In the Wolf's Mouth

Prologue: The Shepherd 1926

He leaned forward, swung his shotgun carefully around from his back and raised it so that the stock rested firmly along his jawbone. His stubble rasped against the wood as he adjusted, setting the partridge floating on the two beads. Still there, panting in the heat. He fired. The bird was thrust sideways. It sat heavily, startled, like somebody suddenly shoved out of a chair. The blast rocked in echoes across the valley and knocked up into the air a crow that flew in wide evasive circles, crying out. Angilù thought of the other shepherds in the hills hearing the shot and wondering, frightened maybe. The partridge fluttered one wing as though thinking it might still fly away to safety, but while Angilù walked towards it the movement slowed to a feeble waving and by the time he reached it the bird was still, the clasp of its beak unfastened, its little black eye unblinking in the sun.

He picked up the bird and carried it back up to the ridge where the wind hit him then down the other side to his hut, his tethered mule, the sheep scuttling over stones looking for fresh growth. He sat in the shade of the opening and plucked the bird, the soft beautiful feathers blowing about his feet. When its pimpled flesh was as bare as a naked woman he took his knife and slit below the keel bone then pulled out the wet handful of innards. Ready to cook. Excellent. The partridge was good luck. Otherwise it would have been more salty cheese and hard bread or snails if he could be bothered to collect them. Or wild herbs. There was a place near here where they grew. He could see it in his mind: the clear light, the slender plants shaking in the wind.

He spatchcocked the bird, cracking open its small ribcage, and cooked it over a fire of quick-burning, sun-bleached stuff. He cut the meat and ate it from the side of his knife. He ate its delicate bones and sucked at the larger ones.

Winter had been a warm time back in the village, among people, with the cold silver rain darkening the earth, feeding it. But it was good to be alone again, up out of all the clamour of talk and obligation, families and rivalries and wrongs. The other shepherds missed home but he was young still and without a wife. There was loneliness, of course, and when he was a boy he’d hated it, feeling himself a prisoner in the hills, expelled from normal life, frightened of the bandits and the business he had to do. Back then he’d arranged stones on the ground near one of the huts to form faces and he’d talked to them, long conversations. He didn’t do that any more but the place remained altered by it. There was a presence there, a charge in the air above the spot, a ghost of himself, perhaps.

As the sun set he watched the shadows pour down behind the hills, filling the valley. Then there were stars. His mule faded into the darkness, the pale sheep also. But the wind was always awake, vibrating over the hard ridges.

The following day, Gino drove his herd near enough in the east for Angilù to hear his singing rise up on the wind. Angilù put his hands to the side of his mouth and sang, ‘Who’s singing over there? Sounds like a sick dog.’ There was a pause, then Gino’s voice drifted back. ‘Who’s that singing up there? You sound like you’ve got toothache in every tooth.’

For a while they sang insults.

‘You know nothing about singing. You’d better go and learn at school in Palermo.’

‘You don’t know how to sing. You need to go to school in Monreale.’

‘When you were born behind a door I thought you were a stillborn dog.’

‘When you were born in the middle of the street there was a terrible stink of shit.’

They sang for a while then Gino was gone.

The day after that at sunset Angilù saw his mule twitch its ears forwards and lift its head. He looked across the valley to see a man approaching on horseback, the horse’s big, jointed shadow moving over the stones in front of them as it snorted and laboured under a big man. One of the field guards. The Prince chose them for their size, in part, and how they would look in his livery. Angilù didn’t have to look; he knew which one it would be before he arrived. He sat still and waited.

Finally, Angilù looked up at the huge silhouette of horse and man right in front of him, the sword hanging from the guard’s hip, the feathers on his hat bending in the wind. The horse shifted sideways a little, finding sockets for its hooves in the ground.

‘This evening,’ the guard said, ‘it would be better to let fate take its course.’

Angilù nodded. ‘They’re making it hard for themselves,’ he said. ‘There’s no moon tonight.’

‘Why should you worry?’

Angilù picked up a small pink pebble and rolled it in his palm. ‘Are they bringing or taking?’

‘Does it matter?’

Angilù didn’t say anything.

The guard said. ‘They’re taking.’

‘How many?’

