The Day of the Owl (12 page)

Every now and then a bell rang. Then a voice began to float on that sandy light, spreading like a patch of oil over the gradually increasing murmur of the hall. They were unable to locate the source of this voice until their eyes travelled down from the President of the Assembly, who was ringing the bell, to what, when present, must have been the Government bench, where they saw, sitting near the man speaking, Minister Pella.

'We want the Minister of the Interior!' shouted the benches on the left.

The President rang the bell. He said that the Minister of the Interior was prevented from coming, that the Undersecretary was there, which amounted to the same thing, that they should let him speak and that he was sure nobody would be lacking in respect for the House. He might have saved his breath.

'The Minister! the Minister!' the left continued shouting.

'Let 'im speak for Christ's sake,' said one of the two Sicilian spectators in his companion's ear. They let him speak.

The Undersecretary said that as regards public order in Sicily the Government saw no particular reason for concern.

A howl of protest rose from the left. This was just subsiding when a voice from the right shouted: 'Twenty years ago in Sicily one could sleep with one's door open!'

The left and a part of the centre rose to their feet, yelling. The two leant over the rail to see the fascist beneath them who, in a voice like a bull's, was bellowing: 'Yes, twenty years ago there was order in Sicily; but it's been destroyed by you!' He pointed an accusing finger from Fanfani to Togliatti.

The two saw his shaven head and accusing finger and muttered in chorus: 'The order of horns on your head!'

A long, frenzied ringing of the bell: then the Undersecretary continued. About the happenings at S., to which the Honourable Members had referred in their question, the Government, he said, had no comment to make, since there was a judicial inquiry in course. The Government, however, considered these happenings as manifestations of normal criminality and rejected the interpretation put on them by the said Honourable Members. Furthermore, the Government indignantly rejected the base insinuation, spread by left-wing newspapers, that certain Members of Parliament - and even of the Government - had any connection whatsoever with elements of the so-called mafia, which, in the opinion of the Government, only existed in the imaginations of socialists and communists.

From the left-wing benches, now packed with deputies, rose a storm of protest. A tall, grey, hairless member left his bench and advanced to the Government's until stopped by three ushers. The insults he was shouting at the Undersecretary were such that the two spectators thought: 'This'll end with knives!' The bell rang frenziedly. Darting from the right like a cicada, the shaven-headed member reached the middle of the hall; other ushers rushed to restrain him as he hurled his insults towards the left. The word 'cretin' whizzed around him, grazing his massive head as Red Indians' arrows did Buffalo Bill's.

'They need a battalion of carabinieri here,' thought the two, admitting for the first time in their lives that carabinieri might have some use.

They looked down towards their friend, the Honourable Member. He was quite unperturbed. Noticing their look, he waved with a smile.

*

It was a languorous evening in Parma, touched by a melting light embracing memory, distance, indefinable tenderness. Steeped in a dimension already reflected in memory, Captain Bellodi was pacing the streets of his native city; but uppermost in his mind was the thought of far-off Sicily, with its burden of injustice and death.

He had been ordered to Bologna to attend a trial as recorder of evidence and, when the trial ended, had not felt like returning to Sicily at once; the prospect of a leave in Parma with his family was particularly sweet to one in his state of nervous strain. He had applied for sick-leave and been given a month.

Now, almost half-way through his leave, he had just learnt, from a bundle of local newspapers sent by the enterprising Sergeant D'Antona, that his whole painstaking reconstruction of the S. case had collapsed like a card-castle under a puff of irresistible alibis, of one alibi in particular, Diego Marchica's. Persons above all suspicion, highly respected for position and education, had borne witness to the sheer impossibility of Diego shooting Colasberna and being recognized by Nicolosi, as on the day and at the time the crime was committed Diego had been no fewer than seventy-six kilometres away: this was the exact distance, in fact, from S. to P., where Diego, in Doctor Baccarella's garden and under the very eyes of the doctor himself, who was in the habit of getting up early to supervise work in his garden, had been engaged in the harmless and peaceful task of hosing. This testimony could be confirmed not only by the doctor, but by peasants and passers-by, sure as they all were of Diego's identity.

