“And you want me to help?” asks Saul.
“I want you to be my number two,” says Joey. “Officially. I want you to take some of my meetings, handle some of my conflicts, come up with some ideas for me. The monthly Fianzo meeting, to start—you’ve been coming along with me, you can do that yourself. I’ll manage some of the big-scale things—and Sofia’s work, I imagine it would be uncomfortable for you to do that, so I’ll do it.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed we’ve spent a lot of time together lately. In some ways, you’re already doing the job. But appearances mean a lot in this business.” Joey is silent. He drains the espresso and puts the cup and saucer back on the table next to him. Then he interlaces his fingers and sighs, and Saul realizes that Joey looks tired, that in the curve of his spine and the heaviness of his facial features there is a profound exhaustion. “You’re a more powerful tool than you realize, Saul. You disturb what people consider to be the natural order of things. I didn’t always think that was the right strategy, but a lot has changed.”
It would feel strange to say thank you, so Saul says nothing.
There is a thick silence between them. Saul doesn’t know how to react.
“What do you think?” Joey asks.
Saul thinks. He thinks of Julia, running to hug him when he gets home, the voracity of her own desires the only thing she can comprehend or act on. He thinks of Sofia, opening her eyes in the morning and smiling at him, the clear light of her laugh, the magma of her rage. He thinks of his mother, whose name was never included on any of the death camp lists, whose house was leveled in the early years of the war, whom no one ever heard from again, and whom Saul has been unable to mourn, the way you are able to mourn someone who is gone, and so instead, whose absence Saul feels like a searing flame, a wrenching thing, a knot in his stomach, his heart, his head, constant. He thinks of the war that destroyed him and dumped him on a foreign shore. He was looking for family when he told Eli he’d join him. But he betrayed a family to do it.
“I can’t,” he tells Joey.
“Well, you’re going to have to explain why,” Joey says.
Saul feels suddenly that he might cry, and the thought of that is so reprehensible that he presses his mouth shut and closes his throat and digs one of his fingernails into the soft skin of his palm until the urge passes. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he says. “I can’t even begin to thank you for giving me this—this family. But I can’t participate in any more wars. I can’t—the violence, Joey, I can’t do it.” In his heart of hearts, of course, Saul knows that the violence doesn’t bother him as much as it should. But he feels guilty. How can he accept a promotion from a man whose trust he has betrayed?
Joey nods. The air in the room is silent, heavy, waiting. “Do you know the story of my parents, before they brought me here?”
“No,” says Saul. “Well—I know you were a baby.”
“My father was an orchardist,” says Joey. “He grew oranges and lemons. He loved those fucking trees. My whole life, he complained about the citrus in America.” Joey picks up his cup, realizes it is empty. Turns back to Saul. “I’m trying to cut back. So, my father grew oranges and lemons. When he was a boy, they kept the fruit on the island, or they shipped it to Rome. They traded boxes of fruit with neighbors who grew figs, or eggs, or chicory. They traded for fish, or they brought fruit in a cart to a small local market.
“But then,” Joey continues, “after the unification of Italy, the rest of the world discovered the oranges, the lemons. And suddenly, they needed boxes of lemons on ships all around the world, to prevent scurvy. They needed to marinate their meat; they needed lemonade, they needed to eat oranges all winter. The price of oranges went up. The demand went up. And no one in Sicily could afford them anymore. My father’s father had to ship his oranges out on a schedule, boxed and packaged. He wasn’t making much more money, but there were new middlemen, who would jack the prices up when ships came to port, or during holiday seasons. All over the world, people were eating Sicilian fruit. And it was in such high demand that it started to be stolen. My grandfather would wake in the morning and trees that had been dripping with fruit the night before would be empty, stripped of all their fruit and even their leaves. Their branches would be broken; the earth around them would be destroyed. This was happening to farmers all over the island.