In Sicily

by Norman Lewis

  The villagers’ approach to the lava flow (moving in fact at this point at only ten feet a day) was a respectful one, and a man of obvious authority ordered them to stand well back. Bulldozers were working all night to deflect the flow and to cut a new road releasing those stranded by the eruption. A rescue by jeep varied in cost between 18,000 and 22,000 lire - say £10 at most. In the morning a bulldozer took me and the motorbike five miles up a steep slope covered with people collecting coloured stones spawned up overnight from the bowels of the earth. Bulldozers were struggling up like tanks in an attack, their drivers shouting with laughter. Little pyramids of lava, some only a few feet high, had sprouted here and there and the chemicals blasted out of the crater were turning them green. Where any vegetation had been left by the fire it gave off a smell of cooking vegetables. Outside Milo I unloaded the motorbike and went riding off over a good road to the north. Linguaglossa was bad again. Rivers of lava were spreading down through the vineyards. At this point I suddenly remembered a section member who was on detachment there and I found him through the police. His name was Potts, although he could have passed as an Italian.

  ‘What’s it like here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Indescribably boring,’ he said. ‘All the girls go to Mass on Sunday evenings, and then keep out of the way.’

  ‘Any bandits?’

  ‘There used to be a few, but they call themselves Separatists now. It’s going to give the army the chance to wipe them out. We had a late frost in the spring so the wine won’t be worth drinking this year.’

  We happened at that moment to be standing at the entrance to the town under a banner stretched from one side of the road to the other. UNDER THE VOLCANO YOU COME CLOSEST OF ALL TO SICILY, it said. Potts shook his head. ‘I offered the clerk of the Council a few thousand lire to take that down,’ he said, ‘but there was nothing doing. Who wanted to be under a volcano anyway, and for Christ’s sake we were close enough to Sicily at any time as it was.’

  3

  AFTER THAT BRIEF wartime visit, in the 1950s I returned to Sicily on several occasions to write articles for the New Yorker and the Sunday Times. These led eventually to the completion of a book, The Honoured Society, on that enigmatic island. In researching The Honoured Society, I was assisted by running into James McNeish, who had succeeded in exploring what must have been then the least-known part of Mediterranean Europe, the Cammarata Mountains. He had been sent there by the BBC to record the ancient folk music of the area and one of his first contacts was the local Mafia overlord who rode up to his tent on a white horse, and offered his services in a most engaging manner. All that would be required of James in exchange, he said, would be to change his religion. Although James declined as gracefully as he could, the mafioso still proved helpful in a place where it was unlikely that an Englishman had been seen before.

  I next joined forces with Marcello Cimino, a senior journalist on the staff of L’Ora of Palermo. He arranged a number of explorations of the less well-known areas of the island, and his unrivalled knowledge of Sicilian topography made light of journeys among sparsely inhabited mountains, and along coasts that could only be reached on foot. We made our first journey in 1961, and by little more than good luck had soon seen so much of a world that had only just slipped quietly out of the dark ages, that the idea grew of dedicating a month or two in the coming years to further travels and then settling down together to write a book.

  These journeys, undertaken in an ancient Fiat, often took us into areas drained of people during the wartime years. Many young men had disappeared, lost to sight for ever in the Western Desert of North Africa. Mussolini had temporarily suppressed the mafiosi, but now that his reign was over they were at the point of recovering their strength. Bandits had taken control in many remote areas, and at nightfall mountain villages barricaded themselves in against desperate men sometimes near to starvation. Marcello explained that they worked for food when they could, on isolated hill farms, and turned into bandits at night. Most of them were boys in their teens, and when the police caught them they would deal with them by crushing their toes. In these remote parts Sicily was a place of emptiness, of desolation and elusive beauty and, stopping the car, we would hear only the clicking of insects or sometimes the distant braying of an ass that had returned to the wild.

