The Day of the Owl (10 page)

'Corporals! I like that!'

'There's nothing to laugh at, my good fellow. I hope with all my heart that your face never gets impressed on the memory of a corporal... Anyhow, even corporals pass and we stay ... a jolt or two, an occasional scare, but we're still here.'

'But Don Mariano ...?'

'Don Mariano, too, has had his little jolt, his little scare.'

'But he's still inside. What he must be going through ... '

'He's not suffering physically at all. If you imagine that they are keeping him tied on top of two drawers or giving him electric shocks, forget it. All that sort of thing's in the past; nowadays even carabinieri have to obey the law ... '

'The law be damned! Only three months ago ... '

'Forget it; we're talking about Don Mariano. Nobody would dare lay a finger on him, a man who's respected, enjoys protection, a man who can afford to pay for defence lawyers like De Marsico, Porzio and Delitala, the lot... Certainly he'll have a bit of hardship to put up with. The guardroom isn't exactly a grand hotel: its plank bed is hard, its bucket stinks and he'll miss his coffee. Poor old fellow, he used to drink a strong double every half-hour ... But in a few days they'll let him out, shining with innocence like the Archangel Gabriel. And his life will settle down again and his affairs will go on prospering ...'

'A moment ago you were being alarmist, making me give up hope; now ...'

'A moment ago it was heads; now it's tails. I say tails should come up and things go well; but it just might come up heads.'

'We must see it's tails.'

'Well, then, listen carefully to my advice. We must pull the first ring out of that wall, we must get Diego freed.'

'Only if he wasn't the one to commit the disgrace ... '

'Even if he was, get him out. Let the investigation go ahead - it's in the hands of those two polenta-eaters anyway and no one can stop it. Let it go ahead, let it finish, let it all come before the Examining Magistrate and, meanwhile, prepare for Diego such a cast-iron alibi that anybody who tries to bite it will break his teeth.'

'How d'you mean?'

'I mean that on the day Colasberna was killed, and at the very same hour, Diego was a thousand miles from the scene of the crime, and in the company of highly respectable persons without a police record among them, honest men whose word no judge'd have the right to doubt.'

'But if he's confessed ...?'

'If he's confessed, he must take back all he's said: declare that either under physical or moral torture -there are moral tortures too - he made statements to the carabinieri which do not correspond to the truth. The proof that these statements are quite untrue, sheer fantasy, is that certain persons of the utmost integrity bear witness to the material impossibility of Diego having committed the crime. Only saints possess the gift of bi-location and I doubt whether any judge would credit Diego with sanctity ... Now just take a look at this newspaper, this little item of news: "In the S. murder cases, one line of inquiry has been neglected by the carabinieri ... "'

Captain Bellodi was reading about the line of inquiry which the Sicilian paper - usually extremely cautious and not at all addicted to criticisms of the 'forces of law and order' - had accused him of neglecting. This line, of course, was 'passion'; which might, to one conversant with the facts so far revealed by the inquiry, explain one of the crimes, but, in doing so, leave the other two in utter mystery. Perhaps the journalist, when visiting S., had gone to Don Ciccio the barber for a shave and been excited by that story of an affair between Nicolosi's wife and Passerello. In short, as a good journalist and Sicilian, what he said was:
cherchez la femme.
The captain's opinion was that police in Sicily should be given strict instructions not to
cherchez la femme;
for she was always found in the end, much to the detriment of justice.

In Sicily, thought Captain Bellodi, the
crime passionnel
is not the result of genuine passion, a passion of the heart, but of a sort of intellectual passion, an almost juridical concern for forms; juridical in the sense of the abstractions to which law is reduced at various levels of our legal system until they reach that formal transparency in which 'merit', that is, the human element, no longer counts. Once this is eliminated, law simply reflects itself. A character by the name of Ciampi in Pirandello's
Cap of Bells,
for instance, talked as though he had the entire High Court of Appeal in plenary session in his mouth, so carefully did he eviscerate and reconstitute form, never even touching on 'merit'. Bellodi had come across a Ciampi in the early days of his service at C. Just like Pirandello's character, he had turned up in his office, not in search of an author (he already had a most illustrious one) but of a subtle recorder of his evidence; so, fearing the sergeant might be unable to grasp his intricate arabesques, he had insisted on speaking to an officer.

