That Summer in Sicily (28 page)

Mattia said nothing. As though in a trance, he closed his eyes. The only sound in the room was from Callas.

Cosimo spoke again.
He cares very little for his own life. Perhaps someday you will know how little. But I care for his life. Not to share it with him, not to stay in his presence, but to know that such a man still walks, however restrainedly, upon this poor earth of ours. That’s the proposition which I came here today to present to you. Banish Leo, Signor Mattia. You decide when, where, under what circumstances, under what regulations. He will comply. The only other thing I beg of you is to leave the girl alone.

The
puttanina
? That I will not promise.

Then my mission fails.

As though Cosimo were not present, Mattia paces, sits, paces, turns pages in a book that he does not look at, closes his eyes, mouths words that sound like prayer.

Get him away. By the time you’ve arrived back at the palace, instructions will be waiting for you. Get him away tomorrow. Tonight. Convince everyone of the
lupara bianca.
You’ve been a priest for long enough to have learned to lie, Cosimo. Convince everyone, especially the girl. I shall oversee his exile while you remain at the palace to comfort the widow, the daughters. The girl. Should you try even to speak with the prince or he with you, I’ll kill both of you. Likewise, should Leo make the most fleeting contact with the girl, I’ll kill her. Send her to him in a box. And if he’s still alive after he sees the way in which she died, I’ll kill him, too. You tell him that.

Then it was Cosimo who rose to leave, offered his hand to Mattia. Though he did not offer his hand in return, Mattia said,
I thought I’d forgotten the stories my grandmother, my mother, used to tell me about when they were young. About hunger and cold and heat and work and about being thrashed, first thrashed and then raped, by the noble’s capo, should they in any way displease him. I thought I’d forgotten those stories but, for some reason, today they all came back to me. Every one of them. Get him away, Cosimo. Get him away before I forget the stories once again. Oh, that jacket he always wears. Keep that jacket. Give it to the girl.

Cosimo said that this last served to prove to him that Mattia’s surveillance was complete, since it was true that Leo constantly wore the same suede riding jacket. But, wearing it, he rarely, if ever, left the palace grounds. The surveillance was carried on from within.

Cosimo asked,
Who is it, Signor Mattia?

He said that Mattia began to laugh then. Laugh and shake his head. He showed Cosimo to the door.

So through the offices of Cosimo, Leo was exiled rather than murdered. Two questions are on your lips, I know. What would have happened if Leo, himself, had gone to Mattia? And without either Cosimo’s intervention or Leo’s surrender of himself, what would Mattia have done?

I have asked these of Leo and Cosimo. You might imagine how often. Neither of them, certainly not I, can know the answer to the first. There was always a vacillating consensus between the men that Leo, in his weakened state, might have presented a less-than-persuasive case for himself. To the second question, there seems no doubt of the outcome. Leo would have been murdered.

And so Leo had lived with me for three years in self-imposed exile in the palace and then, for fourteen years, he lived in the exile imposed by Mattia. You’ll want to know where Leo was sent. What did he do? How did he live? And with whom?

Leo was taken to live on a farm whose wheat fields covered the length and breadth of a high plateau. The fields below the plateau were only a few kilometers from the western borders of the land he had just given away. So near and yet so far. A serpentine tactic, you might think, but as you will learn, it was not.

Alongside a large, extended family of tenant farmers, Leo worked as a laborer during the growing seasons. In the colder months, he helped to keep the barns and the farmhouse in repair. He was treated as the valuable worker and pleasant companion he showed himself to be. He slept in the cavernous loft of one of the outbuildings where he was not uncomfortable. He ate at the family table; his clothes and his bedding were cared for by the women of the house. He was invited to attend and to participate in what few outings and celebrations these simple mountain people enjoyed. Though they worked hard and lived simply, Leo said that this family did not seem to be poor. They seemed not to be living hand to mouth so much as they seemed to be living in the way they chose to live. An itinerant priest came to say Mass in a chapel in the fields each Sunday. They birthed their own children, buried their own dead. Small groups of the men and sometimes of the women went to market twice monthly to one or another of the nearest villages. Leo was often among them. But wasn’t he recognized in the villages? you want to know. Though he wore a poor man’s clothes, perhaps even took on a poor man’s bearing, I think someone who had once known Leo would surely have known him in any guise at all. You must remember, though, the inexorability of Sicilian silence.

