Marco Baldi, Owner

THE highway known as —th Street is justly distinguished merely by a number. Like so many other streets in the Bronx, it would be an offense to name it after anybody or anything, so utterly lacking in character is it. Yet it differs from its neighbors in the fact that it is sparsely built upon, and the wind and sun have more chance to beat down on the backyards of its few houses. In short, this particular street is still attractive to the realty operator and is so situated as to lead him to seek his prey among the Italians of the neighborhood.

Marco Baldi had had his eye on one of these houses for a long time; somehow a building surrounded by empty lots makes an intending purchaser feel that he is getting a ‘view.’ Marco Baldi reasoned that, even though the adjoining lots might soon be built upon, he could for at least a year raise the rent of his hypothetical tenants on the ground that every window in the house could be put to practical use. By which he meant that in each window there would be sun enough to dry peppers and corn and clothes, or to raise basilico, and from each window one could lean out and watch America passing by. Baldi had it all carefully calculated, with the aid of his son who could add and subtract; he had competent advice from his paesano, who was no less than a Notary Public of the State of New York, as to how to rent a two-family house to five families without getting into trouble with the building laws. In this he had no intention of defrauding his hypothetical tenants; he knew that they would prefer the sociability of a numerous tenantry to the austere segregation demanded by Anglo-Saxon health laws.

Yes, it was an excellent investment in which to place the five thousand dollars asked. But Baldi’s exchequer held only two thousand dollars cannily distributed among five solid American savings banks. The broker, however, had most obligingly said that from such a purchaser a three-thousand-dollar mortgage at five per cent would be perfectly acceptable on a sale. A threethousand-dollar mortage! How many of us outside of the real-estate brokers know what a synonym of fear that word is to our Italians? It is not merely because of the unthriftiness of a transaction which involves paying interest on what you are supposed to own, but there is also a sort of traditional, bredin-the-blood shame of such a precarious holding; it is not ownership — it is an evidence of a debt. Taxes seem to them an entirely different kind of burden; in a way, they are a recognition by the sovereign authority that you are a man of parts, of interest to the State; Italians are used to them.

How Baldi coveted that parcel of land! There was not a vineyard in sunny Sulmona as alluring, or a mountain-slope in all the Abruzzi as attractive as No. 549 —th Street in the Bronx. Each day he labored computing possible income as compared with fixed charges; and what labor it was for a man who could not write his name and was only sure of his numbers as far as the count of his fingers. Here he was dealing in hundreds — yea, in thousands — even tens of thousands when measured by the currency of his native land! Oh, dizzying, oh, glorious finance — oh, land of boundless promise! He even forgave that barbarous American law which actually punishes parents who fail to send their children to school; he might have been at the mathematical mercy of strangers, without the aid of his son, a graduate of the primary department of the Clark Street school.

Now, let us see what it all figured up to. Interest and taxes, two hundred and nineteen dollars — there was no play for the imagination in adding up such items. But how limitless was fancy’s outlook in computing income! Five families at five dollars each — and who could positively deny that they might be five such small families as to make a sixth tenant possible. Of course he would be a tenant, but his exact location was indefinite; it might be even in a shanty in the yard, to be built in the future.

The ground floor was big enough for two stores — yes, the seller would put up a partition without extra charge. Baldi saw a thriving business in each, and a wave of lordly greed swept over him: he would double the rent then, and it would be ‘ paga o muori’ for the prosperous shopkeepers.

There was also a space below the store, with steps to the street; foolish Americans called it a dark cellar for storing old things; but ice kept so well in such a place when ice was high and everybody wanted it; and coal and wood require no clean, sunny rooms, — and no inspectors poke in their noses to see whether such stuff is fresh. How could Battista, his paesano, have gone into the milk business and hoped to succeed, with the Autoritá all the time looking into his cans and a lot of ladies dressed all in white competing with him only five blocks away! Cosa vuole! Battista had always been a little queer.

Then there was all the backyard, the entire backyard, all sunny. Some one, — at one of those agreeable evenings spent in front of the counter of the dingy ‘bank on Avenue A, when the pros and cons of America are so vividly discussed by the sociable clienti, — some one, he remembered, had said that Americans considered fifty acres the smallest farm a family could live on. The man who had said this had a half interest in the saloon half a block from the ‘bank,’ and only his exalted status saved him from being thought a daring impostor; but even he had strained the faith of his audience almost to the breaking-point. Now this incredible statement came back to Baldi as he mentally measured that Bronx backyard. ‘No, I cannot believe it,’ he was cogitating. ‘I know the signore Americano would change his mind if he could see what I shall raise on my lot, on every inch and in every corner, watching every day. There will be enough for the family, and a bit to sell to neighbors; and in winter a few hens in snug, warm boxes.’

