Chapter 34 23-1

After five months of wandering in the west, Michael Corleone finally understood his father's character and his own destiny.He finally understood characters like Luke Brasi and the hard-boiled Clemenza, and his mother's contented detachment.In Sicily he had seen clearly what would become of them if they did not act to fight their lot.He understood why the old man kept saying, "A man has but one destiny." He understood at last the source of the contempt for powerful and legitimate governments.Understand the root of people's hatred for anyone who breaks the law of silence.

Wearing an old suit and a duckbill cap, Michael was transported to the interior of Sicily as soon as he arrived in Palermo, to the heart of a province controlled by underground family forces.There, the head of the underground family is grateful to Michael's father, because Michael's father worked hard for him in the early years.There is a small town in this province called Corleone, and the old man took the name of this town as his surname when he immigrated to the United States.But, in this small town, the old man has no living relatives anymore.The women in the kinship died, and the men were killed in family feuds or emigrated to America, Brazil, or the Italian peninsula.Michael would later learn that this poor town had the highest murder rate of any part of the world.

Michael, by arrangement, was staying as a guest with the uncle of the head of the family, who was a bachelor and the local doctor of the district.The underground gang leader was fifty-nine years old, and his name was Don Tomasino.His public identity is the steward of the most prominent noble family in Sicily, in charge of a large estate.The so-called steward here is actually the guard of the rich manor's manor. Poaching is allowed, and land occupation and farming are not allowed without authorization.To sum up, the so-called housekeeper is a person who acts as a gangster for a certain amount of money, protects the real estate of the rich family, and opposes all legal or illegal demands made by the poor.Whenever any poor peasant tried to enforce the law allowing him to purchase uncultivated land, the steward frightened him away by threatening to maim or kill him.The butler's task is as simple as that.Tommasino also controlled the local "water rights", negating the Roman government's plans to build any new dams in the area.Such a dam will inevitably hit his water selling business, make the price of water cheap, and completely destroy the entire important system of water management that has been established through thousands of years of hard work.Tommasino, however, was an old-fashioned mob boss who disdained getting involved in drug smuggling and the whore trade.In this regard, there is a sympathy between Don Tomasino and the new type of gang leader who has just emerged in a big city like Palermo: those new types of characters who were deeply influenced by the hooligans who were repatriated from the United States to Italy. On the one hand, there is no scruple.

The leader of the gang was an unusually fat man, a "man with a big belly."The image, literally or literally, signifies a man capable of inspiring awe among his associates.Under his protection, Michael was safe, but it was still considered necessary to keep the identity of the homeless a secret.Michael's activities were thus confined within the walls of the estate of the Don's uncle, Dr. Tatcha. Dr. Tatcha was a large man for a Sicilian, almost six feet high, with a red face and snow-white hair. Although he was more than seventy years old, he went to Gillemot every week to patronize whores younger than him, the younger the better.Another problem with Dr. Tacha is reading.He read all kinds of books, and he would tell the contents of the books he read to the residents of the town, to the illiterate farmers, and to the shepherds of the manor.This earned him a reputation locally as a fool.Books have nothing to do with them.

In the evening, Dr. Tacha, Don Tomasino, and thirty Michael sat in the large garden full of marble statues.On this island, the marble statues grew magically from the gardens like great black and red grapes.Dr. Petra loved to talk about the exploits of the gang over the centuries, and Michael Corleone was fascinated.Sometimes even Don Tommasino could get carried away, and the rich air, the grape-flavored intoxicating wine, and the refined, secluded, uplifting atmosphere of Garden City couldn't help it. Tell a story based on your own experience.The doctor talked about historical legends; the old man Yu talked about real people in reality.

In this quaint garden, Michael Corleone taps into the old roots from which his father grew.He also figured out that the word "gangster" originally meant "shelter" in Italian.Later, the word evolved into the name of the secret organization formed to rebel against successive rulers who oppressed the country and its people.This land in the west has been ravaged far more cruelly than anywhere else.The religious court tortured all the people in Ximian, regardless of whether they were rich or poor.The landlords Laocai and princes and sons in the Catholic Church have absolute power to dominate the herdsmen and farmers.The police are the tools of the church's power. The police and the powerful forces in the church are almost indistinguishable from each other, and they are completely indifferent.Therefore, scolding among Sicilians, scolding "you are a policeman" is considered the greatest insult.

