The Four Corners of Palermo

by Giuseppe Di Piazza

  “City news?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have some things to tell you about the picciriddi fatti scomparsi—the children that were disappeared.”

  The same voice, the same sound like a dried walnut.

  “Buon giorno, I’m listening.”

  I grabbed a piece of paper covered with writing and turned it over: underneath was a black Bic ballpoint.

  “You need to take notes.”

  “I’m taking notes.”

  “Good. Now then: the three picciriddi? Vito Carriglio disappeared them in Sant’Onofrio.”

  He pronounced the words clearly, and his accent became harder, even wrinklier.

  I scribbled the words. My heart was racing.

  “Can you tell me where Sant’Onofrio is?”

  “Did you take that note?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Click.

  I sat there, staring at the sheet of paper. Then I thought of a small town by that name, over near Altavilla Milicia. I knew someone who lived there. I picked up the phone book for the province of Palermo. Rallo, Raspano, Ravanusa … Ravanusa, Salvatore: Contrada Sant’Onofrio, phone number 26.06.01.

  It was there.

  A house, a field, a grave, a prison?

  I went to my news editor and told him about the phone call. We decided not to call the chief of the mobile squad immediately: after all, he’d had me followed, so he could wait a little while to find out. I’d check things out on my own. First I needed to talk with Carriglio’s lawyer. And pay a call on Rosaria Savasta.

  I started at the hall of justice. By noon the day’s hearings were already over, and Counselor Giovanni Gallina was one of the lucky ones that day. I found him at the bar, his black robe draped over his arm, kidding around with two other colleagues. I walked over and as I approached, I heard that they were talking appraisingly about a female clerk of the court.

  “You ought to see the minne on her,” Gallina was saying as he raised a Stagnitta-brand demitasse of espresso to his lips. The other two lawyers joined in with some bawdy mimicry, tracing double B-cups in the air. They stopped snickering when they saw that I was heading straight for them.

  “Counselor Gallina, forgive me for intruding.”

  I introduced myself, and he knew who I was: he’d been reading my articles about his client. The other two lawyers made themselves scarce, claiming a sudden urgent need to get back to their hearings.

  “Prego, tell me what I can do for you,” said Gallina, checking to make sure his charcoal-gray jacket was buttoned properly. He’d taken on an alert and professional tone of voice, the tone of a man about to earn a retainer.

  “I’d be interested in talking to your client Carriglio.”

  “So would everyone. You can’t imagine how many journalists have called me. But he’s in prison, at the Ucciardone. It’s not that easy to get a permit for a visit in there …”

  “Pass me off as your assistant: we can go together.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I have a piece of information that no one else has.”

  Counselor Gallina leaned a foot closer. His breath smelled of coffee.

  “And just what would this piece of information be?”

  “I know a name that might mean something to your client.”

  “And what would that mean to me?”

  “That depends. The name is Sant’Onofrio.”

  The lawyer furrowed his brow and expressed his doubts: “What the fuck is Sant’Onofrio?”

  “A place.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Maybe Carriglio has: Why don’t you ask him, and then we can talk later this afternoon.”

  We exchanged phone numbers and a handshake.

  I went back out onto the street.

  The Vespa was parked in front of the newspaper. I released, all at once, the tension that had been building up inside me as I shoved my foot down onto the kick-starter. The engine turned over instantly. I was heading for Acqua dei Corsari.

  The little building on Via Ettore li Gotti was just as dreary as it had been the first time I met Rosaria Savasta. Someone must have dumped an animal carcass next to a pile of garbage as tall as a truck. You couldn’t see the carcass, but you could smell it.

  I rang the bell. I announced my name.

  The door clicked open.

  Rosaria Savasta was a dark patch in the dim light of the landing. She was waiting for me with one hand on the anodized railing.

  “What is it?”

  “I have something to ask you.”

  “Come in.”

