The Day of the Owl (3 page)

He was sitting in front of the captain, turned slightly sideways so as not to look him in the face, and nervously twisting his cap, while all the time the dog inside him bit, growled, bit again. The evening was icy cold and the tiny electric stove in the captain's office gave out so little warmth that it made the vast, bare room seem even colder. Even the old-fashioned whitish enamelled tiles with which it was paved looked like ice. Still, the man was sweating; a cold death-shroud enveloped him, chill over the fiery laceration of the
lupara
slugs which were already rending his flesh. From the moment he had heard of Colasberna's death, the informer had begun thinking out his story. At each detail he added, each little touch, like a painter standing back from his canvas to judge the effect of a brush-stroke, he would say to himself: 'Perfect. Not another thing needed,' but kept on adding and retouching. And he was still feverishly adding and retouching even as he told it to the captain. But the captain knew, from a voluminous dossier on the police informer, Calogero Dibella, alias
Parrinieddu
or 'Little Priest', that of the two
cosche
or local mafia groups
(cosca,
they had explained to him, meant the thick cluster of artichoke leaves) Dibella was closer to, if not actually a member of, the one which had certain if unprovable connections with public works. As S. was a coastal town, the other
cosca,
younger and more enterprising, mainly concerned itself with the contraband of American cigarettes. He thus foresaw the informer's lie; but in any case it would be useful to watch the man's reactions while telling it.

He listened without interrupting, occasionally adding to Dibella's discomfiture with a distracted nod. In the meanwhile he thought of those other informers buried under a thin layer of soil and dried leaves high in folds of the Apennines. Wretched dregs, soaked in fear and vice; yet they had gambled with death, staking their lives on the razor's edge of a lie between partisans and fascists. The only human emotion they had was the tormenting agony of their own cowardice. From fear of death they faced death every day; until finally it struck, final, permanent, unequivocal death, not the double-cross, the double death of every hour.

The informer of S. was risking his life; sooner or later one
cosca
or the other, either with a double-barrel of
lupara
or a burst from a submachine gun (the two
cosche
also differed in their choice of weapons), would fix him. But between mafia and carabinieri, the two sides between which he played his game of chance, death could come to him only from one side. On this side there was no death; there was only this fair, clean-shaven man in his smart uniform, who lisped, never raised his voice, or treated him with scorn. Yet he was just as much the law as was that gruesome death. To the informer the law was not a rational thing born of reason, but something depending on a man, on the thoughts and the mood of this man here, on the cut he gave himself shaving or a good cup of coffee he has just drunk. To him the law was utterly irrational, created on the spot by those in command, the municipal guard, the sergeant, the chief of police or the magistrate, whoever happened to be administering it. The informer had never, could never have, believed that the law was definitely codified and the same for all; for him between rich and poor, between wise and ignorant, stood the guardians of the law who only used the strong arm on the poor; the rich they protected and defended. It was like a barbed wire entanglement, a wall. The thief who had done time, was involved with the mafia, negotiated extortionate loans and played the informer asked only to find a hole in the wall, a gap in the barbed wire. If he did, he would soon raise enough capital to open his little shop; his elder son he would put into a seminary, either to become a priest or leave before ordination to become, better than a priest, a lawyer. Once over the wall the law would no longer hold terrors. How wonderful it would be to look back on those still behind the wall, behind the barbed wire.

So, tortured by fear, he tried to find some consolation by fondly picturing his future peace, a peace founded on poverty and injustice. But for him the fatal bullet was already cast.

Captain Bellodi, on the contrary, an Emilian from Parma, was by family tradition and personal conviction a republican, a soldier who followed what used to be called 'the career of arms' in a police force, with the dedication of a man who has played his part in a revolution and has seen law created by it. This law, the law of the Republic, which safeguarded liberty and justice, he served and enforced. If he still wore a uniform which he had first put on by chance, if he had not left the service to become a lawyer, the career to which he had been destined, it was because the task of serving and enforcing the law of the Republic was becoming more arduous every day.

