The Family - Mario Puzo [180]
And that brought her back with fondness to the memory of her father. A cardinal of the Holy Church when she was born, a loving and dutiful father when he was Pope and the Vicar of Christ. Did his soul roast in hell forevermore for his sins? If she could feel mercy, how could not an all-powerful God? She remembered then what her father had said when she wept over Cesare’s murder of her husband.
“God will forgive them both,” he had told her. “Otherwise there is no reason for His being. And one day, when our worldly tragedy is done, we will all be together again.”
Near nightfall, the lake had taken on a silvery glow. Lucrezia walked slowly out onto the small dock from which they had swum and dived as children. And in her mind, she could hear her brother Cesare’s voice as it sounded when she was a child. “No, Crezia, it’s too shallow.” “Don’t worry, Crezia, I’ll save you.” And later, when they were older, with more of their lives lived and some dreams destroyed, his voice again, promising, “If that is what you want, Crezia, I’ll try to help.” Then, when she had seen him for the very last time, his plea: “If I’m ever killed, Crezia, you must live for me.” And she had promised she would.
As she walked to the end of the dock the night began to envelop her in its shimmering darkness, and she saw the pale moon rise just over the cedars. It was then Lucrezia removed the cover from the urn, and slowly scattered Cesare’s ashes into Silverlake.
Later, as she reached the shore again, several of the penitents walking back through the hills after their day of prayer and penance noticed her.
One beautiful young woman turned to the young man she was with and pointed to Lucrezia. “Who is that lovely woman?” she asked him.
“Lucrezia d’Este, the good and merciful duchess of Ferrara,” he said. “Have you never heard of her?”
AFTERWORD
CAROL GINO
THE BIGGEST SURPRISE for me when I first met Mario Puzo was that he was nothing like his characters. The Mario I came to know was a husband, a father, a lover, a mentor, and a true friend. He was kind and generous, authentic as any human being could be, true and funny and smart. From him came the loyalty, the fairness, the compassion that he wrote about in his books, but not the villainy. That aspect came from his nightmares, not from his dreams. He was a shy, soft-spoken, generous man who held very few judgments about others. We spent twenty years together, playing, brainstorming, and working.
Mario was fascinated with Renaissance Italy, and especially with the Borgia family. He swore that they were the original crime family, and that their adventures were much more treacherous than any of the stories he told about the Mafia. He believed the Popes were the first Dons—Pope Alexander the greatest Don of all.
For most of the years we spent together, Mario told Borgia stories. Their escapades both shocked and amused him, and he even rewrote some of the incidents to make them contemporary enough to put in his Mafia books.
One of Mario’s greatest pleasures was traveling, and we did it often. After we visited the Vatican in 1983, he was so enchanted by the look, feel, and food of Italy, so taken by its history, that he wanted to write a novel about it. It was that many years ago that he began to write the Borgia book, though even then he referred to it as “just another family story.” Although he would write several other novels in the years between, each time he had difficulty writing, each time his creativity felt blocked or he felt discouraged, he went back to the Borgia book for inspiration or refuge.
“I wish I could write a book with this material and have it make a lot of money,” he told me one day as he was lying on the couch in his study, staring at the ceiling as he always did.
“Why don’t you?” I asked.
“I was a struggling writer until I was forty-eight years old, honey,” he said. “I wrote two books the reviewers called classics, and only made