‘The Brave Tailors of Maida’ was first published on Reader’s Digest in October, 1988. The nonfiction essay tells the story of Talese’s father, Joseph, who apprentices under the discerning, proud eye of Francesco Cristiani, a tailor from the small Italian town of Maida. The text also shares the symptoms of a quirky occupational malady common among tailors, as well as one dangerous accident with an important order for a mafioso. Cristiani’s solution is comic gold. ‘Lavar la testa al’asino e acqua persa,’ indeed.

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The Brave Tailors of Maida

by Gay Talese

‘There is a certain type of mild mental disorder that is endemic in the tailoring trade, and it began to weave its way into my father’s psyche during his apprentice days in Italy, when he worked in the shop of a volatile craftsman named Francesco Cristiani, whose male forebears had been tailors for four successive generations and had, without exception, exhibited symptoms of this occupational malady.

Although it has never attracted scientific curiosity and therefore cannot be classified by an official name, my father once described the disorder as a form of prolonged melancholia that occasionally erupts into cantankerous fits — the results, my father suggested, of excessive hours of slow, exacting, microscopic work that proceeds stitch by stitch, inch by inch, mesmerizing the tailor in the reflected light of a needle flickering in and out of the fabric.

A tailor’s eye must follow a seam precisely, but his pattern of thought is free to veer off in different directions, to delve into his life, to ponder his life, to ponder his past, to lament lost opportunities, create dramas, imagine slights, brood exaggerate — in simple terms, the man, when sewing, has too much time to think.

My father, who served as an apprentice each day before and after school, was aware that certain tailors could sit quietly at the workbench for hours, cradling a garment between their bowed heads and crossed knees, and sew without exercise or much physical movement, without any surge fresh oxygen clear their brains. Then, with inexplicable suddenness, my father would see would see one of these men jump to his feet and take wild umbrage at a casual comment of a co-worker, a trivial exchange that was not intended to provoke. And my father would often cower in a corner as spools and steel thimbles flew around the room — and, if goaded by insensitive colleagues, the aroused tailor might reach for the workroom’s favorite instrument of terror, the sword-length scissors.

There were also confrontations in the front of the store in which my father worked, disputes between the customers and the proprietor — the diminutive and vainglorious Francesco Cristiani, who took enormous pride in his occupation and believed that he, and the tailors under his supervision, were incapable of making a serious mistake; if they were, he was not likely to acknowledge it.

Once when a customer came in to try on a new suit but was unable to slip into the jacket because the sleeves were too narrow, Francesco Cristiani not only failed to apologize to the client; he behaved as if insulted by the client’s ignorance of the Cristiani shop’s unique style in men’s fashion. “You are not supposed to put your arms through the sleeves of this jacket!” Cristiani informed his client, in a superior tone. “This jacket is only designed to be worn over the shoulders!”

On anther occasion, when Cristiani paused in the Maida square after lunch to listen to the band during its midday concert, he noticed that the new uniform that had been delivered the day before to the third trumpeter showed a bulge behind the collar whenever the musician lifted the instrument to his lips.

Concerned that someone might notice it and cast aspersions on his status as a tailor, Cristiani dispatched my father, then a skinny boy of eight, to sneak up behind the bunting of the bandstand and, with a furtive finesse, pull down on the end of the trumpeter’s jacket whenever the bulge appeared. When the concert was over, Cristiani contrived a subtle means by which he was able to reacquire and repair the jacket.

Around this time, in the spring of 1911, there occurred a catastrophe in the shop for which there seemed to be no possible solution. The problem was so serious, in fact, that Cristiani’s first reaction was to leave town for a while rather than remain in Maida to face the consequences. The incident that provoked such panic had taken place in Cristiani’s workroom on the Saturday before Easter, and it centered on the damage done by an apprentice, accidentally but irreparably, to a new suit that had been made for one of Cristiani’s most demanding customers — a man who was among the region’s most renowned uomini rispettati, men of respect, popularly known as the Mafia.

