Omerta - Mario Puzo [95]
“No,” Caterina said. “But you can tell him if you like.”
After dinner Don Aprile lit his cigar, filled his glass with anisette, and told Astorre the story.
“Ten years ago the most important man in the town was a certain Father Sigusmundo, a very dangerous man and yet good-humored. When I visited Sicily he often came to my house and played cards with my friends. At that time I had a different housekeeper.”
But Father Sigusmundo was not irreligious. He was a devout and hardworking priest. He scolded people into going to mass and even at one time engaged in fisticuffs with an exasperating atheist. He was most famous for giving last rites to victims of the Mafia as they lay dying; he shrived their souls and cleansed them for their voyage to Heaven. He was revered for this, but it happened too often and some people began to whisper, saying the reason he was always so handy was because he was one of the executioners—that he was betraying the secrets of the confessional box for his own ends.
Caterina’s husband at that time was a strong anti-Mafia policeman. He had even pursued a case of murder after he had been warned off by the provincial Mafia chief, an unheard-of act of defiance at that time. A week after that threat, Caterina’s husband was ambushed and lay dying in a back alley of Palermo. And it so happened that Father Sigusmundo appeared to give him last rites. The crime was never solved.
Caterina, the grief-stricken widow, spent a year in mourning and devotion to the church. Then one Saturday she went to confession with Father Sigusmundo. When the priest came out of the confessional, in full sight of everyone, she stabbed him through the heart with her husband’s dagger.
The police threw her in jail, but that was the least of it. The Mafia chief pronounced a death sentence upon her.
Astorre stared wide-eyed at Caterina. “Did you really do that, Aunt Caterina?”
Caterina looked at him with amusement. He was filled with curiosity and not a bit of fear. “But you must understand why. Not because he killed my husband. Men are always killing each other here in Sicily. But Father Sigusmundo was a false priest, an unshriven murderer. He could not give last rites with legitimacy. Why would God listen? So my husband was not only murdered but denied his entrance to Heaven and descended into Hell. Well, men don’t know where to stop. There are things you can’t do. That’s why I killed the priest.”
“Then how come you’re here?” Astorre asked.
“Because Don Aprile took an interest in the whole affair,” Caterina said. “So naturally everything was settled.”
The Don said gravely to Astorre, “I had a certain standing in the town, a respect. The authorities were easily satisfied, and the church did not want the public attention of a corrupt priest. The Mafia chief was not so sensitive and refused to cancel his death sentence. He was found in the cemetery where Caterina’s husband was buried, with his throat cut, and his cosca was destroyed and made powerless. By that time I had grown fond of Caterina, and I made her chief of this household. And for the last nine years my summer months in Sicily have been the sweetest of my life.”
To Astorre this was all magic. He ate a handful of olives and spit out the pits. “Caterina’s your girlfriend?” he asked.
“Of course,” Caterina said. “You’re a twelve-year-old boy, you can understand. I live under his protection as if I were his wife, and I perform all my wifely duties.”
Don Aprile seemed a little embarrassed, the only time Astorre had seen him so. Astorre said, “But why don’t you marry?”
Caterina said, “I could never leave Sicily. I live like a queen here, and your uncle is generous. Here I have my friends, my family, my sisters and brothers and cousins. And your uncle could not live in Sicily. So we do the best we can.”
Astorre said to Don Aprile, “Uncle, you can marry Caterina and live here. I’ll live with you. I never want to leave Sicily.” At this they both laughed.
“Listen to me,” the Don said. “It took