Black Souls

by Gioacchino Criaco

  Before Lorenza had come along, Pasquale would bake all night, sell the last of his bread by eight-thirty in the morning and go back to sleep until the afternoon. The Romanian forced him to change his habits. Pasquale brought a large bed to his store and placed it in the toasty little room behind the oven. That way, he could sleep until half past eleven, get up, and prepare the goods to be delivered on time to his one and only midday customer before going back to bed. He did everything mechanically, his eyes half-closed.

  When he heard the door open, he reflexively bundled the bread. He couldn’t have been less interested in looking at the woman in question; he preferred his own voluptuous Antonia. All he cared about was sleep. That day, when Ciccio prodded his chin with the barrel of the Belgian-made Walter PPK 9mm, Pasquale made a gesture as if to swat away a fly. He had to force himself to focus on the image of the hooded youth, who pushed him into the back room and cuffed him to the foot of his comfortable bed; he almost wanted to thank him for taking him there.

  Lorenza made her usual bold entrance, swathed in a cloud of her French perfume, the only one she used. She maintained her regal air even as she followed the young man with the gun.

  In the wheat-scented back room, the baker was already snoring away by the warmth of the oven. Lorenza was disappointed when she realized that all the robber wanted was her overcoat, her sunglasses, and her scarf, but she didn’t resist. She flung her overcoat across the room, and before Ciccio could retrieve it, she had undressed completely.

  Pasquale was sure he was dreaming. No woman could really be made like that, with such a slender waist, breasts pointing to the sky, silk instead of skin; nor was it normal for men to have a monstrosity like Ciccio’s between their legs. Even if it was just a dream, Pasquale wanted to ask his Antonia to try the same position.

  After Ciccio had fallen nearly half an hour behind schedule, Giulio and Gino began to worry. Santino was worried, too, and the cell phone in Lorenza’s coat pocket began to howl angrily.

  Ciccio looked at Lorenza, not sure what to do; she signaled for him to pass her the phone, which she answered in a brooding voice: “I’m coming, baby, the baker was late.”

  “You’re fucking someone else!” replied Don Cozza.

  Every day at that hour, a few kids passed by the bakery on their way home for lunch. That day, they looked on appreciatively as the Romanian got in her jeep without deigning to glance in their direction and drove off to the sound of the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly.” The boys rushed off to a lunch that was growing cold.

  When the jeep reached Don Zacco’s, Ciccio passed the point where his companions were waiting in ambush, lowered the window, and gave them the finger. “Fuck you!” his friends shouted at him. He pressed the remote control and opened the bunker’s outer gate. The nephews knew that their uncle was spying on them from a window and let their beautiful aunt pass through without looking twice at her.

  The second button opened the door to the garage that led into the villa. Then Ciccio crossed an antechamber and entered the living room, where the pathetic lover had his back turned; he’d arranged flowers and lit romantic candles, and now he was setting the table.

  “That bastard Pasquale,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll have him shot in the legs.”

  Santino was sulking. He expected the woman’s arms to wrap around him from behind, for her soft lips to make him forget about her delay; Santino had a gift in his pocket, as he’d had for every day they’d spent together and would have for every day to come.

  His daughters should have been happy; that day, all of his spending of their inheritances was put to an end.

  Santino didn’t understand the reason for the bite he felt on his back, the teeth that sank into his flesh. The long blade of the Opinel no. 12 slipped easily between the vertebrae of his dorsal column, paralyzing him instantly. But before he died, Ciccio made sure Santino knew that Lorenza had screamed with pleasure in the arms of his killer, and that she was now locked up naked with that bastard Pasquale, who was not, as he had believed, the adulterer.

  The nephews saw their aunt leave again and figured their strange relatives were having one of their usual lovers’ spats. They were left to unwittingly guard a corpse.