Before Cristiani became aware of the accident, he had enjoyed a prosperous morning in his shop collecting payment from several satisfied customers who had come in for the final try-on of their attire, which they would wear on the following day at the Easter passeggiata, the most exhibitionistic event of the year for the men of southern Italy. While the modest women of the village — except for the bolder wives of American immigrants — would spend the day after Mass discreetly perched on their balconies, the men would stroll in the square, chatting with each other as they walked arm in arm, smoking and shiftily examining the fit of each other’s new suits. For despite the poverty in southern Italy, or perhaps because of it, there was excessive emphasis on appearances — it was part of the region’s fare bella figura syndrome; and most of the men who assembled in the piazza of Maida, and in dozens of similar squares throughout the South, were uncommonly knowledgeable about the art of fine tailoring.

They could assess in a few seconds the craft of another man’s suit, could appraise each dexterous stitch, could appreciate the mastery of a tailor’s most challenging task, the shoulder, from which more than twenty individualized parts of the jacket must hang in harmony and allow for fluidity. Almost every prideful male, when entering a shop to select fabric for a new suit, knew by hart the twelve principal measurements of his tailored body, starting with the distance between the neckline and the waist of the jacket, and ending with the exact width of the cuffs above the shoes. Among such men were many customers who had been dealing with the Cristiani family firm all of their lives, as had their fathers grandfathers before them. Indeed, the Cristianis had been making men’s clothes in Southern Italy since 1806, when the region was controlled by Napoleon Bonaparte; and when Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, who had been installed on the Naples throne in 1808, was assassinated in 1815 by a Spanish Bourbon firing squad in the village of Pizzo, a few miles south of Maida, the wardrobe that Murat left behind included a suit made by Francesco Cristiani’s grandfather.

But now on this Holy Saturday in 1911, Francesco Cristiani confronted a situation that could not benefit from his family’s long tradition in the trade. In his hands he held a new pair of trousers that had an inch-long cut across the left knee, a cut that had been made by an apprentice who had been idling with a pair of scissors atop the table on which the trousers had been laid out for Cristiani’s inspection.

Although apprentices were repeatedly reminded that they were not to handle the heavy scissors — their main task was to sew on buttons and baste seams — some young men unwittingly violated the rule in their eagerness to gain tailoring experience. But what magnified the youth’s delinquency in this situation was that the damaged trousers had been made for the mafioso, whose name was Vincenzo Castiglia.

A first-time customer from nearby Cosenza, Vincenzo Castiglia was so blatant about his criminal profession that, while being measured for the suit one month before, he had asked Cristiani to allow ample room inside the jacket for the holstered pistol. On that same occasion, however, Mr. Castiglia had made several other requests that elevated him in the eyes of his tailor as a man who had a sense of style and knew what might flatter his rather corpulent figure. For example, Mr. Castiglia had requested that the suit’s shoulders be cut extra wide to give his hips a narrower appearance; and he sought to distract attention from his protruding belly by ordering a pleated waistcoat through which a gold chain could be looped and linked to his diamond pocket watch.

In addition, Mr. Castiglia specified that the hems of his trousers be turned up, in accord with the latest continental fashion; and, as he peered into Cristiani’s workroom, he expressed satisfaction on observing that the tailors were all sewing by hand and not using the popularized sewing machine, which, despite its speed, lacked the capacity for the special molding of a fabric’s seems and angles and angles that was only possible in the hands of a talented tailor.

Bowing with appreciation, the tailor Cristiani assured Mr. Castiglia that his shop would never succumb to the graceless mechanized invention, even though sewing machines were now widely used in Europe and also in America. With the mention of America, Mr. Castiglia smiled and said that he had once visited the New Land, and added that he had several relatives who had settled there. (Among them was a young cousin, Francesco Castiglia, who in future years, beginning in the era of Prohibition, would achieve great notoriety and wealth under the name Frank Costello.)