‘You’ve got a lot of questions.’

Angilù looked up at the horse’s solid flank as it stepped back a pace. He could feel the guard staring down at the top of his head. The guard was smoking a cigarette now, an expensive one, sweet and fragrant.

‘Let’s say,’ the guard said, ‘that if it didn’t happen the landlord wouldn’t be happy.’

‘I see,’ Angilù said and let the pebble drop onto the ground. ‘I see.’

The guard took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his hair with his forearm. ‘You think too much up here. You worry. It’s all arranged anyway. You’ll be found in the morning.’

‘Holy Mother.’

‘It’s best for your reputation if they tie you.’

‘But why? They haven’t done that before. Why do they need to do that? Jesus Christ.’

‘What did I say about thinking? Maybe someone is worried that maybe somebody in the municipality is taking an interest. Things aren’t like they were. It’s best.’

‘Best,’ Angilù repeated.

‘That’s all,’ the guard said. He flicked down the butt of his cigarette. It landed on the ground in front of Angilù as light and precise in its sudden stillness as a cricket. Angilù wondered if the guard was watching to see if he would reach across and pick it up.

The guard twisted his horse’s reins and rode away down the hill, the horse resisting the gradient at first with stiff, straightened front legs. It took a long time for him to cross the valley, ride up the opposite slope and finally sink down behind it.

Darkness. The sky crowded on all sides with the countless bright stars of a moonless night. The wind sucked noisily at the fire. Angilù had nothing to do but wait.

When he finally heard them approaching he stood up to meet them. Different footsteps around him but he couldn’t count how many of them there were. They spread out in different directions. Angilù saw in his mind spiders scattering from a lifted stone. They could see him perfectly clearly, as he intended, a man appearing in gusts of flame light as he stood by the fire. He wanted to show himself willing straightaway. The shape of one man approached directly and Angilù turned his back so as not to see the face, not to know. The man said nothing as he took hold of Angilù’s wrists and started tying them. He had the sweet, acrid aroma of red wine on his breath. They would all have had a good meal in somebody’s house in Sant’Attilio before travelling up. The man bent down to tie Angilù’s ankles then thought better of it.

‘Lie on your back and put your feet in the air.’

Angilù did as he was told. As the man spent a minute fastening the rope around his legs, Angilù felt a surprising pleasure at the intimacy of the contact with this stranger. He felt cared for. It was the same careful, practical touch his mother had when she cut his hair.

When he was tied the man turned and walked away.

‘Hey!’ Angilù shouted after him. ‘Hey! Put me in the hut!’ But the man didn’t turn back and Angilù had to crawl like a caterpillar past the heat of the fire to get into the safe darkness of his shelter. Beyond its walls he could hear shouting, the snapping of whips, the bleating and scrambling of sheep driven away in the dark.

The men were busy for a while but eventually it was done and there was quiet, just the wind and the remaining sheep, spooked, rattling the stones. And suddenly his mule brayed into the emptiness, loud and angry. The dumb beast. He lay on his side so as not to lie on his hands and looked out at the diminishing flames and white ashes of the fire as they were torn away towards the stars. He relaxed slowly, slowly fell asleep past sudden painful jerks of his trussed legs.

He awoke before dawn and stretched the cramps out of his legs and arms then lay still and watched the cold red spill of light across the hills. As the sun climbed he smelled the dew on the ground as it burned away, the vegetation of his hut as it heated. He was thirsty but he couldn’t think how to get the stopper from the skin of water without it emptying everywhere. Perhaps he could drink the whole thing. Also he wanted to piss, but what could he do? He flipped himself over and squirmed and kicked towards the waterskin. Then he twisted upright so that it was behind him and within reach of his hands. His fingertips found the stopper, grasped it and pulled. He moved it by millimetres, with great concentration. When finally it suddenly came loose he had to spin around on the floor as quickly as he could, push his lips up against the weight of spilling water and fix his mouth over the hole. He lay there like a suckling infant, swallowing away as his stomach expanded with the cool darkness of the water. He detached himself, the water flowing over his face again, and crawled away. His hair was wet now, coarse and heavy with dust. He made his way over to the doorway and sat upright waiting to be discovered.

