by Peter Watson
The light was improving. For the first time he took in the room where he lay—Annunziata’s room. There were lots of flowers, a religious painting on the wall, a hairbrush, what looked like a couple of glass jars containing—what, makeup? There was a very old picture magazine and a candle stuck in a bottle. The windows—oh, how he loved windows—had curtains, sewn, he was sure, by Annunziata herself. The contents of this room were far poorer and more pathetic than the contents of Anna-Maria’s cabin on the Syracusa, but the feel was much the same. This was a woman’s room.
Some things that he didn’t at first recognize caught his eye. What looked like a long piece of wood with some string hanging from it. A jumble of short leather straps. A tiny book with a white cover. With a start he realized what he was looking at. The wood and string had once been a bow, the straps had once been a bridle for a donkey, and the book was a Bible, a child’s Bible. These things had once belonged to little Nino, Annunziata’s dead son, gifts he had never grown old enough to use. Silvio turned his gaze away and looked out the window. He felt like he was intruding.
“You’re awake.”
He turned. Annunziata stood in the doorway.
“What happened to your black dress?”
“I’ve been in mourning long enough.”
Instinctively he looked at her son’s effects.
She followed his gaze but all she said was, “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
She went out but quickly came back with a jug of coffee, some warm bread, and fig jam.
Silvio sat up on the edge of the bed, holding his shoulder to prevent unnecessary movement. He held the coffee jug under his nose. It had been four years since he had drunk or eaten anything fresh. He put the bread to his nose, then the fig jam, groaning in pleasure.
Annunziata spread some jam on the bread and handed it to him.
He munched and chewed and swallowed. He took some coffee. Draining his cup, he refilled it from the jug, using his good arm. He poured coffee into Annunziata’s cup.
“It’s good to have you back, Toto. We need you here.”
He looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see. It’s better if you learn it for yourself.”
He looked at her intently. “Bastiano isn’t Nino. I always knew that.”
But she wouldn’t be drawn.
Starting his third cup of coffee, he said, “What news from Palermo, then? What happened that day, when I was rescued?”
“About thirty prisoners escaped. Three guards were killed in the explosion, two lost limbs, all the others suffered injuries. You’re famous all over again, Toto.”
He grunted. “And … what news of Nino?” He said it softly.
She nodded. “He’s better. Out of danger.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she held them back.
She got up and went to the window. “People want to see you, Toto. Would you like to go for a walk? Are you strong enough?”
“Well, I’m not going to stay in bed all day, like I was in prison. Let me just finish this coffee … it’s so good.”
Outside, the sunshine glared and bounced off the walls of the buildings. Young children he had never met immediately came running up to him. He was a hero they had been told about. Hearing the commotion, adults came to look—Bastiano, Smeralda, Alessandro Alcamo, Ruggiero, who had been Nino’s servant and had such a good singing voice, Laura and Elisavetta, the cooks, Paolo and Gaspare, whom he’d last known as children, now verging on manhood. With all of them he shook hands and embraced them—but carefully, avoiding use of his injured shoulder.
“You look pale, Silvio,” Bastiano said. “Like, the underside of a leaf. Take your time, get your strength back, then we can talk. You’re safe here: use the sunshine, the breeze from the mountains, the cold of the streams to get the stench of Ucciardone out of your system. We have fresh almonds, figs, olives, fish, fruit, and wine. Tonight, in your honor, Elisavetta is roasting a lamb.”
Silvio and Annunziata walked on then, past the buildings and down to the river. They crossed the shingle to the thin stream, so unlike the Mississippi, so meager and so clear. Silvio bent, dipped his hand in the cold water, and splashed it over his face. “Better even than coffee,” he said, smiling. “You can’t drink the Mississippi.”
He looked about him, up toward the Indisi Mountains where an eagle soared, for a moment blocking out the sun. “God, how I missed this.”
Annunziata was dipping her hand in the stream, too. She put her wet fingers to her mouth and moistened her lips. “Why did you go, Toto?”
