The Sicilian Page 4

  Pisciotta laughed. “He is not so gentle now. And you, Hector, don’t play the little schoolteacher now. On horseback you were as big a man as any of us.”

  Hector Adonis looked at him sternly. “Aspanu,” he said, “this is not the time for your wit.”

  Pisciotta said to him excitedly, “Little man, do you think I can ever be afraid of you?”

  Michael noted that Pisciotta’s nickname was Aspanu, and that there was ingrained dislike between the two men. Pisciotta’s constant reference to the other man’s size, the stern tone in which Adonis always spoke to Pisciotta. There was, in fact, a distrust in the air amongst all of them; the others seemed to hold Stefan Andolini at arm’s length, Guiliano’s mother seemed to trust no one completely. And yet as the night wore on it was clear that they all loved Turi.

  Michael said cautiously, “There is a Testament written by Turi Guiliano. Where is it now?”

  There was a long silence, all of them watching him intently. And suddenly their distrust included him.

  Finally Hector Adonis spoke. “He started writing it on my advice and I helped him with it. Every page is signed by Turi. All the secret alliances with Don Croce, with the government in Rome and the final truth about the Portella della Ginestra. If it were made public the government must surely fall. It is Guiliano’s last card to play if things come to the worst.”

  “I hope then you have it in a safe place,” Michael said.

  Pisciotta said, “Yes, Don Croce would like to get his hands on the Testament.”

  Guiliano’s mother said. “At the proper time we will arrange to have the Testament delivered to you. Perhaps you can send it to America with the girl.”

  Michael looked at them all with surprise. “What girl?” They all looked away, as if with embarrassment or apprehension. They knew this was an unpleasant surprise and were afraid of his reaction.

  Guiliano’s mother said, “My son’s fiancée. She is pregnant.” She turned to the others. “She won’t vanish into thin air. Will he take her or not? Let him say so now.” Though she tried to maintain her composure it was obvious she was worried about Michael’s reaction. “She will come to you in Trapani. Turi wants you to send her ahead of him to America. When she sends word back that she is safe, then Turi will come to you.”

  Michael said cautiously, “I have no instructions. I would have to consult my people in Trapani about the time element. I know that you and your husband are to follow once your son gets to America. Can’t the girl wait and go with you?”

  Pisciotta said harshly, “The girl is your test. She will send back a code word and then Guiliano will know he is dealing not only with an honest man but an intelligent one. Only then can he believe you can get him safely out of Sicily.”

  Guiliano’s father said angrily, “Aspanu, I have already told you and my son. Don Corleone has given his word to help us.”

  Pisciotta said smoothly, “Those are Turi’s orders.”

  Michael thought quickly. Finally he said, “I think it’s very clever. We can test the escape route and see if it is compromised.” He had no intention of using the same escape route for Guiliano. He said to Guiliano’s mother, “I can send you and your husband with the girl.” He looked at them questioningly, but both the parents shook their heads.

  Hector Adonis said to them gently, “It’s not a bad idea.”

  Guiliano’s mother said, “We will not leave Sicily while our son is still here.” Guiliano’s father folded his arms and nodded in agreement. And Michael understood what they were thinking. If Turi Guiliano died in Sicily, they had no wish to be in America. They must stay to mourn him, to bury him, bring flowers to his grave. The final tragedy belonged to them. The girl could go, she was bound only by love, not by blood.

  Sometime during the night Maria Lombardo Guiliano showed Michael a scrapbook filled with newspaper stories, posters showing the different prices placed on Guiliano’s head by the government in Rome. She showed a picture story published in America by Life magazine in 1948. The story stated that Guiliano was the greatest bandit of modern times, an Italian Robin Hood who robbed the rich to help the poor. It also printed one of the famous letters that Guiliano had sent to the newspapers.

