She ignored her husband and Stefano Andolini, she spoke directly to Michael. 'Have you come to help my son or not?' The other two men looked embarrassed at the rudeness of her question, but Michael smiled at her gravely.
'Yes, I am with you.'
Some of the tension went out of her, and she bowed her head into her hands as if she had expected a blow. Andolini said to her in a soothing voice, 'Father Beniamino asked to come, I told him you did not wish it.'
Maria Lombardo raised her head and Michael marveled at how her face showed every emotion she felt. The scorn, the hatred, the fear, the irony of her words matching the flinty smile, the grimaces she could not repress. 'Oh, Father Beniamino has a good heart, without a doubt,' she said. 'And with that good heart of his he is like the plague, he brings death to an entire village. He is like the sisal plant – brush against him and you will bleed. And he brings the secrets of the confessional to his brother, he sells the souls in his keeping to the devil.'
Guiliano's father said with quiet reasonableness, as if he were trying to quiet a madman, 'Don Croce is our friend. He had us released from prison.'
Guiliano's mother burst out furiously, 'Ah, Don Croce, 'The Good Soul,' how kind he is always. But let me tell you, Don Croce is a serpent. He aims a gun forward and slaughters his friend by his side. He and our son were going to rule Sicily together, and now Turi is hiding alone in the mountains and 'The Good Soul' is free as air in Palermo with his whores. Don Croce has only to whistle and Rome licks his feet. And yet he has committed more crimes than our Turi. He is evil and our son is good. Ah, if I were a man like you I would kill Don Croce. I would put 'The Good Soul' to rest.' She made a gesture of disgust. 'You men understand nothing.'
Guiliano's father said impatiently, 'I understand our guest must be on the road in a few hours and that he must eat something before we can talk.'
Guiliano's mother suddenly became quite different. She was solicitous. 'Poor man, you've traveled all day to see us, you had to listen to Don Croce's lies and my ravings. Where do you go?'
'I must be in Trapani by morning,' Michael said. 'I stay with friends of my father until your son comes to me.'
There was a stillness in the room. He sensed they all knew his history. They saw the wound he had lived with for two years, the caved-in side of his face. Guiliano's mother came to him and gave him a quick embrace.
'Have a glass of wine,' she said. 'Then you go for a walk through the town. Food will be waiting on the table within the hour. And by that time Turi's friends will have arrived and we can talk sensibly.'
Andolini and Guiliano's father put Michael between them and strolled down the narrow, cobbled streets of Montelepre, the stones gleaming black now that the sun had fallen out of the sky. In the hazy blue air before twilight, only the figures of the National Police, the
'This was once a lively town,' Guiliano's father said. 'Always, always very poor, like all of Sicily, a lot of misery, but it was alive. Now more than seven hundred of our citizens are in jail, arrested for conspiracy with my son. They are innocent, most of them, but the government arrests them to frighten the others, to make them inform against my Turi. There are over two thousand National Police around this town and other thousands hunt Turi in the mountains. And so people no longer eat their dinner out of doors, their children can no longer play in the street. The police are such cowards they fire their guns if a rabbit runs across the road. There is a curfew after dark, and if a woman of the town wants to visit a neighbor and is caught they offer her indignities and insults. The men they cart off to torture in their Palermo dungeons.' He sighed. 'Such things could never happen in America. I curse the day I left.'
Stefano Andolini made them pause as he lit a small cigar. Puffing, he said with a smile, 'Tell the truth, all Sicilians prefer smelling the shit of their villages to the best perfumes in Paris. What am I doing here? I could have escaped to Brazil like some others. Ah, we love where we are born, we Sicilians, but Sicily does not love us.'
Guiliano's father shrugged. 'I was a fool to come back. If I had only waited a few more months my Turi would have been an American by law. But the air of that country must have seeped into his mother's womb.' He shook his head in bewilderment. 'Why did my son always concern himself with the troubles of other people, even those not related by blood? He always had such grand ideas, he always talked of justice. A true Sicilian talks of bread.'
As they walked down the Via Bella, Michael saw that the town was built ideally for ambush and guerrilla warfare. The streets were so narrow that only one motor vehicle could pass through, and many were only wide enough for the small carts and donkeys Sicilians still used for the transport of goods. A few men could hold back any invading force and then escape to the white limestone mountains that encircled the town.
They descended into the central square. Andolini pointed to the small church that dominated it and said, 'It was in this church that Turi hid when the National Police tried to capture him that very first time. Since then, he has been a ghost.' The three men watched the church door as if Salvatore Guiliano might appear before them.
The sun dropped behind the mountains, and they returned to the house just before curfew. Two strange men were waiting inside for them, strangers only to Michael, for they embraced Guiliano's father and shook Stefano Andolini's hand.
One was a slim young man with extremely sallow skin and huge dark feverish eyes. He had a dandyish mustache and an almost feminine prettiness, but he was in no way effeminate looking. He had the air of proud cruelty that comes to a man with a will to command at any cost.
When he was introduced as Gaspare Pisciotta, Michael was astonished. Pisciotta was Turi Guiliano's second in command, his cousin and his dearest friend. Next to Guiliano, he was the most wanted man in Sicily, with a price of five million lire on his head. From the legends Michael had heard, the name Gaspare Pisciotta conjured up a more dangerous and evil-looking man. And yet here he stood, so slender and with the feverish flush of the consumptive on his face. Here in Montelepre surrounded by two thousand of Rome's military police.
The other man was equally surprising but for a different reason. At first glance, Michael flinched. The man was so small that he could be taken for a dwarf but had such dignified bearing that Michael sensed immediately that his flinching might give mortal offense. He was dressed in an exquisitely tailored gray pin-striped suit, and a wide, rich-looking silver-toned tie rode down his creamy white shirt. His hair was thick and almost white; he could be no more than fifty years of age. He was elegant. Or as elegant as a very short man could be. He had a craggy, handsome face with a generous but sensitively curved mouth.
He recognized Michael's discomfort and greeted him with an ironic but kindly smile. He was introduced as Professor Hector Adonis.
Maria Lombardo Guiliano had dinner set out on the table in the kitchen. They ate by a window near the balcony where they could see the red-streaked sky, the darkness of night snuffing out the surrounding mountains. Michael ate slowly, aware they were all watching him, judging him. The food was very plain but good, spaghetti with the black inky sauce of squid and rabbit stew, hot with red pepper tomato sauce. Finally Gaspare Pisciotta spoke in the local Sicilian dialect. 'So, you are the son of Vito Corleone who is greater even than our own Don Croce, they tell me. And it is you who will save our Turi.'
His voice had a cool mocking tone, a tone that invited you to take offense if you dared. His smile seemed to question the motive behind every action, as if to say, 'Yes, it's true you are doing a good deed, but for what purpose of your own?' Yet it was not at all disrespectful, he knew Michael's history, they were fellow murderers.
Michael said, 'I follow my father's orders. I am to wait in Trapani until Guiliano comes to me. Then I will take him to America.'
Pisciotta said more seriously, 'And once Turi is in your hands, you guarantee his safety? You can protect him against Rome?'
Michael was aware of Guiliano's mother watching him intently, her face strained with anxiety. He said carefully, 'As much as a man can guarantee anything against fate. Yes, I'm confident.'
He saw the mother's face relax, but Pisciotta said harshly, 'I am not. You put your trust in Don Croce this afternoon. You told him your plan of escape.'
'Why should I not?' Michael fired back. How the hell did Pisciotta know the details of his lunch with Don Croce so quickly? 'My father's briefing said that Don Croce would arrange Guiliano's delivery to me. In any case I told him only one escape plan.'