Angilù squinted out over the hills. No one. Nothing. He stared into the blue and pink distances and looked for figures. Nothing. The world was only just creeping awake. His mule quivered its flanks to shake off the first flies. Angilù really needed to pee now and there was no way to get his hands round to the front of his body. He could try lying back with his knife under him but surely someone would come soon. He kicked himself back into the shade of his hut, found a dry area the spilled water hadn’t soaked and lay still.

He woke up with one image roaring in his mind — a stream exploding over a rock. There was no choice now. He wrestled his knife out of his belt, gripped it with the blade upright against the rope and lay back over it. He rocked from side to side, crushing his fingers, feeling the blade bite into the rope, its tip sting against his back. He pushed with his heels so all his weight came down on it, and when it was almost through he rolled onto his face and pulled his arms apart as hard as he could. After three exertions his arms flew apart and he used them to drag himself out of the hut. He fell on his side, pulled open his trousers and let himself go in a long, loud stream that rolled over the ground as thick as a sheet of glass.

The sun was well past its highest point. They had forgotten him. Angilù shouted as loudly as he could, separating each syllable, ‘Motherfuckers!’

He crawled back inside his wet, disordered hut and took the knife to cut the rope at his ankles. His arms were weak. His fingers trembled inaccurately. He saw that the dirt floor was churned, marked with the tracks of his struggle. He pushed the stopper back into the flaccid skin and picked it up. He collected his gun and left to ride his sombre, patient mule back to the estate to report the stolen sheep to the man who had ordered the theft.

Climbing onto his mule, he felt a hot fluttering pain in the small of his back. He checked with his fingertips: fine wet lines where his knife had cut him. He kicked the beast forwards, patting its strong neck as it collected itself under his weight and lunged.

Sant’Attilio appeared by stages, sliding behind slopes, emerging at other angles. From one ridge, Angilù saw the landlord’s separate house, close to the palace, its outer walls and olive trees. From another, the whole of Sant’Attilio was disclosed — cubes of flaking yellow and grey, red roofs, the white church tower, the empty stripe of the roadway, the palace large on its outskirts. Everything he knew was down there, every name, every person, every secret.

He rode straight to the landlord’s house to do it quickly and get it over with. He got down from his mule at the gate and led it by the bridle between the hissing silver leaves of his beloved olive trees. He walked up to the front door and pulled the bell. He heard the sound of shaken brass pass through the house and frightened himself by imagining the landlord’s presence moving in response through the interior darkness and no way of knowing how close he was, shifting closer and closer. The door opened. The landlord, smoking, looked down at him from the step then out over the top of his head. A clean white shirt and braces. Angilù thought of the dust in his hair, the dirt on his clothes, his shirt plastered to the small of his back with stiff dried blood. Best for your reputation.

Angilù began, ‘Sir, last night …’

Cirò Albanese seemed bored. He raised a languid upturned palm and curled his fingers to summon the story he already knew out of Angilù.

‘Last night,’ Angilù began again. ‘Bandits. The sheep. They took most of my sheep.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t …’ Angilù didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t say, I didn’t count them because I thought they’d tell you. He said, ‘I didn’t count.’

‘You didn’t count.’

‘No.’

‘Mother of God. All right. You go straight back up. Don’t talk to anyone in the village. You understand me? I’ll let the Prince know next time I see him.’ The landlord leaned backwards and closed the door.

Angilù wanted to go and see his mother, to wash, to eat, to be comforted, to get a new saint for the string around his neck because he was worried that the one he had on was losing power. But he’d been told. He climbed back onto his mule and kicked its belly with his heels, kicked again and again until it bounced up into a trot and carried him up and away, the heavy pull of his unvisited home dragging at his back. It carried him up to many days of heat and silence, the noon sun pressing the colours flat to the ground, nights of stars and the sharp points of the returning moon. He drove the remaining sheep on with a whirling whip and they stumbled before him, nervous, thick-skulled, reeking. When he paused they stopped where they were, haggard, and stared down at their own shadows as if wanting to crawl into them. Angilù drove them on past his place of faces in the ground. He looked across and felt a surge of communication from them. He couldn’t say what it was they were telling him. The impulse was dark, opaque, but it was commanding. It felt as though they recognised him and what it was had something to do with his shame, trussed up and helpless, forgotten by the world. He should … what? He touched the weakening saint on his collarbone and said a prayer.

