In Sicily

by Norman Lewis

  After the massacre, as tensions gradually began to ease, the government turned its attentions to the future prospects and morale of the rural population. Marcello’s first major undertaking after joining L’Ora was to test the attitudes of the agrarian population, and in particular the degree of confidence they felt in the advertised advantages promised them by the new laws.

  The results were negative in the extreme. Some peasants took the view that the Portella massacre was a forerunner of others to come, and the promised redistribution of uncultivated land would lead to little but disappointment. From the beginning huge delays were clearly to be involved in putting such reforms into practice. It eventually took fifteen years to distribute uncultivated land on the Nelson estate at Bronte, for instance, and it turned out here and elsewhere that a grant of fifteen acres, the maximum to which each peasant was entitled, was too small to support a family. The government’s much boosted Anti-Mafia Commission was described by Marcello’s informants as a political diversion and a waste of time. He himself noted that the Sicilian peasantry had lost their capacity for hope. Between 1951 and 1953, 400,000 Sicilians - more than 10 per cent of the population - had emigrated. The majority were working males, and in some areas only old people, women and children were left behind to work the fields. Even before Marcello began his investigation, 20 per cent of the feudal estates found themselves without labour.

  With the most effective members of its peasant class lost to emigration, a drastic increase of poverty took place in Sicily. In 1959, Professor Silvio Pampiglione of the University of Rome, who was to become a friend of Marcello’s, carried out a project based upon Palma di Montechiaro, a town somewhat larger than Piana degli Albanesi, although otherwise facing similar disadvantages.

  Pampiglione investigated the lives of 600 families, producing a report said at the time to have shocked the Italian conscience, although it had little effect on the conditions the professor described. The 600 families, he found, occupied 700 rooms - 4.86 persons to a room - 216 of which possessed no window. Such habitations are known as bassi, and still exist all over the remoter parts of Sicily as well as on the outskirts of Palermo. Basically a single door provides the influx of air, although in other cases an opening in the wall not always covered by glass may pass as a window. Only fifty-two of the houses studied in this case possessed a water supply, and eighty-two a lavatory, which in some cases was no more than a hole in the corner of a room.

  Shortages of living space involved other problems. Every family was compelled to supplement its income by keeping a variety of animals, and as there were no pens or outhouses where these valuable possessions could be kept in safety they had to be brought in to sleep with the family at night. Thus sharing 700 rooms with 3,404 humans were 5,085 animals, including goats, pigs, donkeys, horses and mules. On one occasion the professor was hospitably offered a glass of goat’s milk. ‘Where does the goat sleep at night?’ he asked, and was told, ‘Under the bed.’ ‘But doesn’t the stink kill you?’ ‘You get used to it, like everything else, in time.’ The implications for hygiene were clearly catastrophic. There were ten bakeries in the area covered by the professor’s investigations, and in every case the family’s animals were lodged in the bakery. In one case the dough was prepared and the loaves finally produced in a cavern sheltering three humans, a donkey, a mule, four goats and twelve hens.

  Poverty at this level inevitably adds to the crime figures. In the first place it shows in the increase of the low-level depredations of sneak thieves who steal hens from the coops, and this adds to the misery of the poor. The more efficient members of this criminal small-fry find eventual promotion into the local underworld, until a break-in or the theft of a car attracts the attention of a mafioso enlisting picciotti (small-time criminals) to help him in more serious levels of crime. Such a picciotto (said to have been trembling with terror) killed my friend Boris Giuliano of the Pubblica Sicurezza years later in 1979, shooting him with six bullets in the back while he sipped his morning coffee at the counter of the Bar Lux, Palermo.

