alone, just four houses down the street. Her husband was killed by the
She paused for a moment and then said, 'La Venera.' And of course since the discussion had begun, they had been waiting for her to say that name. From the first, La Venera had been the only logical choice in all their minds. But they were Sicilian males and could not make such a suggestion. If La Venera agreed and the story came out, her reputation would be ruined forever. She was a young widow. She would be granting her privacy and her person to a young male. Who could ever doubt that she would lose her virtue? No man in that part of Sicily could marry or even respect such a woman. It was true that La Venera was at least fifteen years older than Turi Guiliano. But she was not yet forty. And though her face was not beautiful, it was attractive enough, and there was a certain fire in her eyes. In any case she was female and he was male and with the tunnel they would be alone together. There could not therefore be any doubt that they would become lovers, for no Sicilian believed that any male and female alone together, no matter what difference in age, could refrain. And so the tunnel into her house that perhaps might one day save Turi Guiliano's life would also mark her as a woman of ill repute. What they all understood except for Turi Guiliano himself was that Guiliano's sexual chastity worried them. It was not natural in a Sicilian male. He was almost prudish. His band of men went to Palermo to visit whores; Aspanu Pisciotta had scandalous love affairs. His bandit chiefs Terranova and Passatempo were known to be the lovers of poor widows to whom they gave gifts. Passatempo even had a reputation as a man who used persuasion more typical of rapist than suitor, though he trod carefully now that he was under Guiliano's orders. Guiliano had decreed execution for any of his men who raped.
For all these reasons they had to wait for Guiliano's mother to put forth the name of her friend, and they were a little surprised when she did so. Maria Lombardo Guiliano was a religious, old-fashioned woman who did not hesitate to call the young girls of the town whores if they so much as took a stroll in the village square without a chaperone. They did not know what Maria Lombardo knew. That La Venera, because of the sufferings of childbirth, the lack of proper medical care, could no longer become pregnant. They could not know that Maria Lombardo had already decided that La Venera could best comfort her son in the safest possible way. Her son was an outlaw with a price on his head and could easily be betrayed by a woman. He was young and virile and needed a woman – who better than an older woman who could not bear children, and who could not make any claims for marriage? And indeed would not want to marry a bandit. She had had her fill of that misery. A husband shot down before her eyes. It was a perfect arrangement. Only La Venera's reputation would suffer, and so she would have to make the decision herself. It would be on her head if she agreed.
When Guiliano's mother made that request a few days later she was surprised when La Venera gave a proud and joyful yes. It confirmed a suspicion that her friend had a weakness for Turi. So be it, Maria Lombardo thought as she took La Venera into her arms with grateful tears. The offshoot tunnel was completed in four months; the main tunnel would not be completed for another year. Periodically Guiliano would sneak into town at night and visit his family and sleep in a warm bed, after his mother's hot meals; there would always be a feast. But it was nearly spring before he found it necessary to use the offshoot tunnel. A
The offshoot was disguised by a wooden panel covered with a foot of dirt so that workers on the main tunnel would not know it existed. Guiliano had to dig away the dirt and remove the wooden disc. It took him another fifteen minutes to crawl through the narrow space that led under La Venera's house. The trapdoor there led to the kitchen and was covered by a huge iron stove. Guiliano tapped on the trapdoor with the prearranged signal and waited. He tapped again. He never feared bullets, but he feared this darkness. Finally there was a faint noise above him and then the trapdoor was raised. It could not rise all the way because the stove above it broke the plane of the lid. Guiliano had to squeeze through the opening and wound up on his belly on La Venera's kitchen floor.
Though it was the middle of the night, La Venera was still in her usual ill-fitting black dress, the mourning for her husband though he was three years dead. Her feet were bare. She wore no stockings, and as Guiliano rose from the floor he could see the skin on her legs was a startling white, so very much in contrast to the brown skin of her sunburned face and the jet black, coarse and heavily woven hair. For the first time he noticed that her face was not as broad as that of most of the older women in his town, that it was triangular, and though her eyes were dark brown, they had little black flecks in them he had never seen before. In her hand she held a scuttle full of live coals as if ready to throw them at the open trapdoor. Now she calmly slid the coals back into the stove and replaced the lid. She looked a little frightened.
Guiliano reassured her. 'It's just a patrol roaming around. When they return to their barracks, I'll leave. But don't worry, I have friends out in the street.'
They waited. La Venera made him coffee and they chatted. She noted that he did not have any of the nervous movements of her husband. He did not peer out the windows, his body did not tense at sudden noises in the street. He seemed completely relaxed. She did not know he had trained himself to act this way because of her stories about her husband and because he did not want to alarm his parents, especially his mother. He projected such an air of confidence that she soon forgot the danger he was in and they gossiped about the little happenings of the town.
She asked him if he had received the food she had sent him in the mountains from time to time. He thanked her and said how he and his companions had fallen on her food packets as if they were gifts from the Magi. How his men had complimented her cooking. He did not tell her of the coarse jokes some of his companions had made, that if her lovemaking equaled her cooking she would be a prize indeed. Meanwhile he was watching her closely. She was not being as friendly to him as usual; she did not show that fond tenderness she had always shown in public. He wondered if he had offended her in some way. When the danger was past and it was time for him to leave, they were formal with each other.
Two weeks later, Guiliano came to her again. The winter was near its end, but the mountains were filled with storm gales and the padlocked shrines of saints along the roads were dripping with rain. Guiliano in his cave dreamed of his mother's cooking, a hot bath, his soft bed in his childhood room. And mixed with these longings, much to his surprise, was the memory of the white skin of La Venera's legs. Night had fallen when he whistled up to his bodyguards and took the road down to Montelepre.
His family greeted him with joy. His mother started to cook his favorite dishes and as they were cooking she prepared a hot bath. His father had poured him a glass of anisette when one of the network of spies came to the house and told him that
Guiliano went through the closet trapdoor and into the tunnel. It was muddy with rain and the earth clung to him and made the trip long and laborious. When he crawled into La Venera's kitchen his clothes were covered with slime, his face black.
When La Venera saw him, she laughed and it was the first time Guiliano could ever remember her laughing. 'You look like a Moor,' she said. And for a moment he felt a child's hurt, perhaps because the Moors were always the villains in the puppet shows of Sicily, and instead of being a hero in danger of his life, he could be seen as a villain. Or perhaps because her laugh made her seem inaccessible to his inner desire. She saw that in some way she had injured his vanity. 'I'll fill the bath tin and you can get clean,' she said. 'And I have some of my husband's clothes you can wear while I clean yours.'
She had expected him to object, that he would be too nervous to bathe in such a moment of danger. Her husband had been so jumpy when he visited her that he would never undress, never leave his guns out of reach of his hands. But Guiliano smiled at her and took off his heavy jacket and his guns and put them over the wooden box that held her firewood.
It took time to heat pots of water and fill the tin tub. She gave him coffee while they waited and studied him. He was handsome as an angel, she thought, but she was not deceived. Her husband had been as handsome and murdered men. And the bullets that killed him had made him ugly enough, she thought with misery; it was not