Facing this brutal and brutal autocratic power, the suffering people have developed the habit of speaking out in anger.In order not to put themselves in a passive position of being beaten, they have developed the habit of never issuing any threats, because threatening is tantamount to reminding the other party, which will definitely lead to rapid retaliation by the other party.They understand that society is their enemy, so when they are wronged and demand justice, they turn to the gangster's underground organization, the so-called gang.The Mafia strengthened its power by adopting the law of silence, the so-called principle of tight-mouthedness.In Sicily, a stranger who asks his way to a town does not even get an answer.The worst crime a gang member can do is to give the police the name of the person who just shot him or hurt him.The law of silence has become almost a religious creed of people's devout beliefs.A woman, if her husband is murdered, goes down and tells the police the name of her husband's murderer, not even the name of her child's murderer, or the name of her daughter's rapist.

In Sicily, justice has never come from the authorities, so people who want justice always run to the Green Heroes.Today, gangster organizations still play this role.When the pinch hits, people always go to the local gang boss for help.He is the person in charge of their welfare and relief work, the chief in charge of food, clothing and placement in their area, and their patron saint. However, in the following months, what Dr. Tatcha did not add, but what Michael himself felt was that in Sicily, the gang had become an illegal espionage of the wealthy class, and even became an auxiliary of the judicial and administrative departments. Policemen.The gang has degenerated and turned into a capitalist institution, anti-communist and anti-people, and imposes self-imposed exorbitant taxes on any business.

For the first time, Michael Corleone realized why a man like his father would rather be a thief and murderer than a member of legitimate society.Poverty, fear, increasing hardship, these things were too dreadful to bear for any man of backbone.Sicilian immigrants who had just arrived in the United States thought that the American authorities would be equally cruel. Dr. Tacha offered to take Michael with him whenever he visited a brothel in Palermo, but Michael declined.He took refuge in Sicily, which made it impossible for him to receive proper treatment for his injured jaw bone. To this day, he still has a "souvenir" given to him by Captain McCluskey on the left side of his face.The broken bones were glued together indiscriminately, tearing his face askew, making his profile look greatly deformed.He had always admired his own looks, and this caused him to suffer more than he had anticipated.The pain itself, appearing and disappearing from time to time, he didn't take it to heart at all.Dr. Tacha gave him some pills, which stopped the pain.Dr. Tacha offered to heal the wound on his face, but he declined again.Because he had been here for a long time and knew that Dr. Tacha was probably the worst doctor in all of Sicily.Dr. Tatcha reads everything except medicine, which he admits he doesn't understand, is about his profession.He passed his medical exams because the most important gang leader in Sicily gave him a back door.The gang leader made a special trip to Palermo to negotiate with Tacha's teacher to see what grade they should give Tacha.This fact shows that the gang is like a cancerous tumor to the society in which it lives.Merit is worth nothing, talent is worth nothing, achievement is worth nothing, and the godfather of the gang will give you a position as a gift.

Michael had plenty of time to think things through.When he went for walks in the country during the day, he was always accompanied by the two men who belonged to the Tommasino estate.Shepherds on this island are often hired out as executioners. They kill purely to make money.Michael ponders his father's organization.If his father's organization continued to prosper, it would grow into something like the gangsters on this island, and it would destroy an entire country like cancer destroys an entire human body. Sicily was already an empty, haunted place: men were constantly migrating around the world in order to make ends meet, or simply to escape the possibility of being murdered simply for exercising their political and economic liberties of doom.