The confession he had made to Captain Bellodi, Diego had explained, was due to a sort of spite; the captain had made him think that he had been incriminated by Pizzuco and, maddened by rage, he had tried to get even; just to put Pizzuco on the spot he had incriminated himself. Pizzuco on his part, confronted with Diego's treachery, had spouted a regular firework display of lies just to tie a millstone round Diego's neck for having incriminated him. The gun? Well, Pizzuco was certainly guilty of illicit possession of firearms; but it was this very worry about the weapon being illegal that had made him tell his brother-in-law to get rid of it.

As for Don Mariano, who had been much photographed and interviewed by the press, it goes without saying that the patient web of clues woven by the captain and the Public Prosecutor had melted into thin air. An aura of innocence illuminated that ponderous head which, even in photographs, wore an expression of wise cunning. To a journalist who had asked him about Captain Bellodi, Don Mariano had replied: 'He's a man.' When the journalist asked whether by this Don Mariano meant that like all men he was fallible, or whether on the other hand there was an adjective missing, Don Mariano had said: 'Adjective be damned! A man doesn't need adjectives and, if I say the captain's a man, he's a man and that's all there is to it!' - a reply considered by the journalist as sybilline, surely dictated by anger and probably by rancour. Don Mariano, however, had wished to express an objective appreciation, like a victorious general praising a defeated adversary. And so a note of ambiguity, of pleasure mingled with irritation, was added to the turmoil of Captain Bellodi's feelings.

Other items in the paper, marked in red by Sergeant D'Antona, announced that, of course, the investigations on the three murders had all been reopened, and that the mobile police squad were well on the way to solving the Nicolosi case and had arrested his widow and her lover, a certain Passarello, a man under the 'darkest' suspicion; it was inexplicable, the paper added, how this trail had been overlooked by Captain Bellodi. Another red-marked item, on the page devoted to news from the province, stated that the commander of the carabiniere station of S., SergeantMajor Class 1 Arturo Ferlisi, had, at his own request, been transferred to Ancona. In a viaticum of good wishes and congratulations the correspondent of the newspaper paid tribute to his equilibrium and ability.

Brooding over this news and seething with impotent rage, the captain was stalking aimlessly around the streets of Parma with the air of a man afraid of being late for an appointment. He did not even hear his friend Brescianelli call him by name from the opposite pavement and was surprised and annoyed when the other caught up and stopped him, standing, smiling affectionately and claiming at least a hand-shake in the name of their happy but, alas, distant schooldays. Bellodi gravely apologized for not hearing and told him that he wasn't feeling very well, forgetting that Brescianelli was a doctor. The other in fact took a step back to get a better look at him and noticed that he was thinner, as his overcoat hung too loosely from his shoulders; then he came nearer, took a look at his eyes which, he said, had a touch of burnt sienna in them, sign of liver-trouble, asked about his symptoms, and named medicines. Bellodi listened with an absent smile.

'D'you hear me,' asked Brescianelli, 'or am I a nuisance?'

'No, no,' protested Bellodi, 'I'm delighted to see you again. By the way, where are you going? ... I'll come with you,' and, without waiting for an answer, took his friend by the arm; with this gesture, one he had almost forgotten, he really did begin to feel the need of company, of talk, of distraction from his anger.

But Brescianelli now began asking him about Sicily; what was it like, how was life down there; and what about its crime?

Bellodi said that Sicily was incredible.

'Yes, indeed; incredible ... I have Sicilian friends too; quite extraordinary people ... And now they have home rule, their own government. The government of the
lupara,
I call it... Incredible, that's just the word.'

'Italy's incredible, too. You have to go to Sicily to realize just how incredible Italy is.'

'Maybe the whole of Italy is becoming a sort of Sicily. When I read about the scandals of that regional government of theirs, an idea occurred to me. Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year ... The palm tree line ... I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line ... It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome ... ' He broke off suddenly and said to a smiling young woman approaching them: 'You're incredible too: incredibly lovely ... '

'What d'you mean: "too"? Who's the other?'