Finally they reached a hollow full of prickly pears and the sheep hurried towards them, their tatty rumps swaying as they ran. This was now the far west of the estate, the dangerous edge. Bandits here were not the friends of friends. They would be stealing to sell or even eat. He would have to sleep lightly in the day and try to keep watch at night, his gun close at hand.

He was up there for days before anything happened, more days than it would take for him to be seen and word to spread so he was past his fear when they came, having assumed that no one cared. He’d even started sleeping at night for hours at a time, a decision he made collecting snails one day. He detached their light bodies from a rock, dropped them into his bag, then lay down in the shade and drifted into sleep. When he awoke he found his little prisoners crawling out again in laborious escape. Their long grey feet fully extended, their tiny eyes circling on their stalks, they strived forwards as quickly as they could. He laughed as he picked them up again, unsuckering them from the stones, and kept on laughing, finding it hilarious, and that laughter rinsed right through him, made him careless and light-hearted. He laughed at the thought of himself up in the hills, picturing the top of his head from above as God might see it and whatever, fuck it, whatever would happen would happen. He wiped tears from his cheeks.

They came early so he’d only just fallen asleep. He saw their grey shapes moving in the moonlight. He shouted, ‘I have only thirteen sheep! The others were stolen! They’re not worth taking.’ There was a yellow flash, a jump in the dirt near his feet and he fell away onto his face, his hands over the back of his head. ‘Don’t shoot! I won’t do anything! Don’t shoot!’ They fired again. He could still see the ghost of the muzzle flash smeared across the darkness when he heard his mule growl and stagger and fall hard onto its knees. To the rhythm of its heart, blood was pumping out of the poor beast, masses of blood, a sound like a fountain or like a basin emptied over and over onto the ground. The mule wheezed, snarling and snoring, and struggled to stay upright. Angilù saw its head flail down onto one side as the blood continued to gush. ‘Why did you?’ he shouted and reached for his gun. Another shot thumped into the ground right by him. Angilù aimed at one of the hurrying grey shapes and fired. A twisting fall. He’d hit him. There were curses, two more shots from different places, running feet. Angilù fired again. He saw the men, heads low, arms half raised, racing down into the darkness and disappearing.

Then Angilù was alone with the man he’d shot and had to listen to him dying. Angilù was cursed, forgotten, all his luck gone. His saint was painted tin. In the moonlight he could see the man lying on the ground by a dark irregular shape of blood, his loose legs and outflung arms like a dropped puppet’s. The man chattered to himself and cried. Angilù didn’t know what to do. He sang to drown out the sound. He thought of the man lying there, was suddenly himself inside the dark cave of his dying mind, hearing the man who’d killed him singing. It was terrible. But what else could he do? After a while he sensed silence beyond the sound of his voice and stopped. Stillness. The bandits gone. The shape of the mountains and the moon. His dead mule. A dead man.

Everything had ended. It was all over. And there was nothing Angilù could do, no way to alter one thing. All the time there had been death, he’d heard gunshots and stories, but he’d always been apart, hidden in the hills, in his gleaming good fortune. Now he was himself forced to eat death. Now he was taking part. His life was over. He felt tiny sitting there in the dark, his head hanging forwards, the round bones of his neck exposed to the wind. The world had its huge thumb on the back of his neck. It pressed down. It would never release him.

In the faint, frayed light of dawn, Angilù went over to look at the body to see if he recognised the man. He didn’t. The shape of the man’s skull was distinctive, tall and narrow and accented along the jaw with tufts of beard. His eyes had already sunk under the ridge of bone. His mouth was open showing yellow teeth, surprisingly long, like a sheep’s. Angilù crossed himself. The son of some mother, some woman who would beat her head with open hands when she knew, who would clasp her rosary and howl, held up by her daughters. Probably word had already reached her.

Angilù had to go and tell someone. He had, at the very least, to be away from there so that the bandit’s people could climb up and collect the body. He picked up his gun and bag and whip and scared the sheep into a huddle and drove them past the fallen body of the mule towards the village. Leaving now, not stopping, they could be back by nightfall.

