The Prince (14 page)

“We didn't mean to disturb
voscenza
,” Jano interjected to get the prince's attention. But Licata didn't deign to look at him. Instead his eyes were on Ginetto, the youngest of the band.

“Ginetto, why aren't you with your father?” he reproached the young man gently. “He's inside.”

The boy didn't know what to say other than an offhand “I had things to do.”

The prince frowned, irritated. “I see that regretfully there is no longer any proper respect; the respect that at one time we young people showed our elders. You should know, however, that everything that is modern will sooner or later be superseded.”

“Our ideas will live on for a thousand years!” Jano Vassallo had the gall to say.

The prince threw him a blistering look and took his leave: “I have guests waiting for me. You may go in peace.” So saying, he went back into the palazzo, leaving the five foaming with rage.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Licata went to Peppino Ragusa, who was sitting on a chair in the entrance hall, utterly drained, still terrified and panting. From the prince's tone when he spoke to him, there seemed to be a long-standing complicity between the two. “Peppino, why are they after you?”

Ragusa rose from his chair and was about to kiss his ring, but the prince drew back his hand.

“
Patri
, they've been hunting me for days. They've accused me of being a subversive.”

Ferdinando Licata did not conceal a slight smile. “Well, is that all? It's what everyone says, isn't it?”

But Ragusa couldn't manage to smile. “
Patri
, you know it's not true. I give a few private lessons to our townsmen who can't read or write. But they say I mix these lessons with antifascist talk.”

“And isn't it so?” The prince was having some fun with the earnest Ragusa.

“I try to open their eyes. Make them use their heads and think.”

“Calm down now.” Licata squeezed his shoulders, as if to give him courage. “You may join us if you wish. Today I have the ‘one hundred saints' here for lunch.”

“Maybe I'll just wait here awhile, before I go.”

The prince was about to leave him. “And how are things at home?”

“We have our health. Saro is a big comfort to me. He's a wonderful boy.”

“Well, make yourself at home,” the prince said. With that, he returned to his guests and to the monsignor, whom he had left alone for too long.

In the dining room, a brand-new gramophone was playing the notes of a Viennese waltz. Ferdinando Licata returned to his seat beside Monsignor Antonio Albamonte, who was enjoying a vanilla cake along with the four other diners seated at his table.

“Forgive me, Monsignor; some rude intruders.” The prelate nodded with his mouth full, while a servant brought the prince his piece of cake. Ferdinando began eating it with gusto, and then, eyeing the medal that adorned the priest's cassock, asked with a tinge of irony, “Monsignor, I didn't know you had been to war.”

The bishop scoffed, touching the medal. “This? I won it at the carnival.” He laughed, but quickly turned serious. “I'm joking, of course. This is the medal I recently received from the Fascist party secretary, Achille Starace himself: Meritorious of the Battle of Wheat. I was awarded it along with sixty other bishops and more than two thousand priests from all over Italy. We were received by Pope Pius XI. It was an unforgettable day, so I've worn this ever since.”

“From what I've read, I don't think the Pope agrees much with our Duce's decisions. Last year's encyclical condemned the Nazi ideology in no uncertain terms. Yet our Duce does nothing but sing the praises of his friend Adolf Hitler, and now he's even looking to him as a model. A few months ago, he introduced the ‘Roman step,' to imitate the German army's goose step. Isn't it grotesque?” the prince suggested, leaving his guest to draw his own conclusions.

“Not as grotesque as the Roman salute. I'm truly embarrassed when I have to salute some party official,” the prelate explained. “However, to even the score, the Pope criticized communism as well,” the monsignor promptly added. “We'll see. Our Duce knows what he's doing. Have you seen the order and stability he's brought about here?”

“What he's done is simply replace the Mafia.” The prince repeated: “The fascist state has supplanted the Mafia. However, the roots remain intact. All they changed was the name, but the methods are alike. I'm willing to bet, Monsignor, that when these gentlemen in black shirts are gone, the Mafia will return, stronger than ever.”