In the weeks that followed, Cristiani devoted much attention to satisfying the mafioso’s specifications, and he was finally proud of the sartorial results — until Holy Saturday, when he discovered an inch-long slash across the left knee of Mr. Castiglia’s new pants.

Screaming with anguish and fury, Cristiani soon obtained a confession from the apprentice who admitted to cutting discarded pieces of cloth on the edges of the pattern under which the trousers had been found. Cristiani stood silently, shaken for several minutes, surrounded by his equally concerned and speechless associates. Cristiani could, of course, run and hide in the hills, which had been his first inclination; or he could return the money to the mafioso after explaining what had happened and then offer up the guilty apprentice as a sacrificial lamb to be appropriately dealt with. The culpable apprentice was the young nephew of Cristiani’s wife, Maria. His wife had been Maria Talese. She was the only sister of Cristiani’s best friend, Gaetano Talese, then working in America. And Gaetano’s eight-year-old son, the apprentice Joseph Talese — who would become my father — was now crying convulsively.

As Cristiani sought to comfort his remorseful nephew, his mind kept searching for some plausible solution. There was no way, in the few hours remaining before Castiglia’s visit, to make a second pair of trousers even if they had matching material in stock. Nor was there any way to perfectly obscure the cut in the fabric even with a marvelous job of mending.

While his fellow tailors kept insisting that the wisest move was to close the shop and leave a note for Mr. Castiglia pleading illness, or some other excuse that might delay a confrontation. Cristiani firmly reminded them that nothing could absolve him of his failure to deliver the mafioso’s suit in time for Easter and that it was mandatory to find a solution now, at once, or at least within the four hours that remained before Mr. Castiglia’s arrival.

As the noon bell rang from the church in the main square, Cristiani grimly announced: “There will be no siesta for any of us today. This is not the time for food and rest — it is the time for sacrifice and meditation. So I want everybody to stay where you are, and think of something that may save us from disaster …”

He was interrupted by some grumbling from the other tailors, who resented missing their lunch and afternoon nap; but Cristiani overruled them and immediately dispatched one of his apprenticed sons to the village to tell the tailors’ wives not to expect the return of their husbands until sundown. Then he instructed the other apprentices, including my father, to pull the draperies across the windows and to lock the shop’s front and back doors. And then for the next few minutes, Cristiani’s entire staff of a dozen men and boys, as if participating in a wake, quietly congregated within the walls of the darkened shop.

My father sat in one corner, still stunned by the magnitude of his misdeed. Near him sat other apprentices, irritated at my father but nonetheless obedient to their master’s order that they remain in confinement. In the center of the workroom, seated among his tailors, was Francesco Cristiani, a small wiry man with a tiny mustache, holding his head in his hands and looking up every few seconds to glance again at the trousers that lay before him.

Several minutes later, with a snap of his fingers, Cristiani rose to his feet. Though barely five feet six inches tall, his erect carriage, fine styling, and panache lent substance to his presence. There was also a gleam in his eye.

“I think I have thought of something,” he announced slowly, pausing to let the suspense build until he had everyone’s attention.

“What is it?” asked his most senior tailor.

“What I can do,” Cristiani continued, “is make a cut across the right knee that will exactly match the damaged left knee, and –”

“Are you crazy?” interrupted the older tailor.

“Let me finish, you imbecile!” Cristiani shouted, pounding his small fist on the table,” — and then I can sew up both cuts of the trousers with decorative seams that will match exactly, and later I will explain to Mr. Castiglia that he is the first man in this part of Italy to be wearing trousers designed in the newest fashion, the knee-seamed fashion.”

The others listened with astonishment.

“But, maestro,” one of the younger tailors said in a cautious tone of respect, “won’t Mr. Castiglia notice, after you introduce this ‘new fashion,’ that we tailors ourselves are not wearing trousers that follow this fashion?”

