The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [145]
Caesero Ferra had been a secret member of Guiliano’s band for the last five years, strictly as a gatherer of information, never in its operations. He and his wife had known Guiliano’s parents and had been neighbors; they lived ten houses down the Via Bella from the Guiliano house. He was more educated than most of the people in Montelepre and was dissatisfied with farming. Then when Justina as a child had lost the money and Guiliano had replaced it and sent her home with the note that the family was under his protection, Caesero Ferra visited Maria Lombardo and offered his services. He gathered information in Palermo and Montelepre as to the movements of carabinieri patrols, the movements of rich merchants who were to be kidnapped by Guiliano’s band, the identity of police informers. He received a share of the loot from these kidnappings and opened a small tavern in Montelepre, which also helped his secret activities.
When his son Silvio had returned from the war a Socialist agitator, Caesero Ferra ordered him out of the house. Not because he disapproved of his son’s beliefs, but because of the danger to the rest of the family. He had no illusions about democracy or the rulers in Rome. He had reminded Turi Guiliano of his promise to protect the Ferra family and Guiliano had done his best to protect Silvio. And after Silvio was murdered, it was Guiliano who promised him that the murder would be avenged.
Ferra had never blamed Guiliano. He knew that the massacre at Ginestra had profoundly disturbed Turi Guiliano, had caused him to grieve, that it still tormented him. He heard this from his wife who had listened for hours to Maria Lombardo talking about her son. How happy they had all been before that terrible day years ago when her son was shot down by the carabinieri and he had been forced against his better nature to kill in return. And of course every killing since then had been necessary, forced upon him by evil men. Maria Lombardo excused every killing, every crime, but she faltered when she spoke about the massacre at the Portella della Ginestra. Oh, the little children torn by machine-gun fire, the defenseless women killed. How could people think her son would do such a thing? Was he not the protector of the poor, the Champion of Sicily? Had he not given fortunes to help all the Sicilians in need of bread and homes? Her Turi could never have given the orders for such a massacre. So he had sworn to her on the statue of the black Madonna, and they had wept in each other’s arms.
And so over the years Caesero had pursued the mystery of what had really happened at the Portella della Ginestra. Had Passatempo’s machine-gunners made an honest mistake in the elevation of their fire? Had Passatempo, out of the sheer blood-thirstiness for which he was famous, slaughtered those people for his pleasure? Could the whole thing have been engineered to damage Guiliano? Was there perhaps even another band of men who had opened fire with their machine guns, men not under Guiliano’s orders but perhaps sent by the Friends of the Friends or even by a branch of the Security Police? Caesero left nobody off his list of suspects except Turi Guiliano. For if Guiliano were guilty the whole world he lived in would collapse. He loved Guiliano as he had loved his son. He had seen him grow from a child to a man, and there had never been a moment when he had showed any meanness of spirit, any viciousness.
So Caesero Ferra kept his eyes and ears open. He bought drinks for other secret members of the band who had not been thrown into jail by Colonel Luca. He caught scraps of conversation among the Friends of the Friends who lived in town and occasionally came to his tavern to drink wine and play cards. On one night he heard them talking laughingly about “The Animal” and “The Devil” visiting with Don Croce, and how the great Don had turned those two feared men into whispering angels. Ferra pondered on this and with that unerring Sicilian paranoia made the connection. Passatempo and Stefan Andolini had at some time