Defiance by Tom Behan Read Free Book Online

which he was arrested and charged. Local people saw that he lived a charmed life, that he was untouchable.
    His influence and eyes must have been everywhere; indeed, his black eyes burned like lumps of coal. As somebody once said of him: ‘In Cinisi a leaf didn’t move without Don Tano knowing about it.’ Photographs from back then show him often dressing as a typical peasant, in an ordinary jacket and cloth cap, although on special occasions he wore a suit and sunglasses. Over the years his face became burnt by the sun and grizzled, like that of most Sicilians – yet this was a man who operated on a global scale. His behaviour in public, particularly at trials, was both courteous and grave, he acted like a real ‘man of honour’. His measured response to any question or comment, often answered indirectly, meant that people hung on his every word, simply because they knew how powerful he was.
    But when his boss Cesare Manzella was blown up in 1963 during the First Mafia War, the leaves stopped moving. Badalamenti went on the run for six years and disappeared from his hometown.

5
It’s in the Air that You Breathe
F
    ifteen miles to the west of Palermo, the town of Cinisi is like many in Sicily: small, isolated and – particularly in the summer heat – sleepy. Like other towns it is
    also claustrophobic, everybody knows everybody else, and everybody often knows everybody else’s business. People talk, maybe not in front of you, but they talk. You sense it when you’re walking along the streets, in the way people look at you. Some give you friendly glances if you know them, others greet you in an apparently friendly way, but you can see a knowing or penetrating look in their eyes.
    If people don’t know you then their gaze is even more inquisitive, searching and invariably hostile. If you’re an outsider arriving by car, by the time you’ve locked the door many people have registered your alien presence. All of this surveying happens from two vantage points: people looking out from shops or at tables outside of bars, or in hot weather people sitting on chairs on their doorsteps. You are being watched all the time, there is no escape from the equivalent of hundreds of ‘smart’ CCTV cameras. Even houses with closed doors can be observation posts: you can easily imagine people peering at you from between the slats of their window blinds.
    Lots of communication takes place without words, as one Cinisi resident put it: ‘Our culture is one in which nobody talks but everybody knows everything. It’s as if there are some magnetic waves.’ Everyday activity is often highly symbolic. Because everybody knows everything, you know that one supermarket is run by a Mafioso and one isn’t. The same goes for the butcher, or the petrol station, or the numerous bars on the main street.
    Felicetta Vitale’s family has been running a bar on the main street for nearly fifty years. Things haven’t changed very much from the 1960s and 1970s she remembers:
Back then every bar had its own clientele: there was the Bar Palazzolo on the corner of the town square – that was the bar for the ‘gentlemen’ of the town. The Bar Roma was across the street, and it was the students’ bar. Halfway down there were another two bars, one in front of the other. One was the Maltese, which was used by cattle farmers, whereas opposite it, the Mastrominico – which has now become a pub – was used by building workers and manual labourers. Right at the bottom there were another two bars which were frequented by truck drivers, since they were very close to the main road.
    This was how the town was divided: these were your reference points. However, over time two groups – workers and students – started to mingle.
    The town has always been divided, but the walls and fences are in people’s minds. If a member of a Mafia family gets a top-up for their mobile from a non-Mafia shop it’s a significant event. Maybe they’re making a statement,