What Michael saw on his long walks was that intoxicating beauty.He walked through the citrus groves, and there were everywhere citrus-like green avenues like endless caves, and there were ancient snake-like monsters carved out of stone in the B.C. Water pipes flowed out from the snake's mouth.The houses were all built like ancient Roman villas: a large marble porch in front, and a large vaulted room inside, most of which have become ruins or shelters for stray lambs.Looking from a distance, the mountains on the horizon look like piles of bones piled high. Gardens and fields adorned the desolate background like sparkling emerald necklaces, one after the other, glowing with green.Sometimes he walked as far as the town of Corleone, where eighteen thousand inhabitants lived on one long street, and the houses extended to the nearest hillside; crude huts of black stone.There were sixty murders in Corleone last year alone.Atmospherically, death looms over the town.In the distance, there is a "Phigusa" forest, which breaks the extremely monotonous atmosphere caused by all the farmland. The two bodyguards always had their big shotguns with them when they walked with Michael.This lethal Sicilian earthen musket is a favorite weapon of gangsters.The police leader sent by Mussolini back then wanted to eliminate the gangster forces in Ximianli.One of the first steps he took was to order that all the high stone walls of Sicily be torn down to a height of three feet.In this way, those who would like to kill cannot use the stone wall as a cover to carry out the assassination.The measure didn't do much.The last resort of the Superintendent of Police was to arrest any man suspected of being a gang member and send him to a labor camp. When Sicily was liberated by Allied forces, American military officials believed that anyone imprisoned by the fascist regime was a democrat.In this way, many gang members were appointed as village chiefs, town chiefs, or translators for the military government.This time, the gang got lucky and had the opportunity to regroup and develop even more terrifyingly than before. Long walks, a bottle of strong wine in the evening, and a large plate of pasta and meat allowed Michael to sleep soundly at night.In Dr. Tatcha's collection there are many in Italian.Although Michael can speak an authentic Italian dialect and has taken Italian as an elective in college, he still finds it very strenuous and time-consuming to read these books.He spoke Italian with almost no odd accents, but still not enough to sound like a native.From his accent one might think he came from the far north of Italy bordering the Swiss and the Germans. His crooked face made him more like a native.In Seomyeon, due to lack of medical care, deformed people abound. The reason why minor injuries can be healed is because they cannot afford the money.In Sicily, many children, many men, have scars.Had it been in the United States, the scar would have been healed long ago, either through minor surgery or a complicated course of treatment. Michael often thought of Kay, of her voice and smile, of her figure.He abandoned her so unkindly, and didn't even say hello when he was parting.Every time he thought about it, he felt a prick in his conscience.He had never felt uneasy about the two men he had personally killed, because Sollozzo had tried to kill his father, and Captain McCloskey had beaten him with a disfigured face. Dr. Tacha repeatedly urged him to have an operation to correct his uneven face, especially as the pain became more and more severe and frequent as time went by.When Michael asked him for painkillers, he pressed harder.Tacha explains: There is a facial nerve center under the eyes.From this center spread a whole nervous system.To be honest, this place is also a place where gangsters like to make fuss.The thugs used the sharp points of the ice picks on the dining table to find the nerve centers on the faces of the prisoners they were holding, and tortured them wantonly.This nerve center in Michael's face had been damaged, or perhaps a small splinter of bone had lodged in it.A simple operation in a hospital in Palermo can save the pain once and for all. Michael declined.When the doctor asked him why, he grinned and said, "This is a souvenir from my hometown." Pain, he really didn't care; pain, in fact, was more like numbness, more like a slight tremor in the skull, just like the rotation of a machine with a motor in a liquid, it would make the machine clean. After almost seven thousand months of this leisurely country life, Michael began to feel bored.At this time, old man Tommasino was also very busy, and it was rare to see him in the villa.He was having trouble with the "new mafia" that had just emerged in Palermo.The so-called "new gangsters" refer to young people who have made a fortune from the city's postwar construction industry.With the money in their hands, they are desperately trying to invade the country fiefdom of the old gang leader.They dismissed old gang leaders as senile.Old man Tommasino was busy everywhere, and he was busy defending his territory.So Michael lost the honor of the old man's company and had to make do with listening to Dr. Tacha's stories, some