The Day of the Owl (2 page)

Another quick glance of consultation. 'That can't be,' said Giuseppe Colasberna.

'Oh, yes, it can,' said the captain, 'and I'll tell you exactly how and why. Apart from your particular case, I've a great deal of inside information on the contracting business, only hearsay, unfortunately, but if I had proof... Well now, let's just suppose that in this district, in this province, there are ten contracting firms operating. Each firm has its own machinery and materials, that lie by the roadside or on the building site at night. Machines are delicate things. All you have to do is remove a piece, even a single bolt, and it will take hours or days to get it running again. As for the materials, fuel oil, tar, timber, it's easy enough to lift those or burn them on the spot. True, there is often a hut near the machinery and materials where some workmen sleep, but that's just it; they sleep. Well now, there are other people - and you know who I mean - who never sleep. Wouldn't it be natural to turn to these people - these people who never sleep - for protection? Especially when protection has been offered you at once and, if you've been unwise enough to refuse it, something has happened to make you decide to accept it... Of course, there are the stubborn, the people who say no they don't want it, and wouldn't accept it even with a knife at their throats. From what I can see, you're stubborn ... or perhaps only Salvatore was ... '

'This is all new to us,' said Giuseppe Colasberna, and the others, with taut faces, nodded assent.

'Maybe it is, maybe it isn't,' said the captain, 'but I haven't finished yet. Now, let's say that nine out of ten contractors accept or ask for protection. It would be a poor sort of association - and you know what association I refer to - if it were to limit itself to the functions and pay of night-watchmen. The protection offered by the association is on a much vaster scale. It obtains private contracts for you, I mean for the firms which toe the line and accept protection. It gives you valuable tips if you want to submit a tender for public works, it supports you when the final inspection comes up, it saves trouble with your workmen ... Obviously, if nine companies out of ten have accepted protection, thus forming a kind of union, the tenth which refuses is a black sheep. It can't do much harm, of course, but its very existence is a challenge and a bad example. So, by fair means or foul, it must be forced to come into the fold or be wiped out once and for all.'

Giuseppe Colasberna said: 'This is the first I've ever heard of all this,' and his brother and partners made signs of approval.

'Now, let's suppose,' went on the captain as though he had not heard, 'that your company, the Santa Fara, is the black sheep of the district, the one that won't play ball, that submits honest tenders and competes for contracts without protection. Sometimes, especially with the system of maximum and minimum prices, it succeeds in making the winning offer simply because it has made an honest estimate ... One fine day, a person "worthy of respect", as you would say, comes to have a little talk with Salvatore Colasberna; what he says might mean anything and nothing, allusive, blurred as the back of a piece of embroidery, a tangle of knots and threads with the pattern on the other side ... Colasberna cannot or will not look at the other side and the man "worthy of respect" takes umbrage. The association moves into action; as a first warning, a small dump goes up in smoke, or something like that. Then comes a second warning; late one evening, round about eleven, as you are on your way home, a bullet just misses you ...'

The partners of the Santa Fara avoided the captain's eyes. They stared at their hands, looked up at the portrait of the Commander-in-Chief of the Carabinieri, at that of the President of the Republic and at the crucifix hanging on the wall. After a long pause, the captain struck just where they were most sensitive.

'I seem to remember something of the kind happening to your brother six months ago,' he said, 'just as he was going home, round about eleven ... Didn't it?'

'Er ... I ... I never heard about it,' stammered Giuseppe.

'They won't talk,' broke in the warrant-officer, 'even if they're picked off one by one, they still won't talk. They'd sooner get themselves killed ...'

The captain interrupted him with a gesture. 'Listen,' he said, 'there's a woman waiting out there ... '

'I'll go at once,' said the sergeantmajor, rather crestfallen.

'There's no more for me to say to you,' went on the captain. 'I've already said a good deal and you have nothing to tell me. Before you go I want each one of you to write his name and surname, place and date of birth, and address on this sheet of paper.'

'I write very slowly,' said Giuseppe, and the others affirmed that they also wrote slowly and with difficulty.

