The Four Corners of Palermo

by Giuseppe Di Piazza

  “We should photograph all three of them together. Imagine the headline: ‘The Grief of the Women of St. John Beheaded.’ ” He laughed all by himself.

  “Filippo, what are you laughing at?”

  “Nothing: Can’t a guy babbiare anymore?”

  “Of course, you can kid around all you want, but those two girls lost their father not two days ago.”

  “Soft-hearted, eh? You’re tender, just like a tasty green vegetable …” He twisted his two fingers as if drilling into his cheek: “Appetitoso.”

  “Filippo, maybe I should go.”

  “Okay, forget I said a thing,” he said. “If you ask me, though, we need to work hard on this case. It’s very unusual: no Kalashnikovs, no car bombs, no .38 Specials, no tommy guns … De-cap-i-ta-ted. Capisci?”

  “Of course I understand.”

  “You should read up on what it means, here, to chop off heads. There was a time when they put a rock in people’s mouths for ratting.”

  “I’ve read Sciascia, I remember.”

  When I left, he was cleaning his Nikon flash couplers. I went back to my desk and called down to the archives.

  “Anna, sorry, listen, I need a favor: Could you find me something in the encyclopedia about the ritual significance of a beheading?”

  Annamaria Florio said nothing for several long seconds.

  “Chopping off heads, right?”

  “What did I just say?”

  “You know that in China, Chairman Mao has forbidden beheadings.”

  “They’re a crime in Italy, too, and you don’t even have to be a Communist. Right?”

  The Marxist-Leninist militant laughed through clenched teeth: “Why, what a comedian you’ve become.”

  “And you, with an abundance of comic research, see what you can find me about decapitation in various cultures. It would be great if you could find out what it means to cut someone’s head off for a romantic and pessimistic people like the Sicilians.”

  “A romantic and pessimistic people? What you Sicilians need is a few Red Guards, my friend. Then see how pessimistic you still manage to be.”

  “Anna, you know that you and I are fundamentally in agreement. There’s nothing I like better than steamed rice, and I have a soft spot for girls with almond-shaped eyes.”

  Before hanging up she said something that sounded like “asshole.”

  An hour later, there was a stack of Xeroxes on my desk.

  I began to read: “In the ancient world, beheading was a method of execution used by the Egyptians and the Romans. Under the Roman Empire, it was a capital punishment reserved only for those who possessed Roman citizenship, because it was considered to be a quick form of death that did not entail any infamy; for slaves and highwaymen, in contrast, death was imposed by crucifixion. Beheading was also used widely in the Middle Ages and in the modern era. Until the eighteenth century, beheading was considered an honorable method of execution in Europe, available only to noblemen, while the bourgeois and paupers were punished with crueler methods, such as being drawn and quartered. In China, in contrast, it was considered the most infamous form of capital punishment, because according to the tenets of traditional religion, bodies were supposed to remain intact. In 1949, when the Communist regime took power, beheading was outlawed.”

  Annamaria had a point: Chairman Mao didn’t like beheadings. What about the Mafia bosses? What meaning did they attribute to the headman’s ax? There wasn’t a hint in the papers on my desk. I’d need to talk to a scholar of Sicilian traditions, though I already had a pretty strong hunch: cutting someone’s head off wasn’t a sign of respect.

  I suddenly remembered a night two years ago, outside police headquarters. A top-level mob boss, Masino Spatuzza, the owner of a fleet of dark-blue speedboats he used to bring the raw material for heroin, morphine, into Sicily, had been arrested after ten years on the lam. We journalists were waiting for him to do the perp walk—the passerella—in chains: from the high-security holding cells to the armored bus that would take him to Rome to stand trial. The boss appeared, flanked by two officers of the mobile squad: he was short, overweight, and furious, with enormous shackles on his wrists. I shouted to Filippo Lombardo: “Get that shot!” His flashgun flared. The boss climbed onto the bus as it pulled out, spitting at the television cameras focused on him.

