Women and Children First (21 page)

“And then I saw Italo Giuliano tweeze the hairs from that place where his eyebrows grew together, above his nose.”

“So perhaps Italo’s change was just slow in coming. For by the next summer, when Italo Salvatore returned from that fateful trip to Palermo, my neighbor was clearly ready to change something deeper than his overgrown eyebrows.

“The boys were fifteen. Early in June, Italo Salvatore had gone with his father to see an uncle in the city. And he came back a different man. The city had turned him into a gangster. He’d bought a sheepskin jacket, which he wore with the collar turned up. He chain-smoked cigarettes. He mumbled out of the corner of his mouth. And he narrowed his eyes into such thin slits that I could no longer see their dreamy expression.

“Immediately my neighbor began to copy him. From my window, I saw him stretching the collar of his sweater until it hung in rolls around his neck. And as he narrowed his eyes and twisted his mouth, he looked so exceptionally homely that I almost cried.

“Within a week, the two Italos became the village bullies. They shook down children for pennies. They insulted the girls with dirty names. ‘Stay away from those two,’ our mothers warned us. ‘They’re nothing but trouble.’

“If that had been true, we would never have listened to our mothers; we would have worshipped those boys like Jesus. But we knew they were only imitation gangsters, pretending to be tough; and we despised them for it. Italo Salvatore lost all his fascination for me. And my neighbor turned so nasty that I couldn’t stand to see him. We stopped speaking, and I mourned the loss of Italo’s good nature as if it were a dead man.

“All the village girls felt as I did—all, that is, but one. For it was rumored that little Maria Gozzi had become Italo Salvatore’s mistress, and was meeting him at night, behind the church.

“My neighbor, on the other hand, had given up his love. He would have died before he read another book. Mrs. Giuliano had gotten her wish, but it brought no peace to the family. As I spied on them from my window, I saw her raging harder than ever, cursing Italo’s rotten gangster ways.

“One night, after one of those battles, a strange thing happened. Italo stormed out of his house, and squeezed through the narrow alley, just as he’d done as a boy.

“‘Angela,’ he whispered, ‘I’m on the run. Take me in.’

“‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ve gotten too nasty. Be a gangster if you want, but not in my house.’

“But a moment later, I changed my mind. For the sake of our old friendship, I let him in; for the sake of those nights he’d comforted me, I let him sit on my bed. But that evening, he couldn’t sit still. Suddenly, he sprang toward me, pinning me against the pillows.

“‘Angela!’ he cried. ‘All week Italo Salvatore’s been telling me what it’s like to kiss Maria Gozzi, and I want to try it myself. Please, let me do it with you, as an experiment, just to see what it’s like!’

“‘You’re crazy!’ I screamed. ‘That’s no way to ask a girl. And even if it was, I wouldn’t do it with you.’

“‘That’s just what Italo Salvatore told me,’ said my neighbor. ‘All the girls protest like that.’ So he refused to believe me, and kept on pressing his homely face against mine until he saw I was serious. Then, without a word, he got up and left the house.

“The next morning, as I looked across the alley, I noticed that Italo’s bed was empty. And it stayed empty, for two years.”

My grandmother sighs and reaches down to brush some imaginary dust off her thick black stockings. “A lot happens in two years,” she says. “Maria Gozzi got pregnant. Italo Salvatore got married. He settled down, took over the management of his father’s cafe, and soon developed such a paunch that I wondered what I ever saw in him.

“I, too, settled down. That fell, my parents began mentioning Anthony Bruno, ten times a day. ‘He’s a good boy,’ said my mother. He’ll inherit his father’s bakery. He’ll take good care of you.’

“I took the hint; it was time for me to marry, anyway. So Anthony and I moved into my father’s house. He worked in the bakery all day; at night he sat in the café playing cards with his friends. It was comfortable, married life. It was the way everyone lived.

“I was five months pregnant with my first child when Italo Giuliano came home.

“By then, I’d stopped spying on the Giuliano family. So it was only an accident that I first saw Italo from the window. I stood very quietly, and stared. I saw that he’d kept his gangster ways. He’d bought a real sheepskin jacket, heavy boots, and a funny cap, like a shepherd’s. I noticed that he’d grown a little less homely. And later that evening, when he came to visit, I looked closer, and saw something else: I saw that he’d brought his old good nature home with him.

