by Peter Watson
Another silence.
Then Silvio went on, gently. “Zata, we’re not old. We’ve had twists in our lives, bad things, that’s all. America is different. People like the abbot, like Smeralda—they’re old, old-fashioned, old bones. In New Orleans there’s an area called the vieux carré, that’s French for the ‘old quarter,’ but it’s where all the new things happen. The new dress shops, the flower shops, bookshops with Mark Twain and other writers, shops selling French pastry, satin shoes, whole shops selling just toys.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Zata, it doesn’t matter whether you’re strong. I’m strong. Let me be strong for both of us. In a few days there will be the raid on Bagheria. The abbot and Smeralda won’t matter after that—”
Annunziata went to say something but he hurried on.
“—but even if they do, we can go to America. We can get married there, have children. The schools are even better in New Orleans than in Palermo. When I was in prison I thought a lot about children—”
“Stop!” she cried. But it was a whisper all the same. “Toto, I want to come to America, I want to be with you. My body never needed a man before you, but now … now you know how I need you.” She put her fingers to her temple. “But in here, I’m not you. In here, the abbot matters, Smeralda matters. I wish they didn’t, but they do.” Again, she wiped her eyes with the ball of her hand. “I’m crying not because we’re cousins, Toto. I want you to make love to me right here, right now. That’s how much I want you. I’m crying because I don’t know what to do. My head and my body want to come to America, but my soul, my conscience, tells me that somehow that would be running away.” She shook her head, the tears flowing again. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Silvio moved forward over the moss and put his arms around her. He kissed her wet, warm, salty face. Her lips parted and she pressed her body hard against his.
Silvio sat on the hill of Solunto and enjoyed the first fingers of dawn. It was shortly after five. He had chosen this spot because from here he could see both Bagheria and Porticello. For days now, members of the band had been watching the Liottas deliver cartloads of poppies, one cart at a time and always at night. Earlier that day, the Priola-line steamship, the Ustica, had put into Porticello and unloaded some crates of her own. Silvio had no idea if the crates were genuine or empty and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that this project was going according to plan.
The plan for blowing up the factory was simplicity itself. Alesso Alcamo, who had grudgingly approved Silvio’s scheme, would wait for the orphans to leave for the service and festivities, around nine-thirty in the morning, and then slip into the orphanage and climb the stairs to the top floor. Reconnaissance had shown that all the buildings in that complex had skylights. Alesso would climb up through one of the skylights in the orphanage, cross to the factory, and drop the explosives through the skylight in the appropriate part of the roof. He would escape the way he had come.
According to Ruggiero’s information, the cartload of opium would leave the factory at about eight A.M. for the ride to Palermo. At about ten-thirty, it would cross a railway bridge in an out-of-the-way spot. As the road approaching the bridge was very steep, the cart would slow down drastically. Silvio and his men, having watched the cart leave the factory from their hilltop at Solunto, would stage their ambush as the cart slowed, on the rise of the railway bridge. From the bridge there was a fast road to Porticello.
The morning was sunny, hardly a cloud in the sky. Eight o’clock came. Right on schedule, the cart emerged from the factory gate and pulled away. There were just over four miles between Bagheria and the railway bridge; it would take the cart about an hour and a half to get there. Say nine-thirty, the same time that Alesso was to enter the orphanage to blow the factory. After Silvio had delivered the opium to the Ustica, the men would split up and make their own way back to Bivio Indisi.
Solunto was three miles from the railway bridge. Now that Silvio knew the cart was on its way, it was time for him to make a move. He first of all dispatched one man to Porticello, to alert the captain of the Ustica that the operation was under way and that he should begin to get up steam. If all went well, the opium should be delivered on board ship between eleven and twelve that morning.
Then he himself set off, with ten others. The cart, he had been told, had a driver and two guards. Eleven men should be plenty.
The road from Solunto was overshadowed at first by Mount Catalfano but then moved closer to the sea, giving the most wonderful views of the glittering blue water in the distance. For a time the road ran alongside the railway, then left it. Just before they reached the bridge, the line came into view again.