  In the early afternoon, Antonia arrived with her one hundred and eighty pounds of sensuality to make coffee for Pasquale, who, upon awaking from his nap, always had a special urge to see her. It took four people to restrain the baker’s wife, who was sending her husband and his Romanian whore to the next life with the baker’s paddle. It hadn’t just been bread that woman had been getting from Pasquale, she screamed. Stories began to spread before the envied Don Juan recovered from his beating and managed to explain what he had been doing in bed naked with Lorenza. People only believed the baker’s story after Don Santino’s body was found and the farce suddenly turned to tragedy.

  There had never been such a sensational execution, and it caught everyone by surprise, including us. The boys became feared beyond measure; they rarely went out, but when they were seen it meant they were on the hunt, and everyone waited to hear the name of the next victim.

  Over the years they had created their own network of friends, boys their own age who worshiped them. They became black souls unlike any before them; only Sante, perhaps, could have compared. They had adapted to the time and place better than we had. And they’d pulled off the whole thing by themselves.

  There was a kind of revolt in the opposing camp, and the Blood Brothers were in disarray; in just a short time a dozen of their most important representatives had made their journeys to the great beyond. Many who had answered to them began to evade their control, and others found the courage to settle long-pending accounts. And now there were hits from all directions, executed by anyone and everyone. It made for a sort of free zone, without the influence of the mafia; nobody answered to anyone if they weren’t answering to us.

  After a few years the war died down, assassinations tapered off. To assert our presence, it was enough to make an example of someone only once in a while.

  In our territory we were safe. We formed alliances with groups scattered throughout the countryside, out of the mob’s range. People began to turn to us with all kinds of problems. We helped everyone without asking for anything in return; they were our people. Petty crime ceased; we had more work than the carabinieri and the high commissioner put together. But the evil done by the Blood Brothers couldn’t be erased.

  In the Aurora, Luciano and I became kids again. I remembered how his big, brown eyes always grew teary during the Christmas holidays. He never wanted to go home; there was no one waiting for him. His mother used to wander out in her perennial black garb to collect him. She always found him sitting next to the small monument that marked the spot where his father, a simple postman, had died.

  The Aurora was near our town’s carabinieri barracks. Growing up, we would often see Don Peppino Zacco making his daily drop-ins; sometimes he would notice us, approach, and drop some coins in Luciano’s hand. “Buy yourself some nuts, little orphan,” he’d say. He’d look up in the direction of Minna’s balcony. “Greetings, Mrs. Bonasira.” Then he would go off in his car, which was always driven by some young soldier. Minna refused to go outside; Luciano’s mother, who always watched from the window, would go out, take the coins from her son’s hand, and throw them away. We understood who was evil before we knew the facts; there were many orphans like Luciano who roamed the villages.

  The Aurora was its own microcosm in the tiny world of a village in Locride. Sixteen families, dozens of souls joined by a bond that transcended that of blood. All for one and one for all. United in a common destiny. One big family, sharing all their joys and pain. The kids got up at dawn in the summer and played until they collapsed from exhaustion. A break for lunch and then back to the courtyard until sunset. Dusk in the Aurora was an event both magical and strange. The kids would stop playing; the women dragged ou
t their chairs and waited for the men to come back from the mountains. Even the widows in black sat out by their doors, though they had no one to wait for. The little ones would study them with compassion, without understanding. But they would understand later. This was how the boys of the Aurora grew up, drinking from the fountain of hatred and thirsting for revenge. And this was how the boys of the Aurora learned to transform their pain into satisfaction. They walked the hellish streets and took their darkness elsewhere, to taint other houses and other women. The boys of the Aurora grew up at dusk, when the glare of the sun could no longer hide the harshness of life. And in the end, dawn in the Aurora never arrived; the day became night and the night swallowed everything.

  We weren’t aware of it at the time, but that’s what had set us on our path. What we were, all that we had, and all that we did had been born of those childhood scenes. So much violence over so many years, all because Don Peppino had decided to take out one old peasant who held a job he had reserved for one of his own friends.

