The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [91]
When Guiliano’s mother made that request a few days later she was surprised when La Venera gave a proud and joyful yes. It confirmed a suspicion that her friend had a weakness for Turi. So be it, Maria Lombardo thought as she took La Venera into her arms with grateful tears.
The offshoot tunnel was completed in four months; the main tunnel would not be completed for another year. Periodically Guiliano would sneak into town at night and visit his family and sleep in a warm bed, after his mother’s hot meals; there would always be a feast. But it was nearly spring before he found it necessary to use the offshoot tunnel. A carabinieri patrol in strength came down the Via Bella and passed by. They were armed to the teeth. Guiliano’s bodyguard of four men hidden in nearby houses was ready to do battle. But they passed on. Still there was the fear that on their return they might decide to raid the Guiliano home. So Turi Guiliano went through the trapdoor in his parents’ bedroom and into the tunnel.
The offshoot was disguised by a wooden panel covered with a foot of dirt so that workers on the main tunnel would not know it existed. Guiliano had to dig away the dirt and remove the wooden disc. It took him another fifteen minutes to crawl through the narrow space that led under La Venera’s house. The trapdoor there led to the kitchen and was covered by a huge iron stove. Guiliano tapped on the trapdoor with the prearranged signal and waited. He tapped again. He never feared bullets, but he feared this darkness. Finally there was a faint noise above him and then the trapdoor was raised. It could not rise all the way because the stove above it broke the plane of the lid. Guiliano had to squeeze through the opening and wound up on his belly on La Venera’s kitchen floor.
Though it was the middle of the night, La Venera was still in her usual ill-fitting black dress, the mourning for her husband though he was three years dead. Her feet were bare. She wore no stockings, and as Guiliano rose from the floor he could see the skin on her legs was a startling white, so very much in contrast to the brown skin of her sunburned face and the jet black, coarse and heavily woven hair. For the first time he noticed that her face was not as broad as that of most of the older women in his town, that it was triangular, and though her eyes were dark brown, they had little black flecks in them he had never seen before. In her hand she held a scuttle full of live coals as if ready to throw them at the open trapdoor. Now she calmly slid the coals back into the stove and replaced the lid. She looked a little frightened.
Guiliano reassured her. “It’s just a patrol roaming around. When they return to their barracks, I’ll leave. But don’t worry, I have friends out in the street.”
They waited. La Venera made him coffee and they chatted. She noted that he did not have any of the nervous movements of her husband. He did not peer out the windows, his body did not tense at sudden noises in the street. He seemed completely relaxed. She did not know he had trained himself to act this way because of her stories about her husband and because he did not want to alarm his parents, especially his mother. He projected such an air of confidence that she soon forgot the danger he was in and they gossiped about the little happenings of the town.
She asked him if he had received the food she had sent him in the mountains from time to time. He thanked her and said how he and his companions had fallen on her food packets as if they were gifts from the Magi. How his men had complimented her cooking. He did not tell her of the coarse jokes some of his companions had made, that if her lovemaking equaled her cooking she would be a prize indeed. Meanwhile he was watching her closely. She was not being as friendly to him as usual; she did not show that fond