The bridge itself was deserted. It was a new construction and was perfectly sited for their purposes. At this point the railway line was cut into the rock as the land rose to form cliffs at the sea’s edge. The road therefore rose also, in a continuous gradient, from the south side of the railway to the north, where it then divided, one fork going to Palermo, the other to Solunto and Porticello. Silvio had examined the railway timetable and no trains were due until just after ten, by which time they should be well clear.
Two men were stationed to the north of the bridge, high up, hidden among trees. Two more were positioned to the south of the bridge, one hidden in a gulley, the other in the ruins of a cottage. That left seven to huddle under the railway bridge itself. It was five past nine.
To the west, the railway line ran straight for a long way, certainly as far as Ficarizzi. To the east, it began to curve as soon as it passed under the bridge and so could not be followed by the eye for more than two or three hundred yards, when it entered a cutting.
Silvio lit a cigarette, to help calm his nerves. He missed American cigarettes; indeed, at times he simply missed America. America didn’t have the lethargy of Sicily, or its obsession with tradition. The church took a backseat in America, thank God. People like Father Ignazio did not have the power, the overwhelming power, that they had in Sicily. Silvio and Annunziata had been on edge with one another since the episode after the wedding in the giardino segreto. They still made love, but even then Annunziata was locked up inside herself, going through the motions because she needed the physical release, as he did, but otherwise not letting him near her emotionally. Some mornings she just got up, left the room, and didn’t come back. He longed to take Annunziata to America, away from the crabby women and away from the abbot.
The people in Sicily, he had decided, could be as arid and harsh as the landscape.
Father Ignazio had caught up with Silvio during the wedding and told him he would be seeing the archbishop at the very festivities that were being celebrated in Bagheria later this day. The timing was tight, but perfect if all went well. Silvio ought be so popular after today’s exploit that nothing the archbishop said could detract from it. Annunziata’s attitude would change afterward, too. Silvio needed her more than ever. He thought about children more and more these days, and he couldn’t bear to start all over again with another woman. It had to be Annunziata.
Nine-thirty arrived. No cart. Silvio lit a fresh cigarette.
Five minutes later a low two-tone whistle from the man hiding in the ruin told them that the cart was within sight.
Silvio peered around the edge of the bridge and after a few seconds saw the cart. It was bigger than it had looked when seen from that hilltop in Solunto, a four-wheeler, drawn by a big brown horse. One guard sat with the driver; the other was pretending to sleep on top of the load. Boxes of oranges lay on top, presumably to hide the bags of opium. The cart looked like hundreds of others on its way to market, or to the docks in Palermo.
As it mounted the hill the cart slowed. Silvio motioned his men to wait. Let the others struggle up the hill, do their work for them. Let the horse tire itself out. Down the line a locomotive hooter sounded. Odd. Nothing was due for nearly half an hour. But the line was clear in both directions.
Once again, Silvio had worked
out a simple plan. At the top of the hill there was a water trough, placed there by a religious order that looked after animals. The order had calculated that horses pulling heavy loads would be tired at that point and in need of refreshment. They were right. Silvio was relying on the near certainty that the driver of the opium cart would stop and allow his horse to drink from the trough. Silvio would ambush them there.
Sure enough, as the cart approached the top of the hill, the driver pulled over and steered the horse to the watering trough. The cart stopped and the horse began to drink greedily. It was barely a quarter to ten but the day was already hot.
Silvio was just about to give the signal when the air around them shifted—and in the distance an explosion was heard. Alesso had hit the factory right on schedule. Alesso might still be sulking, so far as Silvio was concerned, but when he put his mind to it, he was highly professional. Instinctively Silvio looked back toward Bagheria. He couldn’t see anything from here of course, but what he could see, now that he looked, was a train, steaming slowly toward him, around the bend, from the direction of Bagheria. He was confused. It shouldn’t be there, not according to the timetable. Then it dawned on him: it was a freight train, two wagons only. He had only inspected the passenger timetable. There wasn’t time to wait for it to pass. In a moment the horse at the trough would have drunk its fill and the cart would have moved on, away from the hill.
