo about the Church was the form its traditions offered, the very traditions assailed in so many ways across the curriculum at the secular university. If Argo sensed a certain disassociation from his two families, that sense of alienation was pronounced at Rutgers.
Argo’s major in Romance languages would be a valuable addition to his church Latin, and his interest in English literature would make for a solid minor. On the entrance exams, Argo had placed out of freshman English and selected a course in Shakespeare for his first foray into literature. It was to prove his first foray into more than just res literati.
The smallish, finely boned Argo looked younger than his 16 years, and sitting in classrooms with older and bigger young men set him apart. But with his dark, curly hair and finely formed features, girls found him, if not dating material, at least “cute.” That was until they heard him in class and saw that he continually topped the classes in grades. In both the arts and science classes, Argo excelled, and that for more than a few coeds was attractive. He learned by his first semester that despite his being a aloof there was no shortage of classmates who found some reason to start a conversation. His reserve and politeness encouraged further contact, and he knew that any number of young women were interested him.
However, it was not only the students who found the young man attractive. His Shakespeare professor, Dr. Eustacia Venitor, was a thirty-year-old dyed blonde, attractively coiffed, stylishly dressed, tall, and imperially slim. She was a graduate of New York University in Greenwich Village and got her master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. Argo wondered why she wore oversized sunglasses in the classroom and decided that she was likely in hiding for the great workload she required of her students. There was a paper due every two weeks and a short-answer quiz after each play, designed to insure students came to each class having read. They did. In lieu of a final exam, students were to submit on the last day of class a term paper on a topic of their choosing.
The sylphlike Dr. Venitor’s carriage, her air of control, and her regal mien struck Argo. There was, however, a part of her that he found unusual and almost unsettling. Her wrists were so thin that, at rest, her hands folded almost completely down on her forearms reminding Argo of a praying mantis, and he thought she might be as deadly.
She was an associate professor whose excellent scholarship was matched by her preternatural drive to get tenure. Her lectures were exceedingly well prepared, her classroom demeanor warm, yet professional, and her enthusiasm for the Bard infectious. In some circles that infection was termed “Bardolatry.” Students who groused about the papers and the quizzes admitted that she was a fine instructor, and her students uniformly rated her highly in their end-term evaluations.
Argo appreciated her lengthy commentaries on his papers, on which he always received an A, and found her suggestions for improved syntax particularly instructive. In was with her lectures that Argo found difficulty. Her interpretations of passages seemed more political than literary, rendering her classes more polemic than artistic.
There was, however, an intriguing point of scholarship that arose during an early lecture on Romeo and Juliet. Dr. Venitor said that the plays were generally performed in about two hours and cited the line in the introduction to the play in which the Chorus refers to “the two hours traffic of our stage.” Argo asked in class how it would be possible to perform a play like Hamlet, which has four thousand lines and 28,000 words, in two or even three hours. Her answer was that the actors spoke more rapidly then than they do now. They spoke, she said with a smile exuding confidence, “trippingly on the tongue” --- a reference to Hamlet’s speaking to actors who were to perform a play he had arranged to be enacted in front of King Claudius.
That answer made little sense to Argo, who resolved to research the issue on his own. He indeed found stated in several critical texts that the plays were performed in “two hours or so.” But Argo calculated that given the speed of normal speech, about 150 words per minute, it would take well over three hours just to read Hamlet aloud. Given the time on stage where there is action and no dialogue and where there are songs and dances which were always performed, Hamlet would take four hours. Indeed, modern performances of Hamlet typically run three hours, after the elimination of large sections of the play.
Argo was rewarded for his library time by finding valuable source material from contemporary Elizabethan diaries and letters in which the writers referred to spending several hours at the theatres. That hard evidence along with the illogic of expecting actors to speed though lines, lines into which Shakespeare had put so much beauty and wit, prompted Argo to write a paper disproving the general acceptance of the time it took to perform the plays. He concluded that only the shorter plays could have been performed in about two hours but that the longer ones took well over three.
Students would be able to collect at Venitor’s office their graded final papers one week after their submission, and those students who wanted them returned by mail could submit them in a stamped manila envelope. Argo opted for the latter, and when he received his final paper in the mail it had on the cover page a large A++ with a smiley face. No comments were made nor suggestions for improved syntax but just the words, “Please see me, Argo.”
Her department secretary told him, when Argo went to her small office in the arts building, that Dr. Venitor was at home during the intersession and that Argo should call her there.
“Dr. Venitor, this is Argo Malle. Your secretary said you wanted me to call.”
“Yes, Argo. How are you?”
“Fine, and you?”
“Fine. It’s about your term paper. It was truly excellent, as I’ve come to expect from you, and I thought we could send it to College English for publication.” Argo did not respond. “It needs some work, but I definitely believe it’s worthy of publication. So if you’re willing to work with me on it, I’m available this week until the 24th.”
“I have to work during the recess, but I’m free after three until the weekend when my hours change, but I don’t know what they’ll be.”
“That can work,” she said hesitantly. “Is it possible for you to get to the city? I live in Greenwich Village just across from the arch in Washington Square Park.”
