Sadine

Kina Abe
Kina Abe
Sep 9, 2018 · 6 min read

I had some time to kill, about 2 hours before I was to go get dinner with some friends. I took the scenic route to the restaurant by going through Washington Square Park. I had a long day that morning helping my mom with some open houses so I was hoping to nestle into a comfortable shady spot to people watch and maybe read.

The park had its normal crew; the palm reader, the man asking groups of people if they want to hear a song, the quakers promoting their purpose. It was a delight to be able to choose the channel I wanted to watch. I settled on a bench with view of the Quakers.

It was a nice day out so naturally the park was pretty full. I was looking out, wondering what two of these Quaker boys could be talking about, when I sense a man walking towards the open seat next to me. He’s an older man, around 80, wearing a dark zip up, holding an open scroll. When he sits down, I realize that he is a tourist because he is holding a caricature of himself. I side eye his new art and I smile to myself. How adorable, I think to myself. I wonder where the rest of his family is, maybe getting an ice cream on this summer day.

He notices me looking and says, “Does it look like me?” in an indecipherable accent.

I look at his face and look at the paper, “Yeah, it does!” I say, showing support. We smile at it together.

We then talk for the next hour and a half.

He tells me about another street artist, a Japanese woman who did some very intricate pattern work. Apparently he loved the work so much that he asked her to fill in the white matting space that padded a picture of him and his wife. He spoke about how there were lots of artists in this park but the park guards were strict about people laying their pieces on the ground. “They aren’t hurting anybody!” he complained.

I liked listening to this man speak because he reminded me of my grandfather in the way that he rolled from one topic to another, slowly but without pause. His face was deeply worn and he had that smell that all aging humans have.

I asked him where he was visiting from. He said he lived here.

“What do you think I am?” he asks.

“Hmm, maybe Spanish?” I say.

He’s Italian. He lives on 9th street. His wife was French. Her name was Sadine. She passed away 2 months ago.

It clicked when he said that, that this was a lonely man, looking to talk to someone. He got a caricature of himself not because he is a tourist, he probably was looking for something to do.

Gino Musso was an Italian man who went to school for hospitality. He moved to Germany (I believe? or some German speaking country) once he graduated because his friend offered him a job there … his job. Apparently this friend didn’t want to work for this restaurant anymore so he gave the job to Gino.

Gino explained to me that back then, people worked, ate, and danced. They had no time for anything else. He would go to the dance halls every single weekend and dance to music that mostly came from America. Dancing, he explains, is one of the best things you can do, and we’re talking about tango, swing, ect, man and woman, together, in synchrony. Dancing taught him how to handle a woman, how to respect her body, how to approach and speak to a woman. Dancing could solve all of today’s problems according to Gino. Boys these days can google: “how to talk to a girl” and the internet had nothing of substance to say. Kids these days are awkward and don’t know how to respect women. In the dancing world, the women held the power to reject any male dancers who were rude. They had the power to put a man in the corner of a dance hall, all by himself. Therefore, dancing taught men how to be a gentleman. Gino went on to recommend some videos to watch, “Go on youtube and look up ‘tango denver festival’… Watch this documentary, it’s called ‘The Heart of Tango’!”.

Gino talked a lot about his wife too. He loved her so much, I could tell. Sadine was French and they met while out dancing. He kept a bunch of photos of her and their life in his pocket which he eagerly showed me. These photos were printed on an 8.5x11 paper, with 3–4 pictures per page, annotated with some shaky scribbles below each. I could tell these photos travelled with him everywhere he went because of the yellowing edges and the fold creases that were fuzzy from being opened and closed so many times. Sadine was truly gorgeous and Gino, a stud. The photos were so precious, as photos were back then where you would only take one shot per moment. There was a picture of them on their wedding day where Sadine wore a short white dress. I commented on this saying, wow, that is different, and he responded with “she was different”. There was a picture of Sadine in one of the dance halls sitting with her sisters. There was a candid picture of Sadine looking like a celebrity getting off of a massive boat, the boat that took them to America.

“You have to understand, back then, when we went to America, we had nothing but each other. We had no material things, no family, no friends, just each other.”

Once in America, Gino had 3 children and opened a restaurant called The Captain’s Table.

An ad from Gino’s restaurant:

Gino talked about the first time he met Sadine. He went to a dance hall, coming in late because of a long day at work. He was looking around and everyone was already paired up, dancing to the penultimate song. The song was coming to an end and Gino knew that he only had one chance to slip in a dance for the night. When the couples broke free for just a few seconds, he spotted Sadine, beautiful and alone. He grabbed the opportunity and put his hands to hers. The last song was “You Are My Destiny” by Paul Anker.

Gino told me his whole house now is full of those printed pictures of Sadine. I imagine his walls littered with loose paper tacked arbitrarily onto the walls. He told me that when she died, he would listen to that Paul Anker song over and over and dance in his house. Gino had held himself together the entire time he was talking about Sadine, the most important thing in his life, but when he told me about this, I think he was shot back into reality, a place where she doesn’t exist anymore. His eyes started to flood with tears. I knew it was all over for me at that moment, I’ve never been good at holding back tears.

I did not expect to have an hour long conversation with a stranger that day. I definitely did not expect to be in tears.

All of the sudden it got a darker, colder and a few raindrops started to fall. We started to say our goodbyes and acknowledge the value of each other’s company. I had the urge to give him my information, or to at least take his picture but I didn’t and I regret it now. He mumbled that I should tell my boyfriend that I met a crazy old guy in the park and we had one last laugh. He then told me that the only important thing in life is love. We shook hands and parted.

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