  On the first of our explorations together, Marcello suggested a pilgrimage to Piana degli Albanesi, a small town some sixteen miles south of Palermo. In so far as Sicily attracted tourists in those days, they were invariably taken to Piana. Its people were descended from Albanian refugees whom the Italians had allowed to settle there, and they had retained their old mode of dress and a number of picturesque customs which had induced both King Victor Emmanuel and Mussolini to pay them visits. Both these occasions produced unsatisfactory results: the King was tricked into adopting one of the local children, while Mussolini, discovering that the mayor was a secret mafioso, clapped him in gaol.

  Piana came into view against a backdrop of mountains, squeezed among rocky outcrops wherever space could be found. For a short time a single, pale upthrust of rock, curved like a tusk, hid the lake, which appeared less like a body of water than an immense crystal afloat upon a cushion of air. The mayor, stiff as a hussar on parade, awaited us outside the municipio with a short list of the town’s attractions. A little behind and to one side a young lady presented herself in a silk gown of the old style embroidered in silver and gold thread. Her sleeves sparkled with coloured glass and she wore a hat shaped like a helmet with gold coins dangling on her forehead. A fragrance of incense reached us from the nearby church door and with it came the thin oriental wailing of a choir. The mayor shook our hands. ‘Please consider yourselves honorary citizens of this town,’ he said.

  Our conversation, as was to be expected, was chiefly on the subject of Piana’s urgent need to benefit from the growing tourist market. With a nod in the direction of the splendidly attired young woman, the mayor complained of the community’s dependence on the past. ‘We are the victims of folklore,’ he said, ‘which does little to fill empty stomachs. Our girls spend their lives making beautiful clothes which they wear only once a year for the Easter processions. In our churches we sing the old hymns using words that many of our youngsters do not understand. The church walls are covered with ikons of our own making, but no one will buy them in the shops. Well, gentlemen, the fact is we have a right to live, too.’

  ‘They tell me you have guided tours of your wonderful caves,’ said Marcello.

  ‘The first time round a tourist was lost for four hours, and we abandoned the project. In any case you look at a cave once, and you go away. Signor Cimino, people do not stay here because there is no hotel. If they are hungry, there is nowhere to eat. A bus goes to Palermo twice a week. The children walk four miles to Altofonte to school. Art and history are all very well, but we’re isolated. If we don’t do something soon even the children will go away.’

  ‘What’s the remedy?’ Marcello asked. ‘Have you anything in mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ the mayor said. ‘We have lived long in the past, and now we shall look to the future.’

  He led the way down through a narrow passage and we came out on a ledge above the lake. This was so clear that we could see the rocks on its bottom, and small green birds were twittering everywhere at its edge. After the old town’s undecipherable smells, the air here was suddenly clean and sweet. ‘In this lake lies the Albanian people’s future,’ said the mayor. ‘Piana is to become a centre of sport. This is our decision.’

  ‘It will bring about enormous changes,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘From being poor we shall be rich.’

  ‘What kind of sport had you in mind?’ Marcello asked him.

  ‘Every kind,’ the mayor said. ‘All varieties of what we call turismo lacustre, including scuba-diving, water-skiing and spear fishing, for which we shall introduce the right species, one which can be easily caught. A children’s beach will possess its o
wn swimming pool. There will be a fauno-floristic reserve and a landing stage to cope with vessels of all sizes as well as a properly equipped centre for repairs. The resort in itself will employ hundreds of persons and up to a thousand visitors from northern Europe are expected in the first year. An application has been made for our town to change its name to Piana del Lago, and we believe that this will be granted.’

  ‘Where are the hotels to be built?’ Marcello asked.

  ‘A convention will grant building rights on the whole surrounding area,’ the mayor said.

  ‘And how soon is all this going to happen?’

  The mayor’s gesture spoke of the conflict between optimism and doubt. He shook his head.

  ‘I’ll come and see you for the Easter procession next year,’ Marcello told him.