“I don’t have a car,” said Argo flatly.
“I don’t either; it’s in the shop again. They’re rebuilding the transmission. It’s an old Saab, a real heap,” she said. “But there’s a bus that stops at NYU --- I’ve taken it a number of times when I couldn’t drive. All you do is walk to New Brunswick Avenue across from the train station. They have the schedules at the bus stop, in a store front.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with it,” said Argo.
“I think they run to NYU three times a day, 7, 12, and 5-ish. I can hunt up a schedule and meet you at the bus stop here. It’s about 45-minutes.”
“What about getting back?” asked Argo.
“Well, you can walk or take the train to the Holland Tunnel stop, at Canal Street, and get the bus back to New Brunswick. It’s easy. About a fifteen-twenty minute walk.”
“Okay,” said Argo tentatively.
“Good, so pick a day. Today or tomorrow works for me.”
“Today would be all right,” said Argo who had planned to do Christmas shopping before visiting the Frederic’s on Christmas Eve.
“Good. Then I’ll go to the library this morning. NYU has a decent Elizabethan section. We’re going to need to flesh out the source material. If you can, bring whatever have.”
“I returned everything to Alexander,” said Argo. “But I can go back and get them, I guess.”
“If the librarians give you any trouble, tell them to call me. But they’re pretty decent about those kinds of things.”
“Okay.”
“Yes, I think we need to expand some of the quotations. College English likes longer quotations. Then they can have something to edit out,” she giggled. Argo returned the laugh. “So, good, Argo. I look forward to seeing you. I’ll be at the bus stop. Just wait there in case I run late --- and be sure to keep my number in case of anything.”
“I will,” said Argo like a little boy given a task by his mother.
“See you in a few hours, bye.”
“Bye.”
Argo got off the bus at 6:20, his books in a shopping bag, just across the street from the Greenwich Village arch. It was already dark and unusually cold for that time of year, but there was no wind and the air was dry, and it felt good to be out of the stuffy bus.
Venitor was wrapped in a black parka with a faux fur collar sipping hot coffee.
“Hi, Argo. Glad you were able to make it,” she said with a smile. She had on fresh wine-colored lipstick and darker than usual eyeliner.
“Hello, Dr. Venitor,” he answered politely and flashing his perfect, bright white teeth.
“Please call me Eustacia,” she said. “We’re not in class now --- and --- you’re no longer my student.”
Argo did not respond.
“That’s my building,” she said pointing to a 20-story art deco high-rise from the 1920’s. Hers was one of a series of high priced buildings ringing Washington Square, the most expensive apartments of which overlooked the famous arch. “I inherited my apartment from my grandmother. It doesn’t face the Square, but I’m fortunate to be in the building. It’s a good location.”
“It’s a beautiful building,” said Argo, intrigued by the geometric detailing around the windows and the copper crown at the top lit from below.
“Are you hungry?” she asked as they walked quickly in the frigid air. “I fixed us something. I hope you eat fish.”
“Yes,” said Argo, “I do.” The doorman, waiting in the warm foyer, opened the large, etched glass doors as they hurried in from the cold December night. It was right after Argo noticed an old Saab parked down the street. He had just turned seventeen, but he was not so innocent that he did not know why he was there.
The trip to Greenwich Village provided three firsts for Argo. It was the first time he had been with a woman and the first time he had anything published. It was also the first time he realized how academia, while more subtle, was as predatory as Tommy M.’s world. The good doctor Venitor had added little to the paper she had submitted for publication, and rather than submitting the research in Argo’s name alone, she added hers, and her name appeared first in the article.
It was to become just a one-nighter between professor and student. Argo on a number of occasions considered calling her but never could summon the nerve. He had hoped she would call, but she did so only when their article, almost a year later, had been accepted for publication. He was at work, and his dorm mate gave him the message. The next and last time he heard from her was when he received in the mail a copy of College English with a stick-um on the cover sporting a smiley face. That was the year Eustacia Venitor got her tenure.
Argo in his first year also took a required freshman biology class that turned out to be his favorite. Perhaps it was because of the professor, Mrs. Dillon---she refused to be called doctor--- a biochemist who was remarkably adept at relating her subject matter to human existence as a whole. She was a kind, matronly figure who tied her long gray hair back in a ponytail. Somehow even her lectures on single-celled organisms seemed to have cosmic importance. It was the chemistry of biology, of course, that was the basis of all living things on earth, but it was the biology that had life, which was life. Unlike in history and literature courses infused by the professorate with politics and advocacy, Mrs. Dillon’s class presented a purity of thought bound only by the limitations of observation. At the undergraduate level, at least, there were no vested interests, no biases, and no dissembling. It was the same with the calculus, but biology was alive, and it excited Argo to know that he was studying the very basis of existence on this planet.
It became clear in his second year that courses in literature and the social sciences would have little to offer. Based on the classes he had taken, Argo concluded that succeeding ones in those areas would differ little from those he had taken: they would be sounding boards for instructors who railed against the system they uniformly despised. He would be held captive by frustrated academics advocating, ironically Argo thought, the deconstruction of the society which supported them while offering nothing to replace it. Biology, on the other hand, offered hope, a hope that through research man would continue to unravel, like strands of DNA, the complexity of life and so improve it.