  Two minutes later I was surrounded by three guys about my age. They all had nasty glares and their shirts open to the last button above the navel. One of them was wearing a counterfeit pair of Ray-Bans, unnecessary at night, and they made him look like a killer. They said nothing, just surrounded me as Filippo was photographing the departing bus; he never noticed them. The tallest of the three stepped a little closer; I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. He whispered just four words to me: “Ti scippiamo ’a tiesta.” We’ll take your head off. I looked at him as if he were an extraterrestrial, and stepped away from that triangle of bad breath and impending violence, with my heart racing furiously. Message received.

  The next morning, I talked about it with the head of the mobile squad: he sent a patrol car to park outside my house for a month. It hadn’t been a very good idea to get on the nerves of the mob boss Spatuzza’s three sons.

  Ti scippiamo ’a tiesta. Their language. The symbolic meaning of the act.

  “Come over here,” said the news editor.

  “At your service.”

  “Stop pulling my leg. Instead, why don’t you tell me where we are with the severed head?”

  “Wife, daughters, nothing much. A good husband, an exemplary father. The usual bullshit.”

  “Take a look at his criminal record.”

  “Already did it.”

  “Then go find out what he really did: talk to people, find out what they know.”

  “Got it. I’m on my way to Porticello. And I have plenty of phone tokens.”

  I slip my hand into my inside jacket pocket. I grab my BlackBerry, my little portable multimedia office, contained in five and a half ounces of high technology. I want to check the name of the capital of Ecuador. I open the browser and search on Google. Wikipedia: it’s Quito, population 1,397,698, elevation above sea level 9,350 feet. I decide to trust the source.

  There was a time when the only thing I trusted was a public phone booth. And the bronze-colored phone tokens that cost fifty lire. I still have a hundred or so, in a red cardboard box in a closet somewhere. I’ve had them with me since my years in Palermo: you never know.

  Being a reporter in the early eighties was a pure activity, with nothing else around it. No technology, no other means of communication. Those were the years when private television broadcasting began in Italy; I worked for the station owned by my newspaper. We were a high-energy group of news reporters busy telling the story of the other Palermo, the city that refused to bow to the inevitable fate of death by the Mafia. But the massacre was under way. We weren’t able to prevent the bloodbath: to tell the truth, knowing now the way it turned out, I think not even BlackBerrys could have stopped it.

  On the marble counter of the Porticello market sat two swordfish heads that looked like a pair of cactuses: empty eyes, giant, bony swords pointing straight up at the sky above the green awning that shaded the fish stall. Farther along, two old men sitting on the pavement of the wharf, near the market. They were mending fishing nets, working with a large spindle and heavy thread, holding the mesh taut between their toes and their mouths.

  I locked the steering column of my Vespa and walked over.

  “Forgive me for bothering you. Would you happen to know where the Neglias live?”

  Their hands stopped working. They looked at me.

  “Neglia who?”

  “Giovannuzzo’s father. I know they had a motorboat.”

  “Yes, but Neglia ’ntisu Apuzza or Neglia ’ntisu Cafè?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that question. I knew that in town the families had nicknames known as ’nciurie, which were used to identify a family much more t
han the surname: Was the man without a head an apuzza, a little bee, or a cafè? And what was the origin of the two nicknames?

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  They went back to knotting their nets, clearly convinced that they were dealing with a functional moron.

  The swordfish vendor had overheard the conversation.

  “Who is it you’re looking for?” he asked, wiping his bloody hands on his apron.

  “The relatives of Giovanni Neglia.”

  “What could be easier? Apuzza and Cafè both live in the same building, in a second-floor apartment and a first-floor apartment. Down there, at Santa Nicolicchia.”

  He pointed out a little spit of land that enclosed the gulf, behind the breakwater. A pink building stood out against the bright-blue backdrop of the sea. Water behind it, water in front of it, and a ramshackle tenement building nearby.