  Firm in his political ideology and with the law on his side, Luciano’s father had obtained his position through a series of whistle-blowing reports, forcing the state to respect his rights and to discount fraudulent claims of others’ seniority; as he proudly called it, a poor man’s victory. There was no section meeting in which he didn’t praise himself for his courage or the example he set. How many lives had that bastard destroyed?

  We made it through the war unscathed. But there would be pain just the same, delivered to us by nature herself.

  Stefano’s son, Cosimo, arrived breathless; his father was lying on the ground in his goat enclosure, showing no signs of life. We ran with our hearts in our throats and found him with his eyes to the sky, surrounded by his goats. He had just finished the milking and stood to lift the buckets of milk when he collapsed. Now he lay peacefully among the beasts, the milk soaking his clothes; his heart had suddenly given up, without warning.

  He died without pain, and we all privately wished for a similar death.

  A God-willed death leaves a calm sorrow, easily placated in the arms of a tender wife, or by hugging a small child.

  Death delivered by man leaves desert in its wake that all the water in the world can’t quench.

  Luciano, Tonino, and I buried Stefano, left our contributions to his boys, and parted for Milan. We didn’t want to die with pending accounts, and this time the enemy was much more powerful than any other we’d faced.

  We stayed with Giannetto, one the boys orphaned by Totò the Blade on Zacco’s orders, whom we’d raised in secret. Luciano, who had always kept the books, had been sending gifts and money for years, unbeknownst to even Luigi or Sasà. Giannetto could never betray us. With our blessing and the money we left him, he had continued to traffic cocaine even after our arrest.

  He moved large quantities and knew the biggest traffickers. The most important supplier working in Milan was a Calabrian, but unlike us, he was a city boy. He distributed those packages we knew so well, he was our man, so we had Giannetto put in an order for us.

  Even though Giannetto could sell a lot, our request for a ton of coke caught him off guard. It took a few months of to-ing and fro-ing. Giannetto made his city boy dealer lie down in the back seat of his car, covered him with a blanket, and took him to an apartment. He placed a series of suitcases on the table, opened them, and told him to count the cash. He would pay in a lump sum on delivery, he said.

  The Calabrian took his time. After a few weeks, he scheduled a meeting with Giannetto; he would have to talk it over in person with his bosses, he confessed.

  We left for Spain by car, arriving in Denia, a resort town south of Valencia. The meeting was in a typical Valencian restaurant. Giannetto slipped inside and sat down at a table. We positioned ourselves in a cafe across the street.

  The traffickers arrived, dead sure of themselves, without scoping the place out much. They were well-dressed, well-groomed; they looked like kids. They introduced themselves to Giannetto and got straight to business; they were so absorbed they didn’t even notice us when we passed their table.

  We sat at the back of the room, where a waiter quickly jotted down our orders: a double order of calamares a la plancha and two San Miguels.

  Giannetto suddenly stood up, interrupting the conversation, and gestured in the direction of our table.

  The traffickers’ boldness disappeared. They aged suddenly in the face of their consciences. They approached us. Luigi cracked a smile, opened his arms for an embrace, which Sasà blocked. He wanted to explain first. Sasà told us everything we wanted to know in a matter of minutes. Then they got up and left with their heads hanging. I felt sorry for them. They’d grown used to the rhythms of their new life; they would forget about us soon enough.

  My life and Luciano’s had separated from those of Luigi and Sasà, perhaps forever. A piece of us left with them. We had loved them and still did; we did not feel as if we were better than they were. They were certainly doing things right, better than we were; they lived full lives, they enjoyed themselves, this was what they’d wanted. Our path, on the other hand, was marked by a death mission that would have been stupid, as well as impossible, to escape. Our principles, our revenge, our rules, the accounts we had to close—it might all have been bullshit, but our demons carried us to the end.

  We silently wished them well; at least they would be spared, and for that we were happy. They would always be our brothers.

