The Prince (28 page)

“I won't say a word, sir, I swear. Not to anyone.”

“Good, now count.”

“Up to a thousand?”

“Yes, up to a thousand, and not one less. Can you count?”

“Of course. I aced arithmetic.”

“Good for you. Now turn and face the wall and start counting.”

Pepè obeyed and began to count. Saro quickly headed toward town hall. The small door to the combat league's quarters opened on the left side of the building. The guards' pickup truck, known throughout the area, stood outside in the courtyard. In an adjacent alleyway, in a recess formed by two houses, used by women to hang out clothes to dry, were two horses that Saro had managed to borrow from some friends who lived in Pusillesi, a nearby district of Salemi.

With the wooden board balanced on his head, Saro approached the door, his heart beating rapidly. He did not have a prearranged plan. He knew he had to improvise. His only hope was that his father and Losurdo would not panic and would help him at the crucial moment of escape.

He knocked firmly on the door, and a few seconds later, Quinto opened up. Saro was quick to get past the Black Shirt, struggling with the board on his head to avoid being recognized.

“Grub's here!” he called out cheerfully, entering the command room. He set the dishes on the table.

Cosimo and Prospero dropped what they were doing at once and fell upon the bowls.

“What did your grandmother make us, something good?”

“Pasta with sardines.”

They took off the cloth and uncovered the pasta still steaming in the bowls. Without further ado, Cosimo and Prospero sat down and began forking up the spaghetti, stuffing themselves with huge mouthfuls.

“Let's go, hurry up,” Quinto said to Saro, who had placed the board with the last two bowls back on his head.

Luck was on his side. Nobody had yet noticed the switch. Quinto led him down the stairs to the basement and stopped at the first cell. He put in the key, and only then did he realize that it wasn't the usual Pepè who'd brought the food.

“How come Pepè didn't come?” he asked suspiciously as he flung open the cell door.

“He's sick.
Nonna
Tina sent me.”

The cell door swung open. Peppino Ragusa was standing in the doorway. His face was bruised, his eyes lifeless, but as soon as he saw his son, he couldn't help but exclaim “Saro!”

Quinto instantly knew that he had been tricked, but in less time than that, Saro had shoved the board with the bowls at his father, who, completely stunned, found himself holding it. From under his cloak Saro pulled out the
liccasapuni
, the soap knife he used to shave customers at the barbershop, and with a precise stroke slashed Quinto's face. The guard first moved to protect his face, then tried to stem the blood by pressing the palms of his hands on the long gash. Saro did not let up. Picking up the wooden board that had fallen to the ground, he brought it down as hard as he could on the unfortunate victim's skull, causing the guard to slump, unconscious, in a pool of blood.

Peppino Ragusa was a good man and would never have imagined that his son could commit such an act, and in cold blood.

Saro hurriedly retrieved the keys from the lock and then went to open the door of Losurdo's cell, succeeding on the first try.

Rosario Losurdo immediately took in the situation.

“The other two?” he asked Saro, seeing Quinto lying unconscious on the ground, bleeding.

“They're gobbling up pasta.” He pointed upstairs.

“They might have heard. Let's go! You go up first; we'll follow you,” Rosario said.

Peppino Ragusa had remained in his cell, unable to handle the situation. Losurdo grabbed him by the arm and forced him to come out.

Saro began climbing the stairs, his ears straining to hear the slightest suspicious sound. Behind him came Rosario and then the doctor. Besides a razor, the only weapon they had on their side was the element of surprise. They couldn't afford to lose that advantage.

Saro reached the door and slowly opened it partway. Peering into the room, he saw Cosimo still bent over his plate of spaghetti. He motioned the others to follow him, but as soon as he went through the door he was struck by something that felt like a mallet, which knocked the breath out of him. He'd been hit by a chair, and as he fell to the ground, the razor slipped out of his hands. Rosario, who was ready for anything, stepped in and rushed headlong at Prospero. Head lowered, he struck him in the chest, driving him against the wall. Turning, he saw Cosimo coming at them with a sawed-off shotgun. It was obvious that the guards had staged the ambush to catch them unawares, and they had succeeded to perfection. Cosimo shouted, “Stop or I'll shoot!”