“We must be patient. Wait for the storm to pass,” the bishop replied placidly, stuffing the last bit of cake into his mouth. By now the numerous glasses of good wine had loosened his tongue and his inhibitions. “As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed.” He leaned closer to the prince's ear. “I'm hiding the bandit Giuseppe Spagnolo in the convent of Santa Margherita, near Calatafimi. A lost sheep who wants to return to the fold, but the laws won't allow him to. I can't tell you how many souls Spagnolo has sent to meet their Maker. I'd like to send him to America. There he can rebuild his life . . .

“I know that you are well connected to the Florios.”

“True,” the prince confirmed. “They don't ask questions when I ask them to take some poor devil on board.”

“Good. Giuseppe Spagnolo can be a generous man if we save his hide,” Albamonte concluded.

“Let's put it this way, Monsignor. I'll arrange for your bandit to sail, and I don't want anything for myself—”

“If?” The prelate beat him to it.

“If you'll be kind enough to hide a townsman of mine in one of your monasteries for a few months,” Prince Licata requested. “I have to make a good man disappear.”

“How many did he bump off?” the monsignor asked slyly.

“No, no, he's truly a good man. His only misfortune is to have made enemies of the Black Shirts.”

“Is he a subversive? A socialist?” the priest asked suspiciously.

“Monsignor, ideas are sacrosanct, no matter where they come from. The important thing is to avoid bloodshed,” the prince replied. “I assure you, he's just a poor devil. His name is Peppino Ragusa.”

“So may I count on you?”

“If the trade of favors is satisfactory to you, it's fine with me. As they say, one more won't hurt.”

– 1939 –

S
ince the day of the pursuit, Peppino Ragusa tried to be seen as little as possible around Salemi. He went to the clinic, in the vain hope that a patient might turn up on the doorstep, but then quickly returned home and shut himself in until the following morning. He also suspended the evening lessons during this time, fearing that Jano might reappear and rough up his elderly pupils. Annachiara couldn't understand Jano's persistent rage, and this time it was she who proposed that they go back north, to the Veneto region. But Ragusa was too attached to the colors of his Sicilian homeland, the ancient landscapes, that sun, to be able to give it all up.

Leaving everything behind to start over again at their age, in another part of the world, was not an appealing prospect. They had to be patient. Sooner or later Jano would calm down. He'd known Jano since he was young; he'd always been the most reckless hothead of all the kids, but as a boy he'd been less disrespectful.

Actually, Jano had never gotten along with the doctor's son, Saro. True, the two were five years apart. But they had two very different temperaments. The one impulsive and arrogant; the other thoughtful and introverted. Saro spoke little and was always guarded, never revealing his emotions. He preferred to be viewed as antisocial rather than to appear too receptive and thereby open himself up to others' prying. This demeanor made him all the more intriguing in girls' eyes. In addition, his athletic build, his wrestler's shoulders, and his sky-blue eyes were an irresistible magnet for girls, who would turn around to cast furtive glances at him when he passed by.

Saro worked at Domenico's barbershop, the resonating chamber for every incident, large or small, that occurred in the community.

One day while he was soaping the face of Ninì Trovato, the elderly town crier and factotum, Donato, one of Rosario Losurdo's sons, came into the shop. Saro stropped his razor, then took a little rubber ball that was kept in a bowl full of water and stuck it in Ninì's mouth; with his tongue, the old man positioned it between his denture and his cheek. This ingenious technique, devised by Domenico for his elderly clients whose wrinkles were pronounced, smoothed out the skin, thereby making shaving easier.

Ninì Trovato was the most well-informed man in town. If you wanted to know whose son a certain kid was, he could list the entire family tree for you. Carlo Vacca, Roberto Naselli, a livestock broker, a certain Armando Caradonna and three other villagers were also in the shop.

That morning, Ninì was holding forth and recounting yet again what had happened in Partanna a few years earlier to an elderly attorney who was president of one of the agricultural cooperatives formed to help war veterans, though their real aim was to reinforce a coalition of gabellotti to oppose the initiatives of the socialist leagues.