  It read: “For five years I have fought to make Sicily free. I have given to the poor what I have taken from the rich. Let the people of Sicily speak out whether I am an outlaw or a fighter for freedom. If they speak against me, I will deliver myself into your hands for judgment. As long as they speak for me I will continue to wage total war.”

  It sure as hell didn’t sound like a bandit on the run, Michael thought, as Maria Lombardo’s proud face beamed at him. He felt an identification with her, she looked very much like his own mother. Her face was seamed with past sorrows, but her eyes blazed with a natural love for even more combat against her fate.

  Finally it was dawn and Michael rose and said his goodbyes. He was surprised when Guiliano’s mother gave him a warm embrace.

  “You remind me of my son,” she said. “I trust you.” She went to the mantel and took down a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. It was black. The features were Negroid. “Take this as a gift. It is the only thing I own worthy to give you.” Michael tried to refuse, but she pressed it on him.

  Hector Adonis said, “There are only a few of those statues left in Sicily. Curious, but we are very close to Africa.”

  Guiliano’s mother said, “It doesn’t matter what she looks like, you can pray to her.”

  “Yes,” Pisciotta said. “She can do as much good as the other.” There was contempt in his voice.

  Michael watched Pisciotta take his leave of Guiliano’s mother. He could see the real affection between them. Pisciotta kissed her on both cheeks and patted her reassuringly. But she put her head on his shoulder for a brief moment and said, “Aspanu, Aspanu, I love you as I love my son. Don’t let them kill Turi.” She was weeping.

  Pisciotta lost all his coldness, his body seemed to crumple, his dark bony face softened. “You will all grow old in America,” he said.

  Then he turned to Michael. “I will bring Turi to you within the week,” he said.

  He went out the door quickly and silently. He had his own special red-bordered pass and he could melt again into the mountains. Hector Adonis would remain with the Guilianos, though he owned a house in town.

  Michael and Stefan Andolini got into the Fiat and drove through the central square and onto the road that led to Castelvetrano and the coastal city of Trapani. With Andolini’s slow tentative driving and the numerous military roadblocks, it was noon before they came to the town of Trapani.

  BOOK II

  TURI GUILIANO

  1943

  CHAPTER 2

  IN SEPTEMBER OF 1943 Hector Adonis was a Professor of History and Literature at the University of Palermo. His extremely short stature caused his colleagues to treat him with less respect than his talents deserved. But this was foreordained in the Sicilian culture, which commonly and brutally based nicknames on physical shortcomings. The one person who knew his true value was the President of the University.

  In this September of 1943, Hector Adonis’s life was about to change. For southern Italy, the war was over. The American Army had already conquered Sicily and gone on to the mainland. Fascism was dead, Italy was reborn; for the first time in fourteen centuries, the island of Sicily had no real master. But Hector Adonis, knowing the ironies of history, had no great hopes. The Mafia had already begun to usurp the rule of law in Sicily. Their cancerous power would be as deadly as that of any corporate state. From his office window he looked down on the grounds of the University, at the few buildings that could be called a campus.

  There was no need for dormitories, there was no college life as known in England and America. Here most students studied at home and consulted with their professors at stated intervals. The professors gave lectures which students could ignore with impunity. They needed only to take their exams. It was a system that Hector Adonis thought disgr
aceful in general and stupid in particular as it affected Sicilians, who, he thought, required a pedagogical discipline even more severe than students in other countries.

  Watching from his cathedral-like window he could see the seasonal influx of Mafia chiefs from all the provinces of Sicily, come to make their lobbying calls on the professors of the University. Under Fascist rule, these Mafia chiefs had been more circumspect, more humble, but now under the beneficent rule of American-restored democracy, they had risen like worms struggling through rain-broken earth and resumed their old ways. They were no longer humble.

