The Sect of Angels Page 8

  As news of Dr. Bellanca’s arrest and the charges against don Anselmo began to spread, a number of things happened.

  Don Liborio Spartà sent the club’s manservant Casimiro from house to house to summon the executive committee for a meeting to be held at five o’clock that afternoon. But the committee members had to come one at a time, without attracting any attention, since martial law was in effect.

  Mayor Calandro, for his part, got on the phone to talk to the prefect. He told His Excellency, Commendator Eustachio Benincasa, that the town had been left without a municipal doctor after the—in his opinion—arbitrary arrest of the holder of that title, and it therefore behooved His Excellency to appoint a physician from the provincial capital and send him to Palizzolo. He also told him that seeing Dr. Bellanca, a man loved and esteemed by all, walk down the street in handcuffs had been a terrible blow for the whole town. In short, His Excellency should be aware that there was general resentment over Captain Montagnet’s way of going about things.

  He’d just set the phone down when, without bothering to knock, don Serafino Labianca, Commendator Agusto Paladino, and Patre Alighiero Scurria, the parish priest of the Heart of Jesus church, walked in.

  “Is it true . . . ”

  “ . . . that the captain . . . ”

  “ . . . arrested the doctor?”

  This was the first tripartite question asked.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “Is it true . . .

  “ . . . that don Anselmo . . . ”

  “ . . . has been charged and released on his own recognizance?”

  This was the second tripartite question.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “That captain is a maniac!” said Patre Scurria.

  “And why did he arrest Bellanca?” asked don Serafino.

  “Because the doctor didn’t want to tell him what the marquis and the baron were sick with. Or, more precisely, he told them they had the flu, but Montagnet didn’t believe him.”

  “Sheer lunacy!” said Patre Scurria. “But doesn’t the good captain know that a doctor is like a priest? We can’t just tell others what we’re told in the confessional, and doctors are not free to tell other what their patients are sick with.”

  “This is a clear abuse of power!” don Serafino exclaimed.

  “It’s a classic example of the Piedmontese disdain for us Sicilians,” the commendatore proclaimed. “But I’m not going to let this asshole off easy. I’m going to my office now to call Ciccino Barrafranca in Rome and tell him the whole story, and ask him to take immediate action.”

  The honorable parliamentary deputy Francesco Barrafranca, a first cousin and very good friend of the commendatore’s, had owed his resounding electoral victory in Palizzolo to none other than Commendatore Agusto Paladino.

  “And I,” said the mayor, “have just finished speaking with the prefect. I told him there was a lot of resentment building up around town.”

  “And this state of martial law certainly can’t last until the next cholera outbreak,” said don Serafino. “It must be lifted at once, no later than tomorrow.”

  At seven o’clock that evening, the executive committee of the Honor and Family Social Club, consisting of don Liborio Spartà, don Stapino Vassallo, Colonel Amasio Petrosillo, and Professor Ubaldo Malatesta, finished drafting a petition to the prefect of the provincial capital, Camporeale, in which they claimed that the entire population of Palizzolo was indignant over the charges brought by Captain Montagnet against three individuals so beloved and venerated as don Anselmo Buttafava, Don Raccuglia, and Dr. Bellanca, the latter having even been unjustly incarcerated. The town’s citizens therefore demanded:

  —that all charges against said persons be dropped;

  —that Dr. Bellanca be freed at once;

  —that the declaration of martial law be revoked, as there was no longer any reason for it.

  The club’s manservant, Casimiro, was assigned the task of collecting the signatures of not only the club’s members, but also anyone else who wished to add his or her name.

  That evening, Dr. Girlanno Presti arrived from Camporeale to fill in for the municipal doctor. The first thing Presti did was to introduce himself to Captain Montagnet, telling him he needed to confer with Dr. Bellanca in order to have a better sense of the health conditions of the townfolk. Montagnet granted him permission to talk to the doctor at eight o’clock the following morning.

  *

  “So, now that I’ve told where and how we found you, and I’ve explained to you why I thought it would be better if I brought you back to my house instead of to Palazzo Cammarata, are you ready to tell us everything?”

  “Yes,” said Luigi Chiarapane.

  The lad had recovered fairly well, the compresses had reduced the swelling in his lips, his fever was now under 100, but his three broken ribs still hurt whenever he made the slightest movement.

  “I want to see them both in jail: the marquis and ’u zù Carmineddru,” said Luigino, almost as if to himself.

  “I do too,” Teresi smiled. “So please tell me everything from the very beginning.”

  “My mother is a cousin of Filadelfo Cammarata’s wife, and while we were still living in Palizzolo—up until I turned fifteen—our families spent a lot of time together. I grew up with Paolina, the marquis’s eldest daughter, though I’m three years older than her. Even after we moved to Salsetto, I’ve always kept coming back here, at least twice a week, to see her. I’m an only child, and Paolina for me was the sister I never had. She’s a jewel of a girl—religious, good-hearted and unselfish. I have no idea how she got into this situation!”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” said Teresi.

