“He must have one hell of an information service to know you were here so quickly.”
“The best.”
He moved to the railings and read the inscription. “Your mother?” I nodded. “You never did tell me about it.”
And I found out that I wanted to, which was strange. It was as if we were on the old footing again or perhaps I was in that kind of mood where I would have told it to anyone.
“I said my mother was Sicilian, that my grandfather still lived here, but I don’t think I ever went into details.”
“Not that I recall. I believe you mentioned his name, but I’d forgotten it until I saw it again just now on the inscription there.”
I sat on the edge of a tomb and lit a cigarette. I wondered how much I could tell him, how much he could possibly understand. To the visitor, the tourist, Sicily was Taormina, Catania, Syracuse – golden beaches, laughing peasants. But there was another, darker place in the hinterland. A savage landscape, sterile, barren, where the struggle was not so much for a living, but for survival. A world where the key-word was omerta, which you could call manliness for want of a better translation. Manliness, honour, solve your own problem, never seek official help, all of which led to the concept of personal vendetta and was the breeding group for Mafia.
“What do you know about Mafia, Sean?”
“Didn’t it start as some kind of secret society in the old days?”
“That’s right. It came into being in a period of real oppression. In those days it was the only weapon the peasant had, his only means of any kind of justice. Like all similar movements, it grew steadily more corrupt. It ended up by having the peasant, the whole of Sicily by the throat.” I dropped my cigarette and rubbed it into the gravel. “And still does in spite of what the authorities in Rome have been able to do.”
“But what has this got to do with you?”
“My grandfather, Vito Barbaccia, is capo mafia in Palermo, in all Sicily. Number one man. Lord of Life and Death. There are something like three million Sicilians in the States now and Mafia moved over there as well and became one of the main branches of syndicated gangsterism. During the last ten years, quite a few Mafia bosses in the States have been deported. They’ve come back home with new ideas – prostitution, drugs and so on. An old-fashioned mafioso like my grandfather doesn’t mind killing people, but he just doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.”
“There was trouble?”
“You could put it that way. They placed a bomb in his car – a favourite way of getting rid of a rival in those circles. Unfortunately, it was my mother who decided to go for a drive.”
“My God.” There was shock and genuine pain on his face.
I carried on, “Believe it or not, but I didn’t know a damn thing about it, or maybe I didn’t want to know. I came home on vacation after my first year at Harvard and it happened on the second day. My grandfather told me the facts of life the same evening.”
“Did he ever manage to settle up with the man responsible?”
“Oh. I’m sure he did. I think we can take that as read.” I stood up. “I’m beginning to feel rather hungry. Shall we go back?”
“I’m sorry, Stacey,” he said. “Damned sorry.”
“Why should you be? Ancient history now.”
But I believed him for he seemed sincere enough. The wind moaned through the cypress trees, scattering rain across the path and I turned and walked back towards the monastery.
SIX
I WENT TO bed for a while after we’d eaten. Sleep came easily to me at that time, simply by closing the eyes and I seldom seemed to dream. When I opened them again it was seven-thirty by the bedside clock and almost dark.
Somewhere I could hear the murmur of voices and I got to my feet, pulled on a bathrobe and padded across to the glass doors that opened on to the terrace.
Burke was standing in the courtyard below, one foot on the rim of the ornamental fountain. His companion was a thick-set man with close-cropped white hair who looked in better shape than he probably was, thanks to a tailor who knew how to cut cloth.
There was nothing ostentatious about him. He’d resisted the impulse to wear more than one ring and displayed only the regulation inch of white cuff as if following someone’s instructions to the letter. I think it was the tie which spoiled things – Guards Brigade, which didn’t seem likely – and when he produced a platinum case and offered Burke a cigarette, he looked about as real as his garden.
He accepted a light, turned away slightly, running a hand over his hair with a rather feminine gesture and saw me standing there at the edge of the balcony.
He had obviously cultivated the instant smile. “Hello there,” he called. “I’m Karl Hoffer. How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “You provide excellent beds.”
His voice was the first surprise. Pure American – no Austrian accent at all as far as I could judge.
He smiled at Burke. “Heh, I like him,” then looked up at me again. “We’re just going to have a drink. Why don’t you join us? Good chance to talk business.”
“Five minutes,” I said and went back into the bedroom to dress.
As I went down to the hall, Rosa Solazzo appeared from the dining room followed by one of the houseboys carrying a tray of drinks. All the best dresses were English that year. Hers must have set Hoffer back two hundred guineas at least, a cloud of red silk like a flame in the night, setting her hair and eyes off to perfection.
“Please,” she said, reached up and straightened my tie. “There, that is better. I felt very foolish this afternoon. I didn’t know.”
She’d spoken in Italian and I replied in kind. “Didn’t know what?”
“Oh, about you. That your mother was Sicilian.”
“And who told you that?”
“Colonel Burke.”
“Life’s just full of surprises, isn’t it?” I said. “Shall we join the others?”
“As you wish.”
I think she took it as some kind of dismissal, but she certainly didn’t seem annoyed, although I suppose a woman in her position can seldom afford the luxury of that kind of emotion.
Hoffer and Burke had moved to a small illuminated patio where another fountain which was an exact duplicate of the first lifted into the night. They were sitting at a wrought iron table and rose to greet me.
Hoffer had the kind of out-of-season tan that usually argues a lamp or, more rarely, someone rich enough to follow the sun. On closer acquaintance, he was older than I had imagined, his face a network of fine seams and in spite of the ready smile, there was little joy in the china blue eyes.
We shook hands and he waved me to a seat. “Sorry I wasn’t here when you got in. I’m having to run down to Gela three or four times a week now. You know the oil game.”
I didn’t, but I remembered Gela, a Greek colony in classic times, mainly as a pleasant little coastal town on the other side of the island with some interesting archaeological remains. I wondered how the derricks and refineries were fitting in and accepted a large vodka and tonic from Rosa.
She dismissed the houseboy and served us herself, dropping unobtrusively into a chair in the background when she had finished which seemed to indicate that Hoffer trusted her all the way – something I’d been wrong about.
He certainly didn’t waste any time in getting down to business. “Mr. Wyatt, Colonel Burke recommended you highly for this job which is why we went to so much trouble to get you out.”
“That was real nice of him,” I said and the irony was in my voice for all to hear.
Except Hoffer, apparently, who carried on. “In fact I don’t think it’s overdoing it to say that we’re all depending on you, boy.”
He put a hand on my knee which I didn’t like and there was the sort of edge to his voice that you get with the kind of American wheat-belt politician who’s trying to persuade you he’s just folks after all. Any minute now I expected him to break into a chorus of “I believe in you” and I couldn’t have that.