The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [34]
He sighed and said to the Abbot, “I’ve done all I can. The bleeding has stopped, but he’s already lost more than a third of his blood, and that’s usually fatal. Keep him warm, feed him a little milk and I’ll leave you some morphine.” He looked down at Guiliano’s powerful body with regret.
Pisciotta whispered, “What can I tell his father and mother? Is there a chance for him?”
The doctor sighed. “Tell them what you like. But the wound is mortal. He’s a strong-looking lad so he may live a few days more, but it’s wise not to hope.” He saw the look of despair in Pisciotta’s eyes and the fleeting look of relief on the Abbot’s face and said with ironic humor, “Of course in this holy place there could always be a miracle.”
The Abbot and the doctor went out. Pisciotta leaned over his friend to wipe the sweat from his brow and was astonished that in Guiliano’s eyes was a hint of mockery. The eyes were dark brown but edged with a circle of silver. Pisciotta leaned closer. Turi Guiliano was whispering; it was a struggle for him to speak.
“Tell my mother I will come home,” Turi said. And then he did something Pisciotta would never forget in the years to follow. His hands came up suddenly and grabbed Pisciotta by the hair of his head. The hands were powerful; they could never be the hands of a dying man. They yanked Pisciotta’s head down close. “Obey me,” Guiliano said.
The morning after Guiliano’s parents called him, Hector Adonis arrived in Montelepre. He rarely used his house in Montelepre. He hated the place of his birth in his young manhood. He especially avoided the Festa. The decorations always distressed him, their brightness seemed to him some evil disguise for the poverty of the town. And he had always endured humiliations during the Festa—drunken men jeering at his short stature, women giving him amused contemptuous smiles.
It did not help that he knew so much more than they did. They were so proud, for instance, that every family painted its house the same color their fathers had. They didn’t know that the color of the houses gave away their origins, the blood they had inherited from their ancestors along with their houses. That centuries ago the Normans had painted their houses white, the Greeks always used blue, the Arabs various pinks and red. And the Jews used yellow. Now they all considered themselves Italian and Sicilian. The blood had become so intermingled in a thousand years that you could not identify the owner of a house by his features, and if you told the owner of a yellow house that he had Jewish ancestors you could get a knife in your belly.
Aspanu Pisciotta lived in a white house though he looked more like an Arab. The Guilianos’s was predominantly Grecian blue, and Turi Guiliano’s face was truly Greek, though he had the body of the lusty large-boned Normans. But apparently all that blood had boiled together into something strange and dangerous to make the true Sicilian, and that was what had brought Adonis to Montelepre today.
The Via Bella was straddled at each corner by a pair of carabinieri, grim faced, holding rifles and machine pistols at the ready. The second day of the Festa was beginning but this part of town was curiously deserted and there were no children on the street. Hector Adonis parked his car in front of the Guiliano house, up on the strip of sidewalk. A pair of carabinieri watched him suspiciously until he got out of the car, then smiled with amusement at his short stature.
It was Pisciotta who opened the door and led him inside. Guiliano’s mother and father were in the kitchen waiting, a breakfast of cold sausage, bread and coffee on the table. Maria Lombardo was calm, reassured by her beloved Aspanu that her son would recover. She was more angry than fearful. Guiliano’s father looked more proud than sad. His son had proved himself a man; he was alive and his enemy was dead.
Again Pisciotta told his story, this time with comforting humor. He made light of Guiliano’s wound and very little of his own heroism in carrying Guiliano down to the monastery. But Hector Adonis