The Sicilian

by Mario Puzo

  “I have a wagonload of wine for you,” Guiliano bawled out again. He blew his nose with his fingers and snapped the mucus off into the gate.

  “Who ordered this wine?” the Corporal asked. But he was walking down to the gate and Guiliano knew he would open it wide to let the wagon through.

  “My father told me to bring it for the Maresciallo,” Guiliano said with a wink.

  The Corporal was staring at Guiliano. The wine was undoubtedly a gift for letting some farmer do a bit of smuggling. The Corporal thought uneasily that as a true Sicilian the father would have brought the wine himself to be more closely associated with the gift. But then he shrugged. “Unload the goods and bring them into the barracks.”

  Guiliano said, “Not by myself, I don’t.”

  Again the Corporal felt a twinge of doubt. Some instinct warned him. Realizing this, Guiliano climbed down from the wagon in such a way that he could easily snatch the lupara from its hiding place. But first he lifted up a jug of wine in its bamboo case and said, “I have twenty of these beauties for you.”

  The Corporal roared out a command toward the quarters barracks and two young carabinieri came running out; their jackets were unbuttoned and they wore no caps. Neither did they bear weapons. Guiliano standing on top of his cart thrust jugs of wine into their arms. He gave a jug to the guard with the rifle, who tried to refuse. Guiliano said with rough good humor, “You’ll certainly help drink it, so work.”

  Now with the three guards immobilized, their arms full of jugs, Guiliano surveyed the scene. It was exactly as he had wished. Pisciotta was directly behind the Corporal, the only soldier with his arms free. Guiliano scanned the slopes; there was no sign of any of the searching party returning. He checked the road to Castellammare; there was no sign of the armored car. Down the Via Bella the children were still playing. He reached into the wagon and pulled out the lupara and pointed it at the astonished Corporal. At the same time Pisciotta pulled the pistol from beneath his shirt. He pressed it against the Corporal’s back. “Don’t move an inch,” Pisciotta said, “or I’ll barber that great mustache of yours with lead.”

  Guiliano kept the lupara on the other three frightened guards. He said, “Keep those jugs in your arms and everybody go into the building.” The armed guard hugging the jug let his rifle drop to the ground. Pisciotta picked it up as they moved inside. In the office, Guiliano picked up the name plaque and admired it. “Corporal Canio Silvestro. Your keys, please. All of them.”

  The Corporal’s hand rested on his pistol and he glared at Guiliano. Pisciotta knocked his hand forward and plucked out his weapon. The Corporal turned and gave him a cold examining stare that was deadly. Pisciotta smiled and said, “Excuse me.”

  The Corporal turned to Guiliano and said, “My boy, run away and become an actor, you’re very fine. Don’t go on with this, you’ll never escape. The Maresciallo and his men will be back before nightfall and will hunt you to the ends of the earth. Think it over, my young fellow, what it is to be an outlaw with a price on your head. I’ll be hunting for you myself and I never forget a face. I’ll find out your name and dig you out if you hide yourself in hell.”

  Guiliano smiled at him. For some reason he liked the man. He said, “But if you want to know my name, why don’t you ask?”

  The Corporal looked at him scornfully. “And you’ll tell me, like an idiot?”

  Guiliano said, “I never lie. My name is Guiliano.”

  The Corporal put his hand to his side for the pistol Pisciotta had already removed. Guiliano liked the man more for that instinctive reaction. He had courage and a sense of duty. The other guards were terrified. This was the Salvatore Guiliano who had already killed three of their comrades. There was no reason to think that he would leave them alive.

  The Corporal studied Guiliano’s face, memorizing it, then, moving slowly and carefully, took a huge ring of keys from a desk drawer. He did so because Guiliano had the shotgun pressed tightly against his back. Guiliano took the keys from him and tossed them to Pisciotta.

  “Release those prisoners,” he said.

  In the prison wing of the administration building, in a large caged area, were ten citizens of Montelepre who had been arrested the night of Guiliano’s escape. In one of the separate small cells were the two locally famous bandits, Passatempo and Terranova. Pisciotta unlocked their cell doors and they gleefully followed him into the other room.