All this, thought the captain, is the result of the fact that the only institution in the Sicilian conscience that really counts, is the family; counts, that is to say, more as a dramatic juridical contract or bond than as a natural association based on affection. The family is the Sicilian's State. The State, as it is for us, is extraneous to them, merely a
de facto
entity based on force; an entity imposing taxes, military service, war, police. Within the family institution the Sicilian can cross the frontier of his own natural tragic solitude and fit into a communal life where relationships are governed by hair-splitting contractual ties. To ask him to cross the frontier between family and State would be too much. In imagination he may be carried away by the idea of the State and may even rise to being Prime Minister; but the precise and definite code of his rights and duties will remain within the family, whence the step towards victorious solitude is shorter.

While waiting for Arena to be brought to his office, Captain Bellodi pondered these matters, in which literature offered his short experience sometimes the right, and sometimes the wrong, card. And his thoughts were just moving on to the mafia, and how it fitted into this pattern he had just been tracing, when the sergeant showed in Don Mariano Arena.

Before appearing in front of the captain, Don Mariano had demanded a barber and been given a refreshing shave by a carabiniere. Now he was stroking his face and luxuriating in the absence of a sandpapery beard which had caused him more worry than his own thoughts during the past two days.

The captain said: 'Please sit down.' Don Mariano sat down, gazing at the captain steadily from under his heavy lids: an inexpressive stare suddenly interrupted by a movement of the head, as if some mechanism had flicked the pupils upwards and inwards.

The captain asked him whether he had ever had any connection with Calogero Dibella, known as
Parrinieddu.

Don Mariano asked what he meant by connection: simple acquaintance, friendship or common interests?

'Take your choice,' said the captain.

'Truth is one. There's no choice: simple acquaintance.'

'And what was your opinion of him?'

'He seemed sensible enough. A youthful slip or two; but lately he seemed to be going straight.'

'Did he work?'

'You know about that better than I do.'

'I want to hear about it from you.'

'If you mean work with a spade, which was what his father brought him up to, Dibella worked as hard as you or I ... Maybe he worked with his brains.'

'And how d'you think he used his brains?'

'I don't know and I don't want to.'

'Why not?'

'Because I'm not interested: Dibella went his way and I mine.'

'Why d'you talk of him in the past tense?'

'Because he's been killed ... I heard an hour before you sent the carabinieri to my home.'

'It was Dibella himself, as a matter of fact, who sent the carabinieri to your home.'

'You're trying to muddle me.'

'No. I'll show you what Dibella wrote a few hours before his death,' and he showed Don Mariano a photostat copy of the letter.

Don Mariano took it and studied it at arm's length. He saw better from a distance, he said.

'What d'you think of it?' asked the captain.

'Nothing,' said Don Mariano, handing back the photograph.

'Nothing?'

'Less than nothing.'

'Doesn't it look like an accusation?'

'Accusation?' said Don Mariano in amazement. 'To me it doesn't look like anything. Just a piece of paper with my name on it.'

'There's another name as well.'

'Yes: Rosario Pizzuco.'

'D'you know him?'

'I know the whole town.'

'But Pizzuco in particular?'

'Not in particular. Like many others.'

'Did you have business dealings with Pizzuco?'

'Let me ask you a question. What kind of business d'you think I do?'

'Most kinds.'

'I'm not in business. I live on my income.'

'From where?'

'Land.'

'How many hectares d'you own?'

'Twenty-two
salme
and ... let's call it ninety hectares.'

'Do they pay well?'

'Not always; it depends on the year.'

'On average, what does a hectare of your land yield?'

'Much of my land is left to grass, for pasture ... I can't tell you how much a hectare of fallow land yields. I can tell you how much the sheep on it bring in ... Roughly half a million lire ... The rest is in wheat, beans, almonds and oil, depending on the year ... '

'How many hectares are under cultivation?'

'Fifty or sixty.'

'Then I can tell you how much a hectare yields: not less than a million lire.'