  “The other day when there was all the cholera confusion, my mother herself told me to come to Palizzolo to see how the Cammaratas were doing. First she’d sent a servant to ask the marquis if I could drop by his house in the afternoon, and he’d answered yes. I started to get worried as soon as I saw the front door closed and the windows shuttered. It looked like they were in mourning, so I was afraid somebody had died. I knocked on the door and Gnazina, their eleven-year-old daughter, came and told me that all the servants had run away and Paolina and everybody else in the house were sick with the flu. Then she took me into the marquis’s study and told me to wait there. The house was as quiet as a graveyard, when normally it’s a pretty noisy place. About a half an hour later, the marquis came in. He was angry and more nervous than usual. He told me to come with him down to the cellar for a minute to fetch a bottle of wine, and so I followed behind him.

  “‘How is Paolina?’ I asked.

  “He didn’t answer, but just opened the cellar door. It was already lit up in there, with oil lamps.

  “‘I have to do something first,’ he said. ‘You go on downstairs, I’ll be along in a minute.’

  “As soon as I got to the bottom of the stone staircase, which is quite long, I heard the door close. I thought it was a gust of wind. Then suddenly, standing before me was ’u zù Carmineddru.”

  “Did you already know him?” Teresi asked.

  “Yes. He would come and call on the marquis, and they would shut themselves up in his study.”

  “Did you know who he was?”

  “How could I not know? Everybody in town knows he’s a man of influence.”

  “And what did he say to you?”

  “Say to me? He didn’t say a word.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He laid me out on the floor with his first punch in the face. Then it was all kicks and blows with a kind of club . . . I was yelling and screaming, but who’s gonna hear me there in the cellar? After he’d been beating me for about ten minutes, don Filadelfo came in. ‘So you had a good time with my daughter Paolina, eh, you pig? Got her pregnant, eh, you dog? Well, you’re a dead man now.’ I swear
before God that this news hurt me more than any of the things zù Carmineddru was doing to me. At that point they both started pummeling me. And then I fainted and don’t remember anything else.”

  “They thought you were dead,” said Stefano.

  “And we’re going to let them keep thinking you’re dead,” said Teresi.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE DAY OF DENUNCIATION

  Girlanno Presti was a good doctor, but in Camporeale he was known as someone who was afraid of his own shadow.

  He lived with a man who was actually more of a walking tree trunk than a man. His name was Costantino, and he was so big and so broad that he was frightening just to look at. He was always at the doctor’s disposal, ready to accompany him out on nighttime house calls, since never in a million years would the doctor have gone out into the darkness alone.

  He would get scared out of his wits at the slightest thing, and already the mere fact of having to go to the carabinieri station at eight o’clock in the morning had made him break out in a cold sweat. But what surprised him most was that he found his colleague, Dr. Bellanca, as fresh and calm as if he’d just spent the night at the Grand Hotel. Bellanca knew Presti and was relieved they’d chosen him to replace him. Montagnet had set no time limit on the meeting between the two doctors and had made a room with a table and two chairs available to them. The first thing Bellanca said was:

  “Did you bring a lot of changes of clothes?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I don’t think they’ll free me any time soon. Yesterday evening the captain came and told me that I could be in here till the end of my days if I didn’t start talking. And I won’t talk. So . . . ”

  “But what does he want to know?”

  “He wants to know what Baron Lo Mascolo and Marquis Camarata are sick with. I told him the flu, but he won’t believe it.”

  “So what are they sick with?”

  “They’re not sick at all. But I can hardly throw mud on the honorable names of two families!”

  Girlanno Presti turned pale. What was this new complication? He knew his colleague was charged with disturbing the peace, and now it’s a question of the honor of two families? The word honor, in Sicily, was a dangerous matter, one that almost always led to bloodshed.

  “Is this something I should know?” he asked, secretly hoping Bellanca would say no.

  “Of course! Are you not fulfilling the function of town doctor now?”

  Bellanca told him everything.

  “Four pregnant women, none of whom is married? And all of them two months pregnant? How do you explain that?” Presti asked in bewilderment.

  “There is no explanation. That’s the problem. And I’ll have you know that these four pregnancies already raise the annual average in Palizzolo. They’re a surplus, a bonus. A flowering out of season. Know what I mean? But not a word about this to anyone, do you hear?”

  Presti looked offended.

  “No need to remind me of that.”

  “And now let’s discuss the town’s health situation. Around here, tracoma and malaria . . . ”

  They talked for about an hour, after which they shook hands and a carabiniere came to take Dr. Bellanca away. As Presti was gathering up the papers on which he’d been taking notes, the door opened again.

  He looked up to see Montagnet staring at him like a cat eyeing a mouse.

  *

  Dr. Palumbo, for his part, arrived late for his morning visit to Teresi’s house. He found the young man quite improved, and told him that in three days or so he would be able to get out of bed and walk around the house a little.

  “But Teresi’s nephew told my mother I was here, and she’ll be coming to see me this afternoon. She wants to take me back to Salsetto.”

  “For the moment that’s out of the question. You’re not strong enough to handle a journey in a carriage.”