  In the wake of the mass emigration of the 1950s all forms of Mafia-inspired criminality were to increase. Sicily is full of tragic records. After Calabria it has always been the most impoverished area in Italy, and comes close to being the worst in Europe. In the grim anarchy of the post-war years, when even the owners of minor feudal estates decided on emigration, killers went to work for a fixed rate of 200,000 lire (£130) per corpse. As the heads of the various Mafia families fought each other over the declining spoils, the homicide rate in Palermo rose to become the highest in the world apart from the small town of Favara. This had suffered 130 Mafia killings in a single year and the Duce in his time had been told that only one man in the previous decade had died of natural causes.

  4

  FOR ONE REASON or another, despite a promising start, the idea that Marcello and I would write a book together had to be postponed. His obligations to his newspaper were too many. I therefore returned to England shortly after our first excursion, but was almost immediately engaged by the Sunday Times to cover a sensational Mafia trial to be staged in Palermo, which by chance happened to provide a postscript to my memories of the Portella business. The trial had aroused considerable interest internationally since it was the first time that criminal cooperation had been proved between the leading Sicilian mafiosi and American members of Cosa Nostra. For the first time ‘men of respect’ from both sides of the Atlantic were to stand trial together.

  Marcello came to my aid in this undertaking and was able to borrow L’Ora’s photographer, a Signor Lo Buono, who had exceptional access to all such events, and place him at my disposition. He told me with a laugh that Lo Buono was a low-grade man of respect. ‘As a photographer he’s nothing special,’ he said. ‘What matters is he knows how to handle the judge.’

  The trial would provide us with a splendid opportunity to get together again and perhaps even to finish the book. We made arrangements over the phone as Marcello was away in Catania at that moment. He thought that the trial would occupy some time, although he hoped to return within the week, after which he would twist L’Ora’s arm into giving him substantial leave of absence and we could get down to work. He sounded a little less ebullient than usual on this occasion, but I put this down to the poor connection.

  Lo Buono turned out to be small, impish and full of good cheer, and whatever his supposed standing in the Honoured Society he was a man it would have been hard to dislike. We passed through the line of carabinieri guarding the door of the courthouse as if they had not been there. An usher awaited us just inside. He bowed slightly. ‘Signor Lo Buono,’ he said, ‘will you be taking photographs today?’ Smiling pleasantly, Lo Buono replied, ‘I expect to do that.’ It was a hot day outside and the street was full of noise, but the court was as cool and calm as a church. It had the faint odour of hassocks so often to be detected in a very large interior that is rarely used.

  The judge had already taken his seat beneath a notice saying that photography was strictly forbidden. Lo Buono levelled his camera, focused and took a shot, and the judge nodded his head in our direction in acquiescence if not in gratitude. With that a door opened in the rear wall and the prisoners filed in and took their seats in the dock. By all accounts they had spent a year or so in the notoriously gloomy environment of the Ucciardone, yet all these men in their summer suits sported notable suntans. It was later to transpire that they were not only American versions of men of respect, but men of substance, too. Evidence had been produced in court that back in the States they had close associations with leading personalities of the Catholic Church, who had spoken on their behalf. Two had sons training for the priesthood, and one had actually built and paid for an orphanage. This was to be their last but one appearance in court before the trial came to an end with the clearance of all defendants for lack of proof, and their release.

  Lo Buono packed his lenses away and we went out into the street. It occurred to me that although I had
been on a number of occasions in the company of men rumoured to be mafiosi, this was my first experience of being with one positively identified as such by a newspaperman of the kind that did not exaggerate. He seemed pleased when I suggested a coffee and we crossed the road and settled in a cafe. There had been an extraordinary scene in court when the prisoners’ wives and children had been led in by the carabinieri to stand in a row under the front of the dock. With this the prisoners were released from the long chain to which they were fastened, allowing them to pass down to wives and children the presents they had brought with them.

  This came up in the cafe. ‘So that’s one you couldn’t take,’ I said. ‘Do you mean the carabinieri wouldn’t stand for it?’

  ‘I have an arrangement with the carabinieri. They eat out of my hand.’

  ‘What was the problem, then?’