Several times each year, Mattia and his own family—his wife and grown children, grandchildren—would arrive in a colonnade of automobiles to spend a Sunday with this family on the farm. With Mattia’s family. Yes, this exile that Mattia chose for Leo was none other than his matriarchal home, and the people with whom Leo lived and worked were all Mattia’s relatives. Scrubbing, polishing, cooking, gathering branches and wildflowers, carrying barrels up from the cellar, Leo said that for those Sundays with Mattia, the family prepared as if for Christmas. He was their benefactor, their protector. The prodigal son.

Mattia would always shake Leo’s hand. Look him hard in the eye. Rest his great, wide hand on Leo’s back for a while. Ask him why his glass was empty.

Mattia punished Leo—would have killed him—for the blatant irreverance he showed to the clan’s dictum.
But only secondarily was Leo to be punished for his real actions—his willful intervention of a centuries’-old system of hierarchy that kept the wealthy in comfort and the poor in misery. It was the affront more than the deed itself.
I shall not minimize the deed, though. You see, had all the landowners done what Leo did, the clan’s revenues would have been mightily impacted. It was a far cleaner task for the clan to plunder a handful of cowering, effete landowners than it would have been to bleed pittances from thousands of historically starved peasants waving freshly inked deeds and hunting rifles. But once again, the upsetting of the hierarchy happened to be Leo’s crime against the clan. The crime might well have taken on another form, his irreverance might have been demonstrated for some other cause. But what matters here and what seems so difficult to clearly state is that
it wasn’t what Leo did so much as it was his affront
for which he had to pay. Leo’s duel with the clan was not a philosophical one but one of deference. Leo did not defer to the clan. Leo did not allow the clan to prevail. A mortal sin. Leo compelled the clan to make an example of him.

But if we return to the question of philosophy, you will see that, in his own way—by subsidizing his relatives who lived on the farm—Mattia had done the same thing that Leo had done for his peasants. The circumstances and the results were certainly different but, in the end, both men, both Mattia and Leo
had done the same thing.
I don’t think it was until Cosimo sat with him, smoking Toscanos and drinking whiskey while Callas sang—I don’t think it was until then that this truth impressed Mattia. The truth that the prince and the clan’s chieftain had certain sentiments in common. Perhaps their very characters were not dissimilar, one from the other. And perhaps, just perhaps, Mattia began to think that, in his place, he would have done what Leo had done. Supposition, I know.

During all those years Leo never asked Mattia about time. About when or if he could leave the farm. Go back to find his own life. Nor did Mattia once broach the subject. I believe that Leo’s exile ended when Mattia died. No one from the clans presented himself in Mattia’s place, though Leo expected such. Waited for some unfamiliar automobile to move down the long gravel path. He waited for a year after Mattia’s death, but no one came. Thus Leo believed that his debt was paid, that it was time for him to leave the farm. Though they were sad to lose him, the family always knew that Leo would not stay forever. I do not believe that any of them were ever told that they were keeping Leo prisoner for all those years. I think that Mattia must have asked them to give Leo refuge as a favor to him. Told them some story about Leo having fallen on hard times. That he’d needed to
stay apart
for a while. Perhaps Mattia told the family that Leo was a fugitive whom he’d promised to protect, this being more truth than fiction. Also, I do not believe that Mattia involved any other member of the clan in his decision to let Leo live. To his brothers, he might have claimed that some other faction of the clan was responsible for the supposed
lupara bianca.
It might have been one of those times when several factions took credit for a kill without anyone knowing which faction actually consummated the deed. He might have closed the issue of Leo in some other way and at some great cost to himself. But close it, Mattia did. However he settled it, though, the settlement included me. My safety. Mattia insured that no one from the rural clans either prevented my going to or tracked my existence in Palermo. This is not supposition.