Cristiani raised his eyebrows slightly.

“A good point,” he conceded, as a pessimistic mood returned to the room. And then his eyes flashed, and he said: “But we will follow the fashion! We will make cuts in our knees and then sew them up with seams similar to Mr. Castiglia’s …” Before the men could protest, he quickly added: “But we will not be cutting up our own trousers. We’ll use those trousers we keep in the widows’ closet!”

Immediately everyone turned toward the locked door of a closet in the rear of the workroom, within which were hung dozens of suits last worn by men now dead — suits that bereaved widows, not wishing to be reminded of their dead spouses, had passed on to Cristiani in the hope that he would give the clothing away to passing strangers who might wear them in distant villages.

Now Cristiani flung open the closet door, pulled several pairs of trousers off the suit hangers, and tossed them on his tailors, urging a quick try-on. He himself was already standing in his cotton underwear and black garters, searching for a pair of trousers that might accommodate his slight stature; and when he succeeded, he slipped them on, climbed up on the table, and stood momentarily like a proud model in front of his men. “See,” he said, pointing to the length and width, “a perfect fit.”

The other tailors began to pick and choose from the wide selection. Cristiani was now down from the table, the trousers off, and was beginning to cut across the right knee of the mafioso’s pants, duplicating the already damaged left knee. Then he applied similar incisions to the knees of the trousers he hand chosen to wear himself.

“Now, pay close attention,” he called out to his men. With a flourish of his silk-threaded needle, he applied the first stitch into the dead man’s trousers, piercing the lower edge of the torn knee with an inner stitch that he adroitly looped to the upper edge — a bold, circular motion that he repeated several times until he had securely reunited the center of the knee with a small, round, embroidered wreathlike design half the size of a dime.

Then he proceeded to sew, on the right side of the wreath, a half-inch seam that was slightly tapered and tilted upward at the end; and, after reproducing this seam on the left side of the wreath, he had created a miniscule image of a distant bird with spread wings, flying directly toward the viewer; a bird that most resembled a peregrine falcon. Cristiani thus originated a trouser style with wing-tipped knees.

‘Well, what do you think?” he asked his men, indicting by his offhand manner that he did not really care what they thought. As they shrugged their shoulders and murmured in the background, he peremptorily continued: “All right now, quickly, cut the knees of those trousers you’ll be wearing and stitch them together with the embroidered design you’ve just seen.” Expecting no opposition, and receiving none, Cristiani lowered his head to concentrate entirely on his own task: finishing the second knee of the trousers he would wear, and then beginning, meticulously, the job on Mr. Castiglia’s trousers.

In the latter case, Cristiani not only planned to embroider a winged design with silk thread that matched exactly the shade of the thread used on the buttonholes of the jacket of the Mr. Castiglia’s suit, but he also would insert a section of silk lining within the front part of the trousers, extending from the thighs to the shins, that would protect Mr. Castiglia’s knees from the scratchy feel of the embroidered inner stitching and would also diminish the friction against the knee seems when Mr. Castiglia was out promenading at the passeggiata.

For the next two hours, everyone worked in feverish silence. As Cristiani and the other tailors affixed the winged design on the knees of all the trousers, the apprentices helped with the minor alterations, button sewing, the ironing of cuffs, and other details that would make the dead men’s trousers as presentable as possible on the bodies of the tailors. Francesco Cristiani , of course, allowed none but himself to handle the mafioso’s garments; and as the church bells range, signaling the end of the siesta, Cristiani scrutinized with admiration the stitching he had done, and he privately thanked his namesake in heaven, Saint Francis di Paola, for his inspired guidance with the needle.

Now there was the sound of activity in the square: the jingles of horse-drawn wagons, the cries of the food vendors, the voices of shoppers passing back and forth along the cobblestone road in front of Cristiani’s doorstep. The window draperies of the shop had just been opened, and my father and another apprentice were posted beyond the door with instructions to call in with words of warning as soon as they caught a glimpse of Mr. Castiglia’s carriage.