After the thick, surging colours of sunrise, two little birds joined them, wagtails, hunting the insects that whirred up where the sheep trod. They twitched their yellow tails and emitted their one bright, repetitive note. They kept flying a foot or two in the air and landing again, maintaining a precise distance from Angilù and the animals. Where they landed was the exact midpoint between their hunger and their fear.

Cirò Albanese rode to a nearby town to talk to somebody, a large stationary man who sat with a boulder of stomach resting on his thighs. This man, Alvaro Zuffo, modestly dressed and inconspicuous as he was, made a centre wherever he sat. Any chair enthroned him. Cirò found him in the clean-cut rectangle of shade cast by the awning of a particular bar on the square. This man had a surprisingly delicate way of smoking. He puffed, the cigarette held low in an open hand of evenly spread fingers. The man talked elliptically but to the point. Birds. Barking dogs. Stones. Fishermen. He spoke in proverbs. Only when Cirò mentioned the posters around the town did he speak directly, with rage. His anger was so large and powerful it seemed to tire him like an illness. He half closed his eyes. That mule-jawed, cuckolded son of a whore had appointed a Fascist governor to Sicily, as Cirò knew, and now disappearances, torture, order destroyed. So the decision Cirò was making was very wise. Cirò didn’t know he had made a decision. He thought, rather, that he had come for advice. The man told Cirò where to go. There was a coffin maker down in the harbour who arranged things. Cirò shouldn’t say one word to anyone, not even his wife, just slip away there and go.

Angilù pulled hard at the bell of the landlord’s house. The jangling faded. He rang again. Silence solidified on the other side of the door. He was relieved, for the moment. He was alone. Nothing was happening. He walked back through the olive trees to the pillared gate. Beyond it he saw a motor car, dark green, its gleaming polish filmed with road dust. Beside it there was a tall man in a brown suit wearing bright shoes of two different colours of leather.

The tall man saw him. Their eyes met. Angilù wished that hadn’t happened. He should have just hidden. He had no wish to meet any unknown friends of the landlord. He hung his head down between his shoulders, an insignificant peasant, and pushed through the gate.

The tall man said, in good Italian, ‘He isn’t here?’

Angilù answered, as he had to, in Sicilian. ‘No one answered.’ He tried to walk away.

‘What business do you have with him?’ The tall man bent down towards Angilù. His face was composed of neat triangles, a clipped beard and moustache, a sharp nose and arched eyebrows. He put his hands in the soft checkered fabric of his pockets, leaning forwards.

‘I … I have to talk to him, to tell him, about my flock.’

‘But as he’s not here, why don’t you tell me?’

‘I should go now, sir, and …’

‘He’s not here. Tell me instead.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Angilù scratched his head. ‘I need to speak …’

‘What do you do?’ The man kept his eyes on Angilù’s face, stepping with him as he tried to shift away, preventing him.

‘I’m a shepherd, here on the estate.’

‘I see.’ The man smiled. ‘And do you know who I am?’

‘No, sir. I can’t say I do.’

‘That’s my fault,’ the man said, producing a gold pocket watch as smooth as a river pebble from his waistcoat pocket. He checked it and flipped shut its thin gold door. ‘But that will change. I’m your Prince, you see. You work for me.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t … I saw you once as a child, at harvest …’

‘My fault, as I say. Spending all my time away in Palermo like every other fool. What was it you had to tell Albanese?’

‘I was in the hills last night with the sheep. West part of the hills, your hills, and bandits came to steal them and shot my mule and tried to shoot me and I defended myself, as I had to, Lord Jesus Christ forgive me, and I fired in the darkness and shot one who lies dead there now. The others ran away. I’ve penned the sheep above the village.’

‘You shot one?’

‘God forgive me, I did. He’s up there. He’s dead.’ The long teeth in the half-light. The shadowed eyes. Flies up there now. The mother.

‘I see. It’s what you should have done. You’ve been brave. How old are you? Still a boy, really.’ He put a clean hand on Angilù’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’d like to talk to you some more.’

‘Come with you? In that?’ Angilù nodded towards the motor car.

‘Yes, yes. In this. Albanese’s not here. Probably a good thing. Come on, then. Let’s go.’

