The Prince (9 page)

The reverend father, to avoid having his “sheep” be lured by the “reds,” had set out to help his parishioners become owners of small plots of land, in accordance with the guidelines of Don Sturzo's Popular Party. He gathered a good number of farmers around him and formed a cooperative called the Veterans, even though many of them had only participated in the war vicariously through the stories of some friend who had fought in it.

In fact, the enterprising Don Antonio Albamonte immediately went to work to find an estate that could be shared with his partners. Someone suggested the former Baucina lands, owned by a certain Count Valguarnera, of Catalan origins, which extended for more than 2,500 acres between Castelvetrano and Santa Ninfa.

The total savings of the cooperative's members, combined, did not cover a fraction of the amount needed to meet the asking price, but the sum was more than enough for them to obtain a purchase option.

A few days later, however, a second offer appeared on the same estate, made by a cousin of the Marquis Pietro Bellarato, whom Ferdinando Licata had met during the meeting at Palazzo Cesarò. If the Veterans cooperative was unable to meet its obligation, namely, come up with the sum required to purchase the land, the marquis's cousin would step in with his offer, which was decidedly lower than that of Don Antonio's parishioners.

At this point the priest had to scramble to find the remainder of the stipulated amount; otherwise, when the option expired, the farmers would lose all of their hard-earned savings. Don Antonio therefore turned to the agricultural bank, the Cassa Rurale, through the good offices of the bishop, who exerted a strong influence over the bank's directors. At first it seemed that the loan would be granted very quickly, but days passed and then weeks, with the concession of funds from the Cassa Rurale postponed time after time. The expiration of the option was inexorably approaching.

The Veterans cooperative members were in a state of panic and the priest didn't know how to hold them off except by acting calm and reminding them that he too had invested his savings. But Don Albamonte was seriously worried, realizing that someone was scheming against his cooperative. It was then that the priest got the idea of asking Prince Ferdinando Licata for help.

The prince gladly accepted the priest's request for help and agreed to become a member of the Veterans in the role of guardian-protector of the cooperative. The first thing he did was look into the reason why the loan from the Cassa Rurale hadn't come. Through certain “friends” he learned that it had been Marquis Pietro Bellarato who had prevented the loan, in an effort to further the chances of the cooperative run by his cousin, who was also interested in purchasing the former Baucina estate. There were just ten days left before the option expired, too little time to secure the capital they needed: Don Antonio had made up his mind too late to ask for the prince's help. How to find a swift, effective solution? That was when Ferdinando Licata decided to address the problem directly at its source, that is, by talking to the marquis.

To begin with, he summoned his trusted gabellotto, Rosario Losurdo.

Before becoming the prince's caretaker, Losurdo, a native of Gangi in the province of Palermo, had begun his career as a carter, transporting goods to villages throughout the Madonie Mountains when the only means of conveyance was still the traditional Sicilian cart. Rosario was indefatigable: he allowed himself a little rest between trips, only enough so that the patient horses wouldn't collapse from exhaustion. When he wasn't delivering goods, he helped the farmers hoe the fields, but he was also skillful with a mason's trowel, and more than one house in the Madonie region had been drenched with his sweat. The fact that he traveled around put him in a position to know the affairs of many families in the area. He knew the anxiety of the noblewoman who, year after year, saw her daughter fade away while waiting for a good match to come forward, as well as the ambitions of the wealthy notary who wanted an aristocratic title for his son. He knew where to find animals that could be easily taken from their rightful owners either because they were poorly guarded or because the shepherds could be bribed with a few liras. Sometimes he sent them to the illegal slaughterhouses that supplied sausage factories, other times he offered to act as intermediary between the thieves and owners to recover the livestock, in exchange for a kickback.

He did this and that to wet his beak, or
fari vagnari u pizzu
. In Sicily you “wet someone's beak” with a symbolic glass of wine offered to friends who have not refused a favor or who have performed a job well done. Thanks to these expedients, Rosario Losurdo had managed to set aside a fair pile of money, which, with skill and some not entirely lawful tactics, he had been able to double in the span of a few years. But the circumstance that had changed his life was meeting Rosita, the daughter of a gabellotto from the Gibellina estates.