  The arrested citizens of Montelepre, all neighbors of Guiliano, flooded into the office and crowded around Guiliano to embrace him with gratitude. Guiliano permitted this but was always alert, his eyes on the captive carabinieri. His neighbors were in a delighted good humor at Guiliano’s exploit; he had humiliated the hated police, he was their champion. They told him that the Maresciallo had ordered them to be bastinadoed but the Corporal had effectively stopped this punishment from being carried out by the sheer force of his character and his argument that such an action would create so much ill will that it would affect the safety of the barracks. Instead, the next morning they were to have been transported to Palermo to appear before a magistrate for interrogation.

  Guiliano held his lupara muzzle down to the floor, afraid that an accidental shot would go into the crowd around him. These men were all older, neighbors he had known as a child. He was careful to speak to them as he had always spoken to them. “You are welcome to come with me to the mountains,” he said. “Or you can go visit relatives in other parts of Sicily until the authorities come to their senses.” He waited but there was only silence. The two bandits, Passatempo and Terranova, stood aside from the others. They were extremely alert, as if poised to spring. Passatempo was a short, squat ugly man with a gross face marked by childhood smallpox, his mouth thick and unshaped. The peasants in the countryside called him “The Brute.” Terranova was small and built like a ferret. Yet his small features were pleasant, his lips molded into a natural smile. Passatempo had been the typical greedy Sicilian bandit who simply stole livestock and killed for money. Terranova had been a hard-working farmer and had started his career as an outlaw when two tax collectors came to confiscate his prize pig. He had killed both of them, slaughtered his pig for his family and relatives to eat and then fled to the mountains. The two men had joined forces but had been betrayed and captured when they were hiding in a deserted warehouse in the grain fields of Corleone.

  Guiliano said to them, “You two have no choice. We will go to the mountains together and then if you like you can stay under my command or go off on your own. But for today I need your help and you do owe me a small service.” He smiled at them, trying to soften the demand that they submit to his orders.

  Before the two bandits could answer, the Corporal of the carabinieri committed an insane act of defiance. Perhaps it was out of some injured Sicilian pride, perhaps out of some inborn animal ferocity, or simply that the fact that the noted bandits in his custody were about to escape enraged him. He was standing only a few paces from Guiliano and with a surprising quickness he took a long step forward.

  At the same time he drew a small pistol concealed inside his shirt. Guiliano swung the lupara up to fire but he was too late. The Corporal thrust the pistol to within two feet of Guiliano’s head. The bullet would smash directly into Guiliano’s face.

  Everyone was frozen with shock. Guiliano saw the pistol pointed at his head. Behind it the red raging face of the Corporal was contorting its muscles like the body of a snake. But the pistol seemed to be coming very slowly. It was like falling in a nightmare, falling forever and yet knowing it was only a dream and that he would never hit the bottom. In the fraction of a second before the Corporal pulled the trigger, Guiliano felt an enormous serenity and no fear. His eyes did not blink when the Corporal pulled the trigger, indeed he took a step forward. There was a loud metallic click as the hammer hit the defective ammunition in the barrel. A fraction of a second afterward, he was swarmed over by Pisciotta, Terranova and Passatempo, and the Corporal was falling under the weight of bod
ies. Terranova had grasped the pistol and was twisting it away, Passatempo had the Corporal by the hair of his head and was trying to gouge out his eyes, Pisciotta had his knife out and ready to plunge it into the Corporal’s throat. Guiliano caught it just in time.

  Guiliano said quietly, “Don’t kill him.” And pulled them off the Corporal’s now prone and defenseless body. He looked down and was dismayed to see the damage that had been done in that flashing moment of mob fury. The Corporal’s ear was half-ripped off his skull and was bleeding great gouts of blood. His right arm hung grotesquely twisted at his side. One of his eyes was spouting blood, a great flap of skin hung over it.

  The man was still not afraid. He lay there awaiting death, and Guiliano felt an overwhelming wave of tenderness for him. This was the man who had put him to the test, and who had confirmed his own immortality; this was the man who had certified the impotence of death. Guiliano pulled him to his feet and to the astonishment of all the others gave him a quick embrace. Then he pretended that he was merely helping the Corporal to stand erect.

