‘My fault, as I say. Spending all my time away in Palermo like every other fool. What was it you had to tell Albanese?’
‘I was in the hills last night with the sheep. West part of the hills, your hills, and bandits came to steal them and shot my mule and tried to shoot me and I defended myself, as I had to, Lord Jesus Christ forgive me, and I fired in the darkness and shot one who lies dead there now. The others ran away. I’ve penned the sheep above the village.’
‘You shot one?’
‘God forgive me, I did. He’s up there. He’s dead.’ The long teeth in the half-light. The shadowed eyes. Flies up there now. The mother.
‘I see. It’s what you should have done. You’ve been brave. How old are you? Still a boy, really.’ He put a clean hand on Angilù’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’d like to talk to you some more.’
‘Come with you? In that?’ Angilù nodded towards the motor car.
‘Yes, yes. In this. Albanese’s not here. Probably a good thing. Come on, then. Let’s go.’
Prince Adriano held open the door for him and Angilù sat down on the chair inside, awkwardly gathering his gun and bag between his knees. The Prince shut the door, walked briskly round the front of the car and fired its motor with a violent twist of a metal handle. Angilù was surprised to see a prince bend down and use inelegant physical force. The Prince then got in and sat in the driving position beside him. He moved some levers and then, without any effort of man or animal, not even the visible pistoning of the train, they moved along the road, bouncing over its rough surface on soft leather chairs, all the way to the Prince’s palace.
The palace was the largest building Angilù had been inside, larger even than any church. He’d seen it countless times, of course, from nearby or up above. He knew the shape of the plain, extensive roofs edged with gutters, the two sides that thrust forwards like a crab’s claws, the patterned garden at the back with statues in it, but he’d never properly considered that its outward size must be matched by a vastness inside. As the Prince led him through, ceilings flew high overhead, some with paintings on them, false skies and angels, and he saw rooms on either side big enough for whole families.
A dog loped out to meet them, huge and rough-coated. Petted by the Prince, it trotted ahead on high, narrow legs. It turned, mouth open, to check that they were following. The beast was at home here. It lived in this place.
The Prince showed Angilù into a room, indicated a chair for him to sit on, and stood himself in front of a mirror the size of a dining table so that Angilù could see the back of his cleanly groomed head also. The mirror was surrounded by a thick, ornate golden frame at the corners of which fat little angels were stuck like flies in honey. The dog settled itself on a rug, looped around nose to tail and seemed, by the twitching of its eyebrows, to be listening to its master. Angilù’s seat felt treacherously soft beneath him, as though there were nothing there. He had the strange feeling that some of his sensations were disappearing. The heat and wind in which he always lived were gone, shut outside this airy, airtight place. He looked around him at the polished furniture and patterns and realised that the Prince had been talking for some time. It turned out that the tall man’s elegant beard was wagging to a great hymn of praise to Angilù himself and not only to Angilù: all shepherds were great, the true and ancient Sicily, classical Sicily. Someone had described Sicilian shepherds in a poem a long time ago. Angilù had shown great courage defending his flock against the bandits and it was the Prince’s turn to do the same, to return from Palermo to protect his flock. Now that the Fascists were in power things would be different. There would be no room for people like Albanese who came between the Prince and his people, exploiting them both. The Prince gave Angilù a cigarette of soft French tobacco. Another vanishing sensation: the smoke passed down Angilù’s throat in such a light, cool, unabrasive stream that he hardly felt he was smoking at all.
‘Here,’ the Prince said. ‘I’m going to give you a gift, a pledge if you like. Wait a moment.’
He left the room. Angilù and the dog were alone, silent together. The dog lay on the rug, wet-eyed, its long muzzle resting along its forepaws. Angilù wondered what the dog could smell on him. Sheep, snails, gunpowder, blood, the mule, herbs, sweat.
Quick stuttering footsteps. The dog raised its head. Angilù looked round. A small child stood in the doorway, a girl with big dark eyes set in skin that was pale and yellow. A child who was kept out of the sun, who was never hungry. She wore a dress that stuck out around her legs in stiff rustling layers and pleats. She held the door frame and opened her mouth slowly with a slight popping sound as though to say something, staring with frank curiosity at the stranger. A servant rushed up behind to collect her, a woman with a watch on a short chain that hung on the breast of her dark dress. Everyone here knew the exact time. She caught sight of Angilù and nodded in acknowledgement, a quick tuck of her chin that was more to conceal her flinching in shock than to greet the dirty stranger in the Prince’s drawing room. She took hold of the child’s hand and led her away.
The Prince returned holding something small high up in front of him like a lantern. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Open your hand.’
Angilù did as he was told. The Prince dropped onto Angilù’s palm a heavy gold ring, a small thing but as heavy as a pigeon. The gold looked soft, buttery, as though Angilù would be able to cut through it with his knife.
‘It’s Roman, less ancient than your craft but there you are. I had it just the other day from a dealer from Smyrna.’
‘I don’t know …’
‘You can show it to other people in the village, tell them that it’s a gift from me, that I’ve returned. There’ll be no more landlords coming between me and them, no more leases bought in crooked auctions with violence and intimidation and the profits from the land going to the landlord and his friends.’
Angilù nodded, knowing that he would never show the ring to anyone ever. It would have to be hidden. One day, when he knew how, he could sell it.
‘And you and I will meet now and again,’ the Prince said. ‘And you can help me get to know the land. You see, I’d like to know what you know.’
Cirò Albanese walked through his house with one hand outstretched, his fingertips touching the wall, feeling the silky whitewash as he moved. Three generations to get into this house. He knew its forms, its sounds, where it was cool, where the warmth collected in winter. His children should grow up here. He should have had them already, a check to his brother’s sons. He was heading for a little storeroom in which he picked up a bottle of his olive oil. He looked at it, holding it towards the window to see its colour. He opened it and swigged. A flash of green-gold light above his eyes. The smoothness as he swallowed, the peppery flavour in the after-gasp. He licked his slippery lips, savoured the hours that had gone into its making, sunlight and labour, the possession of the trees.
In his bedroom he went to a particular drawer and collected money which he put in two different pockets and more still in the lining of his jacket. He folded a handkerchief and fixed its neat peak in his breast pocket. He looked at himself in the smoky reflection of the old dressing-table mirror and smoothed his hair back at the sides, straightened his lapels, plucked his cuffs.
Take nothing. Say nothing to anyone. Go.
People were disappearing. This was true enough. Life was becoming impossible. People knew his name. That’s why he had to go this way. And better to do it, better to act for yourself, be the captain of your own fate. This was about staying alive.
He found his wife busy at the kitchen table, her hair pinned up out of the way, an ordinary day six months into their marriage. Teresa was small and voluptuous, as though she had been assembled quickly and greedily. This on top of that on top of that. Breasts, belly and behind. He took her waist in his hands and laid his face against the warm skin of her bare neck.