Bread and cheese in his pockets and warm rain in his face, it was May, late May, when Leo said his farewells to the family, walked out over the fields and down the steep rocky crags to the half-made roads that led back home. He said that he never expected me to be at the palace, but that it was there where he must begin. Where he would begin his search for me. Someone would be there. Someone would know something of me. Would he find Simona and the princesses? Would he find Cosimo? He could say nothing to anyone of where he’d been. He would tell no one but me. But where would I have gone? Would I have so adjusted my life as to make his reappearance an intrusion? Did I love someone else, had I married someone? He arrived at the palace finding it all but abandoned, if not quite in ruins. He ran up the endless stones of the stairway to the entrance, beat the great tarnished lion’s head against the massive door. He screamed,
C’è qualcuno?
Is anyone here?

But the door was unlocked and, his boots raising a hollow ruckus down the long uncarpeted hall, he saw Mimmo swishing a mop along the marble stairs. He called to him, but Mimmo kept on with his mop. Leo called to him once again. This time Mimmo—without looking ’round at the ghost who sounded so like his prince—answered,
yes sir?

Leo called him a third time. Still not turning toward him, Mimmo said,
You’re late for lunch, sir, but I’ll see what I can find for you in the pantry.

I have my lunch, Mimmo,
Leo said, pulling out the unwrapped bread and cheese, small spoils from a fourteen-year crusade.

In magnificent Sicilian arrogance, Mimmo leant the mop against the bannister, pulled a set of keys from the pocket of his trousers, and threw them over the bannister down to Leo, allowing himself only the swiftest glimpse of the ghost. Mimmo then picked up the mop and, looking down at the stairs, he said,
You’ll find her at the hunting lodge, sir. She’s grown even more beautiful, sir.

When Leo was out of sight, Mimmo sat on the stairs and wept for wonder and for joy. This last event was told to me by Mimmo himself.

Do I anticipate you correctly? Are you wanting to know how the clan responded to Leo’s return? We have established that Mattia—in a way that he may have kept concealed from everyone—closed the case on Leo. But when Leo reappeared—though he hardly went about the villages flaunting his resurrection—the clans all over the island would have known it within hours. Was there shock among them that one faction or another had not disposed of the prince as they’d so long believed? Had they, indeed, believed that at all? Did any of them surmise or suspect Mattia to have been Leo’s savior? And, if so, would they be willing, or more importantly—being who they were—would they be able to refrain from vendetta against Leo now? Far stronger for the imposed calm of his exile, Leo claimed that they would. Cosimo agreed. But I, too, was stronger for my own exile. My own ventures with the clans. I had my own reasons to believe that there would be no vendetta. As it turned out, all three of us were correct.

To a Sicilian, artful deception rarely invites vendetta since artfulness demonstrates respect. And Mattia was nothing if not artful. Hence, he was nothing if not respectful to the clan. The clan, as it turned out, chose to acknowledge the respect rather than the dupe. The clan’s acceptance of Mattia’s dupe was not a form of surrender but one of resignation. An overburdened and humble resignation. A kind of draw. A Sicilian often prefers a draw over a win. A draw can be better than a win. Denying triumph to the opponent is more thrilling than one’s tasting triumph one’s self. A Sicilian’s triumph is his denial of victory to his opponent. Leo allowed Mattia—and, essentially, the clan—his victory even if Mattia did not cause Leo’s death. Mattia’s and the clan’s victory was greater than it would have been had they simply murdered Leo. Quieted him with that aforementioned bullet in the heart. Mattia made it possible for the clan to have more. Better than causing Leo’s death, Mattia took Leo’s life. I hope you will pardon my repetitiveness as I try to explain all of this, Chou. Perhaps I do so as much for myself as for you.

Leo chose the rooms at the top of the villa, enclosing himself there in a monkish way, never brandishing his survival as a trophy, a sign of success and, hence, appeasing, I believe, whoever might have been left with a yearning to kill him. It was Leo’s delicacy with the pride and the egos of others, his gentility, his unprincely way of being that kept the balance of the draw and that would have made malevolence toward the aging prince seem vulgar.

The prince lived a reserved, almost shadowy incarnation for those years after he returned and until his second death. He rarely met with passersby, guests, those outside the family. Save members of the clan who visited him with an almost dutiful and, what one might think to be affectionate, regularity. Icilio, whom you met while you were here, among them. Icilio was Mattia’s son, and it’s possible that the father passed on a word or two about Leo to him. I do not know.