  The Mafia chiefs, the Friends of the Friends, heads of small local clans in the many villages of Sicily, came in holiday finery to plead the cause of students who were relatives or sons of wealthy landowners, or sons of friends, who were failing in their courses at the University, who would not get degrees unless some firm action was taken. And these degrees were of the utmost importance. How else would families get rid of sons who had no ambition, no talent, no intelligence? Parents would have to support sons the rest of their lives. But with degrees, slips of parchment from the University, these same rascals could become teachers, doctors, members of Parliament, or if worse came to worst, minor administrative functionaries of the state.

  Hector Adonis shrugged; history consoled him. His beloved British, in their greatest days of Empire, had entrusted their armies to equally incompetent sons of the rich, whose parents bought them commissions in the army and the commands of great ships. Still the Empire had prospered. True these commanders had led their men to unnecessary slaughters, yet it must be said that the commanders had died with their men, bravery had been an imperative of their class. And that dying had at least solved the problem of incompetent and feckless men becoming a burden to the state. Italians were not so chivalrous or so coldly practical. They loved their children, saved them from personal disasters and let the state look after itself.

  From his window, Hector Adonis could spot at least three local Mafia chiefs wandering around looking for their victims. They wore cloth caps and leather boots and carried over their arms heavy velvet jackets, for the weather was still warm. They carried baskets of fruit, bamboo-jacketed bottles of home-grown wine to give as gifts. Not bribes but courteous antidotes for the terror that would rise in the breasts of the professors at the sight of them. For most of the professors were natives of Sicily and understood that the requests could never be refused.

  One of the Mafia chiefs, in dress so countrified he could have stepped onto the stage of Cavalleria Rusticana, was entering the building and ascending the stairs. Hector Adonis prepared, with sardonic pleasure, to play the familiar comedy to come.

  Adonis knew the man. His name was Buccilla and he owned a farm and sheep in a town called Partinico, not far from Montelepre. They shook hands and Buccilla handed him the basket he was carrying.

  “We have so much fruit dropping to the ground and rotting that I thought, I’ll carry some to the Professor,” Buccilla said. He was a short but broad man, his body powerful from a lifetime of hard work. Adonis knew he had a reputation for honesty, that he was a modest man though he could have turned his power into riches. He was a throwback to the old Mafia chiefs who fought not for riches but for respect and honor.

  Adonis smiled as he accepted the fruit. What peasant in Sicily ever let anything go to waste? There were a hundred children for each olive that fell to the ground, and these children were like locusts.

  Buccilla sighed. He was affable, but Adonis knew this affability could turn to menace in the fraction of a second. So he flashed a sympathetic smile as Buccilla said, “What a nuisance life is. I have work to do on my land and yet when my neighbor asked me to do this little favor, how could I refuse? My father knew his father, my grandfather his grandfather. And it is my nature, perhaps my misfortune that I will do anything a friend asks me to do. After all, are we not Christians together?”

  Hector Adonis said smoothly, “We Sicilians are all the same. We are too generous. That is why the northerners in Rome take such a shameful advantage of us.”

  Buccilla stared at him shrewdly. There would be no trouble here. And hadn’t he heard somewhere that this professor was one of the Friends? Certainly he did not seem frightened. And if he was a Friend of the Friends, why had not he, Buccilla, known this fact? But there were many different levels in the Friends. In any event, here was a man who understood the world he lived in.

  “I have come to ask you a favor,” Buccilla said. “As one Sicilian to another. My neighbor’s son failed at the University this year. You failed him. So my neighbor claims. But when I heard your name I said to him, ‘What! Signor Adonis? Why, that man has the best heart in the world. He could never do such an unkindness if he knew all the facts. Never.’ And so they begged me with tears to tell you the whole story. And to ask with the utmost humbleness to change his grade so that he can go into the world to earn his bread.”

  Hector Adonis was not deceived by this exquisite politeness. Again it was like the English he so much admired, those people who could be so subtly rude that you basked in their insults for days before you realized they had mortally wounded you. A figure of speech in regard to the English, but with Signor Buccilla, his request, if denied, would be followed by the blast of a lupara on some dark night. Hector Adonis politely nibbled on the olives and berries in the basket. “Ah, we can’t let a young man starve in this terrible world,” he said. “What is the fellow’s name?” And when Buccilla told him, he took up a ledger from the bottom of his desk. He leafed through it, though of course he knew the name well.