  “No, it’s not the pink building,” he said. “That belongs to people from Palermo. The Neglias live in the building next door.” As he talked, he stroked the head of the largest swordfish, as if it were still alive. A caress of sincere fondness.

  I thanked him and climbed back on the Vespa. Five hundred yards downhill, a distance I covered in neutral, breathing in the salt air. It was a warm day, and the sunlight was kind to the poverty of the fishing village.

  The street door of the tenement where the Neglias lived was wooden. The brine had transformed it, over the years, into an object as unique as the driftwood that the tide tosses up onto the beach: beautifully deformed, inimitable. I rapped on the door with my knuckles. No reply.

  “Buon giorno, anybody home?” I shouted.

  From the second-floor window an old woman with a black scarf on her head looked out.

  “Signora, excuse me, I’m looking for the Neglia family.”

  “Apuzza or Cafè?”

  “Both. Which family do you belong to?”

  “We’re Apuzza Neglias.”

  “But are you by any chance related to Giovanni and Castrenze, who went to live in Palermo?”

  “Those are Cafè Neglias. The sons of my cousin Peppino, who must be inside. Keep knocking, keep knocking.”

  The window swung shut.

  At least now I knew who I was looking for.

  I knocked again, louder this time. I shouted once or twice: “Signor Peppino!” After a few minutes, the wooden door creaked open. A sleepy old man in a sleeveless undershirt looked out.

  “Who’s looking for me?”

  I told him that I worked for a newspaper. I asked if I could come in.

  He nodded his head. The apartment was below street level, two steps down in total darkness.

  The old man touched the parchment-like skin of his face. I heard the scraping of his hand’s dry skin running over his two-day growth of whiskers. “I was asleep. We went out last night for squid. I got to sleep at six. Si assettassi,” he said, pointing to a chair. “Would you like a cafè?”

  I looked up, and in the dim light I made out ten glass mason jars filled to the top with coffee. Next to them, an assortment of Moka Express pots: one cup, three cups, six cups, and twelve. I started to understand the reason for the ’nciuria.

  “Grazie, thanks very much. Gladly.”

  “Vossia sells newspapers in Palermo, and you came all the way out here why?”

  “For your son Giovanni.”

  “God rest his soul.” He crossed himself.

  “May he rest in peace,” I added, with a look of dismay.

  “And what does vossia want to know from me?”

  “What was Giovanni doing in Porticello?”

  “When he left he was just fifteen years old. He was tired of going out on the fishing boat with me. So was his brother, Castrenze, another fine piece of work.”

  “And what did Giovanni want to do?”

  “What he’s always done: be dishonest. He used to rob the other picciriddi when he was ten years old. He was clever and fast. But the idea of working? He wouldn’t hear of it. Fishing is a life for men, not for the dishonest.”

  “And he was dishonest.”

  “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “But you just said it yourself.”

  “I’m his father. But you, who the fuck are you to say that my son, a good Christian, God rest his soul, was dishonest?”

  I realized I was heading down a dead-end street. I quickly covered my tracks, trying to become invisible: “Please forgive me, I was rude and thoughtless.”

  Just then, the Moka Express started to gurgle. Peppino Neglia stood up, turned off the flame, picked up a demitasse spoon, and stirred the freshly made espresso.

  “If you don’t do that, the strong coffee stays at the bottom and the leggio, the light coffee, the last to come out, floats on top. No, ’u cafè should always be stirred.”

  He shoveled two spoonfuls of sugar into each cup and handed me one. I was out of the tunnel.

  “Grazie, Don Peppino.”

  He smiled faintly at me. He’d decided that I was basically a good picciotto. A little rough around the edges, but harmless.

  “You want to know what Giovannuzzo was doing?”

  “If it’s possible.”

  “Nothing. He stole in Palermo and every once in a while he’d come to see me and bring me a little something.”

  “What did he steal?”

  “Honest things.”

