One of the things that has always interested me about the several Italian sections of New York City is their love feuds. Every day and every hour, in all these sections, is being enacted those peculiarly temperamental and emotional things which we attribute more to dispositions that sensate rather than think. How often have I myself been an eye-witness to some climacteric conclusion, to some dreadful blood feud or opposition or contention—a swarthy Italian stabbing a lone woman in a dark street at night, a seemingly placid diner in some purely Italian restaurant rising to an amazing state of rage because of a look, a fancied insult, some old forgotten grudge, maybe, renewed by the sight of another. At one time, when I had personal charge of the Butterick publications, I was an immediate and personal witness to stabbings and shootings that took place under my very eye, some bleeding and fleeing adversary brushing me as he ran, to fall exhausted a little farther on. And mobs of Americans, not understanding these peculiarly deep-seated and emotional feuds, and resenting always the use of the knife or the stiletto, seeking to wreak summary vengeance upon those who, beyond peradventure, are in nowise governed by our theories or our conventions, but hark by other and more devious paths back into the Italy of the Middle Ages, and even beyond that. 268 The warmth of passion and tenderness that lies wrapped up in these wonderful southern quarters of our colder northern clime. The peculiarly romantic and marvelously involved series of dramatic episodes, feuds or fancies, loves or hates, politics or passion, such as would do honor to a medi?val love tale—the kind of episodes that have made the history of Italy as intricate as any in the world!
The section that has always interested me most is the one that lies between Ninety-sixth Street and One Hundred and Sixteenth on the East Side of Manhattan Island, and incloses all the territory that lies between Second Avenue and the East River. It is a wonderful section. Here, regardless of the presence of the modern tenement building and the New York policeman, you may see such a picture of Italian life and manners as only a visit to Naples and the vine-clad hills of southern Italy would otherwise afford.
Vigorous and often attractive maidens in orange and green skirts, with a wealth of black hair fluffed back from their foreheads, and yellow shawls and coral necklaces fastened about their necks; dark, somber-faced Italian men, a world of moods and passions sleeping in their shadowy eyes, decked out in bright Garibaldian shirts and soft slouch hats, their tight-fitting corduroy trousers drawn closely about their waists with a leather belt; quaint, cameo-like old men with earrings in their ears and hands like claws and faces seamed with the strongest and most sinister lines, and yet with eyes that flash with feeling or beam with tenderness; and old women, in all forms of color and clothing, who chatter and gesticulate269 and make the pavements resound with the excitement of their everyday bargaining.
This, truly, in so far as New York is concerned, is the region of the love feud and the balcony. If you will stand at any of the cross-streets that lead east from Second Avenue you will obtain a splendid panorama of the latter feature, window after window ornamented with a red or green or orange iron balcony and hung, in the summertime, with an array of green vines and bright flower-pots that invariably suggests the love scene of Shakespeare’s famous play and the romantic love feeling of the south. Dark, poetic-looking Italians lean against doorjambs and open gateways and survey the surrounding neighborhood with an indolent and romantic eye. Plump Italian mothers gaze comfortably out of open windows, before which they sit and sew and watch their chubby little children romp and play in the streets. Fat, soft-voiced merchants, and active, graceful, song-singing Italian street venders ply their various vocations, the latter turning a wistful eye to every window, the former lolling contentedly in wooden chairs, the blessings of warmth and a little trade now and again being all that they require.
And from out these windows and within these doors hang or lounge those same maidens, over whom many a bloody feud has been waged and for whom (for a glance of the eyes or the shrug of the shoulder) many of these moody-faced, somber-eyed, love-brooding Romeos have whipped out their glistening steel and buried it in the heart of a hated rival. Girls have been stabbed here, been followed and shot (I have seen it myself); petty love-conversations270 upon a street corner or in the adjacent park between two ardent lovers have been interrupted by the sudden appearance of a love frenzied Othello, who could see nothing for it but to end the misery of his unrequited affection by plunging his knife into the heart of his rival and into that of his fair but unresponsive sweetheart. They love and hate; and death is the solution of their difficulties—death and the silence of the grave.
“She will not love me! Then she must die!”
The wonder of the colony is the frankness and freedom with which its members take to this solution. Actually, it would seem as if this to them were the only or normal way out of a love tangle. And if you can ever contrive an intelligent conversation with any of them you will find it so. Lounge in their theaters, the teatro marionette, their cafés, about the open doorways and the street corners, and hear the frankness with which they discuss the latest difficulty. Then you will see for yourself how simple it all seems to them.
Vincenzo is enamored of his Elvina. So is Nicola. They give each other black looks, and when Elvina is seen by Vincenzo to walk openly with Nicola he broods in silence, meditating his revenge.
One night, when the moon is high and the noisy thoroughfare is pulsating with that suppressed enthusiasm which is a part of youth and passion and all the fervid freshness of a warm July night, Vincenzo meets them at the street corner. He is despondent, desperate. Out comes his knife—click!—and the thing is done. On the pavement lies Nicola bleeding. Elvina may be seen running and screaming. She too is wounded, mayhap271 to the death. Vincenzo runs and throws his ha............