Killing Ground (44 page)

They were outside a smart house. There were recently fitted hardwood surrounds to the windows and a heavy hardwood door with a polished brass knocker.

'Is your mother inside?'

'Yes.'

She said with mischief, 'And waiting for your washing?'

'Yes.'

'Can she wait a little longer for your washing?'

'Of course - what do you want?'

'I want to see where they killed your father, where you were in the car when they killed him.'

Perhaps she had startled him. His lips narrowed and his eyes glinted and his cheeks were taut. He walked away from her. She followed him. Benny went past small groups of old men who stood in the sun and let the wind grab at their jackets, and they did not meet his eyes, and he did not look at them. A woman with shopping stopped as he came close to her, and then in ostentation she turned her back on him to stare into the window of an alimentari. As he went by them, three boys who gossiped and sat astride their scooters revved their engines so that the black exhaust fumes carpeted his face. Charley followed. He stopped, as if challenging her, pointed to a gelateria, every sort of ice-cream, every flavour, and she shook her head. At the top of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele was the piazza of Cinisi. A priest came from the church and saw Benny and looked away and hurried on, his robe driven by the wind against the width of his hips.

There were more men in the piazza, more boys idle and squatting on their motorcycles.

She was making him live the moment again, and she wondered if he hated her. He talked her through the chronology of a death, as if he were a tourist guide in the duomo or at the Quattro Canti or at the Palazzo Sclafani. He pointed to the street beside the church.

'It was done there. I had been late at the school for instruction in the violin. My father had collected me on his way back from I errasini. He came for me because it was raining, and they would have known which afternoon I stayed at the school for music, and they would have known that if it were raining he would collect me. It was not important to them that I was in the car, that I was ten years old. That afternoon it was convenient for them to kill my father . . .'

There was a bar on the corner of the piazza. The wind gusted the wrapping of a cigarette packet past the closed door to the bar. It had been seventeen, eighteen years before - of course, there was nothing to see. A narrow street leading into a pretty piazza under the shadow of the church of San Silvestro, a killing zone.

'What had he done? What had your father done?' She knew that she would take him to bed, that day or that night.

'He told the contadini that they should not give up their land. He said that they would be robbed if they agreed to sell their land. He said that they were farmers and they should continue to harvest the olives and the oranges and to grow maize. He said that if they sold their land and the airport was built, they would never work again because the jobs made by the airport would go to people from Palermo, who were not contadini. He said to the people that the success of the airport would be a triumph for the mafiosi, and a disaster for the contadini. He was only a shopkeeper, but he was an honest man, his honesty was respected. There was a time when people began to listen to him. My father called a meeting of all the people in the town and the peasants who had the olives and the oranges and the maize. The meeting was to be here, where we stand. My father was going to tell the people that they should oppose the building of the airport. The meeting was for that evening.'

'So they killed him, to silence him.' She would lie with him on a bed, that day or that night.

'Because he obstructed them, and because he made fun of them. The night before, I had heard my father in the bedroom practise the speech he would make. He had many jokes to tell about them. The family in Cinisi at that time, destroyed now, replaced, was the family of Badalamenti. He spoke of the "Corso Badalamenti" where they lived and of the leader of the family as "Geronimo Badalamenti". He had jokes to tell about the wealth that would come from the airport when they had stolen the land from the contadini, about the Badalamenti family eating from silver plates and taking baths with hot water from gold taps. He was a threat to them because he would laugh at them, and have the people laugh with him.'

'What happened? Tell me what happened?' On a bed she would take the clothes from his body, that day or that night.

'How is it important to you? Why do you wish to know?'

'Please, tell me.'

The sneer was at his face, and the wind caught at the fineness of his hair. 'You are a nanny for a rich family. You take your money for minding small children, for doing the work of their mother. Why—?'

'See, touch, feel, so that I can understand.'

'Am I an amusement to you?'

'No, I promise. Help me to understand.' She would take the clothes from his body and kneel over his body and kiss his body, that day or that night.

'A car crossed the piazza and it stopped in front of my father's car. He did not recognize the people in the car because he shouted at them. Did they not know where they were going? Did they not look where they were going? It was late in the afternoon, the light was going because of the rain. Already in the piazza the preparations had been made, there was the sound equipment for my father, there was a place for him to speak from. He shouted at the people in the car because he thought he would be late for the meeting. There was another car that came behind us, it drove into us. I saw one man only. The man had a small machine-gun and he came from the front towards us and he threw a small cigar from his mouth and he raised his machine-gun. There were more men, with guns, but I did not see them because my father pushed me down in the seat.

He tried to protect me. If he had been alone, I think he would have attempted to run, but I was with him and he would not have left me. There were eighteen shots fired, thirteen of the shots hit my father. The priest who came, who was there first, before the carabineri and the ambulance, the priest said that il was a miracolo that the child was not hit. I think credit was given to the killers of my father because I was not hit. I can remember still the weight of his body on me, and I can remember still the warmth of his blood on me. Someone brought my mother. She came, and the body of my father was lifted off me. My mother took me home.'

'It happened here?'

'Where you stand is where the car stopped to block my father. Do you wish to learn more?'

'So that I may understand . . .' She would kiss his body and put his hands on her body and find his love, that day or that night.

'Two days later there was the funeral for my father. Where we stand now I walked then with my mother, and the whole length of the Corso and the width of the piazza was lined with the people of Cinisi, and the church was filled. There were eight thousand people then living in Cinisi and around the town, and three thousand came to my father's funeral, and the priest denounced the barbarity of the mafiosi. It was a fraud, it meant nothing. It was a spectacle, like a travelling theatre on a festival day. The airport was built on the land stolen from the contadini. The people who had filled the church, stood on the Corso and in the piazza, were bent to the will of the Badalamenti family.