Saro, turning a somersault, lunged for the razor. The sudden move distracted Cosimo long enough to spare Losurdo a blast from the shotgun. Cosimo, in fact, aimed the double-barreled gun at Saro, who hastily picked up the razor and threw it at him like a boomerang. The razor's entire length lodged in Cosimo's right hand, just as he was about to pull the trigger. It happened in a mere fraction of a second; in fact, the razor's impact on the guard's hand deflected the load of gunshot. Cosimo felt a sting like the lash of a whip and then looked at the back of his hand where the liccasapuni was planted. He pulled out the razor and as soon as it was out, blood began gushing from the wound.

Dr. Peppino Ragusa watched the scene as if it did not concern him. But he was stunned by Saro: never would he have thought him capable of such violence.

Rosario Losurdo, meanwhile, had rushed at Prospero, who had yet to recover from the blow to his chest. Losurdo grabbed him by the ears and banged his head repeatedly against the wall as forcefully as he could. At the fourth violent impact, the man slid from his hands.

Cosimo was beside himself with rage; holding the gun in his other hand, since the right one was out of commission, he took aim at Saro, but Rosario Losurdo came up behind him and charged him like a buffalo, butting him in the kidneys and sending him flying to the ground. “Let's go! Let's get out of here!” he yelled to Saro.

Ragusa, meanwhile, was helping Prospero. His physician's instinct led him to assist anyone who required aid.

Saro turned back, grabbed his father's arm, and forced him to follow him. “Papa, this is no time to be a missionary.”

They reached the front door and staggered out into the fresh evening air.

“Let's take the truck,” Rosario said, seeing the pickup parked in the courtyard.

“No, no. Look at the tires,” Saro told him. “We have two horses waiting for us down there.”

Rosario looked at the vehicle's wheels and saw that all four tires had been slashed.

“Nice job,” he remarked.

“That's nothing, I also cut the brake line,” Saro told him.

They reached the horses. Losurdo mounted the thinner one, and Saro and his father got on a handsome young bay.

As they rode off toward Calatafimi, they heard the cries of Prospero and Quinto. Then they heard the truck start up, but they never saw it appear behind them.

They'd made it. Saro was proud of himself. His father less so.

– 1939 –

S
aro had been able to arrange things with excellent judgment. He evidently had the makings of an organizer: he was quick to make decisions and knew what had to be done to achieve a specific objective.

When he'd begun planning the escape, the first thing that concerned him was not so much being able to rescue his father and Losurdo but where to hide them during the long wait for the ship's departure.

Saro had decided that they would flee to America, at least until Italy had come to its senses regarding the insane laws against the Jewish race.

In finding a safe place to hole up without arousing suspicions, he had been aided by a religious friend, a Franciscan friar who lived at the Sanctuary of Calatafimi, the mother church. The pious friars had sheltered entire families of dissidents and even mafiosi within their walls on other occasions.

The sanctuary had been built around the year 1200, and, over time, to oppose pirates coming from the sea, it had been transformed into a veritable fortress, solid and sturdy. Saro thought it would make an ideal refuge, not least because it was just a few miles from the port of Castellammare del Golfo, where they would board a fishing boat that would take them to Palermo.

It was still night when they reached Calatafimi. They headed for the sanctuary and Brother Antonino himself, Saro's friend, welcomed them and led them into the safety of the monastery's walls. At that time, perhaps because of the concordat enacted ten years earlier, church properties enjoyed a kind of immunity, so they were considered the safest refuge for those trying to flee the fascist regime.

The friar asked no questions; he looked at the men standing before him, greeted them with a nod, and then said softly, “Follow me.” He turned and walked to a staircase that descended into the church's crypt.

The friar moved swiftly through the silent corridors, lighting their way with an oil lamp, until he came to a door and opened it. Before letting them inside, he asked solicitously, “Have you eaten?”