  I entered. I heard sounds coming from the kitchen. I imagined the old crow moving pots and pans by pecking at them with her beak.

  “What is it?” she asked again, pointing me to a chair.

  “Have you ever heard of a place called Sant’Onofrio?”

  She made the distinctive Sicilian sound for no, clucking her tongue against the front of the roof of her mouth. As she made that sound, she jutted her chin out and tipped her head back. I once read that there are only two peoples on earth who nod their head vertically to express the word “no”: a nomad people of the Sahel and the Sicilians.

  “But this Sant’Onofrio must mean something. I got this from the same person who called me the first time.”

  I didn’t say anything more. First I wanted to find out if she knew anything. Then I’d report to the mobile squad.

  “No, that stinking fituso of a husband of mine never talked to me about this Sant’Onofrio.”

  “I didn’t see you the other night at Ficuzza. It was a good thing you didn’t come.”

  “I was with my father.”

  I thought about what would have happened if the bodies of the three children really had been buried there, in the Ficuzza forest. The delirious face of Vito Carriglio resurfaced in my memory. I imagined the days and nights of that married couple, in bed, waking up in the morning, during their meals, while the children were suffering from colic. The normal everyday life of a Mafia couple—he’s a two-bit malacarne; she’s the daughter of a mob boss. A violent, out-of-control life, with three little children who thought they had a mother and a father like everybody else.

  “And just what did Signor Savasta say to you?”

  She looked me up and down. The outcome of that glance would determine the likelihood of my learning anything. She decided to trust me: I hadn’t written anything the first time, and I wouldn’t write anything the second time either.

  “It doesn’t matter what my father said to me, what matters is what I asked him for.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Vendetta.”

  Rosaria stood up and went into the kitchen. The noise of the pots and pans stopped as the echo of that word reverberated in the room: vendetta.

  She came back a couple of minutes later. She didn’t offer me anything to eat: she’d just wanted to take a break from herself and her anger.

  “Signora Rosaria, what do you really know?”

  “That that piece of stinking fetenzia took my children. If he killed them, he’ll have to die.”

  “But why would Vito do something so horrible, why would he kill any children, especially his own children?”

  “To show his contempt for me, and to show his contempt for my father. That’s the most important thing to him: his miserable determination to punish my family.”

  “What did you ever do to him?”

  “Nothing. If anything, we made him part of a family with a powerful name.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re a journalist: you weren’t born to understand. What quarter do you come from?”

  “I’m from Via Notarbartolo.”

  “Then you can’t understand a thing.”

  “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  She looked at me the way you look at little children who ask questions about what heaven is like.

  “He was a good-looking boy, Vito was. He w
as twenty years old, big and strong. I noticed him outside a bar, he was making everyone laugh, he drove a souped-up Fiat 500 Abarth, he was selling contraband cigarettes. I liked the way he talked with people. I was a seventeen-year-old signorina, the daughter of Don Peppino Savasta. I was supposed to get married to someone on our same level. But that boy attracted me. I started to say buon giorno to him as I went past the bar. And he paid me compliments. We’d sneak out together for a gelato, or sandwiches with chickpea fritters. Two months later we eloped. We organized it carefully: he took a hotel room in Cefalù, I gave him my virginity, my youth, and once I’d been shamed—svergognata—then the only remedy was to get married.”

  I felt a certain degree of respect for this woman who had decided to tell the truth. She adjusted her hair, pulled back in a bun, and went on with her story.

  “My father was helpless to do anything about it. Love had carried the day, or at least that’s what I thought. The first child came immediately, a boy, Giuseppe, like his grandfather. Then Salvatore and finally Costanza. In the meantime Vito discovered what it meant to be part of a real family. Strict rules. No fooling around. Seriousness, utter respect. But he wasn’t cut out for it. He was too mafallannu for my father, too much of a useless thing. And he could sense how my family looked down their noses at him. He started to make excuses every time there was an official holiday that involved a family meal. He’d say that he had to pick up a load of cigarettes, or else that he had a little job to do at Arenella. He just didn’t want to see my family. He didn’t want to sense the condemnation he could see in their eyes. He spent as little time at home as possible; I raised the children myself, with the help of my sister Assunta, who remained unmarried, still Signorina Assunta.”