Inside, the tailors stood in a row behind Cristiani, famished and fatigued, and hardly comfortable in their dead men’s trousers with wing-tipped knees; but their anxiety and fear concerning Mr. Castiglia’s forthcoming reaction to his Easer suit dominated their emotions. Cristiani, on the other hand, seemed unusually calm. In addition to his newly acquired brown trousers, the cuffs of which touched upon his buttoned shoes with cloth tops, he wore a gray lapelled waistcoat over a striped shirt with a rounded white collar adorned by a burgundy cravat and pearl stickpin. In his hand, on a wooden hanger, he held Mr. Castiglia’s gray herringbone three-piece suit that, moments before, he had softly brushed and pressed for the final time. The suit was still warm.

At twenty minutes after four, my father came running through the door, and, in a high voice that could not betray his panic, he announced; “Sta arrivando!” A black carriage, drawn by two horses, clangorously drew to a halt in front of the shop. After the rifle-toting coachman hopping off to open the door, the dark portly figure of Vincenzo Castiglia descended the two steps to the sidewalk, followed by a lean man, his bodyguard, in a wide-brimmed black hat, long cloak, and studded boots.

Mr. Castiglia removed his gray fedora and, with a handkerchief, wiped the road dust from his brow. He entered the shop, where Cristiani hastened forward to greet him and, holding the new suit high on its hanger, proclaimed: “Your wonderful Easter costume awaits you!” Shaking hands, Mr. Castiglia examined the suit without comment; then, after politely refusing Cristiani’s offer of a bit of whiskey or wine, he directed his bodyguard to help him remove his jacket so that he could immediately try on his Easter apparel.

Cristiani and the other tailors stood quietly nearby, watching as the holstered pistol strapped to Castiglia’s chest swayed with his movements as he extended his arms and received over his shoulders the gray lapelled waistcoat, followed by the broad-shouldered jacket. Inhaling as he buttoned up his waistcoat and jacket. Mr. Castiglia turned toward the three-sectioned mirror next to the fitting room. He admired the reflection of himself from every angle, then turned toward his bodyguard, who nodded approvingly. Mr. Castiglia commented in a commanding voice: “Parfetto!”

“Mille grazie,” responded Cristiani, bowing slightly as he carefully removed the trousers from the hanger and handed them to Mr. Castiglia. Excusing himself, Mr. Castiglia walked into the fitting room. He closed the door. A few of the tailors began to pace around the showroom, but Cristiani stood near the fitting room, whistling softly to himself. The bodyguard, still wearing his cloak and hat, sat comfortably in a chair, his legs crossed, smoking a thin cigar. The apprentices gathered in the back room, out of sight, except for my nervous father, who remained in the showroom busily arranging and rearranging stacks of material on a counter while keeping an eye focused on the fitting room.

For more than a minute not a word was spoken. The only sounds heard were made by Mr. Castiglia as he changed his trousers. First there was the thump of his shoes dropping to the floor. Then the faint whishing rustle of trouser legs being stepped into. Seconds later, a loud bump against the wooden partition as Mr. Castiglia presumably lost his balance while standing on one leg. After a sigh, a cough, and the creaking sound of shoe leather — more silence. But then, suddenly, a deep voice from behind the door bellowed: “Maestro!” Then louder: “MAESTRO!”

The door bolted open, revealing the glowering face and crouched figure of Mr. Castliglia, his fingers pointed down toward his bent knees and the winged design on the trousers. Waddling toward Cristiani, he yelled: “Maestro — che avete fatto qui?” — what have you done here?

The bodyguard jumped, scowling at Cristiani. My father closed his eyes. The tailors stepped back. But Francesco Cristiani stood straight and still, remaining impassive even when the bodyguard’s hand moved inside his cloak.

