by Mario Puzo
The van blocking the Via Bella backed off to let the truck with the arrested men enter the square to make its circle and go back up the street. At that moment Turi Guiliano pushed open the church door and said to Pisciotta, “Fire over their heads.” At the same moment he fired his machine pistol into the blocking van, aiming at the tires and the engine. Suddenly the square flamed with light as the engine blew up and the van caught fire. The two carabinieri in the front seat tumbled out like loose-jointed puppets, their surprise not giving their bodies time to tighten against the shock. Beside him Pisciotta was firing his rifle at the cab of the truck holding the prisoners. Turi Guiliano saw the driver leap out and fall still. The other armed carabinieri jumped out and Pisciotta fired again. The second policeman went down. Turi turned to Pisciotta to reproach him but suddenly the stained glass windows of the church shattered with machine gun fire and the colored bits scattered on the church floor like rubies. Turi realized that there was no longer any possibility of mercy. That Aspanu was right. They must kill or be killed.
Guiliano pulled Pisciotta’s arm and ran back through the church and out the back door and through the dark crooked streets of Montelepre. He knew that tonight there was no hope of helping the prisoners to escape. They slipped through the final wall of the town, over the open fields, and kept running until they were safely into the rising slopes covered with huge white stones. Dawn was breaking when they reached the top of Monte d’Ora in the Cammarata Mountains.
Over a thousand years ago Spartacus had hidden his slave army here and led them out to fight the Roman legions. Standing on the top of this Monte d’Ora watching the sun come radiantly alive, Turi Guiliano was filled with youthful glee that he had escaped his enemies. He would never obey a fellow human being again. He would choose who should live and who should die, and there was no doubt in his mind that all he would do would be for the glory and freedom of Sicily, for good and not for evil. That he would only strike for the cause of justice, to help the poor. That he would win every battle, that he would win the love of the oppressed.
He was twenty years old.
CHAPTER 7
DON CROCE MALO was born in the village of Villaba, a little mudhole he was to make prosperous and famous all through Sicily. It was not ironic, to Sicilians, that he sprang from a religious family who groomed him for priesthood in the Holy Catholic Church, that his first name had originally been Crocefisso, a religious name given only by the most pious parents. Indeed, as a slender youth he was forced to play the part of Christ in those religious plays put on in celebration of Holy Easter and was acclaimed for his marvelous air of piety.
But when he grew to manhood at the turn of the century, it was clear that Croce Malo had difficulty accepting any authority other than himself. He smuggled, he extorted, he stole, and finally, worst of all, he impregnated a young girl of the village, an innocent Magdalene in the plays. He then refused to marry her, claiming they had both been carried away with the religious fervor of the play, and therefore he should be forgiven.
The girl’s family found this explanation too subtle to accept and demanded matrimony or death. Croce Malo was too proud to marry a girl so dishonored and fled to the mountains. After a year as a bandit, he had the good fortune to make contact with the Mafia.
“Mafia,” in Arabic, means a place of sanctuary, and the word took its place in the Sicilian language when the Saracens ruled the country in the tenth century. Throughout history, the people of Sicily were oppressed mercilessly by the Romans, the Papacy, the Normans, the French, the Germans, and the Spanish. Their governments enslaved the poor working class, exploiting their labor, raping their women, murdering their leaders. Even the rich did not escape. The Spanish Inquisition of the Holy Catholic Church stripped them of their wealth for being heretics. And so the “Mafia” sprang up as a secret society of avengers. When the royal courts refused to take action against a Norman noble who raped a farmer’s wife, a band of peasants assassinated him. When a police chief tortured some petty thief with the dreaded cassetta, that police chief was killed. Gradually the strongest-willed of the peasants and the poor formed themselves into an organized society which had the support of the people and in effect became a second and more powerful government. When there was a wrong to be redressed, no one ever went to the official police, they went to the leader of the local Mafia, who mediated the problem.