“Actually we didn't have time,” Saro replied.

“I'll bring you something. Meanwhile, go in and get settled. There are some pallets available.”

Saro entered the large room first and was amazed to see how many other people were in there. Everyone stared at the newcomers in absolute silence, frightened, waiting to hear their stories. One question was going through their heads: Were they friends or informers?

Saro explained that they were from Salemi and that they were waiting to sail for America. At those words, everybody relaxed; they were all in the same situation.

For several years now, the sanctuary had become a way station for Sicilians who had to flee Italy clandestinely.

In recent weeks, the monks had taken in two Jewish families: one from Caltanissetta and the other from a small village near Enna. These desperate, anxious people had brought just a few things with them—only the strictest necessities—in order to be able to move quickly.

Somewhat apart from the two Jewish families, so he would not be confused with them, was a certain Vito Pizzuto, a gabellotto from the Vicaretto estate. He had been hiding in the sanctuary for at least a month, to avoid capture by the fascist squads in Trapani, who had accused him of antigovernment activities.

Everyone in the room had but one goal: to escape from a cruel stepmother of a country and board one of the ships of the Florio fleet, which departed from Palermo, and which a man could sail on without close inspection—provided he tipped the crew well.

As far as personal documents were concerned, there was even a ready-and-willing organization connected with an affiliate at the Port of New York. It offered a one-way ticket, false papers, and the possibility of repaying everything in easy installments. Of course, the
cosca—
the Mob—would withhold what they owed, taking it directly from what they earned in jobs the organization itself procured illegally, thereby holding the naive immigrants in a double bind.

Could paradise itself be more well thought out than that?

In those days, hundreds of thousands of desperate individuals crossed the ocean that way, in search of a new life and a new world, where work would finally restore the dignity that was denied them in the land of their birth.

Meanwhile, in Salemi, Prospero and Quinto had crashed the truck into a stone wall on a curve along the road to Calatafimi. Jano joined them, along with Ginetto and Nunzio, and was blaming the two hapless men who could barely stand up, still in shock following the impact.

Prospero had tried to tackle the road at high speed, careening dangerously because of the four flat tires, and when he hit the brake to slow down, the pedal failed, and the pickup slammed violently into a low wall hidden behind a prickly pear.

Later Prospero, Quinto, and Cosimo were taken to Dr. Bizzarri's clinic. Awakened in the middle of the night, the doctor stitched and dressed their wounds, and then slumped exhausted into a chair a couple of hours later: “That was quite a beating, no doubt about it.”

The words irritated Jano, who didn't like being duped. “If I get my hands on them, they won't live to tell it.”

“In the meantime, they must be laughing about it, waiting for a steamer to America,” the doctor commented.

“What makes you think they're leaving the country?” Jano asked suspiciously.

“Didn't you tell me you followed them on the road to Calatafimi?” the doctor asked, pouring himself a glass of wine that he'd taken from the medicine cabinet.

“So? What's that got to do with America?” Jano insisted.

“Well, they're waiting at the sanctuary for the ship to depart, which should be next week in fact, weather permitting.”

“What are you doing, guessing?” Nunzio asked him.

“No. Everyone knows it. People who want to leave the country and have problems with the law go into hiding at the Sanctuary of Calatafimi and hole up until the evening prior to departure. Then they're taken to the port of Castellammare, and from there a fishing boat brings them directly to the ship as it's about to sail. A crewman allows them to get on board covertly, and that's that.”

The doctor looked at the three men who were listening to him in astonishment. He realized that he had said too much.

“Don't tell me you didn't know! Everyone is aware of that trafficking; lots of people earn a good deal of money from it.”

“Are you sure?” Jano still couldn't believe it was true.

“Of course! Last year around this time, Brother Antonino called me to attend a woman who was pregnant. She was about to give birth, and they were facing the voyage to Palermo. They were afraid she might pop the baby out on the fishing boat. I had to induce labor.”