"Do you think I'm going to let you have all the fun and glory? Let you play in the mountains while I bring donkeys out to work and pick olives? And what about our friendship? Am I to let you live in the mountains alone when we have played and worked together since we were children? Only when you return to Montelepre in freedom will I return there too. So no more foolish talk. I'll come to get you in four days. It will take a little time to do all you want me to do."
Pisciotta was busy those four days. He had already tracked down the smuggler on horseback who had offered to go after the wounded Guiliano. His name was Marcuzzi, and he was a feared man and a large-scale smuggler operating under the protection of Don Croce and Guido Quintana. He had an uncle of the same name who was a great Mafia chief.
Pisciotta discovered that Marcuzzi made regular trips from Montelepre to Castellammare. Pisciotta knew the farmer who kept the smuggler's mules, and when he saw the animals taken out of the fields and brought to a barn near the town, he gambled that Marcuzzi was making a trip the next day. At dawn Pisciotta stationed himself along the road that he knew Marcuzzi had to take, and waited for him. He had alupara,which many Sicilian families owned as part of their household equipment. Indeed, the deadly Sicilian shotgun was so common and so often used for assassination that when Mussolini cleaned out the Mafia, he had ordered all stone walls to be knocked down to at most three feet in height so that murderers could not use the walls as ambush points.
He had decided to kill Marcuzzi not only because the smuggler had offered to help the police kill the wounded Guiliano, but because he had also boasted of it to his friends. By killing the smuggler he would give warning to any others who might betray Guiliano. Also he needed the weapons he knew Marcuzzi carried.
He did not have to wait long. Because Marcuzzi was leading empty mules to pick up black market goods in Castellammare, he was careless. He rode his lead mule down a mountain trail with his rifle slung over his shoulder, instead of at the ready. When he saw Pisciotta standing in the trail in front of him, he was not alarmed. All he saw was a short slender boy with a thin dandyish mustache who was smiling in a way that irritated him. It was only when Pisciotta swung theluparaout from beneath his jacket that Marcuzzi paid full attention.
He said gruffly, "You've got me going the wrong way. I haven't picked up my goods yet. And these mules are under the protection of the Friends of the Friends. Be clever and find yourself another customer."
Pisciotta said softly, "I only want your life." He smiled cruelly. "There was a day you wanted to be a hero for the police. Just a few months ago, do you remember?"
Marcuzzi remembered. He turned the mule sideways, as if by accident, to shield his hand from Pisciotta's gaze. He slid his hand into his belt and drew his pistol. At the same time he yanked on the mule's bridle to bring himself around in a shooting position. The last thing he saw was Pisciotta's smile as theluparablasted his body out of the saddle and flung it into the dust.
With grim satisfaction Pisciotta stood over the body and fired another blast into the head, then took the pistol still in Marcuzzi's hand and the rifle wrapped on the body by its sling. He emptied the man's jacket pocket of rifle bullets and put them into his own. Then quickly and methodically he shot each of the four mules, a warning to anyone who might help the enemies of Guiliano, even indirectly. He stood on the road, hisluparain his arms, the dead man's rifle slung over his shoulder, the pistol in his waistband. He felt no sense of pity and his ferocity pleased him. For despite his love for his friend they had always striven against each other in many ways. And though he acknowledged Turi as his chief, he always felt he had to prove his claim to their friendship by being as courageous and as clever. Now he too had stepped out of the magic circle of boyhood, of society, and joined Turi on the outside of that circle. With this act he had bound himself forever to Turi Guiliano.
Two days later, just before the evening meal, Guiliano left the monastery. He embraced all of the monks as they gathered in the eating hall and thanked them for their kindnesses. The monks were sorry to see him go. True, he had never attended their religious rites, and had not made a confession and act of contrition for the murder he had committed, but some of these monks had started their manhood with similar crimes and were not judgmental.
The Abbot escorted Guiliano to the gate of the monastery where Pisciotta was waiting. He presented him with a going-away gift. It was a statue of the black Virgin Mary, a duplicate of the one owned by Maria Lombardo, Guiliano's mother. Pisciotta had an American green duffel bag and Guiliano put the black Virgin statuette into it.
Pisciotta watched with a sardonic eye as the Abbot and Guiliano said their goodbyes. He knew the Abbot to be a smuggler, a secret member of the Friends of the Friends, and a slave-driving taskmaster with his poor monks. So he could not understand the sentimentality of the Abbot's farewell. It did not occur to Pisciotta that the love and affection and respect that Guiliano inspired in him he could also inspire in as powerful and as old a man as the Abbot.
Though the Abbot's affection was genuine, it was tinged with self-interest. He knew this boy might one day become a force to reckon with in Sicily. It was like spotting the trace of godliness. As for Turi Guiliano, he was genuinely grateful. The Abbot had saved his life, but more than that, had instructed him in many things and had been a delightful companion. The Abbot had even let him have the use of his library. Curiously, Guiliano had affection for the Abbot's chicanery; it seemed to him a nice balance to strike in life, the doing of good without doing great visible harm, the balancing of power to make life go smoothly.
The Abbot and Turi Guiliano embraced each other. Turi said, "I am in your debt. Remember me when you need help of any kind. Whatever you ask, I must do."
The Abbot patted his shoulder. "Christian charity does not require repayment," he said. "Return to the ways of God, my son, and pay his tribute." But he was speaking by rote. He knew well this kind of innocence in the young. Out of it a devil could rise in flames to do his bidding. He would remember Guiliano's promise.
Guiliano shouldered the duffel bag despite Pisciotta's protest, and they walked through the monastery gate together. They never looked back.