  Terranova was examining the pistol. “You are a very fortunate man,” he said to Guiliano. “Only one bullet is defective.”

  Guiliano held out his hand for the gun. Terranova hesitated for a moment, then gave it to him. Guiliano turned to the Corporal. “Behave yourself,” he said in a friendly tone, “and nothing will happen to you or your men. I guarantee it.”

  The Corporal, still too dazed and weak from his injuries to reply, did not even seem to understand what was being said. Passatempo whispered to Pisciotta, “Hand me your knife and I’ll finish him off.”

  Pisciotta said, “Guiliano gives the orders here and everybody obeys.” Pisciotta said it matter-of-factly so as not to alert Passatempo that he was ready to kill him in an instant.

  The Montelepre citizens who had been prisoners left hastily. They did not want to be witnesses to a massacre of carabinieri. Guiliano shepherded the Corporal and his fellow guards to the prison wing and locked them in the communal cell together. Then he led Pisciotta, Terranova and Passatempo on a search through the other buildings of the Bellampo Barracks. In the weapons shed they found rifles, pistols and machine pistols, with boxes of ammunition. They draped the weapons over their bodies and loaded the boxes of ammunition into the cart. From the living quarters they took some blankets and sleeping bags and Pisciotta threw two carabinieri uniforms into the cart just for good luck. Then, with Guiliano in the driver’s seat, the cart brimming over the top with looted goods, the other three men, walking with weapons ready, spread out to protect against any attack. They moved quickly down the road toward Castellammare. It took them over an hour to make their way to the house of the farmer who had loaned Hector Adonis the cart and to bury their loot in his pigpen. Then they helped the farmer cover his cart with olive green paint stolen from an American Army supply depot.

  Maresciallo Roccofino returned with his search party in time for dinner; the sun was falling out of the sky and it had never burned so brightly that day as the Maresciallo’s rage burned at the sight of his men imprisoned in their own cages. The Maresciallo sent his armored car screaming down all the roads for a trace of the outlaws, but by that time Guiliano was deep in the sanctuary of his mountains.

  Newspapers all over Italy gave the story great prominence. Just three days before, the killing of the two other carabinieri had also been front-page news, but then Guiliano had just been another desperate Sicilian bandit whose only claim to fame was ferocity. This exploit was another matter. He had won a battle of wits and tactics against the National Police. He had freed his friends and neighbors from what was obviously an unjust imprisonment. Journalists from Palermo, Naples, Rome and Milan descended on the town of Montelepre, interviewing Turi Guiliano’s family and friends. His mother was photographed holding up Turi’s guitar which she claimed he played like an angel. (This was not true; he was only beginning to play well enough to make his tune recognizable.) His former schoolmates confessed that Turi was such a great reader of books that he had been nicknamed “The Professor.” The newspapers seized upon this with delight. A Sicilian bandit who could actually read. They mentioned his cousin Aspanu Pisciotta, who had joined him in his outlawry out of sheer friendship, and wondered at a man who could inspire such loyalty.

  That an old photograph taken of him when he was seventeen showed him to be incredibly handsome in a Mediterranean manly fashion made the whole story irresistible. But perhaps what appealed to the Italian people most of all was Guiliano’s act of mercy in sparing the Corporal who had tried to kill him. It was better than opera—it was more like the puppet shows so popular in Sicily, where the wooden figures never lost blood or had their flesh torn and mangled by bullets.

  The newspapers only deplored the fact that Guiliano had chosen to free two such villains as Terranova and Passatempo, implying that two such evil companions might tarnish the image of this knight in shining armor.

  Only the Milan newspaper pointed out that Salvatore “Turi” Guiliano had already killed three members of the National Police, and suggested that special measures should be taken for his apprehension, that a murderer should not be excused his crimes merely because he was handsome, well-read and could play the guitar.

  CHAPTER 10

  DON CROCE WAS now fully aware of Turi Guiliano and full of admiration for him. What a true Mafioso youth. He meant the usage, of course, in the old traditional form: a Mafioso face, a Mafioso tree, a Mafioso woman, that is, a thing foremost in beauty in its particular form.