By the middle of his second year, Argo changed majors. Romance languages would be his minor, and he would major in biology with the maternal and brilliant Mrs. Dillon as his advisor. He was certain he wanted to do research in biochemistry, and there were teaching orders, of course, but he would need guidance on precisely what he would have to do to enlist and what options, if any, there were. The priests at nearby Seton Hall University would be the resource he needed.
Argo had kept in touch with Benny Musso who was studying at the seminary in Latrobe, PA. It was Benny’s plan to become a parish priest in Brooklyn, hopefully at Regina Pacis where he wanted to work with the parish youth and coach. He told Argo that most of the seminarians planned to work in parishes but that a few would join a teaching order. Argo could do the same. He described the seminary as a wonderful place situated in a verdant wood and led by dedicated priests, but he admitted missing Brooklyn. Benny’s parents had offered to drive Argo on their next visit at Easter so he could see first hand what was in store for him.
However Argo’s plans changed after his visit to the small campus of Seton Hall, and he never made the visit. Armed with his transcript from Rutgers, Argo met the dean of the university, Fr. Francis Sturdivant, an avuncular administrator who peeped owl-like over a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses sitting precariously at the end of his nose. He was a large man with a round, white face marred by red blotches and flaking skin which dotted the shoulders of his cassock.
He told Argo that he could apply to the seminary at Seton Hall either as a transfer student or upon his graduation from Rutgers. In either case, depending on which order he chose and given his academic talent, he would likely be able to get a doctorate, paid for by the order, and teach at the college level.
Argo was going to have to make decisions which at his age appeared to him life determining and irreversible. What he could not know, lacking the perspective of experience, is that what seem like choices made by careful analyses are often influenced by circumstances arising by chance. And so it was on that day with the scheduled appearance at Seton Hall of Fr. Owen Kearns, L.C., a veteran of the Legion of Christ and the publisher of the National Catholic Register and Catholic Twin Circle. Dean Sturdivant was to introduce the noted priest and invited Argo to attend the talk.
Fr. Kearns, with a trace of an Irish brogue, addressed the students and faculty on the work of the Legion of Christ, an order of priests compared to the Marine Corps and even Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He described the super order as being on an all-or-nothing mission bent only on making the world the kingdom of Christ. “Each legionary is made over into a fearless, loving, self-emptying image of Christ; fiercely loyal, tough, and full of zeal.”
With a sonorous voice, fiery eyes, and a thick shock of dark hair, the imposing Fr. Kearns was a perfect recruiter for an elite corps of highly trained and dedicated priests whose order was born in 1941 and established by Pontifical Rite in 1965. They have come to the novitiate in Connecticut, he said, from various avenues: former star athletes, business leaders, newspapermen, military officers, and minor seminarians.
Fr. Kearns explained that his was a new order, small but growing in influence around the world. Pope John Paul II was particularly impressed by their targeted work in the promotion of Catholic doctrine, education, work in the mass media, and spiritual collaboration with diocesan priests; and the pontiff encouraged a worldwide effort to seek the best of the best. However, Fr. Kearns pointed out that Legionary priests are prepared by a long, gradual, customized formation that would take from 10 to 12 years. Candidacy and novitiate are followed by studies in the humanities, philosophy, and theology, as well as an apostolic internship. Not everyone was expected to achieve acceptance into the Legion.
Then he added matter-of-factly, “Following ordination to the priesthood, Legionaries also continue postgraduate studies.” For Argo, those words were certainly anything but matter-of-fact; they were critical. Fr. Kearns was recruiting for a new order of elite priests expected to do graduate work and whose goal was to shape the world into a Christ-like state. Argo’s research in microbiology would provide the Legion of Christ with solid groundwork to understand more fully the nature of man, additional, fact-based knowledge which Catholic theologians could use to lead the Church into the third millennium.
Being a ward of the Frederic’s offered Argo, aside from being able to attend Rutgers, a family life he would not otherwise have been able to experience. Living, even part time, with a well-balanced family proved that the dysfunctional family life of the Machiarolla’s was aberrant. That the Frederic’s were Christian not only in name but also in manner provided both the evidence that it was possible to live as good Catholics and a model against which he could compare other families. Their standing in the community of the educated, their generosity, and their respect for the law were instructive for the young man. The mutual love of parents and children informed their daily life and were comforting to Argo even as he knew he was different from them.
Argo knew a harsher side of life, one in which physical torment was standard and suffering to be expected. Seeing his mother force herself to go to work despite her pain was a torment for the sensitive boy, and he grew to hate the father he never knew. His surrogate father, the brutish Tommy M., was not only a criminal but also a poor father to Joe. He was continually hollering and was as likely to hit his son as explain how the boy misbehaved. What was wrong one day was tolerated the next. The desultory Tommy M., it seemed, ruled the family by whim.
Yet Argo was always treated well by the Machiarollas, if a bit condescendingly, and they were indeed the most respected family in the neighborhood --- even by Monsignor Gioffi. And they were, of course, most generous both toward Argo and the community they controlled.