He looked at her sharply. “What do you mean? You know why I went—I was made to.”
She picked up a small stone and threw it into the stream. “But you wanted to go.”
“I did not! I hated the idea You were the one who turned off, like a tap. I didn’t open your parcel till I was on the liner. I thought it was food and I was so sick traveling.…” He trailed off. “Why do you say I wanted to go? What put that into your head?”
She didn’t answer right away but threw more stones into the stream. “I went to see Father Serravalle. I had a message for him—Bastiano wanted a meeting—but I asked him to hear my confession—”
“And you told him about us!”
Still staring at the water, she nodded.
“And he told you I wanted to go to America—yes?”
She nodded again.
“Don’t you see, Zata, he said that on purpose, to drive a wedge between us, to make you think I had no … feelings for you.”
Neither spoke for a while. A goat slithered on the far side of the stream.
“So you got married thinking I didn’t … thinking I’d gone off to America and forgotten you?”
She nodded.
“But didn’t you get my letter?”
She turned sharply. “What letter?”
He shook his head. “It was a long time ago. I had someone write a letter for me.”
“What did it say?”
He shook his head. “Not now, Zata.” He picked up some stones and hurled them into the water. On the opposite bank, the goat looked startled. “I can’t believe Father Serravalle told a lie, such a … blatant, awful untruth.”
“I never imagined, not for a moment, that it wasn’t … I never doubted what he said.”
Silvio moved closer to Annunziata. “He has to pay for this, you know.”
She looked up at him. “Don’t forget it was his plan that rescued you from prison.”
“I don’t care. I can’t do anything with my arm like this, but I can think. And … just as’ soon as I get my strength back, I’ll have a little surprise for Father Serravalle.” And he kicked at the shingle, sending it spraying across the water.
On the far bank, the goat ran off.
“How is the lamb, Silvio?”
He looked across the table at Elisavetta and grinned. As he was able to eat only with one hand, his fingers as well as his mouth were smeared with gravy. “Better than I’ve ever known, carissima.” He waved around the table. “Lamb, olives, wine, fruit to come, cheese … I never thought I’d see this for more than twenty years.” He raised his glass. “Let’s not forget Nino.”
All the others at the table raised their glasses. “Nino!” they cried together.
The diners began conversing among themselves and Silvio turned to Bastiano, who was seated next to him. “Tell me about Zata’s dead child. How did it happen?”
“It’s not a good story,” replied Bastiano, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Gino took the boy to Palermo—”
“Yes, she told me. What I mean is, how come Gino didn’t know the city was affected?”
Bastiano looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “The boy wasn’t baptized until he was nearly a year old. You know how it is here … there were things happening, Zata wanted Serravalle to make the service, he was busy and then ill … it all took time. Anyway, Ruggiero Pr
iola came to the celebration and he told Serravalle what was happening in Palermo. But Serravalle wouldn’t let him tell anyone else—he didn’t want anything to spoil the baptism. You know he has a soft spot for Zata. So when Gino decided on the spur of the moment to take little Nino to see his relatives in Palermo, no one here knew anything about the cholera outbreak. Gino didn’t find out until he arrived—and then it was too late.”
“So Serravalle killed little Nino—”
“Silvio! You can’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true. Does Zata know that Serravalle kept the news from her?”
“No—and don’t you tell her. It took her long enough to get over the child. Don’t reopen the wound, Silvio, please.”
Silvio looked down the table at Annunziata. She was sitting with some of the older children, laughing and trying to persuade them to eat more lamb. Sensing Silvio’s eyes on her, she turned her gaze on him.
She was still wearing the white dress she had worn during the day, but she had put some sort of flower in it. She looked very beautiful.
Silvio turned back to Bastiano. “She ought to have another child, don’t you think?”
As the days went by, Silvio’s strength returned. He walked every day by the stream, and gradually he began to do little chores, like fetching water or watching the loaves in the bakery. The doctor came, reported that he was making good progress, but did not take the strapping off his shoulder—these things could not be rushed, he said.