CHAPTER 6
From a jutting cliff edge near the top of Monte d'Ora, Guiliano and Pisciotta could look down on the town of Montelepre. Only a few miles below them, the house lights were coming on to fight the falling darkness.
Guiliano even imagined he could hear the music coming from the loudspeakers in the square, which always played Rome radio station broadcasts to serenade the town's strollers before their evening meal.
But the mountain air was deceiving. It would take two hours to make his way down to the town and four hours to get back up. Guiliano and Pisciotta had played here as children; they knew every rock on this mountain and every cave and every tunnel. Further back on this cliff was the Grotta Bianca, the favorite cave of their childhood, bigger than any house in Montelepre.
Aspanu had followed his orders well, Turi Guiliano thought. The cave was stocked with sleeping bags, cooking pans, boxes of ammunition and sacks of food and bread. There was a wooden box holding flashlights, lanterns and knives, and there were also some cans of kerosene. He laughed. "Aspanu, we can live up here forever."
"For a few days," Aspanu said. "This is the first place thecarabiniericame when they went looking for you."
"The cowards only look in daylight," Turi answered. "We are safe at night."
A great cloak of darkness had fallen over the mountains, but the sky was so full of stars that they could see each other clearly. Pisciotta opened the duffel bag and started pulling out weapons and clothes. Slowly and ceremonially, Turi Guiliano armed himself. Taking off his monk's cassock, he donned the moleskin trousers, then the huge sheepskin jacket with its many pockets. He put two pistols in his waistband and strapped the machine pistol inside the jacket so it could be covered and yet swung into action immediately. He buckled an ammunition belt around his waist and put extra boxes of bullets in the jacket pockets. Pisciotta handed him a knife, which he put in the army boots he had drawn on. Then another small pistol, which fit into a string holster tied into the inside of the collar flap of the sheepskin jacket. He checked all the guns and ammunition carefully.
The rifle he carried openly, its sling over his shoulder. Finally he was ready. He smiled at Pisciotta, who carried only aluparaout in the open and his knife in a holster at his back. Pisciotta said, "I feel naked. Can you walk with all that iron on your body? If you fall down I'll never be able to lift you up."
Guiliano was still smiling, the secret smile of a child who believes he has the world at bay. The huge scar on his body ached with the weight of the weapons and ammunition, but he welcomed that ache. It gave him absolution. "I'm ready to see my family or meet my enemies," he said to Pisciotta. The two young men started down the long winding path from the top of Monte d'Ora to the town of Montelepre below.
They walked below a vault of stars. Armed against death and his fellow man, drinking in the smell of far-off lemon orchards and wild flowers, Turi Guiliano felt a serenity he had never known. He was no longer helpless against some random foe. He no longer had to entertain the enemy within himself that doubted his courage. If he had willed himself not to die, had willed his torn body to knit together, he now believed that he could make his body do this over and over again. He no longer doubted that he had some magnificent destiny before him. He shared the magic of those medieval heroes who could not die until they came to the end of their long story, until they had achieved their great victories.
He would never leave these mountains, these olive trees, this Sicily. He had only a vague idea of what his future glory would be, but he never doubted that glory. He would never again be a poor peasant youth going in fear of thecarabinieri,the judges, the pulverizing corruption of law.
They were coming down out of the mountains now and onto the roads that lead to Montelepre. They passed a padlocked roadside shrine of the Virgin Mary and child, the blue plaster robes shining like the sea in moonlight. The smell of the orchards filled the air with a sweetness that made Guiliano almost dizzy. He saw Pisciotta stoop and pick a prickly pear made sweet by the night air, and he felt a love for this friend who had saved his life, a love with its root in their childhood spent together. He wanted to share his immortality with him. It was never their fate to die two nameless peasants on a mountainside in Sicily. In a great exuberance of spirit Guiliano called out, "Aspanu, Aspanu, I believe, I believe," and started running down the final slope of the mountain, out of the ghostly white rocks, past the holy shrines of Christ and martyred saints standing in padlocked boxes. Pisciotta ran beside him, laughing, and they raced together into the arc of moonlight that showered the road to Montelepre.
The mountains ended in a hundred yards of green pasture that led to the back walls formed by the houses on the Via Bella. Behind these walls, each house had its garden of tomatoes, and some, a lonely olive or lemon tree. The gate to the Guiliano garden fence was unlocked, and the two young men slipped through quietly and found Guiliano's mother waiting for them. She rushed into Turi Guiliano's arms, the tears streaming down her face. She kissed him fiercely and whispered, "My beloved son, my beloved son," and Turi Guiliano found himself standing in the moonlight not responding to her love for the first time in his life.
It was now nearly midnight, the moon still bright, and they hurried into the house to escape observation by spies. The windows were shuttered, and relatives of the Guiliano and Pisciotta families had been posted along all the streets to warn of police patrols. In the house Guiliano's friends and family waited to celebrate his homecoming. A feast worthy of Holy Easter had been laid out. They had this one night with him before Turi went to live in the mountains.
Guiliano's father embraced him and slapped him on the back to show his approval. His two sisters were there, and Hector Adonis. Also there was a neighbor, a woman called La Venera. She was a widow of about thirty-five. Her husband had been a famous bandit named Candeleria, who had been betrayed, then ambushed by the police, only a year ago. She had become a close friend of Guiliano's mother, but Turi was surprised that she was present at this reunion. Only his mother could have invited her. For a moment he wondered why.
They ate and drank and treated Turi Guiliano as if he had returned from a long holiday in foreign countries. But then his father wanted to see his wound. Guiliano lifted his shirt out of his trousers and revealed the great flaming scar, the tissue around it still blue-black from the trauma of the gunshot. His mother broke into lamentations.