Prince Adriano held open the door for him and Angilù sat down on the chair inside, awkwardly gathering his gun and bag between his knees. The Prince shut the door, walked briskly round the front of the car and fired its motor with a violent twist of a metal handle. Angilù was surprised to see a prince bend down and use inelegant physical force. The Prince then got in and sat in the driving position beside him. He moved some levers and then, without any effort of man or animal, not even the visible pistoning of the train, they moved along the road, bouncing over its rough surface on soft leather chairs, all the way to the Prince’s palace.

The palace was the largest building Angilù had been inside, larger even than any church. He’d seen it countless times, of course, from nearby or up above. He knew the shape of the plain, extensive roofs edged with gutters, the two sides that thrust forwards like a crab’s claws, the patterned garden at the back with statues in it, but he’d never properly considered that its outward size must be matched by a vastness inside. As the Prince led him through, ceilings flew high overhead, some with paintings on them, false skies and angels, and he saw rooms on either side big enough for whole families.

A dog loped out to meet them, huge and rough-coated. Petted by the Prince, it trotted ahead on high, narrow legs. It turned, mouth open, to check that they were following. The beast was at home here. It lived in this place.

The Prince showed Angilù into a room, indicated a chair for him to sit on, and stood himself in front of a mirror the size of a dining table so that Angilù could see the back of his cleanly groomed head also. The mirror was surrounded by a thick, ornate golden frame at the corners of which fat little angels were stuck like flies in honey. The dog settled itself on a rug, looped around nose to tail and seemed, by the twitching of its eyebrows, to be listening to its master. Angilù’s seat felt treacherously soft beneath him, as though there were nothing there. He had the strange feeling that some of his sensations were disappearing. The heat and wind in which he always lived were gone, shut outside this airy, airtight place. He looked around him at the polished furniture and patterns and realised that the Prince had been talking for some time. It turned out that the tall man’s elegant beard was wagging to a great hymn of praise to Angilù himself and not only to Angilù: all shepherds were great, the true and ancient Sicily, classical Sicily. Someone had described Sicilian shepherds in a poem a long time ago. Angilù had shown great courage defending his flock against the bandits and it was the Prince’s turn to do the same, to return from Palermo to protect his flock. Now that the Fascists were in power things would be different. There would be no room for people like Albanese who came between the Prince and his people, exploiting them both. The Prince gave Angilù a cigarette of soft French tobacco. Another vanishing sensation: the smoke passed down Angilù’s throat in such a light, cool, unabrasive stream that he hardly felt he was smoking at all.

‘Here,’ the Prince said. ‘I’m going to give you a gift, a pledge if you like. Wait a moment.’

He left the room. Angilù and the dog were alone, silent together. The dog lay on the rug, wet-eyed, its long muzzle resting along its forepaws. Angilù wondered what the dog could smell on him. Sheep, snails, gunpowder, blood, the mule, herbs, sweat.

Quick stuttering footsteps. The dog raised its head. Angilù looked round. A small child stood in the doorway, a girl with big dark eyes set in skin that was pale and yellow. A child who was kept out of the sun, who was never hungry. She wore a dress that stuck out around her legs in stiff rustling layers and pleats. She held the door frame and opened her mouth slowly with a slight popping sound as though to say something, staring with frank curiosity at the stranger. A servant rushed up behind to collect her, a woman with a watch on a short chain that hung on the breast of her dark dress. Everyone here knew the exact time. She caught sight of Angilù and nodded in acknowledgement, a quick tuck of her chin that was more to conceal her flinching in shock than to greet the dirty stranger in the Prince’s drawing room. She took hold of the child’s hand and led her away.

The Prince returned holding something small high up in front of him like a lantern. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Open your hand.’

Angilù did as he was told. The Prince dropped onto Angilù’s palm a heavy gold ring, a small thing but as heavy as a pigeon. The gold looked soft, buttery, as though Angilù would be able to cut through it with his knife.

‘It’s Roman, less ancient than your craft but there you are. I had it just the other day from a dealer from Smyrna.’

