The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [58]
The cart looked like a man with tattoos that covered every inch of his body. Between the shafts stood a sleepy white mule. Guiliano jumped into the empty driver’s seat and looked into the cart. It was packed with huge jugs of wine cradled into bamboo baskets. There were at least twenty of them. Guiliano slipped his shotgun behind a row of jugs. He gave a quick look toward the mountains; there was nothing to be seen, except the flag still flying. He grinned down at Pisciotta. “Everything is in place,” he said. “Go and do your little dance.”
Pisciotta gave a little salute, serious yet mocking, buttoned his jacket over his pistol, and started walking toward the gates of the Bellampo Barracks. As he walked he glanced down the road that led to Castellammare, just to make sure there was no armored car on its way back from the mountains.
High up on the cart seat, Turi Guiliano watched Pisciotta walk slowly across the open field and onto the stone path that led to the gate. Then he looked down the Via Bella. He could see his house, but there was nobody standing in front of it. He had hoped he might catch a glimpse of his mother. Some men were sitting in front of one of the houses, their table and wine bottles shaded by an overhanging balcony. Suddenly he remembered the binoculars around his neck and he unclipped the strap and threw them into the back of the cart.
A young carabiniere stood guard at the gate, a boy no more than eighteen. His rosy cheeks and hairless face proclaimed his birth in the northern provinces of Italy; his black uniform with white piping, baggy and untailored, and his braided fiercely military cap gave him the look of some puppet or clown. Against regulations he had a cigarette in his adolescent, cupid’s bow mouth. Approaching on foot, Pisciotta felt a surge of amused contempt. Even after what had happened in the last few days the man did not have his rifle ready.
The guard only saw a scruffy peasant who dared to grow a mustache more elegant than he deserved. He said roughly, “You there, you lump, where do you think you’re going?” He did not unsling his rifle. Pisciotta could have cut his throat in a second.
Instead he tried to look obsequious, tried to suppress his mirth at this child’s arrogance. He said, “If you please, I wish to see the Maresciallo. I have some valuable information.”
“You can give it to me,” the guard said.
Pisciotta could not help himself. He said scornfully, “And can you pay me too?”
The guard was astounded by this impudence. Then he said contemptuously but a little warily, “I wouldn’t pay you a lira if you told me Jesus had come again.”
Pisciotta grinned. “Better than that. I know where Turi Guiliano has come again, the man who bloodied your noses.”
The guard said suspiciously, “Since when does a Sicilian help the law in this damned country?”
Pisciotta moved a little closer. “But I have ambitions,” he said. “I’ve put in an application to become a carabiniere. Next month I go to Palermo for my examination. Who knows, both of us might soon be wearing the same uniform.”
The guard looked at Pisciotta with a more friendly interest. It was true that many Sicilians became policemen. It was a road out of poverty, it was a small piece of power. It was a well-known national joke that Sicilians became either criminals or policemen and that they did equal damage on both sides. Meanwhile Pisciotta was laughing inwardly at the thought that he would ever become a carabiniere. Pisciotta was a dandy; he owned a silk shirt made in Palermo. Only a fool would preen in that white-piped black uniform and that ridiculous braided stiff-billed cap.
“You’d better think twice,” the guard said, not wanting everybody to be in on a good thing. “The pay is small and we’d all starve if we didn’t take bribes from smugglers. And just this week two of the men of our barracks, good friends of mine, were killed by that damned Guiliano. And every day the insolence of your peasants who won’t even give you directions to the barber in town.”