It was at the home of the Frederic’s, however, that Argo felt most at ease. There was no hollering or hitting, and when the family gathered every evening at dinner, there was conversation. Unlike the life he had known, there were no crises or threats, unnamed, always waiting to pounce. Donald Frederic had created a secure, if not mundane, situation for his girls, and Argo felt fortunate to be a part of it.
The Frederic’s home also offered a retreat from the crowded and impersonal hurly-burly of the state university. Rutgers, only a 20-minute car ride to midtown Manhattan, is a cosmopolitan school which offers its students a well-respected education, but the Georgian architecture belied the modernism which for Argo seemed precisely what was wrong with the direction of the nation.
For the conservative mind, challenges to the status quo are threats to stability and order. Much that was attractive to Argo about the Church was the form its traditions offered, the very traditions assailed in so many ways across the curriculum at the secular university. If Argo sensed a certain disassociation from his two families, that sense of alienation was pronounced at Rutgers.
Argo’s major in Romance languages would be a valuable addition to his church Latin, and his interest in English literature would make for a solid minor. On the entrance exams, Argo had placed out of freshman English and selected a course in Shakespeare for his first foray into literature. It was to prove his first foray into more than just res literati.
The smallish, finely boned Argo looked younger than his 16 years, and sitting in classrooms with older and bigger young men set him apart. But with his dark, curly hair and finely formed features, girls found him, if not dating material, at least “cute.” That was until they heard him in class and saw that he continually topped the classes in grades. In both the arts and science classes, Argo excelled, and that for more than a few coeds was attractive. He learned by his first semester that despite his being a aloof there was no shortage of classmates who found some reason to start a conversation. His reserve and politeness encouraged further contact, and he knew that any number of young women were interested him.
However, it was not only the students who found the young man attractive. His Shakespeare professor, Dr. Eustacia Venitor, was a thirty-year-old dyed blonde, attractively coiffed, stylishly dressed, tall, and imperially slim. She was a graduate of New York University in Greenwich Village and got her master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. Argo wondered why she wore oversized sunglasses in the classroom and decided that she was likely in hiding for the great workload she required of her students. There was a paper due every two weeks and a short-answer quiz after each play, designed to insure students came to each class having read. They did. In lieu of a final exam, students were to submit on the last day of class a term paper on a topic of their choosing.
The sylphlike Dr. Venitor’s carriage, her air of control, and her regal mien struck Argo. There was, however, a part of her that he found unusual and almost unsettling. Her wrists were so thin that, at rest, her hands folded almost completely down on her forearms reminding Argo of a praying mantis, and he thought she might be as deadly.
She was an associate professor whose excellent scholarship was matched by her preternatural drive to get tenure. Her lectures were exceedingly well prepared, her classroom demeanor warm, yet professional, and her enthusiasm for the Bard infectious. In some circles that infection was termed “Bardolatry.” Students who groused about the papers and the quizzes admitted that she was a fine instructor, and her students uniformly rated her highly in their end-term evaluations.
Argo appreciated her lengthy commentaries on his papers, on which he always received an A, and found her suggestions for improved syntax particularly instructive. In was with her lectures that Argo found difficulty. Her interpretations of passages seemed more political than literary, rendering her classes more polemic than artistic.
There was, however, an intriguing point of scholarship that arose during an early lecture on Romeo and Juliet. Dr. Venitor said that the plays were generally performed in about two hours and cited the line in the introduction to the play in which the Chorus refers to “the two hours traffic of our stage.” Argo asked in class how it would be possible to perform a play like Hamlet, which has four thousand lines and 28,000 words, in two or even three hours. Her answer was that the actors spoke more rapidly then than they do now. They spoke, she said with a smile exuding confidence, “trippingly on the tongue” --- a reference to Hamlet’s speaking to actors who were to perform a play he had arranged to be enacted in front of King Claudius.
That answer made little sense to Argo, who resolved to research the issue on his own. He indeed found stated in several critical texts that the plays were performed in “two hours or so.” But Argo calculated that given the speed of normal speech, about 150 words per minute, it would take well over three hours just to read Hamlet aloud. Given the time on stage where there is action and no dialogue and where there are songs and dances which were always performed, Hamlet would take four hours. Indeed, modern performances of Hamlet typically run three hours, after the elimination of large sections of the play.
Argo was rewarded for his library time by finding valuable source material from contemporary Elizabethan diaries and letters in which the writers referred to spending several hours at the theatres. That hard evidence along with the illogic of expecting actors to speed though lines, lines into which Shakespeare had put so much beauty and wit, prompted Argo to write a paper disproving the general acceptance of the time it took to perform the plays. He concluded that only the shorter plays could have been performed in about two hours but that the longer ones took well over three.
Students would be able to collect at Venitor’s office their graded final papers one week after their submission, and those students who wanted them returned by mail could submit them in a stamped manila envelope. Argo opted for the latter, and when he received his final paper in the mail it had on the cover page a large A++ with a smiley face. No comments were made nor suggestions for improved syntax but just the words, “Please see me, Argo.”
Her department secretary told him, when Argo went to her small office in the arts building, that Dr. Venitor was at home during the intersession and that Argo should call her there.
