The Sicilian (27 page)

All during the voyage to see Minister Trezza and the Cardinal, Don Croce had been his constant companion. They had eaten dinner together every night, and the Don had discoursed on the future of Sicily, the troublesome times to come. It had taken some time for Pisciotta to realize that the Don was courting him, trying to win him over to some sympathy for the Friends of the Friends, and in a very subtle way attempting to convince Pisciotta that perhaps, like Sicily, his own future might be rosier with the Don than with Guiliano. Pisciotta had given him no sign that he understood these messages. But it made him more worried about the Don’s good faith. He had never before been in fear of any man, except perhaps Turi Guiliano. But Don Croce, who had spent his whole life acquiring that “respect” which is the badge of a great Mafia chief, inspired in him a sense of dread. What he realized now was that he feared the Don would outwit and betray them and that someday they would lie with their faces in the dust.

CHAPTER 20

T
HE
1948 A
PRIL
elections of the Sicilian legislature were a disaster for the Christian Democratic party in Rome. The “People’s Bloc,” the combination of Communist Socialist left-wing parties, polled 600,000 votes, to the Christian Democratic 330,000. Another 500,000 votes were split between the Monarchist and two other splinter parties. Panic reigned in Rome. Something drastic had to be done before the national election or Sicily, the most backward region of the country, would be decisive in turning all of Italy into a Socialist country.

Over the previous months Guiliano had lived up to his agreement with Rome. He had torn down all the posters of rival parties, had raided the headquarters of left-wing groups and broken up their meetings in Corleone, Montelepre, Castellammare, Partinico, Piani dei Greci, San Giuseppe Jato and the great city of Monreale. His bandits had put posters in all these cities that proclaimed in great black letters, D
EATH TO THE
C
OMMUNISTS
, and he had burned some of the community houses established by the Socialist Workers groups. But his campaign had started too late to affect the regional elections, and he had been reluctant to use the ultimate terror of assassination. Messages flew between Don Croce, Minister Trezza, the Cardinal of Palermo and Turi Guiliano. Reproaches were made. Guiliano was urged to step up his campaign so that the situation could be reversed for the national elections. Guiliano saved all these messages for his Testament.

A great stroke was needed, and it was the fertile brain of Don Croce that conceived it. He sent a message to Guiliano through Stefan Andolini.

The two most left-wing and generally rebellious towns in Sicily were Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato. For many years, even under Mussolini, they had celebrated the first of May as the day of revolution. Since May first was also the name day of Saint Rosalie, their celebration would be disguised as a religious festival not forbidden by the Fascist authorities. But now their May Day parades were bold with red flags and inflammatory speeches. The coming May Day in a week’s time was to be the greatest in history. As was the custom, the two towns would combine to celebrate and envoys from all over Sicily would bring their families to rejoice over their recent victory. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, a renowned and fiery orator, would give the main speech. It was to be the official celebration of the Left of their recent stunning victory in the elections.

Don Croce’s plan was that this celebration was to be attacked by Guiliano’s band and broken up. They would mount machine guns and fire over the heads of the crowd to disperse them. It was to be the first step in a campaign of intimidation, a paternal warning, a soft advisory hand of admonishment. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, would learn that his election to Parliament did not give him license in Sicily or make sacred his person. Guiliano agreed to the plan and ordered his chiefs, Pisciotta, Terranova, Passatempo, Silvestro and Stefan Andolini to stand by to carry it out.

For the last three years the celebration had always been held on a mountain plain between Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato, sheltered by the twin peaks of Monte Pizzuta and Monte Cumeta. The people of the towns would climb up to the plain on wildly curving roads that joined near the top, so that the populations of the two towns would meet and become a single procession. They would enter the plain through a narrow pass, and then spread out to celebrate their holiday. This pass was called the Portella della Ginestra.