  I took mental notes. A mountain of information that might well prove useful.

  “When did the drugs start?”

  “Two, three years ago. Cocaine. Vito changed from one day to the next. He went crazy. He always seemed to have a fever, his eyes bugging out, watery. He raised his hands to me every day: a slap, a kick, no matter what I said. I threatened to tell my father. Then he’d stop, but after thinking it over he’d slap me again, or punch me. He hated my father and I was a part of my father. He raised his hands to me in front of my children …”

  “Yes, you told me about that.”

  “So I threw him out. He found a place to live, I don’t know where, and he took the children to sleep at his sister’s place, in Passo di Rigano. And then they never came back.”

  She fell silent.

  Her eyes were still dry. That woman was a piece of tufa stone, a hewn block you could build a cathedral with.

  “What did your father say when you asked him to take vengeance?”

  “He’s my father: What do you think he said?”

  She got to her feet. I heard the gong ring. Round over.

  Rosaria Savasta saw me to the door, and, as I was walking down the first flight of stairs, she said: “The truth … Vito Carriglio doesn’t deserve the truth. I want you to remember that.”

  Via Ettore li Gotti welcomed me back, with its stench of a rotting carcass. My ten-year-old Vespa was the newest thing for a mile around.

  On my way home I summed up the content of that conversation: Vito Carriglio was practically a dead man walking.

  The October afternoon cooled off, and the khaki fatigue jacket was light for the brisk sea breeze I could feel hitting me as I sped down Via Messina Marine on my Vespa. The Cala harbor was illuminated, and the moored sailboats were rocking gently. On the waterfront boardwalk, the best focaccia shop of Mandamento Tribunali was lit by a five-hundred-watt fishing lamp, which hung over the cauldron where the spleen was bubbling in the hot lard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two men, holding a little boy by one hand each, bite into those focaccias. I smiled at the thought of that Palermitan aperitif.

  When I got home, Fabrizio was there. The sound of a piano came from the living room. Delicate, harmonious notes, in sharp contrast with the day I’d had.

  “Fabri, what are you listening to?”

  “Serena put it on. Erik Satie.”

  I went to take a look at the album cover: Gymnopédie.

  “Sere is in the bathroom, she’s taking a shower. I’m going to play some soccer. I’ll be back by eleven, and if you want we can go over to Ilardo’s to get a gelato.”

  “Fine. We’ll have something to eat and wait for you.”

  A plan that involved a crime. Or at least the willingness to commit one.

  Fabrizio picked up his gym bag and left. Serena was still in the bathroom.

  Cicova looked up at me imploringly. He followed me into the kitchen and I opened a can of tuna and rice for him. I cleaned the kitty litter and changed the water in his bowl. He was the only creature I could trust at that moment: he deserved good treatment.

  I treated Serena well, too, when I saw her walk in wrapped in Fabrizio’s bathrobe, with a towel twisted atop her head, a turban for her wet hair.

  “I made you a cocktail: white wine and crème de cassis. The stupidest drink there is, they call it a Kir. You want it?”

  “Certainly I want it, journalist.”

  She gave me a damp kiss on my beard. I smelled the scent of shower soap and shampoo wafting into the air from her warm body. A sweet sensation.

  “What did you do today, Sere?”

  “Seventeenth-century art, there’s no getting away from it.”

  “Didn’t you go out?”

  “Your friend and I went to Piazza Marina to see Palazzo Steri. He told me that in the seventeenth century, in that palazzo, the Inquisition had its headquarters, and they burned people at the stake right out front, where the giant magnolia fig trees are now.”