'Sicily ... Another woman. Mysterious, implacable, vengeful ... and lovely ... like you. Captain Bellodi, whom I have the pleasure of introducing, was telling me about Sicily' - he turned to Bellodi - 'and this is Livia, Livia Giannelli, whom you may remember as a girl: now she's a woman and won't have anything to do with me.'

'Have you come from Sicily?' asked Livia.

'Yes,' said Brescianelli, 'he's down there as a "filthy policeman", as they say,' imitating the cavernous voice and Catanese accent of Angelo Musco.

'I adore Sicily,' said Livia, moving between them and taking their arms.

'This is Parma,' thought Bellodi in sudden happiness, 'and this is a girl from Parma. You're home, and to hell with Sicily.'

But Livia wanted to hear the incredible facts about incredible Sicily: 'I've been to Taormina once; and to Syracuse for the Greek plays, but they tell me that really to know Sicily one must go into the interior ... Where are you stationed?'

Bellodi gave the name of the town; neither Livia nor Brescianelli had ever heard of it.

'What's it like?' asked the girl.

'An old town with plaster-walled houses, steep streets and flights of steps, and, at the top of every street and flight of steps, an ugly church.'

'And the men; are the men very jealous?'

'After their own fashion.'

'And the mafia, what's this mafia the papers are always going on about?'

'Yes, what
is
the mafia?' urged Brescianelli.

'It's very complicated to explain,' said Bellodi, 'it's just incredible.'

Biting sleet was beginning to fall, and a white sky foretold heavy snow. Livia suggested they go home with her: some of her women friends were coming and they could listen to some splendid old jazz records, records unearthed by a miracle; there'd also be some good Scotch whisky and Carlos Primero brandy. 'And food?' asked Brescianelli. Livia promised that there would be food too.

They found Livia's sister and two other girls stretched out on the hearth rug in front of a blazing fire, glasses beside them, and the haunting rhythm of 'Funeral at the Vieux Colombier, New Orleans', on a record-player.

They adored Sicily too. The knives which, according to them, were flashed in jealousy, gave them delicious tremors. Sicilian women they pitied, but also envied a little. The red of blood became the red of the painter Guttuso. Picasso's cock on the cover of Brancati's Bell' Antonio', they said, was a charming emblem for Sicily. The thought of the mafia gave them more tremors: and they asked for explanations, stories of the terrible deeds the captain must have seen.

Bellodi told the story of a medical officer in a Sicilian prison who took it into his head, quite rightly, to remove from the mafia convicts the privilege of residing permanently in the prison hospital. The prison was full of genuine sick cases, even some tubercular ones, living in cells and common dormitories, while these mafia chiefs, bursting with health, occupied the sick-bay in order to enjoy better treatment. The doctor gave instructions for them to be sent back to their ordinary quarters and for the sick to be admitted to hospital. The doctor's instructions were disregarded by both warders and governor. The doctor wrote to the Ministry. The next thing that happened was that one night he was summoned to the prison where, he was told, a prisoner had urgent need of him. He went. At one point in the prison he suddenly found himself alone among the convicts; and he was then beaten up with skill and precision by the mafia chiefs. The warders noticed nothing. The doctor reported the attack to the Public Prosecutor and the Ministry, on which some, not all, of the ringleaders were transferred to another prison. Next, the Ministry relieved the doctor of his post on the grounds that his zeal had given rise to incidents. Being a member of a left-wing party, he applied to it for support, but was told that it was better to let things slide. Unable to obtain redress in any other way he then applied to a mafia leader, who did at least give him the satisfaction of having one of his assailants beaten up in the prison to which he had been transferred. The culprit, he was assured, had been given a thorough working-over.

This episode the girls found quite delightful. Brescianelli was horrified.

Sandwiches were made. They ate, drank whisky and brandy and listened to jazz. Then they talked about Sicily again, then about love, then about sex. Bellodi felt like a convalescent: highly sensitive, susceptible, famished. 'To hell with Sicily! To hell with it all!'