The Sicilian (10 page)

Pisciotta smiled. “Do you think I’m going to let you have all the fun and glory? Let you play in the mountains while I bring donkeys out to work and pick olives? And what about our friendship? Am I to let you live in the mountains alone when we have played and worked together since we were children? Only when you return to Montelepre in freedom will I return there too. So no more foolish talk. I’ll come to get you in four days. It will take a little time to do all you want me to do.”

Pisciotta was busy those four days. He had already tracked down the smuggler on horseback who had offered to go after the wounded Guiliano. His name was Marcuzzi, and he was a feared man and a large-scale smuggler operating under the protection of Don Croce and Guido Quintana. He had an uncle of the same name who was a great Mafia chief.

Pisciotta discovered that Marcuzzi made regular trips from Montelepre to Castellammare. Pisciotta knew the farmer who kept the smuggler’s mules, and when he saw the animals taken out of the fields and brought to a barn near the town, he gambled that Marcuzzi was making a trip the next day. At dawn Pisciotta stationed himself along the road that he knew Marcuzzi had to take, and waited for him. He had a
lupara
, which many Sicilian families owned as part of their household equipment. Indeed, the deadly Sicilian shotgun was so common and so often used for assassination that when Mussolini cleaned out the Mafia, he had ordered all stone walls to be knocked down to at most three feet in height so that murderers could not use the walls as ambush points.

He had decided to kill Marcuzzi not only because the smuggler had offered to help the police kill the wounded Guiliano, but because he had also boasted of it to his friends. By killing the smuggler he would give warning to any others who might betray Guiliano. Also he needed the weapons he knew Marcuzzi carried.

He did not have to wait long. Because Marcuzzi was leading empty mules to pick up black market goods in Castellammare, he was careless. He rode his lead mule down a mountain trail with his rifle slung over his shoulder, instead of at the ready. When he saw Pisciotta standing in the trail in front of him, he was not alarmed. All he saw was a short slender boy with a thin dandyish mustache who was smiling in a way that irritated him. It was only when Pisciotta swung the
lupara
out from beneath his jacket that Marcuzzi paid full attention.

He said gruffly, “You’ve got me going the wrong way. I haven’t picked up my goods yet. And these mules are under the protection of the Friends of the Friends. Be clever and find yourself another customer.”

Pisciotta said softly, “I only want your life.” He smiled cruelly. “There was a day you wanted to be a hero for the police. Just a few months ago, do you remember?”

Marcuzzi remembered. He turned the mule sideways, as if by accident, to shield his hand from Pisciotta’s gaze. He slid his hand into his belt and drew his pistol. At the same time he yanked on the mule’s bridle to bring himself around in a shooting position. The last thing he saw was Pisciotta’s smile as the
lupara
blasted his body out of the saddle and flung it into the dust.

With grim satisfaction Pisciotta stood over the body and fired another blast into the head, then took the pistol still in Marcuzzi’s hand and the rifle wrapped on the body by its sling. He emptied the man’s jacket pocket of rifle bullets and put them into his own. Then quickly and methodically he shot each of the four mules, a warning to anyone who might help the enemies of Guiliano, even indirectly. He stood on the road, his
lupara
in his arms, the dead man’s rifle slung over his shoulder, the pistol in his waistband. He felt no sense of pity and his ferocity pleased him. For despite his love for his friend they had always striven against each other in many ways. And though he acknowledged Turi as his chief, he always felt he had to prove his claim to their friendship by being as courageous and as clever. Now he, too, had stepped out of the magic circle of boyhood, of society, and joined Turi on the outside of that circle. With this act he had bound himself forever to Turi Guiliano.

Two days later, just before the evening meal, Guiliano left the monastery. He embraced all of the monks as they gathered in the eating hall and thanked them for their kindnesses. The monks were sorry to see him go. True, he had never attended their religious rites, and had not made a confession and act of contrition for the murder he had committed, but some of these monks had started their manhood with similar crimes and were not judgmental.

The Abbot escorted Guiliano to the gate of the monastery where Pisciotta was waiting. He presented him with a going-away gift. It was a statue of the black Virgin Mary, a duplicate of the one owned by Maria Lombardo, Guiliano’s mother. Pisciotta had an American green duffel bag and Guiliano put the black Virgin statuette into it.