The informer would have been astounded to know that the man he was facing, a carabiniere and an officer too, regarded the authority vested in him as a surgeon regards the knife: an instrument to be used with care, precision and certainty; a man convinced that law rests on the idea of justice and that any action taken by the law should be governed by justice. His was a difficult and ungrateful profession; but the informer only saw him as a happy man, happy in the joy of being able to abuse his powers, a joy the more intense the more suffering can be inflicted on others.

Like a shopkeeper displaying his lengths of cheap cotton to country housewives,
Parrinieddu
unwound his roll of lies. His nickname of Little Priest was due to the easy eloquence and hypocrisy he exuded. But, as a result of the officer's silence, his fluency began to leave him, his words began to sound tearful or strident, and the pattern he was weaving became incoherent, incredible.

'Don't you think -' the captain quietly asked him after a while, in a tone of friendly confidence - 'don't you think it might be more useful to explore other possibilities?' The double-s of the Emilian accent left the word incomplete and vague and for a moment distracted the informer from his flow.

Parrinieddu
did not reply.

'Don't you think that there's a chance that Colasberna was done away with for, let us say, a question of interest? For not having accepted certain proposals? For having continued, in spite of threats, to land all he could in the way of contracts?'

Captain Bellodi's predecessors had been in the habit of questioning the informer in threatening tones with explicit alternatives of either internment by the police or a charge of usury. This, instead of frightening
Parrinieddu,
had given him a certain sense of security. The link was clear: the police were forcing him to some betrayal and he just had to produce enough information to keep them quiet and himself out of trouble. But with someone treating him kindly and taking him into his confidence, things were different. So he answered the captain's question with a disjointed motion of the hands and head: yes, it was possible.

'And,' continued the captain in the same tone, 'do you happen to know of anyone who takes an interest in such matters? I don't mean those who work on contracts; I mean those who don't, who concern themselves with helping, with protecting ... It would be enough for me to know the name of the man who, some months ago, made certain proposals to Colasberna; proposals, mark you, only proposals ... '

'I know nothing,' said the informer and, encouraged by the captain's gentle manner, his spy's instinct soared like a lark trilling its joy at being able to hurt. 'I know nothing,' he repeated, 'but, taking a shot in the dark, I'd say that the proposals were made either by Ciccio La Rosa or by Saro Pizzuco ... ' But already that giddy flight of joy had turned into a headlong drop, a stone plummeting down into the very centre of his being, his fear.

*

'Another question in the House,' said His Excellency. ' "Is the Minister aware of the serious acts of violence which have recently taken place in Sicily and what steps does he intend to take ...?"
etc.
etc.
The communists, as usual. It seems that they are referring to the murder of that contractor ... What was his name?'

'Colasberna, Excellency.'

'Colasberna ... A communist, it seems ...'

'A socialist, Excellency.'

'You will make that distinction. You are stubborn, my friend, allow me to tell you. Communist or socialist, what's the difference?'

'At the present juncture ...'

'For heaven's sake, no explanations. Even I read the papers sometimes, you know ... '

'I would never take the liberty of...'

'Good. Now, to avoid this ...'

'Colasberna.'

'This Colasberna becoming a martyr in the communist ... sorry, I mean socialist cause, we must find out who killed him. Pretty damn quickly, too, so that the Minister can reply that Colasberna was the victim of a question of interest, or had been after somebody's wife and politics had nothing to do with it.'

'The investigation is going well. It is clearly a mafia crime, but nothing to do with politics. Captain Bellodi...'

'Who is this Bellodi?'

'He commands the Carabinieri in C. He's been in Sicily some months now ... '

'Right. Now here's the point: I've been wanting to talk to you for some while about Bellodi. This fellow, my dear friend, has a fixation about the mafia. One of those Northerners with a head full of prejudices who begin to see the mafia in everything before they even get off the ferry-boat. If he says that Colasberna was killed by the mafia, we're sunk. I don't know whether you read what a journalist wrote some weeks ago about the kidnapping of that landowner ... What was his name?'

'Mendolia.'

'That's it, Mendolia. He said things to make your hair stand on end. That the mafia exists, that it is a powerful organization, that it controls everything: flocks, fruit and vegetables, public works and Greek vases ... That about Greek vases is priceless ... like a comic postcard. What I say is this: let's have a little sense of responsibility ... Do you believe in the mafia?'