  On the drive back to Palermo the talk was of the Portella massacre of 1947 and of its extraordinary place in the history of Sicily. On the morning of 1 May, less than two weeks after Sicily’s impoverished peasants had voted for land reform, villagers from Piana were gunned down during their May Day celebrations at Portella della Ginestra. The massacre had been organized by right-wing politicians in league with the last of the island’s outlaw bands in order to stop the peasants from occupying uncultivated land, as they were entitled to do by a law recently passed by the newly elected Sicilian Regional Parliament.

  Marcello explained that the elections had in reality been a contest between the Christian Democrats - the party of the landowners, the Church and the Mafia - and a Popular Front amalgam of the parties of the Left. To general surprise, and despite the best efforts of the Church and the Mafia, the Left - champions of the repressed, semi-feudal peasantry - carried the day. Describing the tactics employed in canvassing, Marcello cited the efforts of the Sisters in the small town of Petralia, who visited every house with presents of food and thousand-lire notes for those who would promise to vote for the party of the Church. Those who failed to do so were threatened with losing what land they had. Although Piana possessed no Communist party, after the Left won the election the Right decided to use them as an example to the recalcitrant peasantry in general.

  To carry out the task they chose the bandit Salvatore Giuliano, leader of the last remaining wartime band. This brilliant young outlaw had enlisted his followers at the age of sixteen, and had then been bold enough to present himself at the offices of L’Ora and provide a lengthy and self-congratulatory interview. His speciality was kidnapping and his victims were often aristocrats like Count Tasca, who was held for a few weeks in a mountain cave and later spoke of Giuliano’s charm and excellent manners. Tasca spent much of his time writing poetry and when Giuliano asked him to read a few passages, the bandit praised the result and even suggested a few small alterations.

  This was the man, said Marcello, who had been chosen to teach a lesson to the alleged reds at Piana. It was clear that Giuliano himself truly believed that the humble villagers had become communists.

  The peasants had been ready before dawn with their preparations for the May Day fiesta, and with the rising of the sun a long procession of painted carts carried them to Portella - the open space under the Pizzuta mountain where the celebrations had always been held. As the procession set off, Giuliano’s bandits were taking up their positions on the flanks of the mountain facing the fairground below. It is believed that they were carrying the latest American arms, corroborating evidence being a letter from Giuliano to a U.S. Army Lieutenant Stern which fell into police hands. In it Giuliano insisted that he must have heavier weapons, including mortars and artillery. Later, eight hundred empty cartridge cases were found strewn around an American machine-gun on the mountainside. Three boys reported seeing bandits in U.S. Army uniforms leave the scene.

  The number of casualties suffered by the peasants in the ensuing massacre was given as sixty-six, but neither this nor any other figure relating to the episode need necessarily be believed since all the information released passed through a sieve of frequently absurd lies. The true facts about the massacre at Portella instantly became one of the Italian State secrets of the century, for of 2,012 documents relating to the massacre in the possession of the Anti-Mafia Commission all but forty-one have continued to remain secret. In an account of these transactions written for L’Ora, Marcello Cimino reported, ‘Senator Pafundo, who was for some time president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, said that the archives contained material that would cause a national catastrophe if they ever came to light.’

  Once Giuliano’s mission had been completed, the only remaining problem for the secret men who had given him his orders was to rid the country of the bandit and his men with the minimum of publicity and with all possible speed. Most of the rank-and-file bandits were rapidly caught and disposed of, several being added to the scrupulously kept list of those -now amounting to over five hundred names - who had slipped on the stairs at the Ucciardone prison. With the exception of Pisciotta, his cousin and originally his second-in-command, Giuliano was now alone. A secret deal was arranged whereby both men would be allowed to leave Sicily and fly to the U.S.A. in a military plane. Sicily, however, where such deals are endlessly arranged, will always be Sicily, and betrayals are the normal thing. While he was waiting for the plane the Mafia arranged for Giuliano to stay in Castelvetrano, in the house of one De Maria, a low-level mafioso lawyer suffering from religious mania, who would later tell the press, ‘Our conversations were of faith, good and evil, and redemption. He once told me that he was sure that had fate brought our paths together earlier in his life, his destiny would have been a very different one.’ De Maria added that Giuliano spent much of his time reading Shakespeare and Descartes. Six months later a warrant was issued against this God-fearing man for complicity with banditry and participation in an armed band.