There was a short investigation, but the carabineri told my mother that guilt could not be proved. They own the town, they own the airport, they own the lives of everybody here.'

'Why, Benny, do they not kill you?'

His head hung. She thought she had slashed at his pride. He looked away from her and he murmured in bitterness, 'When opposition is ineffective, they do not notice it.

When opposition is only an irritation, they ignore it. When opposition is threatening, they kill it. Do you seek to humiliate me because I am alive, because my father is dead?'

'Let's get your washing home,' Charley said.

They walked back down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She took his hand and led him, set the pace for him. It was useful for her to be able to touch warm blood and feel the weight of a father's body and to see the shock in a child's face . . . She should think about going home, Axel Moen had said. She should think about going home if she could not do the job, Axel Moen had said . . . He did not speak, they reached the car, he lifted a filled pillowcase from the floor at the back of the car. The gale, funnelled down the main street, beat on them. He rang the bell at the door.

She was introduced.

She played the part of the innocent.

She was offered juice and a slice of rich cake.

She was the nanny to a rich family from Palermo, and she was ignorant.

She talked, innocent and ignorant, with Benny's mother. The mother had darting sparrow's movements and bright cobra's eyes. Charley thought the woman must have quite extraordinary courage. She had trained, since her loss, as an accountant. She could live anywhere on the island, work anywhere in Sicily or on the mainland, but she had chosen to stay. She wore a bright scarlet skirt and a grass-green blouse, as if it would have been a defeat to take to widow's black. The courage of the woman, Charley thought, would come from facing each day the people of the town who had stood aside when her man was butchered, and from facing each day the people who had filled the church and lined the Corso for her man's burial. Charley ate her cake and drank her juice, sucked in the strength of the woman. The courage of the woman was in walking, each day, up the Corso, past the home of the people who had ordered her man's killing, and seeing their families in the bars, and standing with them in the shops, and knowing that they slept well at night.

If she were not to quit, go home, walk away, she needed that courage.

She waited for the woman to clear away the glasses and the plates. She waited for the woman to take the pillowcase to the washing-machine in the kitchen.

Charley reached for Benny's hand. The hand was limp. She controlled him. She led him to the staircase of cleaned and polished wood. She heard the churning motion of the washing-machine. The door to the bathroom was open. The door to the principal bedroom, the woman's room, was open. She led Benny through the door that had been shut, into his room. It was cool in the room because the shutters were closed and the sunlight came in zebra lines, filtered, onto the single bed, onto the skin rug on the floor, onto the picture above the bed. The picture was from a newspaper. A car was isolated in an empty street. The body of a man was beside the car. A woman stood near to the car and held a small child against her. Giving space to the body and the woman and the child was a crowd of onlookers. Charley fed from the photograph, as she had eaten the cake and drunk the juice. She must draw strength from the woman and the child.

She took the jacket from his shoulders and he made no move to help her.

She knelt and slipped the shoes from his feet, and the socks.

She took the tie from his throat and the shirt from his chest and loosed the trousers at his waist. She stripped the man bare, and she saw the tremble of his knees and the smooth flatness of his stomach, and she saw the heave of his chest below the hair mat.

She thought he pleaded to her. She heard, from below, the rattle of the plates being rinsed and the clatter of the glasses.

He lay on the bed. She squatted over him. She kissed the mouth and the throat and the chest and the stomach of Benny, drank the juice of his sweat. She made lines with the nails of her fingers on his skin and tangled his hairs. Only when the moaning was in his throat, as the wind moaned in the cables outside the shuttered window, did he reach for her. He tore at the buttons of the blouse and at the clasp of her bra and at the waist of her skirt. She had control of him. She put the rubber over him, as she had known she would.

Charley rode the man.

Not the lecturer from college on the carpet, not the guy from the picket line in the caravan, not the schoolteacher who had lifted her, bruised, bleeding, scarred, from the pavement.

Charley held his head, and her fingers, frantic, searched for the pony-tail of blond hair that was held tight with an elastic band. Charley pounded her fingers into the pale face with the day of stubble beard on it. Charley pulled the arms around her, muscled and powerful. He drove at her, hard in her, as if he were trying to buck her from him.

She murmured the name of the man . . . 'Axel . . . Fuck me, Axel . . .'

He came, he was sagging, he was spent.

She crawled off him. He tried to kiss her, to hug her, to hold her, but she pushed him back and down onto the bed. She took the rubber off him. She walked, cruel and vicious bitch, from the bedroom to the bathroom and she flushed the rubber down the lavatory.

She sat on the seat. She wondered where he was and whether he had watched her. Her fingers rested on the nakedness of her arm, on the coldness of the watch on her wrist.

She came back into the room. He lay on the bed and his arm was across his face so that he should not see her.

Charley started to dress.

'Who killed your father?'

'My father is mine. He is not your business.'

She was dressing fast, snatching at the crumpled heap of clothes. 'Is it good to be so ineffective that one is unnoticed? Who killed him?'

'When a man from Catania is to be killed they bring in an assassin from Trapani, when a man from Agrigento is to be killed they find a man in Palermo.' He hissed the explanation. 'It is an exchange of favours, a barter of services. When a man from Cinisi is to be killed—'

'They bring a killer from Prizzi? Is it good to be only an irritation and ignored?'

'What is it to you?' His arm was off his face. He pushed himself up on the bed. She thought he had a fear of her.

'I'll take the bus back,' Charley said. 'I'll go on the bus because your mother won't have had time to dry your washing and iron it. You're safe from Mario Ruggerio, Benny, because he won't even have noticed you.'

Carmine brought the minister to the apartment.

The apartment was at Cefalu and the business of the minister was at Milazzo, which was nearly 150 kilometres to the east.