“Now!” he hissed to his men. “Let’s move.”
They clambered up onto the road. The guard who lay on the oranges looked as though he was really asleep, not pretending. The driver was relieving himself, facing away from Silvio and his men. The second guard was polishing his gun.
Quickly, silently, Silvio and his group ran up behind the cart. Seeing this, one of the other men, hidden in the trees beyond the bridge, quietly emerged from his cover and approached the driver. The second lookout, in the trees on the far side of the road, did the same. Within moments the cart was surrounded.
Silvio fired into the air, to frighten the man on the oranges and to waken him. This guard nearly jumped out of his skin, but the one who was polishing his gun turned quickly in his seat and might have fired if Silvio had not screamed, “Drop it! Drop it! If you don’t want to die, drop it.”
The man quickly saw he was outnumbered and threw his weapon to the ground.
Silvio turned to one of his men. “Tie them both to those trees—”
He said no more, for a shot rang out behind him. He turned, to see one of his own men, who had been on the south side of the bridge, firing at the train. To his horror, he realized that the train had stopped, almost under the bridge, that the doors on the wagons were opening, and that men, men in uniforms, were streaming out.
It was a trap! There had been a leak within the band, the militia had known they were coming, and the opium was simply a lure, the bait in the trap. For a moment Silvio stared in disbelief as more and more men jumped down from the train.
He stared for only a moment. “Disappear,” he hissed to his men. “We’ve been betrayed. Vanish. Sparite! You know what to do, where to go.”
He himself was already running. He couldn’t go south—that was where the train had halted. He couldn’t go west. If he could reach Palermo, he could get lost in the maze of streets. But he didn’t know the ground between here and Palermo and the men in uniforms might know it much better. He couldn’t go north, not far anyway, for that way lay the sea. That left east, back toward Bagheria. There was a festival, and today masses of people would be milling around. That was his best bet, his only chance.
Sporadic shooting could be heard behind him, but he didn’t look around. So long as the militia were pinned down, shooting, they couldn’t come after him. He was not being a coward. He was acting prudently. He left the road as soon as he could, keeping to trees and gulleys as he put more and more distance between himself and the militia.
Although he had regained his fitness, he had to stop twice to catch his breath. So far as he could tell, he wasn’t being followed, but once the militia had the situation under control at the bridge, they could easily ride the train back to Bagheria and overtake him. That was not the same as catching him, but it did mean he had to keep moving. If he could get beyond Bagheria, he would be safer.
He reached the outskirts of the town just after eleven. To begin with, he found a small courtyard that appeared to be empty and there he lay down, to recover. Not only was he tired, after running a few miles, he was sweating profusely. If he walked through the town in that state, he would only draw attention to himself.
Just after eleven-thirty he moved on. Now he kept to the busy streets, ambling along like anyone else, enjoying the festivities, laughing at the acrobats, inspecting the fruit on the stalls, stopping to watch the conjurors. His gun was well hidden.
Slowly he worked his way through the town. He came to the railway station. There were militia everywhere, but he followed a water seller as he crossed the square in front of the station and managed to keep himself hidden from view. He passed the cathedral, where the morning service had just ended and groups of people were standing on the steps, taking the sun.
Past the cathedral, he suddenly came across a street packed with people, who were not moving. Instead, they were craning their necks forward, looking at or for something. He tried to push through but found it difficult.
A man was coming the other way, out of the crush. Silvio stopped him. “What is all this? Why the crowd?”
“There’s been an explosion at the orphanage.”
The orphanage? What about the factory? But he couldn’t ask that.
“What happened?”
The man shook his head. “Who would do such a thing? A bomb went off in the sanatorium.”
“What! And—?”
“Three children—two girls and a boy. And a nurse. All dead. The animals who did this are going to pay. It makes you sick.” The man moved away.
