CHAPTER 26

In the seventh year of his banditry, Turi Guiliano knew that he must leave his mountain kingdom and flee to the America he had been conceived in, the America his parents had always told stories about when he was a child. The fabulous land where there was justice for the poor, where the government was not the lackey of the rich, where the penniless Sicilians rose to riches simply by good honest labor.

Persisting in his avowals of friendship, the Don had contacted Don Corleone in America to help rescue Guiliano and give him sanctuary there. Turi Guiliano understood quite well that Don Croce was also serving his own purposes, but Guiliano knew he had very few options. The power of his band was gone.

Now on this night he would start on his journey to meet with Aspanu Pisciotta; he would place himself in the hands of the American, Michael Corleone. He would leave these mountains now. These mountains that had given him sanctuary for seven years. He would leave his kingdom, his power, his family, and all his comrades. His armies had melted away; his mountains were being overrun; his protectors, the people of Sicily, were being crushed by Colonel Luca's Special Force. If he remained he would win some victories, but his final defeat would be certain. For now, he had no choice.

Turi Guiliano strapped on his lupara, took up his machine pistol and started on the long journey toward Palermo. He was wearing a white sleeveless shirt, but over this was a leather jacket with large pockets that held clips of ammunition for his weapons. He paced himself. His watch said nine o'clock, and there were still traces of daylight in the sky despite the timid light of the moon. There was the danger of roving patrols of the Special Force to Repress Banditry, yet Guiliano walked without fear. Over the years he had earned a certain invisibility. All the people in this countryside threw their cloaks about him. If there were patrols they would inform him; if he was in danger they would protect him and hide him in their houses. If he were attacked, the shepherds and the farmers would reassemble under his solitary banner. He had been their champion; they would never betray him now.

In the months that followed his marriage, there were pitched battles between Colonel Luca's Special Force and segments of Guiliano's band. Colonel Luca had already taken credit for the killing of Passatempo, and the newspapers reported in huge headlines that one of Guiliano's most feared chiefs had been killed in a fierce gun battle with the heroic soldiers of the Special Force to Repress Banditry. Colonel Luca, of course, had suppressed the note left on the body, but Don Croce learned of it from Inspector Velardi. He knew then that Guiliano was fully aware of the treachery that had been done at the Portella della Ginestra.

Colonel Luca's five thousand-man army exerted an intense pressure on Guiliano. He could no longer dare to enter Palermo to buy supplies or sneak into Montelepre to visit his mother and Justina. Many of his men were being betrayed and killed. Some were emigrating on their own to Algeria or Tunisia. Others were disappearing into hiding places that cut them off from the activities of the band. The Mafia was now in active opposition to him, using its network to deliver Guiliano's men into the hands of the carabinieri.

And then finally one of the chiefs was brought down.

Terranova got unlucky, and it was his virtue that brought him misfortune. He had not the ferociousness of Passatempo, the malignant cunning of Pisciotta, the deadliness of Fra Diav o lo. Nor the ascetic quality of Guiliano. He was intelligent but he was also of an affectionate temperament, and Guiliano had often used him to make friends with their kidnapping victims, to distribute money and goods to the poor. It was Terranova and his own band that plastered Palermo with posters in the dead of night to present Guiliano's propaganda. He did not often take part in the more bloody operations.

He was a man who required love and affection. A few years before, he had acquired a mistress in Palermo, a widow with three small children. She had never known he was a bandit; she thought he was a government official in Rome who took his holidays in Sicily. She was grateful for the money he gave her and the presents he brought for her children, but it had been made plain to her that they could never marry. And so she gave him the affection and care he needed. When he visited she cooked elaborate meals; she washed his clothes and made love with a grateful passion. Such a relationship could not remain a secret forever from the Friends of the Friends, and Don Croce stored the information away to be used at the proper time.

Justina had visited Guiliano a few times in the mountains, and Terranova had been her bodyguard on her voyages. Her beauty had stirred his feelings of longing, and though he knew it was not prudent, he decided to visit his mistress one last time. He wanted to give her a sum of money that would sustain her and her children in the years to come.