Pisciotta watched with a sardonic eye as the Abbot and Guiliano said their goodbyes. He knew the Abbot to be a smuggler, a secret member of the Friends of the Friends, and a slave-driving taskmaster with his poor monks. So he could not understand the sentimentality of the Abbot’s farewell. It did not occur to Pisciotta that the love and affection and respect that Guiliano inspired in him he could also inspire in as powerful and as old a man as the Abbot.

Though the Abbot’s affection was genuine, it was tinged with self-interest. He knew this boy might one day become a force to reckon with in Sicily. It was like spotting the trace of godliness. As for Turi Guiliano, he was genuinely grateful. The Abbot had saved his life, but more than that, had instructed him in many things and had been a delightful companion. The Abbot had even let him have the use of his library. Curiously, Guiliano had affection for the Abbot’s chicanery; it seemed to him a nice balance to strike in life, the doing of good without doing great visible harm, the balancing of power to make life go smoothly.

The Abbot and Turi Guiliano embraced each other. Turi said, “I am in your debt. Remember me when you need help of any kind. Whatever you ask, I must do.”

The Abbot patted his shoulder. “Christian charity does not require repayment,” he said. “Return to the ways of God, my son, and pay his tribute.” But he was speaking by rote. He knew well this kind of innocence in the young. Out of it a devil could rise in flames to do his bidding. He would remember Guiliano’s promise.

Guiliano shouldered the duffel bag despite Pisciotta’s protest, and they walked through the monastery gate together. They never looked back.

CHAPTER 6

F
ROM A JUTTING
cliff edge near the top of Monte d’Ora, Guiliano and Pisciotta could look down on the town of Montelepre. Only a few miles below them, the house lights were coming on to fight the falling darkness. Guiliano even imagined he could hear the music coming from the loudspeakers in the square, which always played Rome radio station broadcasts to serenade the town’s strollers before their evening meal.

But the mountain air was deceiving. It would take two hours to make his way down to the town and four hours to get back up. Guiliano and Pisciotta had played here as children; they knew every rock on this mountain and every cave and every tunnel. Further back on this cliff was the Grotta Bianca, the favorite cave of their childhood, bigger than any house in Montelepre.

Aspanu had followed his orders well, Turi Guiliano thought. The cave was stocked with sleeping bags, cooking pans, boxes of ammunition and sacks of food and bread. There was a wooden box holding flashlights, lanterns and knives, and there were also some cans of kerosene. He laughed. “Aspanu, we can live up here forever.”

“For a few days,” Aspanu said. “This is the first place the
carabinieri
came when they went looking for you.”

“The cowards only look in daylight,” Turi answered. “We are safe at night.”

A great cloak of darkness had fallen over the mountains, but the sky was so full of stars that they could see each other clearly. Pisciotta opened the duffel bag and started pulling out weapons and clothes. Slowly and ceremonially, Turi Guiliano armed himself. Taking off his monk’s cassock, he donned the moleskin trousers, then the huge sheepskin jacket with its many pockets. He put two pistols in his waistband and strapped the machine pistol inside the jacket so it could be covered and yet swung into action immediately. He buckled an ammunition belt around his waist and put extra boxes of bullets in the jacket pockets. Pisciotta handed him a knife, which he put in the army boots he had drawn on. Then another small pistol, which fit into a string holster tied into the inside of the collar flap of the sheepskin jacket. He checked all the guns and ammunition carefully.

The rifle he carried openly, its sling over his shoulder. Finally he was ready. He smiled at Pisciotta, who carried only a
lupara
out in the open and his knife in a holster at his back. Pisciotta said, “I feel naked. Can you walk with all that iron on your body? If you fall down I’ll never be able to lift you up.”

Guiliano was still smiling, the secret smile of a child who believes he has the world at bay. The huge scar on his body ached with the weight of the weapons and ammunition, but he welcomed that ache. It gave him absolution. “I’m ready to see my family or meet my enemies,” he said to Pisciotta. The two young men started down the long winding path from the top of Monte d’Ora to the town of Montelepre below.

They walked below a vault of stars. Armed against death and his fellow man, drinking in the smell of far-off lemon orchards and wild flowers, Turi Guiliano felt a serenity he had never known. He was no longer helpless against some random foe. He no longer had to entertain the enemy within himself that doubted his courage. If he had willed himself not to die, had willed his torn body to knit together, he now believed that he could make his body do this over and over again. He no longer doubted that he had some magnificent destiny before him. He shared the magic of those medieval heroes who could not die until they came to the end of their long story, until they had achieved their great victories.

