Had he spoken to the man in the entrance office? Yes, and been sent to the social service department. That meant trouble—the straightening out of some tangle or, perhaps, breaking the news of a death.
Those of us workers in earshot stopped what we had been doing to listen. When the man gave his name, LaCastro, I realized that it was my task, and stepped forward.
Did he know that his mother had taken Francisco home? I asked. A wan smile and a flicker of light in his lustreless eyes as he told me he was glad to hear that. The friend who had gone out from the New York Hospital ahead of him had come back to tell him that his wife and all his children had been taken to Bellevue.
Yes, that was some time ago, soon after he came to himself in the hospital. He wasn’t feeling very well when he left home that morning, and later when he fainted at his work the boss had him taken direct to the New York Hospital. Would I please tell him in which ward he would find his wife and four children.
I read him a part of Francisco’s history, giving the date of each death. After a brief silence he asked if—if he might see them? Would he find them in the morgue? Feeling sure that he would be allowed, I started back to telephone, to find out if he must go around to the Twenty-ninth Street entrance.
He called me back. There was a flicker of the same light in his eyes that had shown when told that his mother had taken Francisco. Where was his baby? His wife was about to be confined. There must be a baby.
That meant going more deeply into the case. After telephoning back and forth I was told:
“Lived less than two hours.” On giving him this additional blow I turned again to telephone the morgue.
“LaCastro?” the voice at the other end of the wire questioned. A short wait followed. “LaCastro, mother and baby, buried together, and four children. Yes, all buried the same day.”
The expression of that man, not his face alone, but the whole man, remains stamped on my memory as typical of the tenement-dweller before the war—his meek acceptance of conditions, his humility as he thanked me. Sometimes I have wondered if Lazarus may not have thanked the dogs that licked his sores with the same expression, Lazarus starving, with feasting and plenty surrounding him.