Omerta - Mario Puzo [15]
Fissolini rose from his knees. He embraced the Don and burst into tears.
And so it was that the Don and his nephew became most formally united. The Don loved the boy for persuading him to show mercy, and Astorre loved his uncle for giving him the lives of Fissolini and his ten men. It was a bond that lasted the rest of their lives.
The last night in Villa Grazia, Don Aprile had espresso in the garden and Astorre ate olives from their barrel. Astorre was very pensive, not his usual sociable self.
“Are you sorry to leave Sicily?” the Don asked.
“I wish I could live here,” Astorre said. He put the pits of his olives in his pocket.
“Well, we will come every summer together,” the Don said.
Astorre looked at him like a wise old friend, his youthful face troubled.
“Is Caterina your girlfriend?” he asked.
The Don laughed. “She is my good friend,” he said.
Astorre thought about this. “Do my cousins know about her?”
“No, my children do not know.” Again the Don was amused by the boy and wondered what would come next.
Astorre was very grave now. “Do my cousins know you have such powerful friends like Bianco who will do anything you tell them they must do?”
“No,” the Don said.
“I won’t tell them about anything,” Astorre said. “Not even about the kidnapping.”
The Don felt a surge of pride. Omerta had been bred into his genes.
Late that night, alone, Astorre went to the far corner of the garden and dug a hole with his bare hands. In that hole he put the olive pits he had secreted in his pocket. He looked up at the pale night blue of the Sicilian sky and dreamed of himself as an old man like his uncle, sitting in this garden on a similar night, watching his olive trees grow.
After that, everything was fate, the Don believed. He and Astorre made the yearly trip to Sicily until Astorre was sixteen. In the back of the Don’s mind, a vision was forming, a vague outline of the boy’s destiny.
It was his daughter who created the crisis that moved Astorre into that destiny. At the age of eighteen, two years older than Astorre, Nicole fell in love with him and with her fiery temperament did little to conceal the fact. She completely overwhelmed the susceptible boy. They became intimate with all the hot furiousness of youth.
The Don could not allow this, but he was a general who adjusted his tactics to the terrain. He never gave any hint he knew of the affair.
One night he called Astorre into his den and told him he would be sent to England for his schooling and to serve an apprenticeship in banking with a certain Mr. Pryor of London. He did not give any further reason, knowing the boy would realize he was being sent away to end the affair. But he had not reckoned with his daughter, who had listened outside the door. She came storming into the room, her passionate outrage making her even more beautiful.
“You’re not sending him away,” she screamed at her father. “We’ll run away together.”
The Don smiled at her and said placatingly, “You both have to finish school.”
Nicole turned to Astorre, who was blushing with embarrassment. “Astorre, you won’t go?” she said. “Will you?”
Astorre did not answer, and Nicole burst into tears.
It would be hard for any father not to be moved by such a scene, but the Don was amused. His daughter was splendid, truly Mafioso in the old sense, a prize in any form. Despite that, for weeks afterward she refused to speak to her father and locked herself away in her room. But the Don did not fear she would be brokenhearted forever.
It amused him even more to see Astorre in the trap of all maturing adolescents. Certainly Astorre loved Nicole. And certainly her passion and her devotion made him feel like the most important person on earth. Any young man can be seduced