That trip gave us a chance to catch our breath; we’d been going faster than usual, and we weren’t kids anymore. But for once in our lives we were also satisfied, fully and without remorse.
It was still dark when we got back; I found Giulia in a deep sleep, enveloped in her perfume. I rested my hand on her belly and jerked it away, terrified; the life inside of her had moved. A small smile escaped her lips; she was due very soon.
For me, it had been nine months of terror. It was said that when the universe wanted to punish a bad man, it struck down what he loved, knowing it was useless to punish his person. The bad man feared nothing for himself, though he was aware of the damage he caused. What he feared most was that his unearthly rage would be directed back at his own children.
Every evening before going to sleep, I would pray to the god of the Christians, the pagan gods of the woods, and above all, to the pious Basilian monk who had transformed pitch into bread for my ancestors, to reserve all evil for me and to spare my wife, my children, Luciano, Gino, Giulio, Ciccio, Tonino and all those dear to me. If comeuppance was due, the originator of the sin should pay, not his accomplices.
I refused to know the sex of the unborn child or hear anything about its health. I made Luciano take Giulia to all of her doctors’ appointments. She was the most beautiful creature that had entered our lives, as a wife, mother, sister, friend; she was always smiling, she cooked, cleaned, gave lessons with never a complaint, never a reproach, never a regret. She was aware of the choice she’d made and would have stood by it forever. She became the most important person in each of our lives; no one dared to contradict her, and our love for her was without limits.
And then the day came. We paced up and down the hospital corridors, tense like never before. I wasn’t strong enough to enter the delivery room. I went limp. When the midwife called for us, Luciano went in first.
They spent endless minutes inside before the door swung open and Luciano came out holding two bundles tight to his chest: “Everything’s fine, including these two little peas.”
Twin boys, identical and the spitting image of Giulia; nature still loved us, in spite of everything. I felt a calm like never before; no matter what happened, Giulia wouldn’t be alone. I thanked God, the pagan gods, and the Saint. We named them after my father and poor Bino and took them home.
If they’d left us alone, we would have finally buried the hatchet.
But they didn’t want to.
The state wanted to avenge the Blood Brothers, who’d been hung out to dry. Secular deception had been eliminated, the Law could no longer get information from our inner circles, and the state was very interested in what was incubating in the hearts of the people of the forest. The centuries-old hierarchy had to be restored.
The official rule of law in those lands had two faces: the serious and sad Captain Randone, and the arrogant and sneering Commissioner Saffino. The first was Sicilian, the other Piedmontese. They represented opposite worlds, and yet worked for the same master, with diverging methods and sensibilities.
The difference between them was best demonstrated in the captain’s habit of addressing everyone formally, even if he was speaking to a fifteen-year-old boy. The commissioner, on the other hand, used the familiar form to address women, the elderly, and children, anyone from zero to one hundred years old.
When the captain entered your house, it was the state itself entering; the evil that had to be done for the supreme good that he served was delivered without pretense. The commissioner arrived with a smile on his face, delivering slaps on the back and criticizing the government, going on about how we were all friends, sitting down to eat and drink, and leaving happily, having bugged your bedroom or the table where he sat. But he loved everyone.
For both of them, we represented the enemy to be taken down by any means, even if it meant breaking the rules. The captain broke rules only if absolutely necessary, and with disgust. The commissioner loved to screw you over any way he could.
One of them, however, saw us as people. The other saw only scum.
They tried for months to get us out of the way legally: continuous searches, bugs everywhere, cameras. It was a permanent siege, in spite of the fact our area was peaceful. The bloodletting had ended, as had the Blood Brothers’ harassment of civilians. But they couldn’t stand that we were the ones who governed and imposed order.
They’ll wear themselves out, we thought, and we patiently endured. Abruptly the siege ended and a period of apparent normality set in. But one night some time later, a shepherd who lived in a small neighboring district woke us up. A procession of vehicles was headed for the village.
This wasn’t a raid. There were too many of them.
So the men left their beds and took refuge in the woods.
When we read the precautionary custody order, which was directed at all of us and about fifty friends of ours scattered throughout neighboring regions, we understood that the commissioner had had a stroke of genius.
Since his bugs hadn’t picked up any confessions from us, he’d decided to bug our enemies. He filled the Blood Brothers’ cars and houses with sophisticated electronic ears. The gangsters, who were unimaginably loquacious and oblivious to their audience, somehow rendered all the details of our sins while coincidentally managing to avoid disclosing a single incriminating detail about themselves.
The policemen filled notebooks with transcripts that blamed us for every evil that had occurred in the region.
Only our small group escaped prison; the surrounding villages had been swept clean of our friends. The Blood Brothers quickly recovered their lost positions. But our freedom, albeit as fugitives, allowed us to avoid a bloody retaliation.
When the trial began, the presiding judge was the honorable Barresi, great-grandson of the illustrious Giovanni Andrea, who was still enjoying the fruits cultivated by Crocco the brigand.