And so one night he sneaked into Palermo alone. He gave the widow the money and explained he might not be able to see her for a long time. She wept and protested and finally he told her who he really was. She was astonished. His usual demeanor was so mild, his nature was so gentle, and yet he was one of the famed Guiliano's great chiefs. She made love with a fiery passion that delighted him, and they spent a happy evening with the three children. Terranova had taught them to play cards, and when they won this time he paid them real money, which made them laugh with joy.

After the children were put to bed, Terranova and the widow continued their lovemaking until dawn. Then Terranova prepared to leave. At the door they embraced for the last time, and then Terranova walked quickly down the little street and into the main square before the cathedral. He felt a happy satiety of the body, and his mind was at peace. He was relaxed and off guard.

The morning air was blasted by the roar of motors. Three black cars sped toward him. Armed men appeared on every side of the square. Other armed men jumped out of the cars. One of the men shouted at him to surrender, to put up his hands.

Terranova took one last look at the cathedral, the statues of saints niched on its sides; he saw the blue and yellow balconies, the sun rising to light the azure sky. He knew that this was the last time he would see such wonders, that his seven years of luck were ended. There remained only one thing for him to do.

He took a great leap as if he would leap over death itself and hurl himself into a safe universe. As his body flew to one side and hit the ground, he drew his pistol and fired. One soldier reeled back and went down to one knee. Terranova tried to pull the trigger again, but by that time a hundred bullets converged on his body, blowing it to pieces, blowing the flesh off his bones. In one way he had been lucky – it had all happened so quickly that he did not have time to wonder if his mistress had betrayed him.

Terranova's death brought a sense of doom to Guiliano. He had known that the reign of the band was finished. That they could no longer counterattack successfully, that they could no longer hide in the mountains. But he had always thought that he and his chiefs would make an escape, that they would not go down to death. Now he knew there was very little time left. There was one thing he had always wanted to do, and so he summoned Corporal Canio Silvestro.

"Our time is over," he said to Silvestro. "You once told me you had friends in England who would protect you. Now is the time for you to go. You have my permission."

Corporal Silvestro shook his head. "I can always leave when you are safe in America. You need me still. You know I will never betray you."

"I know that," Guiliano said. "And you know the affection I have always had for you. But you were never truly a bandit. You were always a soldier and a policeman. Your heart was always a lawful one. And so you can make a life for yourself when all this is over. The rest of us will find it difficult. We will be bandits forever."

Silvestro said, "I never thought of you as a bandit."

"Nor did I," Guiliano said. "And yet what have I done these seven years? I thought I was fighting for justice. I tried to help the poor. I hoped to free Sicily. I wanted to be a good man. But it was the wrong time and the wrong way. For now we must do what we can to save our lives. And so you must go to England. It will make me happy to know that you are safe." Then he embraced Silvestro. "You have been my true friend," he said, "and those are my orders."

At dusk, Turi Guiliano left his cave and moved on to the Cappuccini monastery just outside Palermo where he would await word from Aspanu Pisciotta. One of the monks there was a secret member of his band, and he was in charge of the catacombs of the monastery. In these catacombs were hundreds of mummified bodies.

For hundreds of years before World War I it had been the custom of the rich and noble families to pin to the walls of the monastery the costumes in which they wished to be buried.

When they died, after their funerals, their bodies were delivered to the monastery. There the monks were masters of the art of preserving bodies. They exposed the corpses to slow heat for six months, then dried the soft parts of the bodies. In the drying process the skin shriveled, the features contorted into all the grimaces of death, some of horror, some of risibility, all terrible to the viewer. Then the bodies were dressed in the costumes that had been left for them and placed in glass coffins. These coffins were placed in niches in the wall or strung from the ceiling by glass wires. Some of the bodies were seated on chairs, some stood against the wall. Some were propped into glass boxes like costumed dolls.