of which were repeated a second time. One morning Michael decided to take a long hike into the mountains beyond Corleone.He also naturally let the two herdsman bodyguards accompany him.This measure was not really designed to guard against enemies of the Corleone family.It's too dangerous for a stranger to wander around alone.Even locally, that's dangerous.There are many bandits in this area, and many gang guerrillas killing each other, which poses a threat to ordinary people.He could also be mistaken for a "farm shed" thief. "Farm tool shed" is a small thatched hut built with wheat stalks in the field, where farm tools can be stacked and agricultural workers can take a short break so that when they go to work in the field, they don't have to take farm tools so far from the village.In Sicily, farmers generally do not live alone on the land they cultivate, because it is too dangerous.Any arable land, if he could get his hands on it, was precious.He lived in the village, and as soon as the sun came out he set out to work in the distant fields.A farmer is a tourist who often walks about his home and fields.An agricultural laborer who arrives at his "implement shed" and finds it robbed of its contents is as wretched as he is robbed of his bread for the day.After the official law proved futile, the gangsters stepped forward and took this interest of the peasants into their own protection. The people solved the problem in typical fashion.The Mafia is responsible for hunting down and killing all "farm shed" thieves.Some innocent people also suffered, it is inevitable.This possibility also exists: If Michael inadvertently walks by a "tool shed" that has just been robbed, he may be legally convicted of robbery, unless he can find someone to bond for him. On a balmy morning, Michael set off on a long hike, followed by the two devoted herdsmen.One of the herdsmen was a plain and simple man, an imbecile, as silent as a dead man, with an expressionless face like an Indian, and his figure was a typical Sicilian vigorous and thin. His name was Gallo. The other herdsman is more cheerful, younger, and has seen some worldly experiences.In fact, all he has seen is the ocean.During the war he was a sailor in the Italian Navy.No sooner had he tattooed himself than the ship sank.He was caught by the British as a prisoner.However, the flowers tattooed on his body made him a celebrity in the whole village.Sicilians generally do not allow tattoos to be tattooed on their bodies.They have no such opportunities, nor such inclinations. (This herdsman named Fabrizio originally wanted to tattoo himself mainly to cover up a red, dirty-looking fetus on his belly.) However, the gang members drove the village There are carefully painted and brightly colored landscape paintings on both sides of the carriage.Fabrizio returned to his village; he was not at all particularly proud of the tattoo on his belly, although the theme represented by the tattoo was also very valuable to the honor revered by the Sicilians.French Reggio sometimes joked with Michael and asked him about the situation in the United States, because it was really impossible to keep his nationality from them for a long time.However, they did not know exactly who he was, other than knowing that he had taken refuge here.Talking nonsense and leaking his information is of course not allowed.Sometimes Fabrizio would bring Michael a fresh piece of cheese still oozing milk beads. They walked along the dusty country road, passing colorfully painted carts drawn by donkeys. The fields are full of pink flowers, and the orange groves, apricot groves, and olive groves are all blooming in full bloom, which is amazing, because everyone knows the poverty of Sicily, so Michael originally Think of it as a wilderness with no vegetation.However, now he found that the land here is a rich land, covered with flowers everywhere, exuding the fragrance of lemon blossoms everywhere.The land here is so beautiful, how can the people here have the heart to leave their homes and wander elsewhere?This, he couldn't figure it out.The extent to which people are cruel to people can be seen from the fact that a large number of people fled from this "Garden of Eden" country. He planned to walk to the seaside village of Matola and then drive back to Corleone so that he could get a good night's sleep after being tired.The two nomads were carrying travel bags with bread and cheese in them to satisfy their hunger when they got hungry along the way.The two nomads were blatantly carrying their big hunting guns, as if they were going out hunting all day. It was a beautiful morning, and Michael felt as happy as he had been when he was a child going out to play ball one summer morning.Back then, the life I lived every day was as fresh as it had just been washed, and as fresh as a painting just drawn. Now, those kind of good days are here again.The large area of ​​Sicily is covered with colorful flowers, and everywhere exudes the fragrance of citrus and lemon blossom.Even with his face hurt and his sinuses constricted, he could smell it. The comminuted fracture on his left face had grown, but the bones were deformed: the pressure on his nose caused pain in his left eye, and