‘I don’t know …’

‘You can show it to other people in the village, tell them that it’s a gift from me, that I’ve returned. There’ll be no more landlords coming between me and them, no more leases bought in crooked auctions with violence and intimidation and the profits from the land going to the landlord and his friends.’

Angilù nodded, knowing that he would never show the ring to anyone ever. It would have to be hidden. One day, when he knew how, he could sell it.

‘And you and I will meet now and again,’ the Prince said. ‘And you can help me get to know the land. You see, I’d like to know what you know.’

Cirò Albanese walked through his house with one hand outstretched, his fingertips touching the wall, feeling the silky whitewash as he moved. Three generations to get into this house. He knew its forms, its sounds, where it was cool, where the warmth collected in winter. His children should grow up here. He should have had them already, a check to his brother’s sons. He was heading for a little storeroom in which he picked up a bottle of his olive oil. He looked at it, holding it towards the window to see its colour. He opened it and swigged. A flash of green-gold light above his eyes. The smoothness as he swallowed, the peppery flavour in the after-gasp. He licked his slippery lips, savoured the hours that had gone into its making, sunlight and labour, the possession of the trees.

In his bedroom he went to a particular drawer and collected money which he put in two different pockets and more still in the lining of his jacket. He folded a handkerchief and fixed its neat peak in his breast pocket. He looked at himself in the smoky reflection of the old dressing-table mirror and smoothed his hair back at the sides, straightened his lapels, plucked his cuffs.

Take nothing. Say nothing to anyone. Go.

People were disappearing. This was true enough. Life was becoming impossible. People knew his name. That’s why he had to go this way. And better to do it, better to act for yourself, be the captain of your own fate. This was about staying alive.

He found his wife busy at the kitchen table, her hair pinned up out of the way, an ordinary day six months into their marriage. Teresa was small and voluptuous, as though she had been assembled quickly and greedily. This on top of that on top of that. Breasts, belly and behind. He took her waist in his hands and laid his face against the warm skin of her bare neck.

‘Baby, I can’t really …’ She raised floured hands, adjusted her fringe with her wrists as she turned inside his grip. ‘You’re dressed up.’ He kissed her hard on the mouth. She squeaked complaint then acquiesced, softening under the force of him. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, pressed it up against her front teeth so that they raked the surface as he withdrew.

‘I’ve got business,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later. What are we having?’ he asked, peering over her shoulder.

‘You’ll find out,’ she said.

Hours later Cirò had found the coffin maker’s down in the city harbour. He stopped outside to smoke a cigarette and think for a moment and look at the water. This wasn’t nothing he was doing. He was even afraid. Big boats standing there. Big white seabirds flying athletically overhead. The stevedores’ voices bounced with a prompt, echoless lightness over the surface of the water. Cirò was an inland Sicilian. For him the sea was strange, dangerous, dazzling and beyond his calculations. It meant travel to invisible places. It meant the edge of his world, the end of it.

He threw down his cigarette then knocked on the door. He gave the name of the mutual friend who had sent him. They nodded. A boy made him coffee while they waited for a weeping widow to finish her order and leave. She pressed the tears from her cheeks with a black-bordered handkerchief and argued them down to a good price in dignified whispers. Cirò smiled at her sharpness. When she was gone they locked the door and showed Cirò his coffin and how it worked, the latches and hinges inside, the sliding panels to open the vents. They made out documents with the name and address of a family. He would be their uncle. They told him to urinate and then climb in. Standing over the drain at the back he found he couldn’t pee. He came back and stepped up on a chair then into the coffin. It was a little tight at the shoulders of his strong, short-levered body but otherwise fine. He lay there and looked up at the wooden planks of the ceiling and their faces bending over him. ‘Don’t open the latch,’ they said, ‘until five hours after you feel the motion of the sea. Then you just climb out and mingle in the crowd. You’re just another passenger.’

They put on the lid with its false screw heads. He latched it inside and opened the vents. It worked: he could breathe. After a minute or two he felt himself lifted up and processing out on a trolley. He began to feel very calm in an enclosing darkness that was safe and simple. He felt more protected than he had for many years. After days of much agitation arranging everything for this moment, hiding things, instructing people, he relaxed. The motion lulled him. Cirò Albanese was almost asleep when they loaded him onto a ship bound for America.