As a semi-invalid, Silvio had plenty of opportunity to observe life in the bivio and he noticed that some things were the same as always and some things had changed. The band was smaller now, sixty or seventy rather than a hundred strong. And although Bastiano was in charge, as Don, he did not play the dominant role that Nino once had. Rather, he was the first among equals, with three or four other men in practice having just as much say, including his consigliere, Alessandro Alcamo, the brother of Annunziata’s dead husband. Another change, which surprised Silvio, was the authority Annunziata herself possessed. Before, no woman had ever had any kind of influence in the bivio. Silvio learned that Gino had been a creative force before his terrible death, and that he had always listened to his wife, who had shown herself to be a highly intelligent strategist and planner of robberies. She had the brains of a bishop, they said. After Gino’s death, Annunziata had retained her authority as well as her beauty. It didn’t take a genius to see that Alessandro was as fond of Zata as his dead brother had been.
Most mornings, Silvio and Annunziata walked by the river. Most evenings, after dinner, she went back to the room with him. His shoulder was still strapped up and he found it difficult to take off his shirt or sharpen his razor with one hand. Sometimes they smoked a last cigarette together, before turning in.
Annunziata wanted to know all about life in America. “I’m a widow, Toto, so I want the real truth,” she said. They had days—nights—at their disposal, so Silvio described exactly what life had been like in New Orleans. Annunziata was both fascinated and horrified by his descriptions of the brothels and gambling joints. She listened, rapt, in the dark, as he talked of Negroes, quadroons, the music of New Orleans, the carnival, life on the river. Each night he talked of some new aspect of America or he read to her from the book he had, by Mark Twain. Sometimes they both fell asleep in midsentence.
Silvio had been sprung from prison in mid-October, and within several weeks of his return to the bivio, the nights began to turn cold. There was always a risk in lighting fires. Heat for cooking was one thing, but the smoke from fires could be seen and even smelled for miles around and thus betray their whereabouts. Fires were frowned upon and kept to a minimum.
One night, as Silvio lay on the bed explaining exactly what absinthe was, Annunziata had interrupted him. “Toto,” she whispered, “I’m cold.” In an instant he had his arms around her, the blanket pulled over both of them, and they were kissing passionately. His injured shoulder still restricted his movements, so Annunziata rolled over and sat astride him. She was still wearing the white dress he associated with his return—she slept in it—but Silvio was faintly surprised to discover that she was naked underneath. He gasped as she lowered herself slowly onto him, then paused for a moment. He had wanted this for so long, ever since he ceased to be a child, and he searched the gloom for the expression on Annunziata’s face. She had her eyes closed.
With one hand he undid the buttons on her dress, reached inside, and freed one of her breasts. He lifted his head and kissed her nipple.
“Bite me,” she whispered urgently. “Please.”
All at once that morning in the giardino segreto came flooding back, when she had spoken the same words—the morning that had ended in disaster.
But that wasn’t going to happen now.
That night he made love to Annunziata with all the skill, all the care, all the knowledge he had acquired from the other women he had slept with. They were by turns gentle and violent. He found that although Annunziata had only ever been to bed with one man before, she was an instinctive lover, responsive, adventurous, and, ultimately, uncontrolled.
It was a still night and sounds traveled. They could hear people coughing in their sleep in the other rooms of the bivio. They could hear the mutter and murmur of the mules and horses tethered on the hill, the bleating and rustling of the goats. None of it made any difference. As Annunziata reached the pinnacle of her excitement she cried out. It was a short cry, stifled the moment it was uttered, and she realized what she had done. But it gave way to a clutch of sobs almost as loud and infinitely more passionate.
Silvio, whose own pleasure had reached its climax at the same moment, held her afterward. They rested together in the gloom, their breathing gradually returning to normal. As he lay there Silvio realized that so far as the others in the band were concerned, there could now be no disguising their relationship.