'No matter,' said the captain, 'there's plenty of time.' He lit a cigarette and watched the efforts of the partners on the sheet of paper. They wrote as if the pen were as heavy as a pneumatic drill: and because of their awkwardness and shaking hands, it vibrated like one too. When they had finished, he rang for the orderly, who came in with the sergeantmajor. 'Show these gentlemen out,' ordered the captain. 'Christ, he knows how to treat people,' thought the partners, and in their joy at having been almost spared (the 'almost' referred to those specimens of their handwriting the captain had wanted) and at having been called gentlemen by an officer of Carabinieri, they went out quite forgetful of their mourning and longing to run and skip like boys just let out of school.

Meanwhile the captain was comparing their handwriting with that of the anonymous letter. He was sure that one of them had written it and, in spite of its clumsy slope and disguise, it did not need an expert to tell by comparing it to that of the personal details on the other sheet of paper in front of him that the writer was Giuseppe Colasberna. The clue provided by the anonymous letter was a sure one.

The sergeantmajor could not understand why the captain was bothering to study that handwriting.

'It's like squeezing tripe: nothing comes out,' he said, meaning the Colasberna brothers, their partners, the town in general and Sicily as a whole.

'No, something,' replied the captain.

'Well, as long as you're happy,' thought the sergeantmajor, mentally using the personal "tu". In his inner thoughts he would use it with General Lombardi himself.

'What about that woman now?' asked the captain, getting up to leave again.

'It's about her husband,' answered the sergeantmajor. 'He went off into the country the day before yesterday to do some pruning and is not back yet. He must have been invited to some farmhouse party, you know, a fat lamb and lots of wine, then he probably went to sleep it off in a haystack, dead drunk ... He'll turn up this evening, I'll bet my life.'

'The day before yesterday ... If I were you I'd start looking for him,' said the captain.

'Yes, sir,' said the sergeantmajor.

*

'I don't like him,' said the man in black, looking as if his teeth were on edge from eating unripe plums; his sun-baked face, alive with a peculiar intelligence, was wry with disgust. 'I don't like him at all.'

'But you didn't like the other one, the one before him, either. Do we have to change 'em every couple of weeks?' said, with a smile, a well-dressed fair man who was sitting beside him. Both were Sicilians and differed only in physique and manners.

They were in a cafe in Rome, a pink, silent room with mirrors, chandeliers like great clusters of flowers and a shapely brunette cloakroom girl who looked as if she could be peeled out of her black dress like a fruit.

She shouldn't be made merely to take it off, thought both the fair man and the dark man alike, but it should be removed stitch by stitch.

'I took a dislike to that other fellow because of the fuss he made about firearm licences,' said the dark man.

'And before the firearm licences there was someone else you disliked because of the internment camp.'

'Is an internment camp a laughing matter?'

'No, no laughing matter at all, I know; but, for one reason or another, you never manage to get on with any of them.'

'But this is different. The presence of a man like him in our part of the world ought to upset you more than it does me. He was a partisan; with all the hotbed of communists we have down there, they had to send us an ex-partisan as well. No wonder our interests are going to pieces ...'

'But what evidence have you that he protects the communists?'

'I'll give you just one example. You know how badly the sulphur mines are doing at the moment. I curse the day I ever went into partnership with Scarantino in that mine. What little capital I had, my life's blood, is being sucked dry by that mine. We're ruined.'

'So you're ruined, then,' said the fair man, ironically incredulous.

'Well, if I'm not utterly ruined, I owe it to you. To you and the government which, one must admit, really has been taking measures over the sulphur crisis ... '

'Such measures that with the money it pays out you could pay your workers regularly and adequately without them ever going down the mine; and perhaps that would be the best solution.'