A clapping of hands from the door, like faint, mocking applause, made all heads turn. Jano entered the shop, headed for Ninì's chair and said, “All reds should hang swinging from a hook.”

Ninì glanced around and saw who had entered. He rose from his chair, taking the rubber ball out of his mouth and wiping the soap off his face. “Jano Vassallo. Take my place. I'm not in any hurry.” He dropped the little ball into the bowl of water.

Jano approached Saro and faced him. The two looked at each other. “Shave, Jano?”

“Yeah,” the other said, sitting down.

“Aren't you afraid of my razor? After what you did to my father.”

“Saro, you wouldn't hurt a fly. Your father is another story. . . .

“So, with and against the grain.” He smiled, and with that smile everyone could breathe again.

Saro began soaping him, using another brush. “Jano, leave my father alone. We're peaceful people.”

“Saruzzo, I have nothing against your father. I'm against people who won't fall in line. It's time we got it into our heads that there is only one man in command and it's
him
, the Duce! Have I made myself clear? Your father teaches those poor illiterate fools without asking a lira, but he puts subversive ideas in their heads, and that's not good. The result, in fact, is that even priests are being shot at now. You heard what happened last Sunday, didn't you?”

“You mean Don Mario's sermon?” Carlo Vacca threw in.

“I was there,” Armando Caradonna chimed in, “and I can tell you that no one had ever spoken so strongly against the signori.”

“I'm talking about the gunshots that were fired at the door of the rectory the following day,” Jano explained.

“Well, my father would never dream of shooting at the church,” Saro said heatedly, still soaping him.

“They're people who think like him, though!”

But Jano was mistaken. The man who had reacted against the harsh tones of the sermon was certainly not a socialist. Because Rosario Losurdo could be called anything, but not a red—and it was he who had shot at the rectory.

That morning Ferdinando Licata had dressed in his hunting outfit: pants, brown corduroy jacket, and high leather boots. He mounted Lightning, the handsome colt with the black coat, and headed for the Tafèle farm, where Rosario Losurdo, his family, and the retinue of campieri lived.

Losurdo was ten years younger than Licata, but his hard life in the fields, his family responsibilities, and the charges brought against him years earlier—of which he continued to declare himself innocent—seemed to have aged him prematurely. Although he was still in his forties, his hair was nearly all gray, and his beard was completely white. He and the prince looked as though they were the same age. But under that prematurely white hair was a sharp mind capable of calculating the value and productive potential of land in a fraction of a second, to within a few pounds of its eventual yield. Moreover, his physical strength was prodigious, rendering him invincible at arm wrestling, even against the strongest, most strapping young men in the area.

Licata paused at the top of the hill, where he could look out over the entire terrain. He saw farms scattered throughout the valley, surrounded by green fields.

The largest of these was that of Rosario Losurdo.

Losurdo had come up in the world, the prince thought, rising from the carter that he had been. In fact, after prison, his gabellotto had become one of the most powerful men in the territory of Salemi. The injustice he had suffered had eliminated any allegiance he might have had toward the law. He was convinced that justice was an ideal that could not be pursued on this earth; the law, because it was written and interpreted by men, could be twisted, obstructed, and adapted as needed.

Licata saw some commotion in the courtyard of his gabellotto's farmstead and realized he'd already been spotted by the campieri who worked for Losurdo, but were paid with his money. He gave Lightning a gentle spur and started down the path.

It didn't often happen that the prince went to go talk to a subordinate. In fact, as far as anyone could remember, it had never happened. But this time he had a favor to do for the monsignor: no one should ever again dare to shoot at the rectory.

Rosario Losurdo had already been at the gate for some minutes, awaiting him.

“
Bacio le mani
—my respects—
patri
,” the gabellotto said as he approached and helped the prince dismount.

“Every time I see this land, my heart fills with joy, Rosario,” Licata said, looking around. “I can see that you tend it with love.”