Silvio was dazed. The man was right. It was sick. Alesso had made a mistake, a terrible mistake. He had dropped the explosives through the wrong skylight—with disastrous results. As the man had said: How could he have done such a thing?
Then the truth struck Silvio. Sono scemo! I’m a fool! There had been no mistake! It had been deliberate. It was part of a plan, a joint plan by Alesso and the Imbriaci family, with the militia. Maybe even the Liotta family had been involved. Alesso and the Imbriacis had taken revenge on Silvio because he had been made Bastiano’s sottocapo. The militia had scored a considerable coup in recapturing a much-wanted criminal. Except that Silvio hadn’t been caught—not yet. The more he thought about it, the more Silvio realized he was right. The whole plan was a setup. Not by Ruggiero Priola, of course; the opium factory had been genuine enough. But after Silvio had worked out his plan, Alesso, still jealous about Annunziata, still worrying that he had a rival to become the next Capo, had seen a way to adapt the Bagheria business to his own ends. Silvio had intended the ambush of the opium and the blowing of the factory to produce cash and good publicity. Alesso had simply rearranged things so that Silvio and the others would be caught when they tried to steal the opium, and he had deliberately killed those children so that Silvio’s name would be vilified all over Sicily and beyond. Silvio remembered now: Alesso had actually volunteered to handle the explosives.
People swirled around Silvio. The killings in the orphanage changed everything. If Alesso was collaborating with the militia, or the Liottas, to that extent, he must surely have given them the exact whereabouts of Bastiano’s camp. It was the end for Bastiano’s family. Alesso had clearly decided that if he couldn’t be Capo, nobody else could. Another batch of militia was probably already ensconced at Bivio Indisi, waiting for men to arrive back exhausted, when they could be picked up with no trouble at all.
Where was Annunziata? She had been one cause of the rivalry between Silvio and Alesso. Did Alesso want her, too?
Still the people swirled around Silvio. What should he do now? He couldn�
��t go back to Bivio Indisi, that was certain. He couldn’t go to the abbey at Quisquina either. When word got out that he had led the group that had killed three orphans, very few places would be safe for him. No one would have any compunction about turning him in. He would be viewed as a child killer, a murderer of orphans. If he was caught, he would surely be lynched.
Orphans. He had been orphaned yet again. Cut off from his loved ones. The pattern of his life.
His thoughts kept returning to Annunziata. Where was she? What would she think? Would she believe him, or would she, too, believe he had killed those children?
Suddenly, surrounded by all those other people, he felt very lonely. There was nowhere he could go. In time, of course, they would all regroup. In time, Alesso would be dealt with. In time, normal life would reassert itself.
But the more he thought about that, the more he began to realize that it wasn’t necessarily true. Earthquakes weren’t unknown in Sicily and they changed the landscape permanently. An earthquake had helped create the bivio; now a different sort of earthquake looked as though it had destroyed that way of life. It was by no means certain that Silvio’s relationship with Annunziata would ever recover its earlier intensity and passion. He realized now—he could admit it to himself—that she had been permanently damaged by the attack on her by Smeralda and the other women. And Father Ignazio’s outburst in the church had been devastating.
Silvio spied a small courtyard just off the road. He slipped in there and took out his cigarettes. He lit one and pulled on it, again wishing he had an American cigarette right now.
America: he could go there. He dismissed the idea as soon as he thought of it Sono pazzo? Am I crazy? That meant smuggling himself on board a ship, sailing the Atlantic, and smuggling himself ashore as an illegal immigrant again. There was the mainland of Italy, but that meant risking the docks at Messina, where there would surely be a lookout for him.
He couldn’t stay in Sicily, though: that much was certain. There was no one he could trust to hide him even for one night. The more he thought about it, the more he understood that he had no alternative but America. Then he reminded himself he couldn’t leave Annunziata. As he had told the abbot, he had a physical need for her. He had left Annunziata before, but it had been different then. Before, they had not been lovers. As he pulled on his cigarette, he thought back to some of their evenings in the darkened room. Would he ever again enjoy that rapture?