The Sicilian

approved were allowed to his cell door; he was never permitted out of this room. He waited patiently for the parrot to eat and digest his food and then ate his own breakfast with good appetite.

Hector Adonis left his Palermo apartment and used the tram car to the Ucciardone Prison. The February sun was already hot though it was early morning, and he regretted wearing his black suit and tie. But he felt he must dress formally on such an occasion. He touched the important slip of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket, securely pressed to the bottom.

As he rode through the city the ghost of Guiliano rode with him. He remembered one morning watching a tram full of carabinieri blown up, one of Guiliano's retaliations for his parents being put in this same prison. And he wondered again how the gentle boy he had taught the classics could commit such a terrible act. Now, though the walls of the buildings he passed were blank, he could still see in his imagination the bold red paint that had inscribed 'long live Guiliano' so often painted on them. Well, his godson had not lived long. But what always troubled Hector Adonis was that Guiliano had been murdered by his lifelong and childhood friend. That was why he had been delighted to receive instructions to deliver the note in his jacket pocket. The note had been sent by Don Croce with specific instructions.

The tram stopped in front of the long brick building that was the Ucciardone Prison. It was separated from the street by a stone wall topped by barbed wire. Guards manned the gate, and the perimeter of the wall was patrolled by heavily armed police. Hector Adonis, all necessary documents in hand, was admitted, taken in charge by a special guard, and escorted to the hospital pharmacy. There he was greeted by the pharmacist, a man by the name of Cuto. Cuto wore an immaculate white smock over a business suit with a tie. He, too, had, by some subtle psychological process, decided to dress for the occasion. He greeted Hector Adonis cordially and they sat down to wait.

'Has Aspanu been taking his medicine regularly?' Hector Adonis asked. Pisciotta still had to take streptomycin for his tuberculosis.

'Oh, yes,' Cuto said. 'He is very careful about his health. He has even stopped smoking. It's something curious I've noticed about our prisoners. When they are free they abuse their health – they smoke to excess, they drink to drunkenness, they fornicate to exhaustion. They don't sleep enough or get enough exercise. Then when they have to spend the rest of their lives in prison, they do push-ups, they spurn tobacco, they watch their diet and are moderate in all things.'

'Perhaps because they have less opportunity,' Hector Adonis said.

'Oh, no, no,' Cuto said. 'You can have everything you want in Ucciardone. The guards are poor and the prisoners are rich, so it's reasonable that money should change hands. You can indulge every vice here.'

Adonis looked around the pharmacy. There were shelves full of medicines and great oaken closets that held bandages and medical instruments, for the pharmacy served as a medical emergency room for the prisoners. There were even two neatly made-up beds in an alcove of the huge rooms.

'Do you have any trouble getting his medicine?' Adonis asked.

'No, we have a special requisition,' Cuto said. 'I delivered his new bottle this morning. With all those special seals that the Americans put on it for export. A very expensive medicine. I'm surprised that the authorities go to so much trouble to keep him alive.'

The two men smiled at each other.

In his cell Aspanu Pisciotta took the bottle of streptomycin and broke the elaborate seals. He measured out his dose and swallowed it. He was surprised at the bitterness of the taste for that one second he could think, then his body bent backward in a great arc and was thrown to the floor. He let out a scream that brought the guard running to the cell door. Pisciotta struggled to his feet, fighting off the agonizing pain that wracked his body. There was a terrible rawness in his throat and he staggered toward the jar of olive oil. His body arched again and he screamed to the guard, 'I've been poisoned. Help me, help me.' And then before he fell again there was a great furiousness that he had finally been outwitted by Don Croce.

The guards carrying Pisciotta rushed into the pharmacy shouting that the prisoner had been poisoned. Cuto made them lay Pisciotta on one of the beds in the alcove and examined him. Then he quickly prepared an emetic and poured it down Pisciotta's throat. To the guards he seemed to be doing everything to save Pisciotta. Only Hector Adonis knew that the emetic was a weak solution that would not help the dying man. Adonis moved to the side of the bed and took the slip of paper in his breast pocket, holding it concealed in the palm of his hand. With the pretense of helping the pharmacist, he slipped the paper inside Pisciotta's shirt. At the same time he looked down at Pisciotta's handsome face. It seemed to be contorted with grief, but Adonis knew it was the contraction of terrible pain. Part of the tiny mustache had been gnawed away in his agony. Hector Adonis at that moment said a prayer for his soul and felt a great sadness. He remembered when this man and his godson had walked arm in arm over the hills of Sicily reciting the poetry of Roland and Charlemagne.

It was almost six hours later that the note was found on the body, but that was still early enough for it to be included in the newspaper stories of Pisciotta's death and quoted all over Sicily. The piece of paper Hector Adonis had slipped inside Aspanu's shirt read so die all who betray guiliano.

CHAPTER 31

In Sicily, if you have any money at all, you do not put your loved ones into the ground. That is too final a defeat, and the earth of Sicily has already been responsible for too many indignities. So the cemeteries are filled with little stone and marble mausoleums – square tiny buildings called congregazioni. Iron grill doors bar their entrances. Inside are tiers in which coffins are put and then that particular tier is sealed with cement. The other tiers are reserved for family use.

Hector Adonis chose a fine Sunday shortly after Pisciotta's death to visit the Montelepre Cemetery. Don Croce was to meet him there to pray at the grave of Turi Guiliano. And since they had business to discuss, what better place for the meeting of the minds without vanity, for forgiveness of past injuries, for discretion?

And what better place to congratulate a colleague for a job well done? It had been Don Croce's duty to eliminate Pisciotta, who was too eloquent and had too good a memory. He had chosen Hector Adonis to mastermind the job. The note left on the body was one of the Don's most subtle gestures. It satisfied Adonis, and a political murder was disguised as an act of romantic justice. In front of the cemetery gates, Hector Adonis watched as the chauffeur and bodyguards lifted Don Croce out of his car. The Don's girth had increased enormously in the last year, his body seeming to grow with the immense power he had accrued.

The two men passed through the gate together. Adonis looked up at the curved archway. On the wrought-iron frame the metal was twisted to spell out a message for complacent mourners. It read: we have been like you-and you shall be like us.

Adonis smiled at the sardonic challenge. Guiliano would never be guilty of such cruelty, but it was exactly what Aspanu Pisciotta would shout from his grave.

Hector Adonis no longer felt the bitter hatred of Pisciotta that he had carried with him after Guiliano's death. He had taken his revenge. Now he thought of the two of them playing as children, becoming outlaws together.

Don Croce and Hector Adonis were deep in the sepulchral village of small stones and marble buildings. Don Croce and his bodyguards moved in a group, supporting each other on the rocky path; the driver carried a huge bouquet of flowers which he put on the gate of the congregazione that held Guiliano's body. Don Croce fussily rearranged the flowers, then peered at the small photograph of Guiliano pasted on the stone door. His bodyguards clung to the trunk of his body to keep him from falling.

Don Croce straightened up: 'He was a brave lad,' the Don said. 'We all loved Turi Guiliano. But how could we live with him? He wanted to change the world, turn it upside down. He loved his fellow man and who killed more of them? He believed in God and kidnapped a Cardinal.'

Hector Adonis studied the photograph. It had been taken when Guiliano was only seventeen, the height of beauty by the Mediterranean Sea. There was a sweetness in his face that made you love him, and you could never dream that he would order a thousand murders, send a thousand souls to hell.

Ah, Sicily, Sicily, he thought, you destroy your best and bring them to dust. Children more beautiful than the angels spring from your earth and turn into demons. The evil flourish in this soil like the bamboo and the prickly