The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [78]
From these mountains he sallied forth with his men onto the white dusty roads to rob government convoys, stick up railway trains, and relieve rich women of their jewels. The peasants riding on their painted carts in holy festivals saluted him and his men at first with fear and then with respect and affection. There was not one of them, not a shepherd or laborer who had not benefited from his distribution of loot.
The whole countryside became his spies. At night when children said their prayers they included a plea to the Virgin Mary “to save Guiliano from the carabinieri.”
It was a countryside that fed Guiliano and his men. There were the olive and orange groves, the vineyards of grapes. There were the flocks of sheep whose shepherds looked the other way when the bandits came for a few lambs. Through this landscape Guiliano moved like a ghost, lost in the hazy blue light of Sicily which is the cerulean Mediterranean Sea reflected from the sky.
The winter months were long in the mountains, cold. And yet Guiliano’s band grew. At night scores of campfires freckled the slopes and valleys of the Cammarata range. The men used the firelight to clean their guns, repair their clothing, do their laundry in the nearby mountain stream. Preparing the communal evening meal sometimes caused arguments. Every village in Sicily had a different recipe for squid and eels, disagreed on what herbs should be disbarred from the tomato sauce. And whether sausages should ever be baked. Men partial to the knife for murder liked to do laundry; the kidnappers preferred the cooking and sewing chores. The raiders of banks and trains stuck to cleaning their guns.
Guiliano made them all dig defense trenches and establish far-flung listening posts so they could not be surprised by government forces. One day when the men were digging they came upon the skeleton of a giant animal, bigger than they could imagine. Hector Adonis arrived that day bringing books for Guiliano to study, for Guiliano was curious now to know everything in the world. He studied books of science, of medicine, of politics, philosophy and military techniques. Hector Adonis brought him sackfuls every few weeks. Guiliano took him to where the men had dug up the skeleton. Adonis smiled at their puzzlement. “Haven’t I given you enough books on history?” he said to Guiliano. “A man who does not know the history of mankind for the last two thousand years is a man living in the dark.” He paused for a few moments. The mellow voice of Adonis was the lecturing voice of a professor.
“This is a skeleton of a war machine employed by Hannibal of Carthage who two thousand years ago traveled over these mountains to destroy imperial Rome. It is the skeleton of one of his war elephants, trained to combat and never before then seen on this continent. How frightening they must have been to those Roman soldiers. Yet they availed Hannibal nothing; Rome vanquished him and destroyed Carthage. These mountains have so many ghosts, and you have found one of them. Think, Turi, one day you will be one of the ghosts.”
And Guiliano did think all that night. The idea pleased him that he would someday be one of the ghosts of history. If he were killed he hoped it would be in the mountains; he had the fantasy that, wounded, he would crawl into one of the thousands of caves and never be found until some accident discovered him, as had happened with Hannibal’s elephant.
They changed encampments many times during the winter. And for weeks at a time the band dispersed altogether and slept in the houses of relatives, friendly shepherds, or the great empty granaries that belonged to the nobility. Guiliano spent most of the winter studying his books and making his plans. He had long talks with Hector Adonis.
In early spring he went with Pisciotta down the road that led to Trapani. On that road they saw a cart with new painted legends on its sides. For the first time they saw a panel showing the legend of Guiliano. It was a scene painted in