Everything ran at an unusually fast pace; the upright judge dismantled any attempts on the part of the defense, and dictated the proceedings as though there was no choice but to deliver the maximum penalties.
We had a friend among the popular judges who updated us on the chamber discussions that took place after each hearing. There was no escape this time; we were scum who had to be erased from a society of which we were not worthy.
The defense attorneys defected one after the other, and the few brave souls who tried to point out the court’s bias were branded as conniving accomplices—obstacles to justice.
Requests for appraisals and testimonies were rejected immediately, with no discussions in the council chamber. It was a farce.
In the end, unable to hang us as his ancestors had, Barresi handed down a few life sentences and a few others ranging from twenty to thirty years. Justice was served.
If they’d captured us, there would have been no hope for any of our friends.
We had to react and we took an unconventional approach.
We got out the carabinieri uniforms that poor Alfio had brought us and went to greet the champions of justice.
Despite the fact that the newspapers had been filled with reports of death threats looming over their persons and their loved ones, the protectors of public good lived peacefully in their beautiful homes. Aside from the occasional poor beat cop, no high representative of the institutions ever suffered any real danger. The state and its sham antagonism allowed them to sleep soundly.
The doors of the Barresi and Saffino households were opened without suspicion; they saw the uniforms and not the people who wore them. The judge and the commissioner soon found themselves locked in the trunks of two cars on an arduous drive through the mountains.
Luciano dusted off the acronym he’d coined so many years earlier in an attempt to save Rino’s socialist friends. The elusive LAL, Locri Liberation Army, issued a leaflet addressed to the press in which they demanded, in exchange for the release of
the two hostages, the freedom of our imprisoned friends and a review of their trials.
It was a desperate move, but it was the last card we could throw down in a game we’d been forced to play in the open. I was ready to pay the consequences for it.
We restored what had been Leonardo’s cage all those years ago, back when men were swine, and we shoved the two whining heroes inside.
The state activated its every means, turning the countryside and neighboring villages upside down. But it would have taken years of searching this way to find the hostages, and they didn’t have years. They needed a quick victory to stop the dangerous epidemic from spreading. There was only one way to do it: by negotiating.
They offered us piles of money. And we sent back their messengers with bins full of the cash from Milan that we’d buried nearby.
The state got the message, and the true negotiations began.
The armies of carabinieri that had been terrorizing our streets disappeared; the press was silenced. Elderly Marshal Palamita was left alone to patrol this patch of countryside. After this last assignment, a pension and his father’s land in the Agrigentino were waiting for him. We saw him everywhere in his old Campagnola. They’d certainly chosen the best messenger, perhaps the only one who could have gotten through to us.
He arrived early one morning, left the car far away and walked to the caves of Malupassu. I found him in the shade of a holm oak, where he had already been waiting for some time. He spoke aloud to the woods, not to me. “. . . Your father, old Bino, Sante, Santoro, the list goes on—how many more do you want to sacrifice? Do you feel like a fucking hero? It’s time to end it, salvage what you can. You can talk to Captain Randone. He’s a man who keeps his promises and only makes promises he can keep. I’ll bring him to the mountains.”
He didn’t allow for an answer. He got up and left.
In a sense he was one of us, too, and he spoke for us.
After a week, the old carabiniere showed up with his boss on the peak above the caves of Malupassu. He showed Randone to a seat, then made as if to leave.
“You’re in this shit, too, Rosario Palamita,” I said, blocking him. Randone nodded and Palamita went to sit next to the captain.
The business was concluded in a matter of minutes. When it was done, we conversed for a few hours more. After all, I had spent years with Palamita, each of us on his own side. He reminisced about those years, until his superior made him understand that they had to leave.
I returned to the guys happy. “In a few months they’ll start the appeals, you’ll see.”
A few days later, a squadron of soldiers discovered where the judge and the commissioner were being kept and freed the hostages; the state had won, as always. The kidnappers had managed to escape, but they’d soon be found.
The two freed martyrs of justice issued effusive declarations about how much they’d suffered to serve the common good. But of course they were not afraid, they wouldn’t back down, they’d go on with their work. They described their imprisonment in minute detail, but couldn’t describe their jailers, who were always hooded and seldom spoke. They were low-lifes who only cared about money.
Saffino was promoted and transferred so he could bring order to Valle d’Aosta. Judge Barresi’s long imprisonment had exacerbated his health problems, and he was soon forced to leave his legal codes in the library and retire.
Then the story went silent.
The appeals process began. Fortunately for the defendants, the magistrates declared that most of the evidence obtained was inadmissible. There were many acquittals, and the few sentences they did hand down—to Luciano, Gino, Ciccio, Giulio, and me—were limited to a few short years.
We awaited the appellate court’s decision in peace, the cops forgot about us, and we went back to sleeping in our homes.