He'd met her at the feast of Santa Rosalia in Palermo. They'd looked at each other and immediately liked what they saw. Rosario proposed that they run off secretly together, and Rosita, more impetuous than he, agreed. They say there was no premeditation on the part of Rosario Losurdo: that he hadn't had his eye on the enviable position of Rosita's father, though for a long time the gossips swore that he had been snooping into the man's financial affairs. But the girl was very pretty and theirs was beyond doubt a great love. Soon the union was blessed by two fine boys, Michele and Donato, and a girl, Mena, born one year after the second brother.

Rosario Losurdo and Prince Ferdinando Licata first met before the outbreak of the Great War. The encounter would prove truly fortunate for both men.

One of Prince Licata's lands bordered on the Asinomorto estate of Prince Bongiorno of Gibellina, a young scion orphaned at an early age, who in a short time had been deprived of a large portion of his assets thanks to his guardian's greed and the dissolute life he himself had led. Not for the first time, the young Prince Bongiorno found himself in the position of urgently needing cash to pay off certain debts owed to some shady characters. He therefore proposed that Prince Licata buy the Asinomorto estate for 200,000 liras. They agreed on the figure of 180,000 liras and made an appointment with the notary.

On the morning of the established day, however, something unusual happened. Prince Bongiorno's elderly grandfather, while making the rounds of his estates in his horse-drawn carriage, was attacked by masked bandits who knocked him unconscious with a blow to the head and stole everything he had on him: his watch, a few liras, and the family ring. The injured old prince was immediately brought to his palace, where his grandson summoned the local doctor. So as not to break his agreement with Licata, Bongiorno sent a proxy to the notary's office: a man he trusted blindly.

But, as they say, every man has a price, and the proxy signed the purchase contract with an added clause stipulating that, to commemorate the opportune transaction, Ferdinando Licata would present Prince Bongiorno with seven fig tarts every September for the following nine years.

In point of fact, the proxy never collected the agreed-upon sum, though he swore that he had duly left it at Prince Bongiorno's home, in a desk drawer where he usually hid documents and money, so as not to go around with so much cash. Bongiorno placed his full trust in the proxy and, despite many reservations, ended up believing him, in part because the notary confirmed that the exchange of money and deeds had actually taken place before his very eyes. Although he hadn't received a single lira from the sale, Prince Bongiorno could not prevent Ferdinando Licata from taking possession of the Asinomorto estate, and in the years that followed, Licata never failed to send the prince seven fig tarts when September rolled around, though they invariably ended up in the pig trough accompanied by the bitter curses of the cheated young man.

It goes without saying that the proxy's name was Rosario Losurdo, who some time later—when Bongiorno's grandfather had died and the young prince decided to settle in Rome at the home of certain noble relatives—entered Licata's employ as his chief aide and overseer.

Thanks to that propitious transaction, Losurdo received twenty-five acres of the former estate as a gift from Prince Licata. And over time a strong friendship was established between the two men.

So when Don Antonio Albamonte's Veterans cooperative had trouble purchasing the Baucina lands, Prince Licata summoned Losurdo and explained the problem in broad outline. “I first want to try and persuade the Marquis Bellarato to become my friend. Not to let his cousin stand in the way of my cooperative. But I need a show of force, in case he may have some hesitation. Nothing violent—you know me. Let's say we'll settle for some cattle this first time around. You steal some cows, we'll hide them for a few days, then I'll go talk to him, and, if he agrees to back out of the Baucina deal, we'll give them back.”

“And if he refuses?” the gabellotto asked.

“In that case, we'll return the cows, but after slaughtering them.”

Not batting an eye, Losurdo asked who he should have do the job.

“Either way, I'd say Gaetano Vassallo is up to both tasks.”

Don Antonio Albamonte was seriously worried about the farmers in the cooperative. Every morning, when the first mass was about to begin, a handful of the 395 coop members confronted him for information about their investment. For many, the amount advanced for the option was the result of years of sacrifice, and the possibility of losing their money had become an obsession.