He would never leave these mountains, these olive trees, this Sicily. He had only a vague idea of what his future glory would be, but he never doubted that glory. He would never again be a poor peasant youth going in fear of the
carabinieri
, the judges, the pulverizing corruption of law.

They were coming down out of the mountains now and onto the roads that lead to Montelepre. They passed a padlocked roadside shrine of the Virgin Mary and child, the blue plaster robes shining like the sea in moonlight. The smell of the orchards filled the air with a sweetness that made Guiliano almost dizzy. He saw Pisciotta stoop and pick a prickly pear made sweet by the night air, and he felt a love for this friend who had saved his life, a love with its root in their childhood spent together. He wanted to share his immortality with him. It was never their fate to die two nameless peasants on a mountainside in Sicily. In a great exuberance of spirit Guiliano called out, “Aspanu, Aspanu, I believe, I believe,” and started running down the final slope of the mountain, out of the ghostly white rocks, past the holy shrines of Christ and martyred saints standing in padlocked boxes. Pisciotta ran beside him, laughing, and they raced together into the arc of moonlight that showered the road to Montelepre.

The mountains ended in a hundred yards of green pasture that led to the back walls formed by the houses on the Via Bella. Behind these walls, each house had its garden of tomatoes, and some, a lonely olive or lemon tree. The gate to the Guiliano garden fence was unlocked, and the two young men slipped through quietly and found Guiliano’s mother waiting for them. She rushed into Turi Guiliano’s arms, the tears streaming down her face. She kissed him fiercely and whispered, “My beloved son, my beloved son,” and Turi Guiliano found himself standing in the moonlight not responding to her love for the first time in his life.

It was now nearly midnight, the moon still bright, and they hurried into the house to escape observation by spies. The windows were shuttered, and relatives of the Guiliano and Pisciotta families had been posted along all the streets to warn of police patrols. In the house Guiliano’s friends and family waited to celebrate his homecoming. A feast worthy of Holy Easter had been laid out. They had this one night with him before Turi went to live in the mountains.

Guiliano’s father embraced him and slapped him on the back to show his approval. His two sisters were there, and Hector Adonis. Also there was a neighbor, a woman called La Venera. She was a widow of about thirty-five. Her husband had been a famous bandit named Candeleria, who had been betrayed, then ambushed by the police, only a year ago. She had become a close friend of Guiliano’s mother, but Turi was surprised that she was present at this reunion. Only his mother could have invited her. For a moment he wondered why.

They ate and drank and treated Turi Guiliano as if he had returned from a long holiday in foreign countries. But then his father wanted to see his wound. Guiliano lifted his shirt out of his trousers and revealed the great flaming scar, the tissue around it still blue-black from the trauma of the gunshot. His mother broke into lamentations. Guiliano said to her with a smile, “Would you rather have seen me in prison with the marks of the
bastinado
?”

Though the familiar scene duplicated the happiest days of his childhood, he felt a great distance from them all. There were all his favorite dishes, the inky squid, the fat macaroni with its herbed sauce of tomato, the roasted lamb, the great bowl of olives, green and red salad doused with the pure first pressing of olive oil, bamboo-covered bottles of Sicilian wine. Everything from the earth of Sicily. His mother and father told their fairy tales about life in America. And Hector Adonis regaled them on the glories of the history of Sicily. Of Garibaldi and his famous Redshirts. Of the day of the Sicilian Vespers, when the people of Sicily had risen to slaughter the French occupying army so many hundreds of years ago. All the tales of Sicily oppressed starting with Rome, followed by the Moors and Normans and the French and the Germans and the Spanish. Woe was Sicily! Never free, its people always hungry, their labor sold so cheap, their blood spilled so easily.

And so now there was not a Sicilian who believed in government, in law, in the structured order of society which had always been used to turn them into beasts of burden. Guiliano had listened to these stories through the years, imprinting them on his brain. But only now did Guiliano realize that he could change this.

He watched Aspanu smoking a cigarette over his coffee. Even at this joyful reunion, Aspanu had an ironic smile on his lips. Guiliano could tell what he was thinking and what he would say later: All you have to do is to be stupid enough to get shot by a policeman, commit murder, become an outlaw, and then your loved ones will show their affection and treat you like a saint from heaven. And yet Aspanu was the only one he did not feel cut off from.