I watched as the twins grew and Giulia’s belly swelled again. The boys got married, one by one; even a blushing Tonino announced his engagement. Only Luciano held out against the bliss of family life. It was true happiness, unlike anything we’d ever felt before.
I hoped the confirmation process would take as long as possible, and I got my wish. The judges in Rome took over a year to finalize the sentences.
We had to honor our agreement with Randone.
We hugged each other with happiness and I set off with Luciano, Ciccio, Gino, and Giulio. The place we’d chosen for the state’s final triumph was a farmhouse in the heart of the mountains; we arrived in the evening and waited until dawn for the Benemérita to come break down the doors.
The boys, tired from our walk, slept like angels, dreaming of their chaste fiancées. I wasn’t tired and sat outside to enjoy the scenery. Spring had arrived overnight, the starry sky invited contemplation, and a warm breeze caressed the trees.
Luciano joined me. After forty years of telepathic communication between us, he suddenly felt it necessary to speak. After a few false starts, his deep voice pervaded the silence. His words took the form of a kind of thank you. He told me that he’d finally been able sleep during the past few months; he was no longer woken by the nightmare of his father surrounded by crows. He had quiet, normal dreams. He also wanted to tell me that Giulia was having another boy.
We felt no melancholy and spent the entire night recounting the brightest moments of our lives. Uncle Bino’s stories, Luigi’s amorous adventures, Tonino’s brawls, the healthy ignorance of the boys who slept soundly inside.
At dawn we embraced, at peace with ourselves; the demon that had enslaved us for decades had abandoned us in search of new victims. Luciano asked me to make him coffee, and was taking one last drag on his second cigarette when the army of the state shattered our placid scene.
Roaring, ultramodern vehicles spat out armed boys in camouflage—kids who had come prepared to fight evil, after years of training. But instead of evil, all they found were two relaxed forty-year-olds in the mood for reminiscing. From the only older vehicle, a Campagnola, Palamita and Randone jumped out to curb the impetuous troops, relegating the mass of muscles to wait inside the huge off-road vehicles.
I made coffee for our guests and we woke the boys, who calmly started to get ready.
Despite his official duties, even Rosario allowed himself to be swept away by our memories. The officers sipped their coffee, while Luciano took advantage of the delay to smoke another cigarette. The marshal shared one story after the next, recounting our exploits to his superior, who despite his role and the task at hand often burst into fits of laughter. He chuckled with gusto at the description of the terrified picciotto whom Palamita had found near our goat enclosure one morning, and who with great embarrassment had showed him the contents of the sack he was carrying: the magnificent pair of horns that Sante Motta had sent to Don Peppino Zacco.
The soldiers in the off-road vehicles looked on in shock. They’d spent years on target practice and martial arts, and now, right before their eyes, an old man and a pudgy marshal were taming the cruelest brigands with inside jokes. Someone must have made a mistake. Where was the action they’d trained for? Where was the bloody battle that justified their extra pay?
Palamita went on undaunted, while our boys and the soldiers camped out under the trees to escape what felt like an August sun.
Then Palamita’s voice began to falter. He mouthed words uselessly, became incomprehensible. The captain silenced him gently. He summoned the platoon and had our boys handcuffed one at a time, collected and loaded into a vehicle and driven off.
Giulio, Gino, and Ciccio said their warm goodbyes before their transports disappeared around the hairpin curves that descended into the valley.
Luciano and I stayed back with Randone, Palamita, and the units from a few of the last jeeps in the clearing in front of the farmhouse.
Luciano offered me his last good wishes, allowed himself to be handcuffed and, sandwiched by two giants, walked to the off-road
vehicle that awaited him.
He was about to climb inside when he stopped suddenly and turned, catching the soldiers off guard.
He saw the captain grip my hand in a kind of salute instead of handcuffing me. Their eyes met, and he understood.
The agreement did not include prison time for me. That was not the promise I had made to secure my friends’ futures. The state needed to have a complete victory. I was the one morally responsible for my companions’ mistaken destinies; I was the one who would pay the price that had to be paid so that they could embark on new lives. It was the morality of the Aspromonte.
An animal howl, like a beast in agony, erupted from his depths, while the soldiers restrained him.
“Kyria!”
Kyria only gave him a tender smile and walked to the center of the clearing.
An incredible thunder shattered the cloudless sky; Kyria turned away and Luciano saw the hole in the nape of his neck, big enough to put a fist through, vomiting blood and brain matter.
Kyria turned back to Luciano and the soldiers and smiled again; it was nothing, he was fine, he could walk with his own legs.
Luciano thought about how Kyria had never smiled like that in his life. He thought of him as a child, back when they’d watch Zacco pass and his eyes shone with a hellish fire.
Randone approached to help support Luciano.
Kyria stepped toward Rosario Palamita, who had covered his face with his hand. He wanted to apologize for splattering the marshal with slime, but the marshal was the only man he would have allowed to do the job.
Black Souls Page 18