The greatest crime a Sicilian could commit was to give any information of any kind to the authorities about anything done by the Mafia. They kept silent. And this silence came to be called omerta. Over the centuries the practice enlarged to never giving the police information about a crime committed even against oneself. All communications broke down between the people and the law enforcement agencies of reigning governments so that even a small child was taught not to give a stranger the simplest directions to a village or a person’s house.
Through the centuries the Mafia governed Sicily, a presence so shadowy and indistinct that the authorities could never quite grasp the extent of its power. Up until World War II, the word “Mafia” was never uttered on the island of Sicily.
Five years after Don Croce’s flight into the mountains, he was well known as a “Qualified Man.” That is, someone who could be entrusted with the elimination of a human being without causing more than a minimal amount of trouble. He was a “Man of Respect,” and after making certain arrangements, he returned to live in his native town of Villaba, some forty miles south of Palermo. These arrangements included paying an indemnity to the family of the girl he had dishonored. This was later heralded as the measure of his generosity, but it was rather the proof of his wisdom. The pregnant girl had already been shipped to relatives in America with the label of a young widow to hide her shame, but her family still remembered. They were, after all, Sicilian. Don Croce, a skilled murderer, a brutal extorter, a member of the dreaded Friends of the Friends, could not comfortably count on all this to protect him from the family that had been disgraced. It was a matter of honor, and if not for the indemnity, they would have had to kill him no matter what the consequences.
By combining generosity with prudence, Croce Malo acquired the respectful title of “Don.” By the time he was forty years old he was acknowledged as the foremost of the Friends of the Friends and was called upon to adjudicate the most desperate disputes between rival cosce of the Mafia, to settle the most savage vendettas. He was reasonable, he was clever, he was a born diplomat, but most important of all, he did not turn faint at the sight of blood. He became known as the “Don of Peace” throughout the Sicilian Mafia, and everyone prospered; the stubborn were eliminated with judicious murders and Don Croce was a rich man. Even his brother, Benjamino, had become a secretary to the Cardinal of Palermo, but blood was thicker than holy water and he owed his first allegiance to Don Croce.
He married and became father to a little boy he adored. Don Croce, not so prudent as he was later to become, not so humble as he later learned to be under the whip of adversity, engineered a coup that made him famous all through Sicily, and an object of wonder to the highest circle of Roman society. This coup sprang from a bit of marital discord which even the greatest men in history have had to endure.
Don Croce, because of his position in the Friends of the Friends, had married into a proud family who had recently bought patents of nobility for such a huge sum that the blood in their veins turned blue. After a few years of marriage, his wife treated him with a lack of respect he knew he had to correct, though of course not in his usual fashion. His wife’s blue blood had made her disenchanted with Don Croce’s no-nonsense, earthy peasant ways, his practice of saying nothing if he had nothing to the point to say, his casual attire, his habit of rough command in all things. There was also the remembrance of how all her other suitors melted away when Don Croce announced his candidacy for her hand.
She did not of course show her disrespect in any obvious fashion. This was, after all, Sicily, not England or America. But the Don was an extraordin
arily sensitive soul. He soon observed that his wife did not worship the ground upon which he walked, and that was proof enough of her disrespect. He became determined to win her devotion in such a way that it would last a lifetime and he could then devote his full attention to business. His supple mind wrestled with the problem and came up with a plan worthy of Machiavelli himself.
The King of Italy was coming to Sicily to visit his devoted subjects, and devoted they were. All Sicilians hated the Roman government and feared the Mafia. But they loved the monarchy because it extended their family, which consisted of blood relations, the Virgin Mary and God himself. Great festivals were prepared for the King’s visit.
On his first Sunday in Sicily the King went to Mass at the great Cathedral of Palermo. He was to stand godfather to the son of one of the ancient nobles of Sicily, the Prince Ollorto. The King was already godfather to at least a hundred children, sons of field marshals, dukes and the most powerful men of the Fascist party. These were political acts to cement relationships between the crown and the executives of the government. Royal godchildren automatically became Cavaliers of the Crown and were sent the documents and sash to prove the honor given them. Also a small silver cup.