That morning, after talking once again with a delegation of farmers, Don Antonio went to Licata's palazzo to seek information directly from the prince.

“Don Antonio, don't worry. I've already told you, it's as if the deal were already a sure thing. If worst comes to worst, all the farmers will get their money back,” Licata tried to reassure him. “Someone is already working on your behalf.”

“It's just a little more than a week before the deadline,” the priest insisted.

“That's more than enough time,” the prince lied.

The failure of the venture would be catastrophic, not so much because of the loss of the farmers' savings, but due to the bad image it would give to Don Sturzo's Popular Party.

– 1920 –

R
osario Losurdo had already been riding for four hours, headed for Portella del Pianetto, the area where Vassallo and his gang had their camp.

In the early decades of the century, a large number of armed bands operated undisturbed in Sicily. It was the logical result of the extreme poverty to which shepherds and farmers were doomed from cradle to grave. The more intolerant ones, dissatisfied with their existence, rebelled and decided to live by raiding and looting. Often the switch to lawlessness was triggered by some injustice inflicted by the authorities: unfair taxes, excessive lease terms, the unkept promises of politicians or prominent figures of bourgeois origins who turned out to be more rapacious than the aristocrats.

Gaetano Vassallo's story was no exception to this scenario. When he was a boy, one of his master's hunting dogs, chasing after a hare, reached his family's hut and entered the chicken coop. His mother tried to chase it away with a stick, but the bloodhound sank his teeth into a hen and was about to make off with her. The woman cut him off, and as the dog tried to leap over the fence, she managed to hit him on the snout with a strength born of desperation, causing him to drop his prey. The hound collapsed on the ground, and the hen, though frightened, scampered off to the hen house, saving her feathers.

Shortly thereafter the master, a marquis, arrived and, seeing his dog lying moribund in the pen, lashed out at Gaetano's entire family. Unfortunately, his father was at work in the fields, and only his mother and his brother Geremia were in the shack.

In those days a hunting dog was worth more than a farmer. The marquis, distraught over the loss of his hound, began to take it out on the woman and beat her so violently that it caused her to abort the third little brother. She remained an invalid from that day on and was admitted to an institute run by nuns and emerged a few years later in a coffin.

Two years after that, the marquis was the target of a shotgun blast that wounded him, permanently paralyzing his right hand. The carabinieri arrested Gaetano Vassallo's father, and the judge sentenced him to ten years in prison for attempted murder, though he maintained that he was innocent. Only a few years later, an old villager confessed on his deathbed that it was he who'd shot the loathsome marquis, because of a wrong he'd suffered. And, despite the fact that he was about to surrender his soul to God, the old man declared that his only regret was not having killed him.

The boy therefore got his father back, but by then his hatred toward padroni, or masters, and any institution that represented the state was so ingrained that he had no other goal in life than to take revenge on the world.

Gaetano Vassallo began his life as a bandit by robbing everyone who had the misfortune to cross his path. Then he went on to extortion, far more reliable and profitable than looting. He would send a simple demand letter to the victim—a gabellotto or an attorney or a tax collector—and wait for payment to arrive. If the victim resisted, the reprisals started: sometimes he would slaughter cattle, other times he set fire to sheaves of grain or to storage sheds filled with a newly harvested crop. Only on rare occasions did the victims respond, and that happened only when they hadn't heard of him. In the midst of all these exploits, Vassallo also found time to marry, after meeting his future wife on the farm of some friends.

Located in a remote part of the Ravanusa countryside, the farmstead was an ideal hideout. After one of his extortions, which ended with a carabiniere being wounded, Gaetano Vassallo thought it was a good idea to lay low there awhile. That's where he met his host's daughter, Teresa, a young woman of twenty who lived the life of a virtual recluse on the farm, unable to see people her own age for weeks at a time. The arrival of Vassallo, a man at the peak of maturity, was an exciting event for her, and the story of the bandit's adventurous life, so far outside the rules, also held a seductive attraction. In short, the young woman saw the crude outlaw as the embodiment of an alluring romantic dream.