  ‘The women,’ he said. ‘The wives. I can’t take that kind of picture. When there’s a woman in the picture I have to ask myself do I take it or don’t I? In this case the answer was no. I work for L’Ora. You probably heard that its office was bombed a couple of years back. They play things carefully these days.’

  He changed the subject. ‘Your friend said you were here before. What were you doing?’

  ‘I was writing about Giuliano.’

  ‘You ought to talk to his brother.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had one. Not a bandit, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s up at the service station. Enrico works on the pumps. We pass the place on the way to your hotel. Might interest you to see him.’

  ‘It would,’ I said. ‘Can I use the story?’

  ‘I’ll tell you if you can’t.’

  Enrico was on the forecourt polishing a windscreen and Lo Buono called him over. ‘This is Salva’s brother,’ Lo Buono said, and for a moment I believed there had been some mistake. Even the worst of the many photographs taken of Giuliano could not have extinguished the fire and the laughter in his face. How could Enrico, limping towards us, eyes screwed up in perplexity and rag in hand, be of the same blood? It was twenty years since Pisciotta’s bullets had blasted away Giuliano’s heart, but surely the slow leakage of time had not been long enough to turn the brother of that heroic savage into this emblem of defeat. Enrico drooped before us, wincing a nervous smile. ‘Friend from England to see you,’ Lo Buono said, and Enrico dropped the rag to wipe his hands on his denims and we shook hands.

  ‘First of all, Enrico, what’s the news of the job? Are they doing what they said for you?’ Lo Buono asked.

  ‘Not so far, Signor Lo Buono. They’re going to give Donata a couple of hours a day office-cleaning. It’s better than nothing. Her mother will look after the boy.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Lo Buono said. ‘I’ll have to talk to them again. In the meanwhile I was telling Signor Luigi about you and Salva. Did you see much of each other in the old days at Montelepre?’

  ‘When I was a boy, of course, Signor Lo Buono. You have to remember I was only a kid. He used to look after us, my mother and me.’

  ‘What did he do for a living? Is it true that he was in the black market?’

  Still twisting at the rag, Enrico drew his lips back in a drab laugh. ‘I never heard of that,’ he said. ‘He used to trap rabbits for a living. We ate the rabbits and people bought the skins to make coats.’

  ‘But he was a bandit, wasn’t he?’

  ‘They say so. I was too young to know much about these things. He used to take me to Partinico to sell the rabbit skins. We went to Trappeto once. That’s by the sea. I collected a bagful of sea shells. In Montelepre we children used to play with them.’

  ‘Wasn’t Salva with the bandits at Portella?’

  ‘No, he was never there. The police wanted him to go but he refused. They offered him three million lire, and told him he’d be arrested and charged with murder if he refused to do what he was told. All Salva would agree to do was to persuade a cousin on our mother’s side who looked like him to take over the job. He was called Ludovico and he had one leg shorter than the other. The idea was to tell the others he’d hurt his knee. His chin was different too so he was told to wrap a scarf round the bottom of his face.’

  ‘You’re telling me that the bandits didn’t know the difference?’ Lo Buono said.

  ‘The old ones were in the know. They were supposed to get half a million each. This was the first time the new boys had been used on a thing like this. They’d never set eyes on Salvatore himself. They wouldn’t have known him.’

  ‘All this is news to me,’ Lo Buono said. ‘I’ve never heard of a cousin. What happened to him?’

  ‘He disappeared.’

  ‘But he was at Portella?’

  ‘He was there. He fired a machine-gun. When it was over the police told them where to go and hide out. I heard that they never saw him again.’

  ‘He just vanished?’

  ‘Off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Enrico,’ Lo Buono said, ‘it could be as you say, but in my job I can’t afford to believe anything, and I don’t believe in Ludovico. What I’m thinking now is maybe you have a poor sort of job, but in the end things can only get better for you. Would you have changed places with Salva? The best time either of you ever had was when you were shooting rabbits.’