“Dr. Venitor, this is Argo Malle. Your secretary said you wanted me to call.”
“Yes, Argo. How are you?”
“Fine, and you?”
“Fine. It’s about your term paper. It was truly excellent, as I’ve come to expect from you, and I thought we could send it to College English for publication.” Argo did not respond. “It needs some work, but I definitely believe it’s worthy of publication. So if you’re willing to work with me on it, I’m available this week until the 24th.”
“I have to work during the recess, but I’m free after three until the weekend when my hours change, but I don’t know what they’ll be.”
“That can work,” she said hesitantly. “Is it possible for you to get to the city? I live in Greenwich Village just across from the arch in Washington Square Park.”
“I don’t have a car,” said Argo flatly.
“I don’t either; it’s in the shop again. They’re rebuilding the transmission. It’s an old Saab, a real heap,” she said. “But there’s a bus that stops at NYU --- I’ve taken it a number of times when I couldn’t drive. All you do is walk to New Brunswick Avenue across from the train station. They have the schedules at the bus stop, in a store front.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with it,” said Argo.
“I think they run to NYU three times a day, 7, 12, and 5-ish. I can hunt up a schedule and meet you at the bus stop here. It’s about 45-minutes.”
“What about getting back?” asked Argo.
“Well, you can walk or take the train to the Holland Tunnel stop, at Canal Street, and get the bus back to New Brunswick. It’s easy. About a fifteen-twenty minute walk.”
“Okay,” said Argo tentatively.
“Good, so pick a day. Today or tomorrow works for me.”
“Today would be all right,” said Argo who had planned to do Christmas shopping before visiting the Frederic’s on Christmas Eve.
“Good. Then I’ll go to the library this morning. NYU has a decent Elizabethan section. We’re going to need to flesh out the source material. If you can, bring whatever have.”
“I returned everything to Alexander,” said Argo. “But I can go back and get them, I guess.”
“If the librarians give you any trouble, tell them to call me. But they’re pretty decent about those kinds of things.”
“Okay.”
“Yes, I think we need to expand some of the quotations. College English likes longer quotations. Then they can have something to edit out,” she giggled. Argo returned the laugh. “So, good, Argo. I look forward to seeing you. I’ll be at the bus stop. Just wait there in case I run late --- and be sure to keep my number in case of anything.”
“I will,” said Argo like a little boy given a task by his mother.
“See you in a few hours, bye.”
“Bye.”
Argo got off the bus at 6:20, his books in a shopping bag, just across the street from the Greenwich Village arch. It was already dark and unusually cold for that time of year, but there was no wind and the air was dry, and it felt good to be out of the stuffy bus.
Venitor was wrapped in a black parka with a faux fur collar sipping hot coffee.
“Hi, Argo. Glad you were able to make it,” she said with a smile. She had on fresh wine-colored lipstick and darker than usual eyeliner.
“Hello, Dr. Venitor,” he answered politely and flashing his perfect, bright white teeth.
“Please call me Eustacia,” she said. “We’re not in class now --- and --- you’re no longer my student.”
Argo did not respond.
“That’s my building,” she said pointing to a 20-story art deco high-rise from the 1920’s. Hers was one of a series of high priced buildings ringing Washington Square, the most expensive apartments of which overlooked the famous arch. “I inherited my apartment from my grandmother. It doesn’t face the Square, but I’m fortunate to be in the building. It’s a good location.”
“It’s a beautiful building,” said Argo, intrigued by the geometric detailing around the windows and the copper crown at the top lit from below.
“Are you hungry?” she asked as they walked quickly in the frigid air. “I fixed us something. I hope you eat fish.”
“Yes,” said Argo, “I do.” The doorman, waiting in the warm foyer, opened the large, etched glass doors as they hurried in from the cold December night. It was right after Argo noticed an old Saab parked down the street. He had just turned seventeen, but he was not so innocent that he did not know why he was there.
The trip to Greenwich Village provided three firsts for Argo. It was the first time he had been with a woman and the first time he had anything published. It was also the first time he realized how academia, while more subtle, was as predatory as Tommy M.’s world. The good doctor Venitor had added little to the paper she had submitted for publication, and rather than submitting the research in Argo’s name alone, she added hers, and her name appeared first in the article.
It was to become just a one-nighter between professor and student. Argo on a number of occasions considered calling her but never could summon the nerve. He had hoped she would call, but she did so only when their article, almost a year later, had been accepted for publication. He was at work, and his dorm mate gave him the message. The next and last time he heard from her was when he received in the mail a copy of College English with a stick-um on the cover sporting a smiley face. That was the year Eustacia Venitor got her tenure.
Argo in his first year also took a required freshman biology class that turned out to be his favorite. Perhaps it was because of the professor, Mrs. Dillon---she refused to be called doctor--- a biochemist who was remarkably adept at relating her subject matter to human existence as a whole. She was a kind, matronly figure who tied her long gray hair back in a ponytail. Somehow even her lectures on single-celled organisms seemed to have cosmic importance. It was the chemistry of biology, of course, that was the basis of all living things on earth, but it was the biology that had life, which was life. Unlike in history and literature courses infused by the professorate with politics and advocacy, Mrs. Dillon’s class presented a purity of thought bound only by the limitations of observation. At the undergraduate level, at least, there were no vested interests, no biases, and no dissembling. It was the same with the calculus, but biology was alive, and it excited Argo to know that he was studying the very basis of existence on this planet.