Still, under the most sanguine of mathematical computations things did not foot up to that fateful two hundred and nineteen dollars of fixed charges. Baldi’s restlessness between desire and financial clear-headedness was accentuated by the almost daily eloquence of the real-estate agent. This personage was a specialist among his countrymen, an artist at his trade, possessed of infinite patience, avoiding hurrying and obvious inducements, substituting therefor a somewhat lordly indifference regarding results, but losing no opportunity of speaking of the greatness of America in relation to the development of land-values. The Reali di Francia had nothing quite so marvelous as the sale of Manhattan by the Indians as depicted by this strenuous historian. No native writer has ever given us such vivid pictures of the early days of the Livingstons and the Schuylers, of the Jays and the Astors, as this Latin orator drew in describing the lives of the founders of these great families. You could actually see them counting out the money to unsuspecting Indian chiefs, who received, ‘tenendo conto dei tempi,' more than was now asked for some improved Bronx property. Yes, he admitted, it was incredible, but how could one doubt him when as a final argument he would say, ‘You need not believe it just because I say it; the land is still there where it was — go and see it — some is where the “World ” has a palace with a golden dome, and some is where the highest grattanuvole downtown now stands.’ How was it possible to doubt such evidence?

But this learned compatriot knew perfectly well that in Baldi’s case the doubt was not as to the attractiveness of the investment but as to the totality of possible income. So he played an entirely different card. With the easy grace of one born to the purple, he invited Baldi one evening to go with him to an open-air cinematograph show. He gave as the excuse for such magnificence toward one with whom he had no possible business interests a friendly solicitude to cheer up his paesano. ’What do you worry about?’ he asked him. ‘There are one million houses in New York, and not one of them can run away. In five years, with what you are saving now, you will be able to choose between a large brick tenement-house and an office-building. But if you worry and get sick all your hard-earned money will be eaten up by your heirs. Come, let us go to the theatre; they have a fine show of the bersaglieri landing in Tripoli.’

It was during one of the short intermissions that the broker said very casually, ‘It is wonderful how everything in this country is made to bring in money. Just look at that side of the house back of the picture-screen, — there is n’t a window there, just a blank space. In Italy we would plant a vine against it if we had such a thing at all, but here it’s different.’

‘Could n’t they cut open some windows there and raise the rent?’ asked Baldi interestedly, trying to fathom the mystery.

‘Yes, but that would mean spending money with the chance that next day this lot where we are might be built, upon,’ explained his host, appearing somewhat bored at such an unpractical question.

‘Ma come fare, dunque,' questioned Baldi eagerly, ‘to make a blank wall pay?’

‘Don’t you know, my dear friend, that there are large American companies that will pay for space like this, just for the permission to paint beautiful pictures in bright colors, with the name of the biggest stores in America?’

‘ Davvero!’ queried Baldi excitedly, ‘ but painting comes high; who pays the pittore ? ’

‘The company pays for the paint and for the artist, and you or whoever has the house sits back and gets a good sum of money for the permission.’ The broker stopped a moment before delivering the staggering climax. ‘Of course,’ he quietly added, ‘ the painting becomes yours.’

Baldi mopped his head and swallowed hard before he essayed, a bit huskily, ‘How much can you get for it ? ’ But the ‘ movies’ had started again and conversation was forbidden.

As they walked home, Baldi asked the broker to state again all he had said about renting blank walls, and, at the end of the explanation, repeated the vital question, ‘How much can you get for it?’ The answer was maddening to a man whose desire for ownership was balanced by the wish for mathematical precision: ‘So much per square foot — it all depends on your ability to bargain — exactly as we do at home.’

Baldi did not sleep much that night and was up very early the next morning. He went to measure visually the blank spaces on the lateral walls of No. 549 “th Street. He started early enough so as not to lose any time on his day’s job, for that would have been bad economy. He walked cheerfully to his labor with the paradisaical vision in his mind of two large paintable spaces, for until the actual inspection of the early morning he had not grasped the fact that the possibilities of an income from American mural painting offered by the coveted property were double his expectations, as the house standing alone near the middle of the block could be artistically and financially utilized on two sides.

At the lunch hour he deferentially approached the foreman and, pointing to a large advertisement across the way, said, ‘ Scuse me, how much you pay for dat — avery foot?’ The reply was not meant to be unkind but it shed no light on Baldi’s researches. The whole day and evening he inquired; it was maddening how nobody seemed to know, not even the banker, not even the notary.

How he wished for that house! But two-hundred-and-nineteen dollars a year was a mathematical certainty against which no wise Italian investor would take chances with an indefinite income that could not be footed up in actual figures.