  We walked away, leaving Enrico to his polishing. ‘I ought to be angry with him for giving us that story,’ Lo Buono said. ‘His troubles are driving him mad.’

  5

  EARLY AUTUMN WITH the Sicilian summer finally in retreat was the time to travel to Palermo. It was quiet everywhere, in the streets and shops, and in the offices of L’Ora where sales of the newspaper dropped by half, with readers still too drugged with the pleasures of departing summer to bother to check on the market price of sulphur or face the daily stories of political skulduggery. Consequently, on 7 September 1990 the taxi from Punta Raisi Airport dropped me at Marcello’s home, 110 Via Maqueda, and once again I climbed the staircase wandering through the lower parts of this ancient building, arriving finally at the top-flat rooms and roof garden where I knew that my friends would be waiting. They were there, as I had seen them so often before, each in his or her favourite place in sun or in shade. It was one of those environments that suppressed evidence of change. There were the little trees in their pots, the trellis drooping its honeysuckle among the tiny blue butterflies, the swifts that came screeching out of the sky to snatch up an insect fluttering within feet of one’s face. Hundreds of feet below, the endless procession of traffic droned softly up and down the Via Maqueda. My friends took me in their embrace: Marcello and his wife Giuliana, who was an authoress and politician, her sister Gabriella, a stage designer, and a young man I saw here for the first time, Gioacchino Lavanco, who worked with Marcello on L’Ora half the week, and spent the other half lecturing on politics at the university.

  Marcello announced that he had just returned from the family’s vineyard. The harvest, he said, had been the best for years. ‘The rain came at the right time. It makes all the difference,’ he told me.

  ‘How many bottles?’ I asked.

  ‘Fewer than usual. About three hundred. But that’s the trouble with the good smaller grapes, you have to expect it. Still it’s worth it. We’re quite happy.’

  At some time during an exchange of views that followed on the topic of viniculture I began to experience a curious sensation. Gabriella’s head was always full of inventions, and her thoughts, affected - as to be expected - by the surrealistic nature of her work, flew like birds from one subject to the next. But today she seemed strangely distracted and detached from what was going on. Marcello’s mouth close to my ear said, ‘I managed to pick up an old map of the Aiutamicristo the other day. I’d like to show it to you.’

  We crossed the roof to a lumber room where he kept a few pictures and books. ‘What do you think of Gioacchino?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s very likeable. Clever, too, I suspect.’

  ‘They think a lot of him at the office. I a
sk you because there’s some bad news. I have to go into hospital on Tuesday, which means I can’t come with you after all. Sorry I couldn’t let you know sooner.’

  ‘My God. What on earth’s the trouble?’

  ‘There’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you. It’s cancer. I spoke to Gioacchino yesterday and he’s offered to take my place. You’d never find a more knowledgeable or pleasant companion.’

  ‘Does Giuliana know about it?’

  ‘They all know. It’s the liver. At the moment there’s no pain. Only numbness. When were you planning to leave?’

  ‘I hadn’t any plans, not knowing what you had in mind. The last thing I want to do is to bother you at a time like this. Poor Giuliana. What on earth will she do?’

  ‘I’d very much like not to disappoint Gioacchino,’ Marcello said. ‘This little bother will take its time. My suggestion is to leave things at the moment as they are. If you preferred you could make this a short excursion. Go off for a few days and come back. Now here’s a suggestion. Gioacchino says there’s something important due to happen at Bagheria tomorrow. It’s only an hour’s drive away and if I can get the doctor and Giuliana to agree I might at least come as far as that with you.’ For a second or two his eyes closed, then reopened, and at this moment I realized that this was an encounter with a hero.

  Next day the doctor’s verdict was that journeys for Marcello, however short, were out of the question. The news was broken by Marcello himself who urged us, via Giuliana, in no circumstances to miss Bagheria and reminded us that he was looking forward to our report.