Don Croce was ready. He had three hundred people in the festival throng. His brother, Benjamino, was one of the priests officiating at the ceremony. The baby of Prince Ollorto was baptized, and his proud father came out of the cathedral holding the baby aloft in triumph. The crowd roared its approval. Prince Ollorto was one of the less hated of the gentry, a slim handsome man; looks always counted for something in Sicily.
At that moment a crowd of Don Croce’s people surged into the cathedral and effectively blocked the King’s exit. The King was a little man with a mustache thicker than the hair on his head. He was in the full gaudy uniform of the Cavaliers, which made him look like a toy soldier. But despite his pompous appearance he was extremely kindhearted, so when Father Benjamino thrust another swaddled infant into his arms he was bewildered but did not protest. The surging crowd had, on Don Croce’s instructions, cut him off from his retinue and the officiating Cardinal of Palermo so they could not interfere. Father Benjamino hastily sprinkled holy water from a nearby font and then snatched the baby out of the King’s arms and handed it to Don Croce. Don Croce’s wife wept tears of happiness as she knelt before the King. He was now the godfather of their only child. She could ask no more.
Don Croce grew fat and the bony face grew cheeks that were huge slabs of mahogany; his nose became a great beak that served as an antenna for power. His crinkly hair grew into a barbed-wire gray. His body ballooned majestically; his eyes became lidded with flesh that grew like a heavy moss over his face. His power increased with each pound until he seemed to become an impenetrable obelisk. He seemed to have no weaknesses as a man; he never showed anger, never showed greed. He was affectionate in an impersonal way but never showed love. He was conscious of his grave responsibilities and so never voiced his fears in his wife’s bed or on her breast. He was the true King of Sicily. But his son—the heir apparent—was struck with the strange disease of religious social reform and had emigrated to Brazil to educate and uplift savage Indians along the Amazon. The Don was so shamed he never uttered his son’s name again.
At the beginning of Mussolini’s rise to power, Don Croce was not impressed. He had observed him carefully and had come to the conclusion that the man had neither cunning nor courage. And if such a one could rule Italy then it followed that he, Don Croce, could rule Sicily.
But then calamity fell. After a few years in power Mussolini turned his baleful eye on Sicily and the Mafia. He recognized that this was not a raggedy set of criminals but a true inner government that controlled a part of his empire. And he recognized that all through history the Mafia had conspired against whatever government ruled in Rome. Rulers of Sicily for the last thousand years had tried and failed. Now the Dictator vowed to strike them down forever. The Fascists did not believe in democracy, the legal rule of society. They did what they pleased for what they regarded as the good of the state. In short, they used the methods of Don Croce Malo.
Mussolini sent his most trusted Minister, Cesare Mori, to Sicily as a Prefect with unlimited powers. Mori started by suspending the rule of all judicial courts in Sicily and bypassing all legal safeguards of Sicilians. He flooded Sicily with troops who were ordered to shoot and ask questions later. He arrested and deported entire villages.
Before the dictatorship, Italy had had no capital punishment, which left it at a disadvantage against the Mafia, which used death as its chief enforcing tool. All this changed under the Prefect Mori. Proud Mafiosi, who adhered to the law of omerta, resisting even the dreaded cassetta, were shot. So-called conspirators were exiled to small isolated islands in the Mediterranean. In a year the island of Sicily was decimated, the Mafia destroyed as a governing force. It was of no consequence to Rome that thousands of innocent people were caught up in this wide net and suffered with the guilty.
Don Croce loved the fair rules of democracy and was outraged by the actions of the Fascisti. Friends and colleagues were jailed on trumped-up charges, since they were far too clever to leave evidence of their crimes. Many were imprisoned on hearsay, secret information from scoundrels who could not be tracked down and reasoned with, because they did not have to appear in open court and testify. Where was judicial fair play? The Fascists had gone back to the days of the Inquisition, of the divine right of kings. Don Croce had never believed in the divine right of kings, indeed he asserted that no reasonable human being had ever believed in it except when the alternative was being torn apart by four wild horses.
