Honoured Society by Norman Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

possessing – like Villalba – no history, but only a few oppressive memories and nightmarish legends. Their purpose has been to breed and house the labour for the great feudal estates, and to condition the minds and subjugate the bodies of that labour. In such towns as Villalba there is an almost puritanical absence of any of the apparatus of pleasure. Even for the very rich, the only satisfaction is to be derived from the wielding of power. Here, in fact, the feudal order continues astonishingly after a thousand years, rather like a mammoth preserved in ice. The absentee landlord may still rule from his palace in Palermo, through his stewardsand armed guards, but more commonly, he will have leased his estate for a number of years to a gabellotto – literally a tax collector – who is traditionally mafioso and will not work the land himself but parcel it out between sharecropping small farmers on the most extortionate terms. At the bottom of this social pyramid is the day labourer, to whom the sharecropper passes down as much as he can of his inevitable misery. The only escape for the exceptionally talented boy born into this class has always been the Church, whose intelligent policy it has been to refresh its blood by accepting recruits from all social levels. When a peasant boy is transformed into a priest his old playfellows salute him respectfully – ‘bacciamo le mani – we kiss your hands.’ He now shares in the clear-cut four-way division of power with the mayor of the town, the chief of police and the local head of the Mafia.
    Don Calò’s uncle had been such an exceptional peasant boy, and had had the advantage of not having to force his way out of one of the lowest social levels. He had shot up like a comet through the hierarchy of the Church to become Bishop of Muro Lucana. The rise of a cousin – also on the mother’s side – had been even more spectacular, for he became not only Bishop of Noto, but the founder of the monastic order of Maria Santissima del Carmelo. Don Calò’s own brother was parish priest of Villalba. As a compensation for his more modest achievement, he had been able to devote more time to side interests, such as running profitable agricultural co-operatives. Such a mingling of spiritual with mundane occupations causes no surprise in western Sicily, where, for example, in 1962 the parish priest of the island’s new Mafia capital, Mussomeli, was also chairman of the local credit bank.
    The young Calogero Vizzini himself was excluded from the beginning from this traditional outlet by his lack of patience with scholarship of any kind, and a sort of bluff and perverse insistence in remaining a down-to-earth countryman in his general demeanour. Don Calò never confused the shadow with the substance of power, and saw no reason why he should ever be compelled to speak an emasculated Italian rather than the vigorous local dialect. In any case he could never have tolerated the long years of submission to others that would have been demanded ofhim as a religious acolyte. As it was, he remained an illiterate all his life – a state of affairs from which he seemed to derive positive satisfaction, being inclined in company to boast that he could solve problems in his head faster than other men could on paper. Although an agnostic, like most elevated Mafia personalities, he agreed with Napoleon that religion was good for the people, and when at home he liked to see priests about the house.
    The young Calogero’s first trial of strength with the law came at the age of seventeen, and with it was laid the cornerstone of the edifice of ‘respect’, which is the prerequisite of high office in the Mafia. Although even in those days unsentimental in his make-up, he was involved in some way with the pretty daughter of the well-to-do Solazzo family of Villalba. It appears that marriage was never contemplated, but none the less, Calogero imposed his veto on the girl’s association with any other