And then there was the woman, La Venera. Why had his mother invited her, and why did she come? He saw that her face was still handsome, bold and strong with jet-black eyebrows and lips so dark and red that they seemed almost purple in this smoky curtained light. There was no way to tell what her figure was like, for she wore the Sicilian widow’s shapeless black dress.

Turi Guiliano had to tell them the whole story of the shooting at the Four Crossroads. His father, a little drunk with wine, emitted growls of approval at the death of the policeman. His mother was silent. His father told the story of how the farmer had come looking for his donkey and his own remark to the farmer: “Stay content you have lost a donkey. I have lost a son.”

Aspanu said, “A donkey looking for a donkey.”

They all laughed. Guiliano’s father went on: “When the farmer heard that a policeman was killed he was too afraid to make his claim, that he might be
bastinado
ed.”

Turi said, “He will be repaid.”

Finally Hector Adonis outlined his plans to save Turi. The family of the dead man would be paid an indemnity. Guiliano’s parents would have to mortgage their little piece of land to raise the money. Adonis himself would contribute a sum. But this tactic would have to wait until feelings of anger had died down. The influence of the great Don Croce would be brought to bear on government officials and the family of the slain man. After all, it had been more or less an accident. There had been no real ill will on either side. A farce could be played out as long as the victim’s family and key government officials cooperated. The only drawback was the identity card at the scene of the killing. But in a year’s time Don Croce could cause that to vanish from the prosecutor’s files. Most important, Turi Guiliano must remain out of trouble for that year. He must disappear into the mountains.

Turi Guiliano listened to them all patiently, smiling, nodding his head, not showing his irritation. They still thought of him as he had been at Festa time over two months ago. He had taken off his sheepskin jacket and stripped himself of arms; his guns lay at his feet beneath the table. But that had not impressed them, nor the ugly huge scar. They could not imagine how his mind had been torn apart by that great blow to his body, or that he would never again be the young man they had known.

In this house, he was for this moment safe. Trusted people patrolled the streets and watched the
carabinieri
barracks to give him warning of any attack. The house itself, built many hundreds of years ago, was made of stone; its windows had heavy wooden shutters locked and a foot thick. The wooden door was strong and iron barred. Not a chink of light could escape this house, no enemy could force his way in quickly in a surprise attack. And yet Turi Guiliano felt himself in danger. These loved ones would trap him into his former life, persuade him to become a peasant farmer, to lay down his arms against his fellow men and leave him helpless to their laws. At that moment he knew that he would have to be cruel to those he loved most. It had always been the young man’s dream to acquire love rather than power. But that was all changed. He now saw clearly that power came first.

He spoke gently to Hector Adonis and to the others. “Dear godfather, I know you speak out of affection and concern. But I can’t let my mother and father lose their little bit of land to help me out of my trouble. And all of you here, don’t worry so much about me. I’m a grown man who must pay for his carelessness. And I won’t have anyone paying an indemnity for that
carabinieri
I shot. Remember, he tried to kill me just because I was smuggling a bit of cheese. I would never have fired at him except that I thought I was dying and wanted to even the score. But all that’s past. I won’t be so easy to shoot the next time.”

Pisciotta said with a grin, “It’s more fun in the mountains anyway.”

But Guiliano’s mother was not to be distracted. They could all see her panic, the fear in her burning eyes. She said desperately, “Don’t become a bandit, don’t rob poor people who have enough misery in their lives. Don’t become an outlaw. Let La Venera tell you what kind of life her husband lived.”

La Venera raised her head and looked directly at Guiliano. He was struck by the sensuality in her face, as if she were trying to attract his passion toward her. Her eyes were bold and stared at him almost in invitation. Before he had thought of her only as an older woman; now he felt her sexually.

When she spoke her voice was husky with emotion. She said, “In those same mountains you wish to go to my husband had to live like an animal. Always in fear. Always. He could not eat. He could not sleep. When we were in bed together every little noise would make him jump. We slept with guns on the floor beside the bed. But that didn’t help him. When our daughter was ill, he tried to visit her, and they were waiting for him. They knew he was softhearted. He was shot down like a dog in the streets. They stood over him and laughed in my face.”