“At first, I was a little nervous when he kissed me hello, for I remembered that night when he’d pressed his face against mine. I pushed my belly forward, wishing that I showed more than I did. But, as I watched him greeting my family in his calm, friendly way, I knew I had nothing to fear. Indeed, he was so much the trusted old friend that my husband Anthony didn’t hesitate to go play cards, leaving us alone.

“After Anthony left, we couldn’t talk. There was a distance between us, even wider than that angry space which had come between us at the start of Italo’s gangster days. Once again, at least, we were pleasant to each other. But we were no longer friends.

“‘Where have you been?’ I asked him.

“‘In Palermo,’ he said.

“‘What’s it like?’ I said.

“He began to tell me about Palermo. But it sounded wrong, like a description he’d read in a book, or had heard from Italo Salvatore. He wasn’t describing any place he’d ever been.

“‘All right,’ I interrupted. ‘All right. What do you do there?’

“‘I do what I want,’ he said. ‘And no one takes advantage of me.’ Then he kissed me good-bye and went home.

“That night, as I lay beside my husband Anthony and stared into the darkened windows of the Giuliano house, I tried to be happy. ‘It’s good,’ I told myself. ‘Italo’s come back.’ But suddenly, I recalled that distance between us and felt the loss of my childhood, felt it like an empty space, like a missing tooth.

“As it happened, the other villagers were even more upset by Italo’s return. They began to whisper about him, spreading rumors so ugly that mothers sent their children out to play before they would even discuss it. It was disgusting, they said. Italo Giuliano had seduced a fourteen-year-old girl, Italo Salvatore’s little sister. He had bewitched her, filled her head with funny ideas. He’d taken her home with him, and was living shamelessly, in sin, beneath his poor mother’s own roof.

“By the time I heard the rumors, I knew they were true. For I had seen it from my window. Night after night, I watched them making love, their bodies glistening in the moonlight. I watched Italo whispering in her ear, telling her stories of city life, of Palermo, of God knows what.

“It was just the kind of thing I’d hoped to see when, as a girl, I’d spied on Italo. But it didn’t make me happy; I wanted it to end.

“Of course, it couldn’t last. The whispers were growing louder. The scandal could no longer be contained. Three times a day, Mrs. Giuliano went to mass, begging the Virgin to end her shame.

“Then one night, as if in answer to her prayers, a band of men converged on the Giuliano house. Led by Italo Salvatore, they seized the sleeping couple and dragged them out of bed. Beating and kicking them, they took them to the edge of town, and threatened to kill them if they ever returned.

“But three weeks later, when the girl came back, she was such a pitiful sight that even the crudest of them couldn’t bring himself to execute that harsh sentence.

“I still remember how she stood there, wailing, wringing her sunburned hands. ‘Kill me!’ she cried. ‘Go ahead and kill me! But I can’t live like that!’

“And it was then that we learned the truth about Italo Giuliano. That imitation gangster, that homely bookworm, that good-natured boy—he had become a notorious bandit! He was a fierce, clever criminal, famous for his bravery. He roamed all through Italy with a band of men who ate raw meat and picked at their body lice with stilettos. Already he’d robbed ten banks, a dozen trucks, fifty mail shipments, and a hundred landowners.

“‘He’s been doing it for two years!’ said the girl. ‘Ever since he left this place the first time. Everyone in Sicily’s heard of it, everywhere but here, in this know-nothing town, where no one’s ever heard of anything!’

“Italo’s mother shrieked and fainted. I helped her to her feet, and took her home.

“‘Get me my mourning dress,’ she moaned. ‘I’ll grieve for my son as if he were dead.’

“‘Don’t be silly,’ I told her. ‘Now everyone in town will worship him like Jesus. And now he’ll never die.’

“I was right. From then on, the townspeople cross-examined every passing stranger for news of Italo Giuliano. Like their hero, ten years before, they stopped cars at the crossroads and pestered their drivers. Until then, the isolated villagers had viewed the outside world only as a source of rare luxuries, like tobacco. But suddenly their bandit son had pushed them into modern life. For them, all history was the legend of Italo Giuliano: He robbed from the rich to feed the poor. He never killed, except in self-defense. He’d emerged unhurt from a thousand ambushes. He was such a beloved leader that men died out of loyalty to him. And though he’d stolen more than two billion lire, he gave it all to charity, and lived as a poor man.

