The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi Read Free Book Online

early concerns of my religious vocation, but I would still have to endure many years of schooling and experiences before I could profess it. Smiling, I recalled that one unforgettable afternoon in which my mother caught me with a smudged notebook in which I’d detailed the adventures of the American spy Ottavia Prescott… She couldn’t have been more scandalized if she’d found a gun or a pornographic magazine under my bed. To her, my father, and the rest of the Salina family, literary pursuits were senseless ones, more suited to unemployed bohemians than to the young daughter of an affluent family.
    The moon shone a luminous white in the dark sky. The pungent scent of the sea carried by the cold night air grew so intense I covered my mouth and nose with the lapels of my coat, then drew my blanket all the way to my neck. The Roman Ottavia, Vatican paleographer, now seemed as distant as the Italian coast, while the Sicilian Ottavia came surging from some remote place she had never really abandoned. Who was Captain Glauser-Röist?… What did I have to do with a dead Ethiopian?… In the midst of all these questions and my reverting to my roots, I fell into a deep sleep.
    W hen I opened my eyes, the sky was growing brighter with the red glow of the eastern sun. The ferry entered the Gulf of Palermo at a good clip. Before we docked, as I folded my blanket and repacked my travel bag, I could make out the thick arms of my oldest sister, Giacoma, and of my brother-in-law Domenico waving lovingly from the dock. I was home.
    The sailors on the ferry, the other passengers, the soldiers on the pier, and the people waiting on the dock watched me with intense curiosity as I came down the gangway for it was impossible to miss Giacoma, the most famous of the new Salinas, and her very discreet convoy—two impressive armored cars with dark windows and kilometric proportions.
    My sister squeezed me until I nearly broke in half, while my brother-in-law gave me loving pats on my shoulder. One of my father’s men gathered my luggage and put it in the trunk.
    “I told you not to come get me!” I protested into Giacoma’s ear. She turned me loose and flashed a bright smile, as though what I said hadn’t registered. My sister, who’d just turned fifty-three, had long hair as black as coal and wore makeup as bright as van Gogh’s palette. She was still beautiful and would have been even more attractive if it weren’t for those twenty or thirty extra pounds she carried.
    “You’re such a silly goose!” she exclaimed, pushing me into the arms of stout Domenico, who squeezed me again. “Do you think I’d let you arrive in Palermo alone and just take a bus home? Impossible!”
    “Besides,” added Domenico, looking at me with paternal reproach, “we’re having some problems with the Sciarra family.”
    “What’s going on with the Sciarra family?” I was worried. Concetta Sciarra and her little sister, Doria, were my childhood friends. Our families had always gotten along well and growing up we had played together many Sunday afternoons. Concetta was a generous, caring person. After her father’s death two years before, she had assumed control of the Sciarra’s family business. From what I had heard, the relationship between our families was very good. Doria, however, was the other side of the same coin: devious, envious, egotistical, and always looking for ways to blame others for her evil actions, she had professed a blind envy of me since we were little. She stole my toys and books and often broke them without one bit of remorse.
    “They’re cutting into our markets with cheaper products,” explained my sister, defiantly. “It’s an unbelievably dirty war.”
    I didn’t say a word. Such a serious action seemed despicable to me, since they were clearly taking advantage of my father’s inevitable decline. He was nearly eighty-five. But Concetta should be smart enough to know that as debilitated as Giuseppe Salina was, his