his nose kept running.He wiped his nose with his handkerchief, and the handkerchief after handkerchief was wet and sticky.Like the local farmers, he often blows his nose everywhere.And when he was a kid, his habit of blowing his nose everywhere was a nuisance.He had always been disgusted then to see old Italians, like English dandies, disdain to use handkerchiefs and blow their noses into the gutters beside the roads. He also felt "heavy" on his face.Dr. Tatcha told him it was the pressure on his sinuses from the shattered bone fragments.Dr. Tatcha called this failure "staggered tumor eggshell rupture."He also said that if the treatment was done before the broken bone was set, the remedy was actually very simple, requiring only a simple surgical operation, that is, using a tool such as a spoon to straighten the broken bone.However, now the doctor said that he had to go to a hospital in Palermo for a check-up, a major operation called "maxillofacial surgery", and the long-term broken bones had to be knocked out again.This is really enough for Michael.He declined.However, what was more serious than the pain, and more serious than the runny nose, was that his face felt heavy. He never reached the waterfront that day.He walked about twelve miles with the two nomads and stopped in the cool, moist shade of citrus trees to eat and drink.Francois Reggio was babbling on and on about his going to America someday.After eating and drinking, they lay lazily under the shade of greenery.Fabrizio unbuttoned his shirt and stretched his belly, which made the pattern on his belly more obvious.The naked man and woman hugged each other excitedly on his chest, and the dagger that the husband stabbed into the woman's flesh was trembling slightly.The three of them were very happy to see this living pattern.While they were enjoying themselves, Michael was shot by the arrow of love that the Sicilians called "bolt from the blue". Beyond the citrus grove lay the strip of fields of a baronial estate.A little way down the road that leads into the orange grove is a villa in the Romanesque style that looks as if it had been dug out of the ruins of Pompeii.The villa was a small palace, with a large marble portico in front, and under the portico fluted Greek columns, out of which came a group of peasant girls, flanked by two Stocky, black-clad women, all from the neighboring villages, had evidently just come out from their old duty to the local baron, either to clean his dacha periodically, or to prepare for his winter return. get ready.At this time, they were going to the fields to pick some flowers for the baron to decorate the room.They were picking pink daisies and purple wisteria, and they were going to pick some citrus blossoms and lemon blossoms to mix in.The girls did not see the men who were resting in the orange grove, and they got closer and closer to the place where the men were resting. They wore cheap tights, richly printed and dyed.They are both in their teens, but their skin has matured quickly due to exposure to the wind and sun, and they look fully feminine.About three or four girls ganged up and chased one girl, and ran after her towards the orange grove.The girl being chased holds a bunch of big purple grapes in her left hand, picks grapes one after another from the bunch of grapes with her right hand, and throws them out to beat the girls who are chasing her.She had curly hair, the color of grapes, purple-black.She has a plump figure. Just when she was about to reach the orange grove, she stopped suddenly and froze, because her eyes caught sight of the shirts of the men who were of a different shade from the surrounding ones.She stood on tiptoe like a frightened fawn trying to run away.She is very close to the man at this moment, so close that the men can see her face clearly. Everything about her was egg-shaped—the egg-shaped eyes, the egg-shaped face, the egg-shaped forehead.Her skin was a wonderful rosy cream; her eyes were large, a dark violet and a dark brown; The cute face is set off hazy and mysterious.Her lips were plump but not brutal, sweet but not weak and sickly, with a deep red color, as if they were about to burst out grape juice.She is unbelievably cute.So, Fabrizio said to himself: "Then Jesus Christ, seeing such a beauty, I am really out of my mind, you simply accept my soul, anyway, I am going to die." It was a joke, but it was too vulgar to say it.The girl seemed to have heard what he said, turned around on tiptoe and slipped away, running towards the girls who were chasing her. The calico dress she was wearing stretched her waist and legs tightly, and she twisted and flung herself as she ran. She was as lively as a fawn, as frivolous as a heathen, and had no sense of Christian stability. Innocence reveals a sensual charm.When she had reached her companion, she turned again, and her face was like a mysterious black hole against a field of brightly colored flowers.She held out the hand that held the grapes and pointed to the orange grove.The girls laughed as they ran away.The two fat women followed behind, cursing non-stop. And Michael Corleone stood up without knowing it, his heart pounding hard in his chest. He felt dizzy, and the blood in his