‘In the year 999, a handful of men from the north, the Normans, came down and seized control of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily,’ his father explained one night during a brief visit. ‘They expelled the Lombards, the Byzantines and the Arabs, and commanded with an iron fist. But they did not disdain the people of Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Sicily and Calabria, a people whose exceptional beauty was the result of mixing the blood of the red Germanic Lombards with the dark-skinned Arabs and Africans, and the pampered Greeks, Albanians, Illyrians and descendants of the ancient Romans. The Normans and then their descendants melted into the local people, but without losing any of their fierceness. They set out to conquer the Holy Land, while their cousins on the Atlantic coast of France, lacking land and with warrior fathers who did not want to pass on any of their wealth even to their own sons, conquered the British Isles. Ours is warrior blood. That, son, is why your eyes are blue and why I named you Ruggiero and your baby brother Roberto. In history, the Norman Robert was earlier, but Roger was greater. You are named after the Norman Knight who created the Kingdom of the South. Learn about him.’
Ruggiero had done as his father asked, reading books he barely understood, then reading them again. He even read three in English. And when his father returned six months later, he was dying to show off his newly acquired knowledge, but his father asked him nothing. A full year later, he appeared one night at the doorway of Ruggiero’s bedroom and returned to the subject.
‘Your mother tells me you have been reading those books about the Normans. What have you learned?’
Ruggiero started listing the dates and places of the battles through southern Italy, the leading knights, the Norman families, and their long war with the Byzantines, the Pope and the Lombards. His father listened, nodded, asked him some dates, corrected a few things, and gave him no praise.
The following night, he asked him what else he had learned, and Ruggiero spoke of the conquest of the Holy Land, the Italians and Normans in Antioch and Jerusalem, all the way up to the final defeat of the last of the Norman kings in Benevento.
On the third and final night before he left for Germany, his father again asked him what he had learned, but Ruggiero had come to the death of Conradin and the books his father had given him went no further.
‘So, what did you learn?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think.’
‘I learned what sort of people they were.’
‘And what was that?’ asked his father.
‘They were men of faith, who believed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Apostolic Church, but they still went to war against the Pope.’
‘Excellent. Even as they held him captive, they begged his forgiveness. What else?’
‘Brother fought brother, cousin fought cousin. And they had a grand council. When they had a common enemy, like the emperor of Constantinople, they came together. But they also fought each other, and sometimes even in the middle of a joint operation one family would try to gain the lands of another.’
‘Yet each battle was eventually resolved by the other families if ever a dispute threatened to undermine their right to rule southern Italy,’ said his father.
Six months later his father, speaking to him after dinner while his mother was upstairs with the newborn Robertino, said, ‘I will not sit by your bedside and tell you stories any more. You are too old for that.’
Ruggiero nodded, sad and pleased.
‘But a little modern history won’t hurt. I’m talking about the 1960s, a long time before you were born, but a period which to many people still seems like yesterday. It was a period of change and internal war. Since then, we have become ever stronger, which is only natural. Do you know why?’
Ruggiero rightly considered this a rhetorical question and said nothing.
‘Threats and restrictions are what make us strong. Threats above all, provided they are external and not internal. Outside enemies make us strong. Restrictions and obedience also make us strong. Someday, it may be good to find yourself facing a powerful enemy, especially one who thinks he knows your weaknesses. And you will have a weakness. We all do.’
‘So how do you stop them from exploiting it?’
‘You change it at the last moment. The regular drunkard who turns up for a fight with his mind alert, focused and sober, the coward who puts his life on the line, the miser who throws away all his wealth to confound his enemy, the joker who turns deadly serious — these are the people who suddenly emerge victorious. But first you need to see where your weakness is. For this you need an enemy, because your enemy will always be nearer the truth in their opinion of you than you are yourself.’
‘What’s your weakness, Papa?’
‘Find out your own first before you ask me, and find it from someone who hates you.’
‘Is that how you found out yours?’
‘I had many weaknesses, but I have worked for years in a foreign and hostile land in the company of someone who hates me more with each passing day, and that has kept me alive, alert and strong.’
‘Are you talking about Enrico’s dad? I thought our families were close.’
‘We are. But let me tell you a story about Tony. In some ways, it is a story that redounds to his honour. I want you to know it so that you understand something of the character of the man. I also want you to imagine how it would feel to be the enemy of a man such as this. Are you following me?’
‘Yes.’
‘In 1963, a faction of the Society was still aligned with the Communist Party. This was because the party was not in government and was regarded as being a sort of anti-state. All the Society’s income came from providing business protection and seizing hostages, or kidnap victims as the press always called them, from the wealthy north for distribution to the people of our land. So the melandrini, the Ndrangheta gangs, were doing in deed what the Communists only promised. That year, a feud broke out between the Mazzaferro and Neri families over the control of the bergamot orange plantations of Reggio Calabria. The Mazzaferro represented an old version of the Society based on ideas of socialism and land reform. Not collectivization or real socialism, since there always have to be landlords and tenants, but they wanted more social justice. The Neri represented a new right-wing version of the Society. In those days, they were very interested in what was going on in Greece where the colonels had taken power. The Neri got mixed up with monarchists and fascists and princes of the Church, as well as magistrates, Christian Democrats, and even elements of the armed forces and police. It was a strange time of strange ideologies, none of which survived for long.
‘The feud between these two families would not usually involve people from our side of the country. But one family from our area, the Megales, with great strategic acumen, decided to offer assistance to the Neris. They sent an expeditionary force up the mountain to help them. So it was that one night in May 1964, a group led by Domenico Megale — you know of him now as Megale u Vecchiu because he is old, but then he was still in his prime, and everyone called him Mimmo instead of Domenico. They say he brought with him his son, then twelve years of age, to show the people of the town that even if his son was slow in his speech and thought, he was fast and merciless in his action. I’m not sure if that’s true.’
‘You mean Zio Pietro?’ Ruggiero tried to picture Enrico’s truculent and silent uncle as a boy, but couldn’t.
‘Yes, Zio Pietro. Now, where was I?’
‘Domenico Megale was leading an expeditionary group,’ said Ruggiero.
‘Right. Domenico Megale and his group breached the defences of the Mazzaferro fort, which was nothing more than a drystone house on the slopes of Aspromonte, and destroyed its inhabitants, wiping out an entire branch of the Mazzaferro. That night of slaughter ended the feud, and relegated that branch of the Mazzaferro family, or what was left of it, to obscurity.’
‘But the Mazzaferro are still in charge in Gioioso Ionico.’
‘Different clan, same surname. Don’t interrupt,’ said his father. ‘When Megale and the Neri squad left, there were twelve males and eight females left dead, their ages ranging from seven to seventy-seven. Four more were seriously injured, three of them maimed for life, and if you look you may well see one of them, disfigured of body, who remains among us yet, pardoned and reinstated by Basile himself.’
‘Was Basile involved in any of this?’
‘Basile was the deal-maker and peacekeeper. He did not take sides, which is his speciality. He never takes sides until the dust settles, and is always ready to mediate. Basile’s only interest is this area, and now he has this
