Further down the track that led away from the house, a car engine coughed into life.
They had talked about it in the kitchen, the radio on, and the television at the other end of the room. They had sat opposite each other at the table, their heads close. Mamma had been behind him, mixing the sauce that would go with the pasta she would serve after they had eaten slices of cured ham and spiced sausage. The boy did not interrupt but sometimes gazed out of the window at the fading view of the wooded crags behind the house and the distant peaks of the Aspromonte mountains. Bernardo had said what should be done, how and where. Then he had questioned the boy: did he understand? There had been a nod. Mamma did not comment. He did not require her opinion so she was quiet. She, though, had packed Marcantonio’s grip. The sports holdall had bulged with clothes, trainers, a well-filled washbag, and a framed picture, protected with bubble wrap, of the Madonna at the shrine of Polsi, in a steep-sided valley to the south-west. The boy smoked at the table, which irritated Bernardo’s chest but he said nothing. The boy was his future: he had killed five times already in his life, would do so twice that evening. At the end, the boy had not answered him but the delicate fingers of his right hand rested reassuringly on Bernardo’s wrist: the old man worried too much . . .
When Marcantonio had stood up, thin and sleek, Mamma had wiped her hands decisively on her apron, enveloped him in her arms, crushing him close to her, then abruptly released him. The radio had been switched off and the TV had been turned down. She had laid the table and Bernardo had poured wine from the Crotone region: a good measure for himself, another for Mamma, but half a glass for the boy, who had tasks to fulfil that evening. The bag went into Stefano’s car.
Exhaust fumes spilled from the old Lancia, and the headlights captured the path that led to the vegetable garden, the chicken coops, the shed, whose roof was unstable, and the dry stone walls, which bulged outwards. The first buds were on the trees and the branches swayed in the wind. The last autumn leaves scurried over the path and whipped against the shed door. The boy walked to the car and did not look back.
His elder son, Rocco, was Marcantonio’s father, married to Teresa. She was at home, a kilometre down the track. She had not been asked to attend the last meal before her son’s long journey. Rocco had not been there because he was detained in the maximum-security gaol at Novara in the north, subject to the brutal regime of Article 41bis, by which the authorities could hold men in isolation from fellow prisoners. The problem confronting the family was not with Rocco and Teresa, but with Bernardo’s younger son, Domenico, husband of Annunziata and father to Nando and Salvo. It involved honour, and could not be ignored or shelved. Domenico was in gaol at Ascoli, also subject to Article 41bis.
The problem centred on Annunziata’s behaviour. Some women took hard the imprisonment of their husbands – sent down for twenty years or more. A few took to drink, and some suffered nervous collapse. One or two sought a lover . . . which was unacceptable. Bernardo, the padrino, leader of the Cancello clan, had condemned his daughter-in-law. A simple enough solution. He could not kill her himself and, shut in their cells, neither could his sons. And it was beneath his dignity to order lesser men to carry out killings when the issue nudged at the very centre of his power. She was a fine-looking girl, Annunziata. She had worn well after the birth of her children. Slim waist, a brittle smile, which seemed always to show that her thoughts were elsewhere. Her clothes, bought in Milan or Rome, were not suitable for the village or her home, which was three hundred metres down the track from Rocco and Teresa’s. If it were known that his son, in gaol, had been betrayed by his wife, it would reflect on the whole family and gnaw at their power.
He heard the car door slam, and Stefano – at the wheel – began the three-point turn. God’s truth, he would miss the boy.
Stefano was two years younger than Bernardo, and had been at his side from the day that Bernardo’s father had been shot dead in the covered market at Locri. He would take Marcantonio to the first targets. The man who had sex with his daughter-in-law was the owner of a small picture gallery in Catanzaro. Bernardo had learned of a beach hut to the south of Soverato, where the pair met, copulated, ate a picnic and drank wine, then locked up and went their separate ways. The man was always there first, and his arrival would coincide with Marcantonio’s. Marcantonio would have with him a sharpened kitchen knife and a lump-hammer. The man first, then Annunziata . . .