It became clear in his second year that courses in literature and the social sciences would have little to offer. Based on the classes he had taken, Argo concluded that succeeding ones in those areas would differ little from those he had taken: they would be sounding boards for instructors who railed against the system they uniformly despised. He would be held captive by frustrated academics advocating, ironically Argo thought, the deconstruction of the society which supported them while offering nothing to replace it. Biology, on the other hand, offered hope, a hope that through research man would continue to unravel, like strands of DNA, the complexity of life and so improve it.
By the middle of his second year, Argo changed majors. Romance languages would be his minor, and he would major in biology with the maternal and brilliant Mrs. Dillon as his advisor. He was certain he wanted to do research in biochemistry, and there were teaching orders, of course, but he would need guidance on precisely what he would have to do to enlist and what options, if any, there were. The priests at nearby Seton Hall University would be the resource he needed.
Argo had kept in touch with Benny Musso who was studying at the seminary in Latrobe, PA. It was Benny’s plan to become a parish priest in Brooklyn, hopefully at Regina Pacis where he wanted to work with the parish youth and coach. He told Argo that most of the seminarians planned to work in parishes but that a few would join a teaching order. Argo could do the same. He described the seminary as a wonderful place situated in a verdant wood and led by dedicated priests, but he admitted missing Brooklyn. Benny’s parents had offered to drive Argo on their next visit at Easter so he could see first hand what was in store for him.
However Argo’s plans changed after his visit to the small campus of Seton Hall, and he never made the visit. Armed with his transcript from Rutgers, Argo met the dean of the university, Fr. Francis Sturdivant, an avuncular administrator who peeped owl-like over a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses sitting precariously at the end of his nose. He was a large man with a round, white face marred by red blotches and flaking skin which dotted the shoulders of his cassock.
He told Argo that he could apply to the seminary at Seton Hall either as a transfer student or upon his graduation from Rutgers. In either case, depending on which order he chose and given his academic talent, he would likely be able to get a doctorate, paid for by the order, and teach at the college level.
Argo was going to have to make decisions which at his age appeared to him life determining and irreversible. What he could not know, lacking the perspective of experience, is that what seem like choices made by careful analyses are often influenced by circumstances arising by chance. And so it was on that day with the scheduled appearance at Seton Hall of Fr. Owen Kearns, L.C., a veteran of the Legion of Christ and the publisher of the National Catholic Register and Catholic Twin Circle. Dean Sturdivant was to introduce the noted priest and invited Argo to attend the talk.
Fr. Kearns, with a trace of an Irish brogue, addressed the students and faculty on the work of the Legion of Christ, an order of priests compared to the Marine Corps and even Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He described the super order as being on an all-or-nothing mission bent only on making the world the kingdom of Christ. “Each legionary is made over into a fearless, loving, self-emptying image of Christ; fiercely loyal, tough, and full of zeal.”
With a sonorous voice, fiery eyes, and a thick shock of dark hair, the imposing Fr. Kearns was a perfect recruiter for an elite corps of highly trained and dedicated priests whose order was born in 1941 and established by Pontifical Rite in 1965. They have come to the novitiate in Connecticut, he said, from various avenues: former star athletes, business leaders, newspapermen, military officers, and minor seminarians.
Fr. Kearns explained that his was a new order, small but growing in influence around the world. Pope John Paul II was particularly impressed by their targeted work in the promotion of Catholic doctrine, education, work in the mass media, and spiritual collaboration with diocesan priests; and the pontiff encouraged a worldwide effort to seek the best of the best. However, Fr. Kearns pointed out that Legionary priests are prepared by a long, gradual, customized formation that would take from 10 to 12 years. Candidacy and novitiate are followed by studies in the humanities, philosophy, and theology, as well as an apostolic internship. Not everyone was expected to achieve acceptance into the Legion.
Then he added matter-of-factly, “Following ordination to the priesthood, Legionaries also continue postgraduate studies.” For Argo, those words were certainly anything but matter-of-fact; they were critical. Fr. Kearns was recruiting for a new order of elite priests expected to do graduate work and whose goal was to shape the world into a Christ-like state. Argo’s research in microbiology would provide the Legion of Christ with solid groundwork to understand more fully the nature of man, additional, fact-based knowledge which Catholic theologians could use to lead the Church into the third millennium.
l
“Hello, Argo? This is Joe. I got some bad news,” said Joe Machiarolla on one of his rare phone calls to Argo. It was midnight, and Argo had just fallen asleep. “It’s my grandmother. She had a stroke. She died.”
Argo said nothing as the blood rushed to his face.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to know right away.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Argo. “When did it happen?”
“Just before. An hour or so. She was dead when they got there --- the EMS guys.”
“How are your parents?”
“Not good. You want me to pick you up?”
“Do you know where my dorm is?”