'Anyway, things are going badly. And, of course, they are going badly for everybody. Why should I be the only one to pay? The workers must pay their share as well ... They've had no wages for two weeks ... '

'Three months,' corrected the other man with a smile. 'I don't remember exactly ... Anyway, they went and held a protest meeting outside my house ... such foul language and catcalls ... they deserve to be shot... Well, I went to complain to him and d'you know what he said to me? "Have you eaten today?" "Yes, I have," I said. "Yesterday, too?" he asked. "Yesterday, too," I said. "Is your family starving?" he asked. "No, thank the Lord," I replied. "And these people who came and made a row outside your house, have they eaten today?" I was on the point of saying: "What the hell do I care whether they have eaten or not?" but from politeness I replied: "I don't know." He said, "You ought to find out." "I've come to you," I told him, "because they are outside my house and threatening me. My wife and daughters can't even go out to go to Mass." "Oh," he said, "we'll see that they get to Mass all right. That's what we're here for ... You don't pay your workmen but we see that your wife and daughters get to Mass." I'm telling you, the look on his face made my fingers itch and you know how hot-blooded I am ...'

'Now, now, now,' said the fair man in crescendo, his tone reproving the urge to violence and at the same time enjoining discretion.

'Oh, nowadays my nerves are as steady as a winch-rope. I'm not what I used to be thirty years ago. But I say: has a policeman ever dared to talk so to a man of honour before? He's a communist. Only communists talk like that.'

'Not only communists, unfortunately. We have people in the party who talk just the same ... If you knew the struggle we have, every day ... every hour ...'

'I know. They're all the same to me, communists, the lot of them.'

'They're not communists,' said the fair man, gloomily thoughtful.

'Well, if they aren't communists, why doesn't the Pope give them a little plain talk? That'd fix them.'

'It's not quite so simple ... but enough of that. To return to our little matter, what's the name of this ... communist?'

'Bellodi, I think. He commands the Carabinieri Company in C. and in three months he's already become a nuisance. Now he's poking his nose into local contracting companies ... Commendatore Zarcone is counting on you too. He said to me only the other day: "Let's hope our Honourable Member gets him sent back north to eat polenta!"'

'Dear old Zarcone!' said the Honourable Member. 'How is he?'

'He could be doing better,' said the dark man with meaning.

'We'll see that he does,' promised the Honourable Member.

*

Captain Bellodi, commanding the Carabinieri of C, sat facing the 'informer' of S. He had sent for him, with the usual precautions, to find out what the man thought about the Colasberna killing. Usually when something serious happened in the town the informer showed up of his own accord. He had been a sheep rustler just after the war but now, as far as was known, was merely a go-between for usurers. He informed partly by vocation and partly because he deluded himself that by so doing he could carry on his activity with impunity. This activity he considered honest and sensible compared with that of armed robbery, befitting the father of a family, and his past as a sheep-stealer he wrote off as an error of youth. Now, without a lira of capital, simply by handling the money of others, he managed to support a wife and three children and was even able to set some aside to be invested later in a little business: for to stand measuring out cloth behind the counter of a little shop was his life-long dream.

But his easy and lucrative living was connected with his youthful error and the fact that he was an ex-convict: for the gentry who entrusted their money to him, honest men quite above suspicion, supporters of the social order and pillars of the Church, relied on his reputation to prevent their victims lapsing in their payments and to ensure no trouble about secrecy. Indeed, such was the fear that the go-between inspired ('I've left my jacket at the Ucciardone prison,' he used to say as a joke or a threat, meaning that if he killed someone he would go back and fetch it, though as a matter of fact the very thought of prison made him shudder), that debtors paid one hundred per cent interest and dead on time. Rare extensions were granted by applying a cumulative rate of interest, whose net result was that anyone who had obtained a loan, say, to buy the mule necessary to work the few acres of land he owned, found himself after a couple of years minus both mule and land.

Had it not been for his fear, the informer would have reckoned himself happy and an honest man both morally and financially. But terror lurked within him like a rabid dog, growling, panting, slobbering, sometimes suddenly howling in its sleep. For incessant gnawing at the liver and sudden painful stabs at the heart, like alive rabbit's in a dog's mouth, doctors had made diagnosis after diagnosis and prescribed him enough medicines to fill his dressing-table drawer; of his terror the doctors knew nothing.