body was boiling, rushing to his limbs, impacting his fingers and toes.The aromas of the whole island are drifting with the wind, and they are not washed away: citrus flowers, grape flowers, and mountain flowers.At this moment, it was as if his soul had left him, burst out of his body.Just at this moment, he heard the two herdsmen laughing loudly. "You were hit by a bolt from the blue, eh?" said Fabrizio, patting him on the shoulder.Even Gallo, who had always been taciturn, could bear it no longer, and with a sympathetic and friendly look, patted him on the arm and said, "Don't be sad, boy, don't be sad." He said it, however, in a tone of pity, As if Michael had been hit by a car.Fabrizio handed Michael a bottle of wine, and Michael took it and gulped it down.After drinking this, his mind cleared up. "What the hell are you two talking about?" he asked.The two listened and laughed out loud.Gallo, with the utmost seriousness on his plain face, said with seriousness: "When the thunderbolt hits you, you can't hide it as much as you want, and everyone can see it clearly. Christ, boy, there's nothing to be ashamed of." .Some men want a bolt from the blue to hit them and ask for it. You're lucky." Michael felt that his emotional fluctuations were so easily seen through, and he was not happy in his heart.But it was the first time in his life that something like this happened to him.This is fundamentally different from the infatuation he had when he first fell in love.It is fundamentally different from his love for Kai. His love for Kai is based on her sweetness, her intelligence, and her characteristics of being both a white beauty and a black beauty.But the emotional fluctuations in front of him are completely an overwhelming possessive desire, and it's all because the girl has left an indelible impression in his mind.He knew that if he didn't possess her, she would be on his mind every day as long as he lived.His life was so simple and concentrated on one point that nothing else was worth even a minute's attention.He had missed Kay all the time during his exile, but he felt that the two of them could no longer be lovers, or even ordinary friends.He is now a murderer no matter how he argues, and he is also a gangster who has passed the "hard test".But now, Kai was completely wiped from his consciousness. Fabrizio said happily, "I suggest going to that village to have a look, and we might as well ask about her. Who knows, maybe she can get it more easily than we think.There is only one cure for lovesickness caused by a thunderbolt, um, what do you think, Gallo? " The herdsman nodded solemnly.Michael said nothing.The two nomads got up and walked away, and he followed.The three of them got on the main road and walked towards the village where the girls escaped just now. This village has a common layout in Sicily: there is a square in the middle, a well in the center of the square, and the houses of the villagers are all around the square.However, the village is precisely on the main road, so there are a few shops, a hotel, and a small cafe with three tables on a small outdoor terrace.The two nomads chose a table and sat down.Michael sat with them.There was no sign of the girl here, not even a shadow.The whole village seemed to have run away, except for a few little boys and a wandering little donkey. The owner of the coffee shop came out with food for them.He was not tall, but very strong, almost a dumpy man.He greeted them with gusto and set a plate of chickpeas on the table. "You are newcomers here," he said, "so let me introduce you to this wine. First try my wine, which is from my own farm and made by my sons. They With some citrus and lemon mixed in, this is the best wine in all of Italy. They told him to bring out a big pitcher, taste it, and, well, it was much better than he said: deep purple, almost as strong as brandy.Fabrizio said to the owner of the hotel: "I can assure you that you know all the girls here. Just now we saw some beautiful girls coming from the road, and one of them caused my companion to be hit by a bolt from the blue." He said and pointed to Michael. The coffee shop owner looked at Michael very seriously.It seems that he has long been used to that crooked face, and it is not worth a glance at all.But a man struck by a bolt from the blue is another matter, he has to look carefully. "My friend, I think you'd better take some bottles home," he said. "You're going to need something to sleep tonight." Michael asked the man, "Do you know that girl with curly hair? The skin is very smooth, like cream, and the eyes are very big, with very dark eyeballs. Do you know a girl like that in the village?" The coffee shop owner said firmly, "I don't know. I don't know where there is such a girl." After that, he left the small platform and slipped into the coffee shop. The three drank the wine without haste, and when they had finished the jug, they shouted for more.Fabrizio came out, made a face, and said to Michael: "As I've just expected, the girl we're talking about is none other than his daughter. Now, he's in the back of the house, his blood boils, and he's about to clean up." Let's. I think we'd better get off at once, and go to Corleone Town."