“No.”
“That’s okay,” said Argo. “Meet me at the State Theater; remember where that is?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
“It takes a half hour. I’ll see you then,” said Argo.
Argo and Joe were nineteen on that October night in 1986, Argo a senior at Rutgers and Joe working for his father in Brooklyn. Having less in common with each other as time passed, they had seen less of each other. However, as often happens in families, the loss of loved ones brings survivors together. There is a need at those times for mutual support, to comfort one another, but mainly to reestablish a connection to something larger than oneself. If the Machiarollas were a surrogate family for Argo, Carmela Machiarolla was his grandmother. She had been there for him when his mother could not and loved him like her own. And as both Joe and Argo stood over her casket looking at was once the face of comfort and giving, they wept for their loss.
Perhaps for others, seeing a loved one dead was somehow cathartic. It finalized for them what words could not. For Argo, however, the sight of Carmela in her coffin was torturous, as it was when he saw his mother, lifeless and grotesquely painted. To learn of their death was horrid; to see them so, worse. The smell of roses in the dead air of the funeral parlor sickened him, and he rushed out to the street fighting the nausea that crawled like worms up to his throat.
It was a threateningly dark fall day and the wind from the east blew leaves and debris down 65th Street. The first drops of rain appeared, and two nuns, their habits billowing behind them like eerie black sails, hurried to their convent across the street. Ago shoved his hands in his jacket and walked quickly to a coffee shop two blocks ahead. It had begun to rain in earnest by the time he sat by the window, coffee in front of him, gazing at what had become a deluge being blown in sheets across the avenue. Cars, their headlights on in hope of better visibility, managed their way slowly along the thoroughfare as the traffic light strung across the avenue twisted as if in pain.
Argo vowed he would never allow himself to see another of his loved ones in an open casket. The idea seemed brutally bizarre, designed to punish those who had the temerity to live on. His last memory before seeing her so harrowingly laid out was at her birthday that July when he kissed her good-bye. Her eyes, loving and warm, sparkled as she tenderly ran her soft hand on his check. Now, he wondered, if he would remember her that way or in her coffin, crucifix on her breast, cheeks sunken with painted lips.
Even the funeral, with its fifty- or sixty-car caravan to Calvary Cemetery in Queens, it was after all the mother of a don, would not be as bad as the wake at the sprawling Collangelo’s Funeral Home. That was where all the wakes for ranking families were held from as far back as the Thirties when Frankie Yale, Joey’s great granduncle, was gunned down in broad daylight around the corner. Argo had been to several of these ceremonies, each one exactly like the rest. The body would be driven the five blocks to the church for a funeral mass, limousines would line up outside the church and around the block to drive the body, under police escort, to the cemetery. A parish priest would officiate at the head of the casket which sat on a gurney in front of a monument or family mausoleum, the mother or sister --- not the wife --- would throw herself on the casket begging to be buried with the deceased, and the other attendees would throw flowers on the coffin before it was positioned in its final resting place. Rain or shine, the ceremony took twenty minutes, seldom more, never less. All adults, including Argo, had black outfits used only for funerals. Attendees, depending on their stations, and the priest, would be invited for a meal at the house of the nearest relative, or to either of only three Italian restaurants. The others would go home and hang up their funeral attire until the next time. Death was very much a part of life in Bensonhurst.
Argo wiped tears from his eyes as he sat in the luncheonette, sad for his loss but consoled by the speed and lack of suffering Carmela suffered. A chill ran up his spine, and he sipped the coffee in a vain effort to get warm. Perhaps he had been too young when his mother died, but this loss was more acute. Along with the passing of Carmela was the loss of his early childhood, the days when he played by himself with his toys in her kitchen waiting for his mother to return from work, the days when he sat on Carmela’s lap feeling her warmth and smelling her special lavender hand lotion. Argo mourned that loss, and only the Holy Mother Church could replace it.
When Argo saw Joey’s Mustang creep along the avenue, he rushed from the luncheonette and got in.
“Where’d you go? I’m looking for you,” said Joe Machiarolla peevishly.
“I got coffee,” said Argo, wet from the short run from the coffee shop to the car.
“They got coffee in Collangelo’s.”
“I needed to get out of there. I just can’t take wakes.”
“Well, you could’ve let me know. I got something I need to tell you.”
Argo ran his hands through his hair and wiped them dry on his pants.
Joe made a left on 66th Street heading back to his house. “It’s my father. It looks like he’s going to jail.”
“Why?” asked Argo looking at Joe who looked back at him for an instant before he returned to negotiating his way through the torrent.
“Well, we don’t know for sure, of course, but the lawyers say the feds have a good case.”
“For what?” asked Argo again.
“A couple of things. It’s a RICO case. The main thing is that they have evidence of money laundering --- the profits from his businesses --- you have to pay income tax on illegal income.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“Bobby Cangemi flipped. You know him?”
“No.”
“He’s a lawyer who worked for my father. He got caught with a pound of powder. So instead of taking a year in prison, he wears a wire. My father trusted him too much, I guess. So they have him on tape talking about moving some money to St. Lucia, a bank there.”
“What money?”
