The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [53]
It was midday before they saw anything and then it was just a lone man riding a donkey on the dusty path that led to their cliff.
They watched for another hour and then as the donkey entered the mountain range and took the upward path, Pisciotta said, “Damn, that rider is smaller than his donkey. It must be your godfather, Adonis.”
Guiliano recognized the contempt in Pisciotta’s voice. Pisciotta—so slender, so dapper, so well formed—had a horror of physical deformity. His tubercular lungs, which sometimes bloodied his mouth, disgusted him, not because of the danger to his life, but because it marred what he thought of as his beauty. Sicilians have a fondness for giving people nicknames related to their physical failings or abnormalities, and once a friend had called Pisciotta “Paper Lungs.” Pisciotta had tried to stab him with his pocketknife. Only Guiliano’s strength had prevented murder.
Guiliano ran down the mountainside for a few miles and hid behind a huge granite rock. It was one of his childhood games with Aspanu. He waited for Adonis to pass him on the trail, then he stepped out from his sheltering rock and called, “Stand where you are.” He pointed his lupara.
Again it was the childhood game. Adonis turned slowly in such a way that he shielded the drawing of his pistol. But Guiliano, laughing, had stepped behind the sheltering rock; only the barrel of his lupara gleamed in the sunlight.
Guiliano called, “Godfather, it’s Turi,” and waited until Adonis put his gun back into his waistband and shrugged out of his knapsack. Then Guiliano lowered his lupara and stepped into the open. Guiliano knew that Hector Adonis always had trouble dismounting because of his short legs and he wanted to help him. But when he appeared on the path the Professor slid down quickly, and they embraced. They walked up to the cliff, Guiliano leading the donkey.
“Well, young man, you’ve burned your bridges,” Hector Adonis said in his professional voice. “Two more dead policemen after last night. It’s no longer a joke.”
When they arrived on the cliff face and Pisciotta greeted him, Adonis said, “As soon as I saw the Sicilian flag I knew you were up here.”
Pisciotta grinned and said good-humoredly, “Turi and myself and this mountain have seceded from Italy.”
Hector Adonis gave him a sharp look. That self-centeredness of youth, stating its own supreme importance.
“The whole town has seen your flag,” Adonis said. “Including the Maresciallo of the carabinieri. They will be coming up to take it down.”
Pisciotta said impudently, “Always the schoolmaster giving knowledge. They’re welcome to our flag, but that is all they’ll find here. We’re safe at night. It would be a miracle for the carabinieri to come out of their barracks after dark.”
Adonis ignored him and unpacked the sack on his donkey. He gave Guiliano a pair of powerful binoculars and a first-aid kit, a clean shirt, some underwear, a knitted sweater, a shaving kit with his father’s straight-edge razor and six bars of soap. “You will need these up here,” he said.
Guiliano was delighted with the field glasses. They headed the list of things he needed to acquire in the next few weeks. He knew his mother had hoarded the soap over the last year.
In a separate package were a huge hunk of grainy cheese speckled with pepper, a loaf of bread, and two large round cakes that were really bread stuffed with prosciutto ham and mozzarella cheese and crowned with hard-boiled eggs.
Adonis said, “La Venera sent you the cakes. She says she always baked them for her husband when he was in the mountains. You can live on one for a week.”
Pisciotta smiled slyly and said, “The older they get the better the taste.”
The two young men sat in the grass and tore off pieces of the bread. Pisciotta used his knife to cut off hunks of the cheese. The grass around them was alive with insects, so they put the food sack on top of a granite boulder. They drank water from a clear stream that ran only a hundred feet below