  Pisciotta, now in the power of the police, left his leader for a day or two. Returning, he found Giuliano asleep in bed and shot him dead. The three carabinieri who were next on the scene decided that it should be made to look as though the bandit had died in combat, so Giuliano’s body was dragged downstairs and pitched face down in the courtyard. There the carabinieri captain fired two bursts into it from his sub-machine-gun. Insufficient blood issued from these wounds so one of De Maria’s chickens was snatched from its coop and decapitated. In the morning Guiliano’s mother and sister were led into the mortuary to identify the body. That task completed, the old lady asked to be taken to the courtyard of De Maria’s house, where she knelt down and licked the blood off the flags. Soon the press were on the scene, and for those photographers who arrived late - the Giuliano family having by now been taken back to their home in Montelepre - a black-shrouded crone of local origin was kept in readiness to re-enact the frantic scene.

  This trivial but ugly imposture set the mood for the day. The hundreds of excited but frustrated journalists who filled the streets of Castelvetrano pieced together what rumours they could uncover and joined in an orgy of imaginative reconstruction of the events of the previous night. The evening editions of the Italian papers carried detailed accounts, sometimes almost shot by shot, of street battles in which - according to the Gazzetta del Popolo – 350 carabinieri were involved. A fog of lies had been released like a genie from its bottle, and it was months before the genie could be squeezed back in and the cork rammed home.

  The elimination of Giuliano had been arranged by the State, yet Pisciotta was now charged with murder and he was held in the Ucciardone prison between sessions of the court during his trial. It had become clear that he shared in the deadly secrets for which Giuliano had been removed from the scene, and there is little doubt that discussions took place as how best to impose the ‘essential silence’ in his case. When Pisciotta, who clearly feared for his life, had been in prison before, he had surprisingly enough been able to keep with him a caged bird on which he tested his food. This was ruled out at the Ucciardone - a veto which had the effect of increasing his precautions when food of any kind was placed b
efore him. But he suffered from a chest complaint, and a doctor in whom he placed some reliance prescribed a vitamin concentrate to be added to whatever food he felt able to eat. However, after the first dose of this he was taken ill and he passed away later the same day.

  The true facts about the massacre at Portella remained concealed for fifty years. Then, in 1997, the Anti-Mafia Commission announced that the secret documents concerning the massacre were at last to be published. These were known to contain proofs of the undemocratic combination of landlords, the Mafia and the Church to prevent the peasants taking over uncultivated land, and there were further documents dealing with the instigators of the bandits’ attack in May 1947, and the supposed supply to them of U.S. Army weapons. From year to year it had been promised that these documents would be produced for public scrutiny, but the moment passed, silence fell and matters of trivial local interest once again occupied the stage.

  A few years later a letter of protest from the father of a local policeman killed by the Mafia, addressed to the President of the Republic, was published. ‘In 1989,’ said the writer, ‘my son, daughter-in-law and their children were wiped out by the Mafia. I note that it has taken fifty years for us to be told anything about the Portella massacre. Does that mean that I, an old man, must look forward to a forty-year delay before I find out what happened to my dear ones - who killed them and why?’

  Possibly this letter had some effect, for in July 1999 a spokesman for the government assured the Italian people that an investigation into the massacre was to be opened after all, and that the Anti-Mafia Commission would reveal the contents of the documents that had so successfully guarded their secrets until now. They were to be passed over for scrutiny by lawyers appointed by the families involved. Amazingly, the Ministry of the Interior now conceded the general view that the massacre at Portella was ‘one of the most obscure moments of our history, which has contributed to the hindrance and delay in the affirmation of democracy and legality in our country’.