  The failed student was a lout, an oaf, a lummox; more a brute than the sheep on Buccilla’s farm. He was a lazy womanizer, a shiftless braggart, a hopeless illiterate who did not know the difference between the Iliad and Verga. Despite all this, Hector Adonis smiled sweetly at Buccilla and in a tone of the utmost surprise said, “Ah, he had a little trouble with one of his examinations. But it is easily put to order. Have him come see me and I will prepare him in these very rooms and then give him an extra examination. He will not fail again.”

  They shook hands, and the man left. Another friend made, Hector thought. What did it signify that all these young good-for-nothings got University degrees they did not earn or deserve? In the Italy of 1943 they could use them to wipe their pampered asses and decline into positions of mediocrity.

  The ringing phone broke his train of thought and brought a different irritation. There was a short ring, then a pause before three curter rings. The woman at the switchboard was gossiping with someone and flipped her tab between the pauses in her own conversation. This exasperated him so that he shouted, “Pronto” into the phone more rudely than was seemly.

  And unfortunately it was the President of the University calling. But the President, a notorious stickler for professional courtesy, obviously had more important things on his mind than rudeness. His voice was quivering with fear, almost tearful in its supplication. “My dear Professor Adonis,” he said, “could I trouble you to come to my office? The University has a grave problem that only you may be able to resolve. It is of the utmost importance. Believe me, my dear Professor, you will have my gratitude.”

  This obsequiousness made Hector Adonis nervous. What did the idiot expect of him? To jump over the Cathedral of Palermo? The President would be better qualified, Adonis thought bitterly, he was at least six feet. Let him jump and not ask a subordinate with the shortest legs in Sicily to do his job for him. This image put Adonis into a good humor again. So he asked mildly, “Perhaps you could give me a hint. Then on my way I might prepare myself.”

  The President’s voice sank to a whisper. “The estimable Don Croce has honored us with a visit. His nephew is a medical student, and his professor suggested he retire gracefully from the program. Don Croce has come to beg us in the most courteous way possible to reconsider. However, the professor in the Medical College insists that the young man resign.”

  “Who is the fool?” He
ctor Adonis asked.

  “Young Doctor Nattore,” the President said. “An estimable member of the faculty but as yet a little unworldly.”

  “I shall be in your office within five minutes,” Hector Adonis said.

  As he hurried across the open ground to the main building, Hector Adonis pondered what course of action to take. The difficulty lay not with the President; he had always summoned Adonis on matters such as these. The difficulty lay with Doctor Nattore. He knew the Doctor well. A brilliant medical man, a teacher whose death would definitely be a loss to Sicily, his resignation a loss to the University. Also that most pompous of bores, a man of inflexible principles and true honor. But even he must have heard of the great Don Croce, even he must have a grain of common sense embedded in his genius brain. There must be something else.

  In front of the main building was a long black car and leaning against it were two men dressed in business suits which failed to make them look respectable. They must be the Don’s bodyguards and chauffeur left down here out of respect for the academics Don Croce was visiting. Adonis saw their looks of astonishment and then amusement at his small stature, his perfect tailoring, the briefcase under his arm. He flashed a cold stare which startled them. Could such a small man be a Friend of the Friends?

  The office of the President looked more like a library than a business center; he was a scholar more than an administrator. Books lined all the walls, the furniture was massive but comfortable. Don Croce sat in a huge chair sipping his espresso. His face reminded Hector Adonis of the prow of a ship in the Iliad, warped by years of battle and hostile seas. The Don pretended they had never met, and Adonis allowed himself to be introduced. The President of course knew this was a farce, but young Doctor Nattore was taken in.