Guiliano lay down on a dank stone of the catacombs and used a coffin as his pillow. He studied all these Sicilians dead for hundreds of years. There was a knight of the Royal Court in a blue silk ruffled uniform, a helmet on his head, a sword cane in his hand. A courtier, foppish in the French style, with white wig and high-heeled boots. There was a Cardinal in his red robes, an archbishop in his miter. There were court beauties whose golden gowns looked now like spider webs strangling the mummified shrunken bodies as if they were flies. There was a young maiden in white gloves and white frilly nightdress enclosed in a glass box.

Guiliano slept badly the two nights he spent there. As who would not? he thought. These were the great men and women of Sicily for the three or four last centuries, and they thought they could escape the worms in this fashion. The pride and vanity of the rich, the darlings of fate. Much better to die in the road like La Venera's husband.

But what really kept Guiliano awake was a nagging worry. How had Don Croce escaped the attack on his life earlier that week? Guiliano knew that the operation had been perfectly planned. He had brooded on how to do it ever since he had learned the truth about the massacre at the Portella della Ginestra. The Don was so well guarded that a chink had to be found in his defenses. Guiliano had decided his best chance was when the Don felt secure in the heavily guarded Hotel Umberto of Palermo. The band had a spy in the hotel, one of the waiters. He gave the Don's schedule, the deployment of the guards. With this intelligence Guiliano was sure his attack would succeed.

He had mustered thirty men to rendezvous with him in Palermo. He had known of Michael Corleone's visit and lunch with the Don, and so he waited until late afternoon when the report reached him that Michael had left. Then twenty of his men had mounted a frontal assault on the hotel to draw guards off from the garden. A few moments later he and his remaining ten men had planted an explosive charge against the garden wall and blown a hole in it. Guiliano led the charge through the hole. There were only five guards left in the garden; Guiliano shot one and the other four fled. Guiliano rushed into the Don's suite but it was empty. And it had struck him as strange that it was unguarded. Meanwhile the other detachment of his band had forced their way through the defense barrier and joined up with him. They had searched the rooms and corridors along the way and found nothing. The Don's huge bulk made it impossible for him to move quickly, so only one conclusion could be drawn. The Don had departed from the hotel shortly after Michael left. And now it occurred to Guiliano for the first time that Don Croce had been warned about the attack.

It was too bad, Guiliano thought. It would have been a glorious last stroke, besides removing his most dangerous enemy. What ballads would have been sung if he had found Don Croce in that sunlit garden. But there would be another day. He would not stay forever in America.

On the third morning, the Cappuccini monk, his body and face almost as shrunken as the mummies in his charge, brought a message from Pisciotta. It read, "In the house of Charlemagne." Guiliano understood it immediately. Zu Peppino, the master carter of Castelvetrano, who had helped Guiliano in the hijacking of Don Croce's trucks and had been a secret ally of his band ever since, had three carts and six donkeys. All three of his carts had been painted with the legends of the great Emperor, and as boys, Turi and Aspanu had called his home the house of Charlemagne. The time of the meeting had already been set.

That night, his final night in Sicily, Guiliano made his way to Castelvetrano. Outside of Palermo he picked up some shepherds who were secret members of his band and used them as an armed escort. They made their way to Castelvetrano with such ease that a suspicion flickered in Guiliano's mind. The town looked too open. He dismissed his bodyguards, who slipped away into the night. Then he made his way to a little stone house outside of Castelvetrano whose courtyard held three painted carts, now all bearing the legends from his own life. This was the house of Zu Peppino.

Zu Peppino did not seem surprised to see him. He put down the brush with which he had been painting the slat of one of his carts. The he locked the door and said to Guiliano, "We have trouble. You attract the carabinieri like a dead mule attracts flies."

Guiliano felt a little shock of adrenaline. "Are they Luca's Special Force?" he asked.

"Yes," Zu Peppino said. "They are tucked out of sight, not in the streets patrolling. I spotted some of their vehicles on the road when I came back from work. And some carters tell me they saw other vehicles. We thought they were setting up traps for members of your band, but we never suspected it might be you. You never get this far south, so far away from your mountains."