  “Did you see the cells?”

  “No.”

  “There are still words carved into the walls by miserable wretches who were about to be burned at the stake.”

  “I have to say that you Palermitans—”

  “That those Roman Catholics, I think you should say …”

  “Sure, but all the same, death is a constant theme in your minds.”

  “Just a short walk from the Steri there’s a painting that represents us perfectly: it’s called The Triumph of Death; I don’t know if Fabrizio took you to see it.”

  “That’s a pleasure we’re saving for our golden years.”

  She laughed. I drank up the last of my Kir.

  “What do you want to eat?” I asked her.

  “Whatever there is.”

  I opened the refrigerator. I saw some red tomatoes.

  “I could make some pasta with a picchio-pacchio sauce.”

  “I’ll trust you.”

  “Tomatoes sautéed in a garlic and oil base.”

  “I’ll trust you even more.”

  She went to change.

  Twenty minutes later we were sitting down to dinner.

  For dinner, I’d put on the Velvet Underground with Nico. She wasn’t even willing to wait for “Femme Fatale” to come on before she started talking about what had happened between the two of us at Antonio’s villa.

  “You’re an unusual person,” she said without glancing at me.

  “Why?”

  “Other guys wouldn’t have stopped.”

  “I never got started.”

  She shot me a cold, hard glare. Then she took another forkful of spaghetti.

  “Okay. You and your friends …” She shook her head. “What the fuck, you Palermitans.”

  “I really care about Fabrizio. He’s my better half.”

  She laughed: “No, he’s mine.”

  She’d laughed it off, and I was happy she had.

  “You know how much it cost me not to get started?”

  Her gaze softened. Everybody likes a compliment.

  Cicova leapt onto my legs, rubbing his head against the edge of the table. Then he stretched out, as if he’d fainted. I scratched his belly: as I touched him I understood the meaning of the word “ecstasy.�
��

  Serena cleared the table. When she picked up my plate, she caressed my beard. I also understood the meaning of the word “terror.” I feared that the strength I’d displayed at the villa might abandon me unexpectedly.

  She went into the kitchen and cleaned up all by herself. I took the Velvet Underground off and turned on the TV. We sat at an amiable distance watching a French movie that was playing on a private network: the story of a television repairman falling for his first love all over again, and then another guy who was head over heels in love shows up and gets down on one knee and declares his love for her. In other words, a movie about love.

  At eleven o’clock we heard the door open. Fabrizio threw his gym bag on the floor and called us: “You guys ready?”

  The pezzi duri that Ilardo made took us into territory that we’d already explored and was therefore safe: I ordered chocolate, Serena ordered Chantilly rice, and Fabrizio ordered cassata. We were a family, a bit Jules and Jim and a bit otherwise, but whatever—it was all fine.

  Before falling asleep I thought once again about Vito Carriglio and Rosaria Savasta. What love could there have been between the two of them? What misunderstandings could have generated that physical attraction? How important had whatever affinities might have existed been? How crucial is the idea of being kindred spirits, twin souls? I saw Fabrizio’s and Serena’s hands, intertwined in the darkness of the room. Then I saw my hands and Serena’s. In another world, possibly.

  I fell asleep with a picture in my mind: her white knuckles, her long, tapered fingers wrapped in mine.

  The telephone rang at seven in the morning. I managed to answer before it woke up Fabrizio and Serena: there are certain sounds that fit right into a dream, and I hoped that was the case for them.

  “This is Counselor Gallina.”

  “Buon giorno, counselor.”

  “Last night I talked to my client, at the Ucciardone prison. He was pretty down. I told him about Sant’Onofrio and his face lit up. He asked me who knew about that place. I mentioned your name. I explained that you’re a journalist. He turned gloomy again. He said nothing for a while. Then he told me: All right, I want to talk to this journalist.”

  “Today?”

  “This morning, if that’s all right with you.”