“The villagers began to regret the inhospitable treatment they’d given Italo during his last visit. After all, they said, it wasn’t really such a sin for a great hero to have come courting a sweet local girl.

“In private, though, they wondered about the real reason for that visit. It was said that beautiful women were always offering themselves to the bandits. Why, then, did Italo come after a scrawny little thing like the Giuliano girl?

“The dishonored girl became a local celebrity. ‘He did it for me,’ she proclaimed proudly. ‘He came back for love of me.’

“Italo Salvatore did everything possible to steal his sister’s glory. ‘No,’ he’d say. ‘He came back because of me. I was his old friend, and he seduced my sister to settle an old debt.’

“But I knew they were both wrong. For I alone knew the true reason for Italo’s visit: he had known that I’d be at my window, night after night, watching him play with that skinny girl. And he wanted me to be ready when he returned again.”

“And I was ready,” says my grandmother, shutting her eyes for a moment, just as she does when she samples the parsley at the greengrocer’s. “In the meantime, though, five years passed. Anthony inherited the bakery; we moved into our own house. And with three children underfoot, I had no time to dream about bandits. Still, whenever I heard rumors of my old friend’s exploits, I’d feel that strange, empty pain, like a missing tooth.

“But on the night Italo finally came, I wasn’t thinking of him. I’d put the children to bed. Anthony was off at the café, praying for three aces. And I was sitting near the window, wondering how I could make a pound of tomatoes last a week.

“Then, suddenly, I heard him. ‘Angela,’ he whispered. ‘I’m on the run. Take me in.’

“For a moment, as I looked down, I expected to see the old alley, with the Giuliano house across the way. But all I saw that night was Italo’s face—shining, beautiful in the moonlight. All those awful cysts were gone, leaving small marks which made him look rough and handsome, like a wolf. He was sunburned; a pale scar ran across his forehead, down through that place where his eyebrows had once grown together. But it was not just his face which had changed. His whole expression was different. He had the look of a man who has won a staring contest with his own death.

“‘Italo,’ I said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

“‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’

“‘No’ I told him. ‘Wait. I’ll come out.’

“That night I followed Italo Giuliano to the meadow.”

My grandmother is a modest woman, who would never dream of dwelling on the details of that night. But she sighs and gazes off into the traffic in such a way that tears of envy spring to Mrs. Russo’s eyes.

“The next morning,” she continues, “I opened my eyes to see a golden bracelet on Italo’s arm. Shining discs hung from the bracelet; each was engraved with a single word. ‘Honor,’ I read, ‘Danger. Courage. Resourcefulness. Justice. Fidelity. Homesickness.’

“At last, the bracelet’s jangling woke Italo. ‘A bandit’s life,’ he said, pointing to the words on the discs. ‘It wakes me every morning.’

“I couldn’t look at him. ‘Fidelity,’ I said. ‘Homesickness. What does that mean?’

“‘It means I’ll come back to you,’ he said.

“‘When?’ I said.

“‘At least once before I die.’

“‘But why should I believe you?’

“‘You know me,’ he said. ‘I never lie.’ Then he kissed me, got to his feet, and walked off across the meadow.

“I went home and lied. I told my husband Anthony that my stomach was bad, that I’d been sick all night in the fields. But I knew Italo hadn’t lied. So I believed he’d come back, believed him so completely that I didn’t even worry when the soldiers came looking for him.

“Although Mussolini had just come to power,” says my grandmother, “none of my neighbors had ever heard of him. But once again, Italo Giuliano brought history to our village. One afternoon the army rode into town and ordered us to gather in the marketplace.

“‘Il Duce is your leader now,’ said the black-shirted captain. ‘And he has sworn to protect his people from the vicious mountain bandits who have been oppressing you. We know that Italo Giuliano comes from this district, and we would appreciate your help in hunting him down.’

“The captain was an oily little man, who reminded me of my daughter’s painted dolls. When my neighbors sneered at his request, I thought that he was probably well accustomed to such sneers.

“‘Good luck to him,’ said the villagers. ‘He’ll never get one of us to do that traitor’s work.’

“But I was afraid that they were wrong. I was afraid that there was one who would.

“A few days later, my husband Anthony went to play cards, and came home with the news that the doors of the café had been boarded shut. Italo Salvatore had left home.”