“What have you done?” Mr. Castiglia repeated, still squatting on bent knees, as if suffering from locked joints. Cristiani watched him silently for a second or two; but finally, in the authoritarian tone of a teacher chiding a student, Cristiani responded: “Oh, how disappointed I am in you! How said and insulted am I by your failure to appreciate the honor I was trying to bestow upon you because I thought you deserved it — but, sadly, I was wrong …”

Before the confused Vincenzo Castiglia could open his mouth, Cristiani continued: “You demanded to know what I had done with your trousers — not realizing that what I had done was introduce you to the modern world, which is where I thought you belonged. When you first entered this shop for a fitting last month, you seemed so different from the backward people of this region. So sophisticated. So individualistic. You had traveled to America, you said, had seen the New World, and I assumed that you were in touch with the contemporary spirit of freedom — but I greatly misjudged you … New clothes, alas, do not remake the man within …”

Carried away by his own grandiloquence, Cristiani turned toward his senior tailor, who stood closest to him, and he impulsively repeated an old southern Italian proverb that he regretted muttering immediately after the words had slipped out of his mouth.

“Lavar la testa al’asino e acqua persa,” Cristiani intoned. Washing a donkey’s head is a waste of water.

Stunned silence swept through the entire shop. My father cringed behind the counter. Cristiani’s tailors, horrified by his provocation, gasped and trembled as they saw Mr. Castiglia’s face redden, his eyes narrow — and no one would have been surprised if the next sound were the explosion of a gun. Indeed, Cristiani himself lowered his head and seemed resigned to his fate — but strangely, having now gone too far to turn back, Cristiani recklessly, repeated his words: “Lavar la testa …”

Mr. Castiglia did not respond. He sputtered, bit his lips, but said not a word. Perhaps, having never before experienced such brazenness from anyone, and particularly not from a tiny tailor, Mr. Castiglia was too wonderstruck to act. Even his bodyguard now seemed paralyzed, with his hand still inside his cloak. After a few more seconds of silence, the eyes in Cristiani’s lowered head moved tentatively upward, and he saw Mr. Castiglia standing with his shoulders slouched, his head hanging slightly, and a glazed and remorseful look in his eyes. He then looked at Cristiani and winced. Finally, he spoke. “My late mother would use that expression when I made her angry,” Mr. Castiglia confided softly. After a pause, he added, “She died when I was very young …”

“Oh, I am so sorry, ” Cristiani said, as the tension subsided in the room. “I do hope, however, that you will accept my word that we did try to make you a beautiful suit for Easter. I was just so disappointed that your trousers, which are designed in the latest fashion did not appeal to you.”

Looking down once again at the knees, Mr. Castiglia asked: “This is the latest fashion?”

“Yes, indeed,” Cristiani reassured him.

“Where?”

“In the great capitals of the world.”

“But not here?”

“Not year,” Cristiani said. “You are the first among the men of this region.”

“But why does the latest fashion in this region have to begin with me?” Mr. Castiglia asked, in a voice that now seemed uncertain.

“Oh, no, it has not really begun with you,” Cristiani quickly corrected him. “We tailors have already adopted this fashion.” And holding up one of his trouser knees, he said: “See for yourself.”

Mr. Castiglia looked down to examine Cristiani’s knees; and then, as he turned to survey the entire room, he saw the other tailors, one after another, each lift a leg and, nodding, point to the now familiar wings of the infinitesimal bird.

“I see,” Mr. Castiglia said. “And I see that I also owe you my apologies, maestro,” he went on. “Sometimes it takes a while for a man to appreciate what is fashionable.”

Then after shaking Cristiani’s hand, and settling the financial account — but seemingly not wanting to linger a moment longer in this place where his uncertainty had been exposed — Mr. Castiglia summoned his obedient and speechless bodyguard and handed him his old suit. Wearing his new suit, and tipping his hat, Mr. Castiglia headed toward his carriage through the door that had been pulled wide open by father.’