'You're joking!'

'No, it's you that's joking ... You tell me that, apart from your land, you have no other source of income and no interests in industry or commerce ... And I believe you. So I have to suppose that those fifty-four millions which you deposited in various banks last year, not withdrawn from previous deposits in other banks, represent the income from your land. A million per hectare ... I must confess, though, that it astounded an agricultural expert I consulted; according to him no land in these parts yields a net income of over a hundred thousand lire per hectare. D'you think he's mistaken?'

'No, he's not,' said Don Mariano, looking glum.

'We started off on the wrong foot, then ... Let's go back again. What are your sources of income?'

'No, we're not going back, not at all. I do what I like with my own money, move it about as I like ... I can say, though, that I don't always keep it in the bank. Sometimes I make loans to friends, without promissory notes, on trust... Last year all the money I lent was repaid: so I made those deposits in banks ... '

'Where there were already other deposits, in your name and your daughter's ... '

'It's a father's duty to think of his children's future.'

'Very proper. And you have assured your daughter a life of ease ... But I'm not so sure your daughter would approve of the way you provided her with it... I know that at the moment she's at a finishing-school in Lausanne – a very expensive, very famous one ... I expect, when you next see her, you'll find her very changed; more refined, pitying what you despise, respecting what you don't.'

'Leave my daughter out of this,' cried Don Mariano, with a spasm of rage. Then he relaxed, as if reassured, and said: 'My daughter's like me.'

'Like you? I hope not; and what's more, you're doing all you can so that she won't be, so that she'll be different ... And when your own daughter's so different that you can no longer recognize her, you'll have paid, in a way, the price of wealth acquired by violence and fraud.'

'You're sermonizing.'

'You're right: you go to church for a sermon, and here you expect to find a policeman: you're right ... So let's talk about your daughter from the point of view of what she costs you in hard cash, and of the money you've accumulated in her name. A great deal, a very great deal of money, of, shall we say, doubtful origin ... Look at these: they are photostat copies of the accounts in your own and your daughter's name at various banks. As you can see, we didn't just check at local branches: we went as far as Palermo ... A great deal, a very great deal of money: can you explain its origin?'

'Can you?' asked Don Mariano impassively.

'I'm going to try. Because it's in the money you so mysteriously accumulate that lie the motives for the crimes I'm investigating; these motives have to be more or less illustrated in my report on you for instigation to murder. I'm going to try ... but in any case you'll have to give an explanation to the income-tax authorities, as we'll be handing over all these data to them.'

Don Mariano shrugged his shoulders.

'We also have a copy of your income-tax returns and of your file at the Inland Revenue Office: you returned an income ... '

'The same as mine,' interrupted the sergeant.

' ... and your taxes came to ... '

'Slightly less than mine,' said the sergeant.

'You see,' said the captain, 'you have quite a bit of explaining to do.'

Don Mariano shrugged again.

'This is the moment when one ought to put on the screw,' thought the captain. 'It's no good trying to catch a man like this with the penal code. There'll never be enough evidence; the silence of both the honest and dishonest will always protect him. It's useless as well as dangerous to consider the chance of a suspension of constitutional rights. A new Mori would immediately become a political-electoral instrument; not of the government, but of a faction of the government: the Mancuso-Livigni one or the Sciortino-Caruso one. We ought to do here what they do in America: grab them for tax-evasion. But not only people like Mariano Arena; and not only in Sicily. There should be a swoop made on the banks, experts set to work on the books, falsified as often as not, of businesses big and small; the register of landed property brought up to date; a check should be made on all those of dubious character, young and old, who spend so much of their time and breath on politics; and on the company kept by the more restless members of the great family group which is the government; and on their families' neighbours, and their families' enemies, and on the luxury villas, custom-built cars, the wives and mistresses of certain civil servants; and their tenor of life compared to their salaries. Then the proper conclusions should be drawn. That's the only way men like Don Mariano can feel the ground begin to give way under their feet... In any other country in the world a tax-evasion like this one, of which I have the proof, would be severely punished; here Don Mariano just laughs, knowing how little it will take to confuse the issue ...'