Guiliano wondered how the carabinieri could have known about the rendezvous. Had they trailed Aspanu? Were Michael Corleone and his people indiscreet? Or was there an informer? In any case, he could not meet Pisciotta in Castelvetrano. But they had a fallback meeting place if one of them did not show up at the rendezvous here.

"Thanks for the warning," Guiliano said. "Keep an eye out for Pisciotta in town and tell him. And when you take your cart to Montelepre, pay my mother a visit and tell her I am safely in America."

Zu Peppino said, "Allow an old man to embrace you." And he kissed Guiliano on the cheek. "I never believed you could help Sicily, nobody can, nobody ever could, not even Garibaldi, not even that windbag Il Duce. Now if you like I can put my mules to a cart and carry you wherever you want to go."

Guiliano's rendezvous time with Pisciotta had been for midnight. It was now only ten. He had deliberately come in early to scout the ground. And he knew that the rendezvous with Michael Corleone was for dawn. The fallback meeting place was at least a two-hour fast walk from Castelvetrano. But it was better to walk than use Zu Peppino. He thanked the old man and slipped out into the night.

The fallback meeting place was the famous ancient Greek ruins called the Acropolis of Selinus. South of Castelvetrano, near Mazzara del Vallo, the ruins stood on a desolate plain near the sea, ending where the sea cliffs began to rise. Selinus had been buried by an earthquake before Christ was born, but a row of marble columns and architraves still stood. Or rather had been raised by excavators. There was still the main thoroughfare, though now reduced to rubble by the skeletons of ancient buildings lining its way. There was a temple with its roof matted with vines and showing holes like a skull and stone columns exhausted and gray with centuries of age. The acropolis itself, the fortified center of ancient Greek cities, was, as usual, built on the highest ground, and so these ruins looked down on the stark countryside below.

The scirocco, a terrible desert wind, had been blowing all day. Now, at night, so close to the sea, it sent fog rolling through the ruins. Guiliano, weary of his long forced march, detoured around to the sea cliffs so he could look down and spy out the land.

It was a sight so beautiful that he forgot for a moment the danger he was in. The temple of Apollo had fallen in on itself in a twisted mass of columns. Other ruined temples gleamed in the moonlight – without walls, just columns, strands of roof and one fortress wall with what had been a barred window high up, now blackly empty, the moon shining through it. Lower down in what had been the city proper, below the acropolis, one column stood alone, surrounded by flat ruins, that in its thousands of years had never fallen. This was the famous "Il Fuso della Vecchia," the Old Woman's Spindle. Sicilians were so used to the monuments of the Greeks scattered over the island that they treated them with affectionate contempt. It was only foreigners who made a fuss.

And the foreigners had raised the twelve great columns that stood before him now. Their grandeur was Herculean, but behind them was only the panorama of ruins. At the foot of those twelve columns, abreast like soldiers fronting their commander full face, was a platform of stone steps that seemed to have grown out of the ground. Guiliano sat down on the top step, his back resting against one of the columns. He reached under his coat and unhooked the machine pistol and the lupara and put them one stone step below him. Fog swirled through the ruins, but he knew he would hear anyone who approached over the rubble and that he could easily see any enemies before they could see him.

He leaned back against one of the columns, glad to be resting, his body sagging with fatigue. The July moon seemed to pass over the gray-white columns and rest against the cliffs that led to the sea. And across the sea was America. And in America was Justina and their child to be born. Soon he would be safe and the last seven years of his banditry would be a dream. For a moment he wondered what kind of a life that would be, if he could ever be happy not living in Sicily. He smiled. One day he would come back and surprise them all. He sighed with fatigue and unlaced his boots and slipped his feet out of them. He took off his socks and his feet welcomed the touch of cold stone. He reached into his pocket and took out the two prickly pears and their sweet night-cooled juice refreshed him. With one hand on the machine pistol resting beside him, he waited for Aspanu Pisciotta.