Even worse, the Fascists had brought back the cassetta, that medieval instrument of torture—a terrible box three feet long, two feet wide, which worked wonders on stubborn bodies. Even the most determined Mafioso found his tongue as loose as the morals of an Englishwoman when subject to the cassetta. Don Croce indignantly boasted that he had never used torture of any kind. Simple murder sufficed.
Like a stately whale, Don Croce submerged himself in the murky waters of the Sicilian underground. He entered a monastery as a pseudo-Franciscan monk, under Abbot Manfredi’s protection. They had had a long and pleasurable association. The Don, though proud of his illiteracy, had been obliged to employ the Abbot to write necessary ransom letters when early in his career he had followed the trade of kidnapping. They had always been honest with each other. They found they had common tastes—loose women, good wine and complex thievery. The Don had often taken the Abbot on trips to Switzerland to visit his doctors and sample the placid luxuries of that country. A restful and pleasant change from the more dangerous pleasures of Sicily.
When World War II started, Mussolini could no longer give Sicily his closest attention. Don Croce immediately took this opportunity to very quietly build up lines of communication with the remaining Friends of the Friends, sending messages of hope to the old Mafia stalwarts who had been exiled on the tiny islands of Pantelleria and Stromboli. He befriended the families of those Mafia leaders who had been imprisoned by the Prefect Mori.
Don Croce knew his only hope, ultimately, was an Allied victory, and that he must exert all his efforts to that end. He made contact with underground partisan groups and gave orders to his men to aid any Allied pilots who survived being shot down. And so, at the crucial hour, Don Croce was prepared.
When the American Army invaded Sicily in July of 1943, Don Croce extended his helping hand. Were there not many fellow Sicilians in this invading army, the sons of immigrants? Should Sicilian fight against Sicilian for the sake of the Germans? Don Croce’s men persuaded thousands of Italian soldiers to desert and retire to a hiding place prepared for them by the Mafia. Don Croce personally made contact with secret agents of the American Army and led the attacking forces through mountain passages so that they could outflank the entrenched German heavy guns. And so while the British invading force on the other side of the island met with huge casualties and co
uld only advance slowly, the American Army accomplished its mission far ahead of schedule and with very little loss of life.
Don Croce himself, though now almost sixty-five years of age and enormously heavy, led a band of Mafioso partisans into the city of Palermo and kidnapped the German general commanding its defense. He hid with his prisoner in the city until the front was broken and the American Army marched in. The American Supreme Commander of southern Italy referred to Don Croce in his dispatches to Washington as “General Mafia.” And so he was known by American staff officers in the months that followed.
The American Military Governor of Sicily was a Colonel Alfonso La Ponto. As a high-ranking politician in the state of New Jersey, he had received a direct commission and had been trained for this particular job. His greatest assets were his affability and knowing how to put together a political deal. His staff officers in military government had been chosen for similar qualifications. The headquarters of AMGOT consisted of twenty officers and fifty enlisted men. Many of them were of Italian extraction. Don Croce took all of them to his bosom with the sincere love of a blood brother, showing them every mark of devotion and affection. This despite the fact that with his friends he often referred to them as our “Lambs in Christ.”
But Don Croce had “delivered the goods,” as the Americans often said. Colonel La Ponto made Don Croce his chief adviser and boon companion. The Colonel came often to dine at his house and groaned with pleasure eating the familiar cooking.
The first problem to be solved was appointing new mayors for all the small towns in Sicily. The former mayors had been Fascists, of course, and had been thrown into American prisons.
Don Croce recommended Mafia leaders who had been imprisoned. Since their records clearly showed that they had been tortured and jailed by the Fascist government for resistance to the aims and welfare of the state, it was assumed that the crimes of which they were accused were trumped-up charges. Don Croce, over his wife’s superb fish and spaghetti dishes, told beautiful stories about how his friends, murderers and thieves all, had refused to surrender their beliefs in the democratic principles of justice and freedom. The Colonel was delighted at finding so quickly the ideal people to run the civilian population under his direction. Within a month most of the towns in Western Sicily had as their mayors a set of the most diehard Mafiosi to be found in Fascist prisons.