The villages of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato were poor, their houses ancient, their agriculture archaic. They believed in the ancient codes of honor; the women sitting outside their houses had to sit in profile to keep their good reputations. But the two villages were home to the most rebellious people on the island of Sicily.

The villages were so old that most of the houses were built of stone, and some had no windows but only small apertures covered with iron discs. Many families housed their animals in the rooms in which they lived. The town bakeries kept goats and young lambs huddled by their ovens, and if a freshly baked loaf dropped to the floor it would usually hit a pile of dung.

The village men hired themselves out as laborers to wealthy landowners for a dollar a day and sometimes even less, not enough to feed their families. So when the nuns and priests, “Black Crows,” came with their packets of macaroni and charity clothes, the villagers swore the necessary oaths: to vote for the Christian Democrats.

But in the regional election of April 1948 they had treacherously voted overwhelmingly for the Communist or Socialist parties. This had enraged Don Croce who thought that the local Mafia chief controlled the area. But the Don declared that it was the disrespect to the Catholic Church that saddened him. How could devout Sicilians have so deceived the holy sisters who with Christian charity put bread into the mouths of their children?

The Cardinal of Palermo also was vexed. He had made a special trip to say a Mass in the two villages and had warned them not to vote for the Communists. He had blessed their children and even baptized them, and still they had turned on their Church. He summoned the village priests to Palermo and warned them that they must increase their efforts for the national elections. Not only in the political interests of the Church but to save ignorant souls from hell.

Minister Trezza was not so surprised. He was Sicilian and knew the island’s history. The people of the two villages had always been proud and ferocious fighters against the rich in Sicily and the tyranny of Rome. They had been the first to join Garibaldi, and before that they had fought the French and Moorish rulers of the island. In Piani dei Greci the villagers descended from Greeks who had fled to Sicily to escape Turkish invaders. These villagers still retained their Greek customs, spoke the language and observed the Greek holidays by wearing ancient costumes. But it had been a stronghold of the Mafia which had always fostered rebellion. So Minister Trezza was disappointed by Don Croce’s performance, his inability to educate them. But he also knew that the vote in the villages and the whole surrounding countryside had been engineered by one man, a Socialist party organizer named Silvio Ferra.

Silvio Ferra was a highly decorated soldier in the Italian Army of World War II. He had won his medals in the African campaign and then had been captured by the American Army. He had been an inmate of a prisoner of war camp in the United States where he had attended educational courses designed to make prisoners understand the democratic process. He had not quite believed them until he had been given permission to work outside the camp for a baker in the local town. He had been amazed at the freedom of American life, the ease with which hard work could be turned into a lasting prosperity, the upward mobility of the lower classes. In Sicily the hardest-working peasant could only hope to provide food and shelter for his children; there could be no provision for the future.

When he was returned to his native Sicily, Silvio Ferra became an ardent advocate of America. But he soon saw that the Christian Democratic party was a tool of the rich and so joined a Socialist Workers’ study group in Palermo. He had a thirst for education and a passion for books. Soon he had gobbled up all the theories of Marx and Engels and then joined the Socialist party. He was given the assignment of organizing the party club in San Guiseppe Jato.

In four years he had done what the agitators from the north of Italy could not do. He had translated the Red Revolution and Socialist doctrine into Sicilian terms. He convinced them that a vote for the Socialist party meant getting a piece of land. He preached that the great estates of the nobles should be broken up since the nobles left them uncultivated. Land that could grow wheat for their children. He convinced them that under a Socialist government the corruption of Sicilian society could be wiped out. There would be no bribing of officials for preference, no one would have to give a priest a pair of eggs to read a letter from America, the village postman would not have to be given a token lira to ensure delivery of mail, men would not have to auction off the labor of their bodies at a pittance to work the fields of dukes and barons. There would be an end to starvation wages, and the officials of the government would be servants of the people, as it was in America. Silvio Ferra quoted chapter and verse to show that the official Catholic Church propped up the debased capitalistic system, yet he never attacked the Virgin Mary, the diversified useful saints, or a belief in Jesus. On Easter mornings he greeted his neighbors with the traditional, “Christ is risen.” On Sundays he went to Mass. His wife and children were strictly supervised in true Sicilian style for he was a believer in all the old values, the son’s absolute devotion for his mother, respect for his father, the sense of obligation for his most obscure cousins.