  We finished our calamari and beer and left. We didn’t have the strength to speak. We got into the car and Giannetto took us back to Milan. He took care of everything we needed for the trip.

  The coded letters Yussuf had written us contained a phone number; we contacted him and, after a few days, met him as he strolled out of the Malpensa airport in Milan. He looked the same as when we’d waved him goodbye from the docks. The scarlet rose on his cheekbone attested to his past as a fighter.

  Of the Sierra Nevada boys, he told us, he was one of the few survivors.

  Giannetto had gotten us a car, documents, and weapons, which we hid in a car door.

  Tonino drove for a while. Then, after we entered France unchecked through Ventimiglia, Luciano took the wheel. We drove along the coast to Marseilles, where we took the A7 into the heart of France. A beautiful Mediterranean landscape accompanied us for a long stretch. Every now and then, we crossed the Rhône, a mass of water that would have been unthinkable for our lands, as it rushed off to embrace the Mediterranean. We passed Avignon and got off the highway at a small town with a Roman name, Arausio, an ancient colony of the empire. We followed the signs for Mount Ventoux. Sasà’s information had been detailed, precise.

  The stunning villa wasn’t hard to find.

  It had grown dark. We turned off on a dirt road and slept in the car until our appointment. Our man lived in Paris, where he carried out his political activity, coddled and acclaimed by Westerners, who were perhaps unaware that they’d opened their homes to a butcher. He spent weekends at his country villa at the foot of Mount Ventoux, and would drive back to Paris every Monday at dawn.

  At five o’clock in the morning, the great gate opened wide, making way for a luxurious sedan. The lord of death had been gentrified; he felt untouchable in that land, and hadn’t bothered with an armored car, escort or weapons, only a chauffeur to attest to his status as a very rich businessman, as well as a champion of peace.

  Luciano cut off the road in front of the sedan, which stopped without suspicion. The driver rushed out as if to deliver some government file. Tonino pulled him through the car window with one hand and sent him into the world of dreams with a single shot to the head.

  The lord of death looked on, annoyed, as the car door opened. When he realized it was Yussuf and me, a fake smile broke out across his face. “My children,” he said, “there are things more valuable than our miserable lives.” It was useless. We made him get ou
t and kneel.

  In horror, he stared at the shotguns, with their sawed-off muzzles and butts. They stared back at him with their empty eyes, from which one shot after the next began to pour. After two reloads, we lost count. We took the Fiocchi’s ammunition from the cartridge cases at our waists. The shotguns roared and spat out lead. With each shot the shortened weapons tried to wriggle out of our grasp and point themselves upwards. Grimly we held the butts in place and kept the muzzles low, directing them at the mangled body. I could taste the gunpowder in my mouth; my eyes were burning.

  “Enough!” Tonino shouted.

  Never had a death been so liberating. What we left on the asphalt looked more like the remains of an animal dragged under the wheels of a truck than the body of a man.

  The demon that had destroyed thousands of lives was now in Muslim hell, if there was one.

  We took our time and changed course on the way back; instead of descending France into Italy, we went east. Before noon we had arrived in Nancy, a beautiful bonbon of a town in Lorraine. We parked behind Place Stanislas, a huge square enclosed by high gates and paved with spotless porphyry. It was like going back in time; in the middle stood the statue of Duke Stanislas, who had given the square its name. We sat at the tables of a restaurant that allowed us to observe the town in all her beauty. We ate the noix St. Jacques, and after lunch we left the car and headed for the gare on foot. The train crossed the entire Moselle and left us in Luxembourg City. We changed trains, taking a series of locals to Germany—Trier, Koblenz, Mannheim, Munich. At nine in the evening we caught a Euronotte to Italy through Brenner. At 4:20 a.m. we found ourselves having breakfast in Piazza Medaglie d’Oro, in front of the station in Bologna. In via San Vitale we met a friend of ours and in the evening, after taking Yussuf to the airport, we left for our homeland.