“I don’t know,” answered Joe petulantly. “Money he earns. It’s got to go somewhere.”
Apparently Joe did not want to tell him, but Argo suspected, correctly, that the profits had come from gambling and prostitution. Tommy M. had long since left the drugs to the other families.
“Cangemi’s family moved. They’re probably already someplace in like Salt Lake City. But as long as he’s in the City, there’s a chance we can get him.”
Argo had to resist telling his friend that compounding the felony would only exacerbate an already bad situation.
“Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was that my uncle Carlo, he’s really my father’s first cousin, will take over things if he gets convicted. And I’ll be working directly under him.” There was a sense of pride in the way Joe told him the “good news.”
Argo said nothing.
“My father will still be in charge no matter how long he’s away,” added Joe, who pulled into his driveway but kept the car running.
“How long a … what kind of time is he looking at?” asked Argo.
“I don’t know,” said Joe with a shrug. “First offense --- it depends on the lawyers and the judge --- maybe eight, ten years.” Joe looked at Argo. “It’s not good. She’s upset, of course. Maybe the funeral will take her mind off it a little bit.”
“Maybe,” said Argo, sensing that neither of them believed it would.
“The trial starts next April,” said Joe. “But don’t say anything, you know, that would get her upset.”
“No. Of course not,” said Argo, then after a hesitation added, “But I have to tell you, Joey, I’m not … it’s not good to know that you’re getting more involved in ….”
“What do you mean?” asked Joe knowing full well what he meant.
“It should be obvious,” answered Argo. “Look what your parents are facing. And you…”
“It’s not obvious, to me,” Joe interrupted. “What’s obvious to you may not be obvious to me, you know what I mean?”
“Right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said “should be obvious.” I should have said “seems obvious to me.”
Joe shut the wipers off but kept the car idling. The rain had not let up and hammered loudly on the roof despite the rush of the air conditioning.
“Are we going in?” asked Argo.
“It’s better to talk here, more private,” he answered looking at the odd rivulets of rain run down the windshield.
Argo sensed that this was going to be the conversation he never wanted to have. With the death of Carmela, he had just lost the biggest part of his childhood, and he feared he was now going to lose what remained of his youth. Joey was all that was left.
“It’s odd,” began Joe still not looking at Argo. “I mean, we’re like brothers, but we’re very different.”
“In some ways.”
“Not in everything, but we’re different. We always were.” He turned to make eye contact with Argo who nodded in agreement. “I mean, you’re going to become a priest!”
“And you’re going into the family business,” answered Argo.
“Right. Not everyone is like you. I don’t know why you decided to become a priest. Look,” Joe explained. “If you were a Jew, you wouldn’t become a priest. It’s like what you’re born into that makes you what you are. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“You’re with the books and you’re really smart. So you become a priest. Me, I’m different, smart in a different way. My father runs a family, and he wants me to follow him.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“But I want to.” Joe shifted in his seat, trying to decide how to continue. “Look,” he said finally as he opened the glove compartment. “That’s a 9mm Beretta. My father gave it to me when I turned 18.” Argo looked at the pistol and back at Joe who was looking directly at him. “You see, we’re soldiers. I don’t really expect you to understand. You’re a student. You live in a different world. You…”
“We live in the same world,” Argo interrupted.
“You know what I mean,” said Joe closing the glove compartment harder than he had to. “I’m trying to talk to you.”
“I just said that we live in the same world. What you do in that world affects a lot of people. If you say we live in different worlds it means that you can do whatever you want since it impacts only on those in your world.”
“I’m not saying that,” answered Joe. He was looking out the window again. “Look, we’re businessmen --- in tough businesses --- we need to protect our interests just like every other business.”
“Other businesses don’t need guns.”
“No, they make the laws to suit themselves. They have big money to make sure their interests are protected. They do whatever they can to cut the other guy’s throat, legal or illegal. The average guy can’t compete, but we found a way. It’s a tough world, and unless you’re tougher than they are, you lose, big time.”
Argo returned to his point. “So you’re father’s going to jail, and you want…”
“That’s the price you pay. We’re soldiers fighting the corporations and the laws they set up for themselves. You can’t be a soldier if you’re afraid of getting hurt. You got to fight if you want to win.”
“Why fight? There are a million ways to make a living without fighting.”
“Yeah, if you want to bend over and take it. I don’t plan to bend --- to let them get richer on my back.”
“But when you break the law you …”
“What law?” snapped Joe turning back to Argo. “The law they make for themselves? The law they break whenever they can? The law is for the peasants!”
“And God’s law?”
Joe stopped, his eyes shifted to the right. “God’s law is God’s law. When I die, I’ll answer for what I did just like everyone else. But I don’t think God will blame me for fighting against the thieves and crooks who run this country, from the politicians, to the cops, to the fat cats who own the corporations.”
Argo knew it was best not to go any further. Joe was dedicated to the things that were Caesar’s. It was a question of values, of course, and how could the son of Tommy M. not want to emulate his father, a powerful man with his own system of morality, violent against his foes yet loved by the community to which he was so generous? Argo would lose this argument, but there would be others.
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” said Argo softly.
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