  What a mailed fist this young man would be for Don Croce. What a warrior chief in the field. Don Croce forgave the fact that Guiliano was at present a thorn in his side. The two bandits imprisoned in Montelepre, the feared Passatempo and the clever Terranova, had been captured with the Don’s approval and complicity. But all this could be forgiven, bygones were bygones; the Don never held a grudge that impaired his future profits. He would now track Turi Guiliano very carefully.

  Deep in the mountains, Guiliano had no knowledge of his growing fame. He was too busy making plans to build his power. His first problem was the two bandit chiefs, Terranova and Passatempo. He questioned them closely about their capture and came to the conclusion they had been betrayed, informed upon. They swore their men had been faithful and many had been killed in the trap. Guiliano pondered all this and came to the conclusion that the Mafia, which had acted as fences and go-betweens for the band, had betrayed them. When he mentioned this to the two bandits they refused to believe it. The Friends of the Friends would never break the sacred code of omerta which was so central to their own survival. Guiliano did not insist. Instead he made them a formal offer to join his band.

  He explained that his purpose was not only to survive but to become a political force. He emphasized that they would not rob the poor. Indeed half of the profit the band earned would be distributed to the needy in the provinces around the town of Montelepre reaching to the suburbs of Palermo. Terranova and Passatempo would rule their own subordinate bands but would be under Guiliano’s overall command. These subordinate bands would not launch any money-making expedition without Guiliano’s approval. Together they would have absolute rule over the provinces that held the great city of Palermo, the city of Monreale, and the towns of Montelepre, Partinico and Corleone. He impressed upon them that they would take the offensive against the carabinieri. That it would be the field police who would go in fear of their lives, not the bandits. They were astonished by this bravado.

  Passatempo, an old-fashioned bandit who believed in rape, small-time extortion and the murder of shepherds, immediately began pondering how he could profit by this association and then murder Guiliano and take his share of the loot. Terranova, who liked Guiliano and was more grateful for his rescue, wondered how he could tactfully steer this talented young bandit on a more prudent path. Guiliano was now looking at them with a little smile, as if he could read their minds and was amused by what they thought.

  Pisciotta was
used to the grand ideas of his lifelong friend. He believed. If Turi Guiliano said he could do something, Aspanu Pisciotta believed he could do it. So now he listened.

  In the bright morning sunlight that lit their mountains with gold they all three listened to Guiliano, spellbound as he told how they would lead the fight to make Sicilians a free people, uplift the poor and destroy the power of the Mafia, the nobility and Rome. They would have laughed at anyone else, but they remembered what everyone who saw it would always remember: the Corporal of the carabinieri raising the pistol to Guiliano’s head. The quiet stare of Guiliano, his absolute confidence that he would not die, as he waited for the Corporal to pull the trigger. The mercy he had shown to the Corporal after the pistol misfired. These were all acts of a man who believed in his own immortality and forced others to share that belief. And so now they stared at the handsome young man, and they were impressed by his beauty, his courage and his innocence.

  The next morning Guiliano led his three men, Aspanu Pisciotta, Passatempo and Terranova, down out of the mountains on a path that would let them out on the plains near the town of Castelvetrano. He came down very early to scout the ground. He and his men were dressed as laborers.

  He knew that truck convoys of foodstuffs passed by here on the way to bringing their wares to the markets of Palermo. The problem was how to get the trucks to stop. They would be going at high speed to foil hijackers and the drivers might be armed.

  Guiliano made his men hide in the underbrush of the road just outside Castelvetrano, then sat himself on a large white boulder in plain view. Men going out to work in the fields stared at him with stony faces. They saw the lupara he was carrying and hurried on. Guiliano wondered if any of them had recognized him. Then he saw a legend-painted large cart coming down the road, drawn by a single mule. The old man driving was known by sight to Guiliano. He was one of the line of professional carters so plentiful in rural Sicily. He hired out his rig to haul bamboo from the outlying villages back to the factory in town. Long ago he had been to Montelepre and had done some hauling of produce for Guiliano’s father. Guiliano stepped into the middle of the road. The lupara dangled from his right hand. The driver recognized him though there was no expression on his face, just a momentary flicker of the eyes.