  I looked at him fondly: the man had loved his son with all the love a father is capable of. A thief of a son, who stole honest things, as if he were a Robin Hood of the Conca d’Oro surrounding Palermo, a paladin of justice who restored fairness and order to the distribution of earthly goods. He saw things just the way his daughter-in-law did. But someone else begged to differ.

  I drank my coffee, we talked about the price of squid, I thanked him, and I headed for the local police station.

  The officer on duty took me for what I was: a source of irritation in the quiet of the winter seaside. He told me that the file his office had on Giovanni Neglia was practically empty. He went and got it, and there was only one prior report, sent from police headquarters in Palermo, for a break-in that took place on Corso Calatafimi. Nothing much stolen; no evidence, only suspicions; nothing solid against Neglia. I thanked the man and left him to his contemplation of the winter calm.

  I went home, convinced I’d only wasted my time and enjoyed a good cup of coffee. I’d had worse days than that.

  “There’s a signorina downstairs for you,” Saro, the doorman, called up to tell me.

  “Who is it?”

  “She says her name is Rosalia.”

  “Send her up.”

  I had started the afternoon with a pile of papers on my desk: the notes of the past year, to be sifted through. What should be kept? What should be tossed out? Which of those notes would prove useful in the future? I had no idea. I was rummaging through that dusty mountain in search of some clue to its usefulness. I was tempted to keep it all: I was a rookie reporter.

  As I was reading back through the notes on my pointless journey to Porticello, the young quasi–Claudia Cardinale materialized in front of me. She was wearing a gray coat over a black knit dress. He eyes were made up to go with her mouth. Her mouth, the only dot of color on her oval face, was the natural pink that I remembered.

  “I’m Rosalia Neglia, do you remember me?”

  She had a gray purse clutched in one hand; it seemed to vanish into her overcoat.

  I got to my feet.

  Of course I remembered her. Her eyes, filled with rage and tears. Her hand, in which her little sister’s hand had found a nest.

  “We were on a first-name basis.”

  “You’re right. It’s just that I didn’t know if you still remembered, whether I’d made an impression.”

  An indelible one. Like an embossed seal on a page in a book. But all I said was: “Yes, I remember you perfectly.”

  “My mother doesn’t know that I’m here.”

  “Has something happened?”


  Rosalia was standing in front of me, on the other side of the linoleum desktop heaped high with papers.

  “I have some things to tell you, maybe someplace quiet.” And, jutting out her chin, she indicated my three colleagues sitting at their desks on that sleepy afternoon. The newsroom had never been quieter.

  “If you like, we can go upstairs to the room the photographers use. At this hour of the day there shouldn’t be anyone there.”

  “Macari.”

  I translated the word in my mind: “Yes, grazie.”

  I ushered her in. The reporter covering politics, Pippo Suraci, leapt to his feet as we went by, introducing himself with a certain unctuousness. As long as I’d known him, I’d never seen him miss a chance to take the hand of a young woman entering the newsroom: pretty or ugly, he shook hands with them all, blithely indifferent to his own sweaty palm. And Rosalia was the prettiest one ever to have set foot in our workplace. All she said was: “Pleasure to meet you.” I placed a hand on her back and pushed lightly, to move her past Suraci. We climbed the stairs.

  On the third floor, the photographers’ room was, as I’d hoped, deserted. All the same, when I’d chosen that as a private place to have a conversation, I’d neglected to take into account the personality and habits of Filippo Lombardo. As soon as I opened the door, the severed head of Rosalia’s father appeared before me, on the far wall. I quickly shut the door, asking her to be so kind as to wait for a moment.

  “I just have to put something away.”

  She gave me a blank look, but didn’t object.

  I walked in, took the photograph off the wall, and hid it in the drawer with the unused AGFA developing paper. Then I let her in.

  She put her overcoat on the table where Filippo laid out his prints when they were dry. Her dress, black for mourning, revealed her shape, reminding me of Angelica in The Leopard. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the full curves of her bosom.

  “What is it, Rosalia?”

  “You have to help me. I need to know why they did what they did to my father.”