The Vendetta Defense

wanted to take.

That morning Tony repaired the battered cages as quickly as he could, watched only by the pigeons roosting and cooing in the loft, and when he was sure his father had gone to market, he washed his face and hands and rode his chubby brown pony north across the provincial border and into the main street of Mas-coli, the Via Dante Alighieri. Mascoli was a medieval city spiked with towers of local travertine, and Tony couldn’t help but stare skyward at the sharp peak of the massive Duomo, so tall it seemed to pierce the blue of heaven. The close-together buildings, the shouting and auto horns, and the swarms of city people put him on edge but not in the extreme, since he had once faced down a runaway bull in the olive groves and nothing compared to that.

The only thing that truly worried Tony were the Blackshirts, and so he wasn’t surprised that he started to sweat when he turned right onto the Via Barberia. He traveled past the majestic Palazzo Capitani and the Piazza del Popolo, crowded with students who barely seemed to notice the singular beauty of the huge piazza and its sixteenth-century porticos. It seemed to Tony almost obscene that the Fascist headquarters were so nearby, in the office of a leftist newspaper the Blackshirts had put out of business. Tony drew within its sight. Coluzzi would be inside.

Tony urged his pony on, his legs swinging on either side of its rotund belly, and the animal sweating lather in the noonday sun. Automobiles honked behind him, one even driven by a woman, which he found shocking, but the pony was too tired to bother hurrying along. At a distance from the Fascist office Tony dismounted and stood behind the pony, not bothering to find anything to hitch him to. Only a barn fire would get the animal to move again today.

Businessmen hurried back and forth down the street, with their fancy suits and their groomed mustaches, and Tony pulled his sweaty straw hat down over his eyes and pretended to read a discarded newspaper against his pony’s damp back, though he couldn’t read. He kept an eye on the entrance of the building, seeing the Blackshirts come and go in laughing groups, as if they were factory workers in uniform and not thugs in costume. Their influence was unchallenged. Tony had heard they were now making the schoolchildren dress in little black shirts and do gymnastic exercises, even in the heat, in the schoolyards before class.

He spit on the cobblestones. He shared his father’s views that the arrogant Il Duce, his womanizing son-in- law Ciano, and the Blackshirts were a plague of black flies feeding on his country, and, as with flies, only God knew where they came from and only God knew when they’d leave. But Tony and his father kept these views to themselves, as they had to be the only family in Abruzzo who felt this way. The region was friendly to the Fascists, given the vast difference between the aristocracy and the farmers there, and Tony didn’t think the black flies were leaving Abruzzo anytime soon, much less Italy. Mussolini had of late joined with the German dictator, and no good would come of it.

Suddenly Tony saw a shiny black car pull up and Angelo Coluzzi emerge from the office, be saluted, and disappear into the back of the car. Tony’s mouth went dry. A car! He hadn’t thought of that. Idiota! He had imagined Coluzzi walking to see Silvana, or at most driving a cart. What had he been thinking? Mascoli was a big place, not a village like his own! Everything was too far to walk, and men drove cars, not carts! He was a bumpkin, it was true! The car was driving away.

Tony had to hurry. He brushed the newspaper off the pony’s back but the sweat held the last page in place. Madonna! He scrambled onto the pony’s back anyway and started kicking him to trot, the newspaper saddle flapping around his legs. The pony didn’t budge, hanging his large head low as if in slumber. “Andiamo!” Tony called to the pony, who had no name, and a child on the street laughed at the ridiculous spectacle. Tony’s face reddened. He had hoped to be unobtrusive, to blend into the city. He should have known. Stupido!

Coluzzi’s car drove off down the street, heading toward the river, negotiating the heavy traffic. Tony kicked wildly. The pony took root. The car was getting away, down the street. Tony clucked and snapped the rope halter, but the pony stood still. Coluzzi’s car turned the corner, onto the Via Maggiore. It was getting away!

Tony had to go. He slid off the pony and left it by the roadside, where it fell immediately asleep, and Tony ran off after the car, holding on to his hat. The businesspeople dismissed him as a country bumpkin, and he picked up his pace and kept his head down. The car was long gone. The corner where it had turned lay straight ahead. Tony sprinted for it, and when he reached it, stopped and clung panting to a building. Unfortunately it wasn’t as busy as the main street, and the car was making smooth progress. Tony hurried on, his droopy leather boots soft on the sidewalk. Where was Coluzzi going? Was he going to see Silvana? He had to, didn’t he? Sooner or later?