'Well, er ...'

'And you?'

'No, I don't.'

'Good man! We two, both Sicilians, don't believe in the mafia. That ought to mean something to you, who evidently do. But I can understand you. You aren't Sicilian and prejudices die hard. In time you will be convinced that it is all a build-up. But, meanwhile, now for heaven's sake keep an eye on the investigations of this man Bellodi... And you, who don't believe in the mafia, try to get something done. Send someone, someone who knows how to handle things. We don't want any trouble with Bellodi, but...
Ima summis mutare.
Do you understand Latin? Not Horace's: mine, I mean.'

*

Paolo Nicolosi, tree-pruner by trade, born at B. on December 14th, 1920, now domiciled and resident in S., at No. 97 Via Cavour, had been missing for five days. On the fourth day his wife had gone back to see the sergeantmajor, who, this time, began to take things seriously. His report lay on Captain Bellodi's desk and 'No. 97 Via Cavour' was underlined in red. The captain was pacing up and down the room smoking furiously; he was waiting to hear from the Records Office and from the Magistrature if Paolo Nicolosi had a criminal record or there were any outstanding charges against him. ^ Colasberna had been shot from the corner of Via Cavour and Piazza Garibaldi. Having fired the shots, the murderer would hardly have come forward into the square where there was a bus with about fifty people on board and a fritter-seller only two paces from the dead man. It was more logical to assume that he had made his get-away down Via Cavour. The time had been six thirty in the morning and the report stated that Nicolosi was to have gone to prune trees at the Fondachello farm, about an hour away on foot. Perhaps, when the killer was running down the street, Nicolosi had come out and recognized him. But how many other people had seen him? The murderer could have counted on Nicolosi's silence, as on that of the fritter-seller and all the others, had he been either a resident or someone well-known in the town; but certainly, in a crime of this sort, he must have been a hired assassin from elsewhere. We learn from America.

No flights of fancy, the major had warned him. All right, then, no flights of fancy. But Sicily is all a realm of fantasy and what can anyone do there without imagination? Nothing but plain facts, then, which were these: a man called Colasberna had been killed just as he was getting on a bus for Palermo in Piazza Garibaldi at six thirty in the morning. The murderer had shot him from the corner of Via Cavour and Piazza Garibaldi and made his escape down Via Cavour. On the same day, at the same time, a man who lived in the same Via Cavour was leaving home, or just about to. According to his wife, she had been expecting him back in the evening, at about Angelus time as usual, she said, but he had never turned up then, nor for the next five days. At the Fondachello farm they say that they've not seen him; they were expecting him that day but he never appeared. He had vanished, together with his mule and his implements, between the door of his house and the Fondachello farm, some four or five miles apart. He had vanished without a trace.

If Nicolosi turned out to have a criminal record or to be involved in some way with the underworld, then he might possibly have gone into hiding; or maybe someone had settled a grudge and covered up all trace of him. But if he hadn't; if there were no reason for him to make any premeditated disappearance; if he were not a man to have any direct or indirect accounts to settle with the underworld; then his disappearance could be definitely, without any flight of fancy, connected with the murder of Colasberna.

The captain did not at that moment take into account a chance of Nicolosi's disappearance being in some way connected with his wife; of it being, in other words, one of those crimes of passion, so useful alike to mafia and police. Ever since the time when, in the sudden silence of the orchestra pit, during
Cavalleria Rusticana,
the cry
of 'Hanno ammazzato cumpari Turiddu!'
('They've killed Turiddu!') first chilled the spines of opera enthusiasts, criminal statistics and number symbols of the lottery in Sicily have had closer links between cuckoldom and violent death. A crime of passion is solved at once: so it is an asset to the police; it is also punished lightly: so it is an asset to the mafia. Nature imitates art; Turiddu Macca, having been killed on the stage by Mascagni's music and Compare Alfio's knife, began to figure on tourist maps - and autopsy tables - of Sicily. Sometimes, though, either by knife or by
lupara
(luckily no longer by music) the Alfios get the worst of it. At that moment Captain Bellodi did not take this into account; a distraction that was to bring him a minor reprimand.