As his strength returned, and the strapping on his shoulder was removed, Silvio began to play more of a part in his uncle’s “family.” He wasn’t yet able to scramble over the hills, or ride a mule, or aim a lupara, but he was brighter, and younger, than Bastiano.
It was also true that Bastiano Randazzo did not have the fundamental understanding of violence that Silvio had learned from Nino. Until Silvio’s rescue, Bastiano had made most of his money through a protection racket involving the olive oil produced between Filaga and Cammarata. All the farmers and landowners paid Bastiano fifteen percent of their produce, in return for which Bastiano made it known that he was their protector. If anyone else attempted to muscle in on the area, it was Bastiano and his band who saw them off. Since Nino and Silvio had left for America, Bastiano’s men had been responsible for seven deaths, one a year. It wasn’t sensational but it had been enough.
It was a good living but scarcely exciting. Nino had been a better strategist than Bastiano in that he had occasionally mounted a more spectacular robbery, and then distributed some of the proceeds to the local people. This had achieved several goals at once. In the first place, the quasipolitical nature of Nino’s crimes had drawn many followers. Thus his “family” had been considerably bigger than Bastiano’s and this was useful in fending off rivals. In addition, the wider distribution of the proceeds of the more spectacular robberies had not only made Nino a popular figure but ensured that his security was better—the local people, who were bound to know where the band lived, were much less likely to betray them. Bastiano, on the other hand, hardly felt safe enough even to visit Bivona, to be seen as the Don.
But it was the lack of numbers that really counted. As soon as he was able to, Silvio brought this matter up with Bastiano.
“I went for a walk yesterday evening,” he told his uncle, one day in early December. “I counted fifty-nine men. It’s not enough.”
Bastiano knew that what Silvio said was true but he didn’t want to admit it in front of the others. “Come,” he said, and led his adopted son into his own rooms. He had a bottle of grappa, and uncork
ed it, offering it to Silvio.
Silvio shook his head.
“The olive-oil business suits us fine, Silvio. It’s easy, safe, predictable. What more could you want?”
Silvio knew he must press his case. “Bastiano, look at what you just said. If the business is easy, someone else is going to want to get his hands on it. Same thing with security. Someone’s going to move in on you sooner or later. It’s not as simple as you think.”
“This isn’t New Orleans, you know. Sicily isn’t sophisticated.”
“Sicily is no different from New Orleans, or anywhere else. What counts, anywhere, is strength, muscolo. Sooner or later, as I keep saying, it’s going to be very easy for someone else to get together a band of seventy men, or a hundred even. Then they’ll come for you. They may not even have to. If they get word out that they are stronger than you, some of your people are going to leave, slink away, join the stronger side while they can, before the fighting starts. If enough people go, fighting would be suicidal.”
Bastiano took a swig of grappa. “We rescued you. What do you know? Life has changed since you were a boy.”
“No, it hasn’t. Bastiano, you know I’m right. The way Nino operated is the only way it can work, out here in the mountains. It’s the same in the towns, too. You’ve got to have an eye-catching job every so often, and you’ve got to do something with what you take to keep the people on your side. And you’ve got to take the fight to the other side, keep moving, keep thinking. Like a fox. Like Liotta. Otherwise, sooner or later, you’ll shrink so small, that some other family will take you out.”
Bastiano said nothing. But he continued drinking.
“Answer me one question.”
Bastiano glared at him.
“I want an honest answer. How many men have you lost in the last three months?”
Bastiano didn’t answer immediately.
“Come on. How many?”
“Six.”
“Sixteen! I already asked around.” Now Silvio seized the bottle from him and took a swig. This was going to require some tact. “What sort of Capo can you be, Bastiano, once you start lying to yourself? You know, deep down, that what I say is right. Instead of resisting me, why don’t you hear what I have to say. I have a plan, a plan which could bring us a lot of money and attract attention. If you like it, you can tell the others it’s your idea—I don’t mind.”