The car turned another corner, and Tony ran after it, keeping his stride even on the crowded sidewalk. It drove down the street, speeding up when it reached its end and turning again, right this time. Tony lost track of the streets but still ran after it. He was getting lost. His feet began to hurt and the sun beat down on him. He whipped off his hat, too far from the car to worry about being recognized. The automobiles clogging the streets made the city hot, and the smoke they spit from their tailpipes filled Tony’s lungs. Still he kept running.

The car came to an abrupt stop in front of an older building with a painted sign out front. Tony slowed his pace to catch his breath as he saw Angelo Coluzzi and three other Blackshirts spring from the car and run inside. Tony didn’t understand. What could be so urgent inside? Did Silvana work there? Maybe her father owned it? In a minute Tony got his answer.

The Blackshirts burst from the storefront holding a little chemist between them. His white coat was splattered with blood and his head hung low. A woman on the street fled the scene just as Angelo Coluzzi ran from the shop and began punching the unconscious chemist in the face. The chemist’s head popped back with each blow and his spectacles flew to the pavement.

Tony couldn’t believe his eyes and without a second thought ran down the block to help the man. Four against one wasn’t a fair fight; any man could see that. The chemist crumpled to the pavement, and Coluzzi started kicking him in the ribs with his black boots.

“Stop!” Tony shouted, running, but Coluzzi was too far to hear. The fourth Blackshirt ran out of the shop, grabbed Coluzzi, and all of them leaped into the car, which took off.

“Hoodlums!” Tony screamed after them but the car sped down the street. He reached the man’s side and cradled him on the sidewalk. One eye was already swollen shut, fresh blood bubbled from his broken nose, and his cheeks were a pulp that repulsed even Tony, who had birthed breeched calves.

“Sir, wait here while I get you a doctor!” Tony looked frantically around the street, bewildered. A pole for a barbershop. A store with Borsalinos in the window. Offices with signs he couldn’t read. He didn’t even know where he was. How could he find a doctor? “We need a doctor!” he cried out, but the crowd was dispersing.

“No, no, go away,” the chemist said weakly.

Tony assumed the man was delirious. “But surely, you need medical help!”

“No, forget it, go away, bumpkin! It’s none of your business!” The chemist struggled from a stunned Tony’s arms and managed to pull himself onto all fours on the pavement, crawling off like a beaten cur. “Leave me alone, boy!”

“Sir, you need help!” Tony shouted as the chemist labored to his feet and staggered inside his shop, slamming the shattered front door closed behind him. Leaving Tony on the street alone, his hands covered in blood, thinking but a single thought: Dove parlano tamburi, tacciono le leggi. Where drums beat, laws are silent.

An hour later it was a dazed Tony who found his way back to his sleeping pony, feeling like an adult, seeing the city around him with grown-up eyes. Life went on as if nobody had been beaten senseless on the street. The sun was low in the sky, the business day winding down, and the traffic clogged the streets. Tony’s world was the farm, and he hadn’t seen what was happening around him, to the land he loved, to his very country. He didn’t understand how Italy had gotten to this point, where thugs ran free. Oddly, even the horrifying scene with the chemist couldn’t chase Silvana from Tony’s thoughts. On the contrary, his attraction to her had grown, for now he was afraid for her safety.

Under his straw hat, Tony kept his eyes trained on the Fascist headquarters. Blackshirts began to leave the office in small groups, walking off to cars and motorcycles, and at the sight of them Tony heard himself growl like a dog. His pony glanced back at the muttering, waking up only briefly. Finally Angelo Coluzzi came out, talking with a fellow Blackshirt, his clothes neatly pressed and his face washed clean of blood. Tony couldn’t hear what they were saying, but his senses told him something had changed. Angelo Coluzzi had the look of a rooster, strutting about. He was a man going to court a woman. Silvana.

Tony’s blood felt hot as Coluzzi walked toward a car that pulled up from the curb and was slapped on the