Late that evening he went to take another look at his heart’s desire. The night was bright and No. 549 rose like a dream of indestructible opulence into the starry night. It fascinated him; it held him; he passed and repassed it and again passed it. He looked up to it, and he looked down as if in his vision he could see each stone of the foundations. Yes, yes, he must see it from the back! He picked his steps carefully, almost stealthily, among the stones and rubbish of the open lots, with his eyes ever fixed on his coveted object.

From out the shadow of a house half a block away, a large form stepped forth quickly, crossed the street at a run, and for an instant seemed to swallow Baldi’s aura in its own dark eclipse. The glint of brass buttons and a grip of steel woke the dreamer from his dream and made him realize the dangers of quiet, poetic strolling on the streets of New York City. Baldi, though not yet thoroughly assimilated to American civilization, appreciated the pomp and circumstance of the police power. He submitted quietly; ho knew now as well as his captor that the police had been watching for socalled ‘blackhanders’ in that section of Little Italy,and a man, as he reflected, had no business to be loitering there at night.

The sergeant at the desk — that figure so infinitely more fateful to the captive immigrant than the highest judicial officer in the land — put to him a few questions without waiting for an answer; and Baldi was led to a cell. After some hours of dazed uncertainty and inactivity, Baldi kicked at the bars and shouted, ‘Me want to go home.’ The man who came to suppress the rumpus said something of which Baldi understood one word — bail. He had heard of that often at the banker’s, and to his mind as well as to his untrained car it was the same word as ‘bill’; he knew it was something involving ‘a five-dollar bill,’ or a bill of higher denomination. So from his pocket he dug out an envelope on which was printed the address of his friend the banker. The policeman instantly understood — he was no doubt one of the many sociologists and immigration experts on our municipal force.

‘ I ’ll ’phone him to-night,’ he said, ‘ and he’ll come in the morning; too late for bail now.’

It seemed an interminable night of waiting, for he was worn out by the excitement of realty-dreaming and the worry of being in the hands of justice to meet an unknown charge. How could he imagine that what he had done had been described on the police blotter as disorderly conduct? Might not a learned advocate justly urge that the prisoner had been but obeying the ancient legal maxim of caveat emptor ?

At last the hour came when a friendly face appeared: it was the banker, an expert counselor in the ways of procedure in the lower courts. With him was Ernesto Castruccio, a flour merchant well known for his real-estate holdings.

‘The signore,’ said the banker, ‘is entitled to fifty dollars for giving bail, but he is a friend of mine and so are you, and he has consented to help you for just fifteen dollars.’

Baldi had just that much on his person, wisely distributed at various points thereof to insure the minimum of loss in case of the remote possibility of being the victim of pickpockets. The banker, with that omniscience regarding his clients’ habits which seems to characterize his class, had shrewdly guessed the amount Baldi carried and fixed the cost at that. Baldi undoubtedly would have objected even in his present distress to paying fifteen dollars — a week’s wages — except that it was presented to him as a handsome ‘mark down’ from fifty. So viewed, he gladly accepted Signor Castruccio’s services and followed his liberators to the clerk’s office. It was his first experience with the ancient English practice of leg-bail, and he watched closely its every step. The flour merchant took out a fat envelope from his pocket and handed it to the clerk who opened it and began reading aloud the description of the premises contained in the deed enclosed.

‘Number five hundred and fortynine —th Street,’ and Baldi’s breath came short. ‘Is that right, house and lot at number five hundred and fortynine —th Street, Bronx?’

Was it destiny? Was it that fateful power which had clutched all these days at Baldi’s heart — was he being freed by his beloved mistress? ‘Madonna!’ he whispered excitedly to the banker, ‘e propria quella.’

He was out! A lawyer would attend to his case; his fears ceased. But he was in a very passion of desire; he hurried, he ran, to his friend the broker. And as he ran he thought, ‘ It may be sold, it may be sold!’ And through his passion piped tunefully the other note, ‘ Think how many people the cops arrest every day, every single day — and fifty dollars a day — and no reduction.’

The broker was in; of course he knew nothing of the affair, nothing! He was always out in the morning, but to-day something had told him to stay at home. It would be hard to say where the liar ended and the artist began with him, so natural and plausible was he in his fabrications.

He advised his friend against buying, but of course Baldi was not to be swerved; the contract must be signed this very day.

The broker finally rose, a look of benevolent concession on his face, as if he were dealing with a child who must not be crossed too much. An eloquent shrug and a portentous lifting of the eyebrows told Baldi that all opposition was won. ‘ Se insisti,’ said the broker, ' I certainly must not stand in your way.’

When the sun went down on that eventful day, Marco Baldi went to bed with the contract for the purchase of No. 549 —th Street carefully hidden in the mattress upon which he passed the happiest night of his life.