Omerta - Mario Puzo [16]
So now, three years after his retirement, Don Raymonde Aprile felt the security and satisfaction of a man who has made the right choices in life. Indeed the Don felt so secure that he began to develop a closer relationship with his children, finally enjoying the fruits of fatherhood—to some degree.
Because Valerius had spent most of the last twenty years in foreign army posts, he had never been close to his father. Now that he was stationed at West Point, the two men saw each other more often and began to speak more openly. Yet it was difficult.
With Marcantonio, it was different. The Don and his second son enjoyed some kind of rapport. Marcantonio explained his work in TV, his excitement over the dramatic process, his duty to his viewers, his desire to make the world a better place. The lives of such people were like fairy tales to the Don. He was fascinated by them.
Over family dinners, Marcantonio and his father could quarrel in a friendly way for the entertainment of the others. Once the Don told Marcantonio, “I have never seen people so good or so evil as your characters in those dramas.”
Marcantonio said, “That is what our audience believes. We have to give it to them.”
At one family gathering, Valerius had tried to explain the rationale for the war in the Persian Gulf, which in addition to protecting important economic interests and human rights had also been a ratings bonanza for Marcantonio’s TV network. But to all of this the Don just shrugged. These conflicts were refinements in power that did not interest him.
“Tell me,” he said to Valerius. “How do nations really win wars? What is the deciding factor?”
Valerius considered this. “There is the trained army, brilliant generals. There are the great battles, some lost, some won. When I worked in intelligence, and we analyzed everything, it comes to this: The country that produces the most steel wins the war, simply that.”
The Don nodded, finally satisfied.
His warmest and most intense relationship was with Nicole. He was proud of her accomplishments, her physical beauty, her passionate nature, and her intelligence. And, true, young as she was, just thirty-two, she was a powerful up-and-coming lawyer with good political connections, and she had no fear of anyone in a suit who represented entrenched power.
Here the Don had helped her secretly; her law firm was deeply indebted to him. But her brothers were wary of her for two reasons: she was unmarried, and she did a great deal of pro bono work. Despite his admiration for her, the Don could never take Nicole seriously in the world. She was, after all, a woman. And one with troubling taste in men.
At family dinners the father and daughter argued constantly, like two great cats frolicking dangerously, occasionally drawing blood. They had one serious bone of contention, the only thing that could affect the Don’s constant affability. Nicole believed in the sacredness of human life, that capital punishment was an abomination. She had organized and led the Campaign Against the Death Penalty.
“Why?” the Don asked.
And Nicole would become infuriated all over again. Because she believed capital punishment would eventually destroy humanity. That if killing was condoned under any circumstances, then it could be justified by another set of circumstances, another set of beliefs. Eventually, it would not serve evolution or civilization. And believing that brought her into constant conflict with her brother Valerius. After all, what else did the army do? The reasons didn’t matter to her. Killing was killing and would set us all back to cannibalism or worse. At every opportunity, Nicole fought in courts all over the country to save condemned murderers. Although the Don considered this the sheerest nonsense, he nonetheless proposed a toast to her at a family dinner following