When the Mafia
cosce
in San Giuseppe Jato warned him that he was going too far, he smiled and intimated that in the future he would welcome their friendship, though in his heart he knew that the last and greatest battle would be against the Mafia. When Don Croce sent special messengers to try to make an accommodation, he put them off. Such was his reputation for bravery in the war, the respect in which he was held in the village and his indication that he would be judicious with the Friends of the Friends that Don Croce decided to be patient, especially since he was sure the election was won anyway.

But most of all Silvio Ferra had a sympathy for his fellow man, a rare quality in the Sicilian peasant. If a neighbor became ill he brought food for his family, he did chores for ailing old widows who lived alone, he cheered all those men who eked out a bare living and were fearful of their futures. He proclaimed a new dawn of hope under the Socialist party. When he gave political speeches he used the southern rhetoric so dearly loved by Sicilians. He did not explain the economic theories of Marx but spoke with fire of the vengeance owed to those who had oppressed the peasants for centuries. “As bread is sweet to us,” he said, “so is the blood of the poor to the rich who drink it.”

It was Silvio Ferra who organized a cooperative of laboring men who refused to submit to the labor auction where the lowest wage got the work. He established a set wage per day, and the nobility was forced to meet it at harvesting or watch their olives, grapes and grain rot. And so Silvio Ferra was a marked man.

What saved him was that he was under the protection of Turi Guiliano. That had been one of the considerations that had persuaded Don Croce to stay his hand. Silvio Ferra had been born in Montelepre. Even as a youth his qualities had been evident. Turi Guiliano had admired him extravagantly, though they had not been close friends because of the difference in their ages—Guiliano was four years younger—and because Silvio had gone off to war. Silvio had returned a much decorated hero. He met a girl from San Giuseppe Jato and moved there to marry her. And as the political fame of Ferra grew, Guiliano let it be known the man was his friend though their politics were different. Thus when Guiliano began his program to “educate” the voters of Sicily, he gave orders that no action was to be taken against the village of San Giuseppe Jato or the person of Silvio Ferra.

Ferra had heard of this and was clever enough to send a message to Guiliano thanking him and saying he would be of service to Guiliano at his command. The message was sent via Ferra’s parents who still lived in Montelepre with their other children. One of the children was a young girl named Justina, only fifteen, who carried the note to the Guiliano home to deliver it to his mother. It so happened that Guiliano was visiting at the time and was there to receive the message personally. At fifteen most Sicilian girls are already women, and she fell in love with Turi Guiliano, as how could she not? His physical power, his feline grace fascinated her so that she stared at him almost rudely.

Turi Guiliano and his parents and La Venera were drinking coffee and asked the girl if she would like a cup. She refused. Only La Venera noticed how pretty the girl was and was aware of her fascination. Guiliano did not recognize her as the little girl whom he had once met crying in the road and given lire to. Guiliano said to her, “Give your brother my thanks for his offer and tell him not to worry about his mother and father, they will always be under my protection.” Justina quickly left the house and dashed back to her parents. From that time on she dreamed of Turi Guiliano as her lover. And she was proud of the affection he had for her brother.

And so when Guiliano agreed to suppress the festival at the Portella della Ginestra, he sent a friendly warning to Silvio Ferra that he should not take part in the May Day meeting. He assured him that none of the villagers of San Giuseppe Jato would be harmed but that there might be some danger he could not protect him from if he persisted in his Socialist party activities. Not that he, Guiliano, would ever do anything to harm him, but the Friends of the Friends were determined to crush the Socialist party in Sicily and Ferra would certainly be one of their targets.