  After the examination, Teresi offered the doctor a cup of coffee.

  “Sorry I got here late, but I was called to Giallonardo’s house.”

  “Is the notary sick?”

  “No, he’s fine, as is his wife.”

  “So what was the problem? They haven’t got any children!”

  “It’s the maid. A pretty twenty-five-year-old by the name of Rosalia Pampina—or, so Signura Giallonardo told me, since the girl has stopped talking.”

  “What do you mean, she’s stopped talking?”

  “The girl ran away when she heard about the cholera. She spent one day and one night away, then came back the following afternoon. Ever since, she’s stopped talking, eating, and drinking. Or, rather, when she got back she asked her mistress if she could go to church, and when she returned a few hours later she’d stopped talking.”

  “And how do you explain that?”

  “Well, I examined her, unfortunately. She’d been torn to shreds.”

  “Raped?”

  “In every way possible and imaginable. In my opinion, she’d run into some bad people during her night away. If she’s not any better by tonight, I’ll have her taken to Camporeale hospital.”

  “Did the signura tell you which church the girl had gone to?”

  “The same one where they themselves go: San Cono.”

  Dr. Presti’s stay in Palizzolo as substitute town doctor turned out not to be as long as Bellanca had expected.

  In fact, it lasted only until eleven o’clock that morning, because at ten-thirty, the door of the holding cell opened and the captain said to the doctor:

  “You’re free to go. I’ve exonerated you of the charges. Have a good day.”

  He turned his back and went out. Bellanca was so surprised he didn’t even say goodbye.

  At more or less the same time of day, Lieutenant Villasevaglios went to don Anselmo Buttafava’s house.

  “It is my pleasure to inform you that Captain Montagnet has withdrawn the charges against you.”

  Having thought, upon seeing the lieutenant, that Villase­vaglios had come to arrest him, don Anselmo very nearly fainted in relief.

  At half past eleven, His Excellency Eustachio Benincasa, prefect of Camporeale, rang Mayor Calandro on the telephone. The mayor was so excited he immediately gushed with gratitude.

  “Thank you so much, Your Excellency, for having so quickly intervened to rel—”

  “Would you let me speak first, for the love of God?”

  “My apologies, Your Excellency.”

  “I wanted to tell you that I just now received a petition signed by a hundred or so citizens of Palizzolo, demanding the release of Dr. Buzzanca . . . ”

  “Bellanca, Your Excellency.”

  “Yes, right, Bellanca. I’m telling you so that you can communicate to the signatories that my reply is to be patient for a few more days. Captain Montagnet is acting in a perfectly lawful manner to restore order in Palizzolo. And you, as mayor, must cooperate with him unconditionally. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, Your Excellency.”

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Nothing, Your Excellency.”

  So it wasn’t the prefect who’d ordered Montagnet to step back. And the captain was not the type of man to change his mind about any action of his own. Then the mayor remembered that Commendatore Padalino had said he would talk with the Honorable Barrafranca. It was possible Barrafranca had intervened immediately. The captain’s surprise move made the mayor feel uneasy. He went out of his office, telling the usher he’d be right back. On mornings when the weather was good, the commendatore liked to sit out on the balcony of his home and watch the people passing by.

  And there he was, in fact. Calandro called up to him from the street.

  “Commendatore, have you heard the news?” he asked.

  “That they let Bellanca out of jail? Yes.”


  “I want to thank the Honorable Barrafranca for—”

  “But, Mr. Mayor, I wasn’t able to talk to Ciccino.”

  Then why had Montagnet decided to release Dr. Bellanca?

  ’Ngilino the overseer pulled up at the Buttafava house just before midday. From the mule he unloaded rounds of tuma, primosale, and ricotta cheese, fruit, vegetables, pork sausages, a just-slaughtered suckling lamb, and four rabbits, and brought them into the larder. Then he went upstairs to don Anselmo’s office.

  “I beg your pardon for the other day, sir. But I’d just found out about Totina and felt like I was going crazy . . . ”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me at the time?”

  “I was too ashamed. My wife told me you slapped Totina around a little. You were right.”

  “She’s like a daughter to me.”

  “I know, don Anselmo.”

  “And you know what made me lose my head, ’Ngilì? She wouldn’t give me a straight answer! She just pulled my leg and said it was the Holy Spirit that got her pregnant!”

  “But, sir, with all due respect, you’re wrong. She wasn’t trying to pull your leg. She really believes it.”

  “Believes what?”

  “That it was the Holy Spirit. She really means it.”

  “Has lost her mind?”

  “No, sir, she’s a normal girl. She just says it was the Holy Spirit.”

  “But what do you think? Have you any idea who it could have been?”

  “None whatsoever. My wife’s got no idea either. You see, Catarina never lets Totina out of her sight. We’re scared, with all these criminals roaming round the countryside . . . . Totina’s a beautiful girl and somebody might try and take advantage of her.”

  “So we’re supposed to believe it was the Holy Spirit?”

  ’Ngilino shrugged.

  “And what about when Catarina and Totina come into town for Mass on Sundays?” don Anselmo continued.