Read Online Honoured Society by Norman Lewis - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Norman Lewis
Ads: Link
arrival of the Allies. In between stretched the lean years of the Mussolini dictatorship.
* * *
At first Don Calò found it hard to make up his mind about Mussolini. To the extent that he promised to stop the downhill slide towards socialism, he was obviously a good thing. But when he began to talk about governing with a firm hand, the Mafia chieftain was not so sure. Prudently, but without enthusiasm, Don Calò forked out a handsome subscription for the march on Rome. What actually saved him from the hurricane to come was nothing more nor less than a happy chance. In 1922, before Mussolini was finally in the saddle, the ‘Honoured Society’ sent Don Calò a young man, a squadrista who had injudiciously murdered a political opponent, asking Don Calò to look after him until the storm had blown over. This was done, the fugitive being concealed in the Vizzini house. Later, the young man became an undersecretary of state, and when the Mussolini purge against the Mafia was at its height and Don Calò had been sentenced to five years’ confino , a letter to his grateful ex-protégé was enough to procure his release.
4
T HE CLASH between Mussolini and the Mafia was inevitable, although each side seems to have underestimated the opponent’s strength. Don Calò and the more far-seeing of the Mafia leaders were not the only Sicilians who had thought it advisable to take out an insurance policy by contributing to the Fascist war-chest. The Sicilian nobility also had a paid-up share in Mussolini’s revolution, and an anguished chorus of protest against the virtual expropriation of their land was soon heard in Rome.
It was clear enough to Mussolini that the Mafia had always had a vested interest in national weakness and division, and that their support for the revolutionary governments of the past had regularly been followed by a stab in the back. The pattern of obstruction and sabotage seemed about to be repeated. Fascist officials sent down to replace the old corrupt administrators controlled by the Mafia were ignored. Fascist courts trying criminal cases in which members of the Mafia were implicated found it was just as impossible to obtain convictions as it had been for the democratic courts of old. Although the Fascist hierarchs might rub their hands at the sight of a nation marching in step, unity and discipline applied only to the peninsula. In Palermo a member of the Party could be shot dead at midday, in the middle of the crowded Via Maqueda, in the sight of hundreds of people, without a single person being ready to admit to the police that they had even heard the shot. The cudgels-and- castor-oil methods the squadrista had used so successfully in northern Italy failed in Sicily against the ancient Mafia defence of silence and vengeance. A carabinieri officer reported: ‘Only two kinds of witness exist. The first live in the neighbourhood where a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything, or even heard a shot. The second category are the neighbours of anyone who happens subsequently to be accused of the crime. These have always looked out of their windowwhen the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing peaceably on his balcony a few yards away.’
Disturbing facts came to light as the first enquiries into Mafia activities got under way. It was reported to the Duce that the Mafia had been in complete control of the Sicilian electoral machine, and that the deputies it sent to Parliament spent their time blocking investigations of the Honoured Society’s misdeeds, and specialised in the production of speeches attempting to prove that the Mafia did not exist. At this time the incidence of violent crime was ten times higher in Sicily than in the rest of Italy. The case of the small town of Favara was quoted which had suffered 150 Mafia killings in one year and where the Duce was told only one man in the previous decade had died of natural causes and in old age. More
* * *
At first Don Calò found it hard to make up his mind about Mussolini. To the extent that he promised to stop the downhill slide towards socialism, he was obviously a good thing. But when he began to talk about governing with a firm hand, the Mafia chieftain was not so sure. Prudently, but without enthusiasm, Don Calò forked out a handsome subscription for the march on Rome. What actually saved him from the hurricane to come was nothing more nor less than a happy chance. In 1922, before Mussolini was finally in the saddle, the ‘Honoured Society’ sent Don Calò a young man, a squadrista who had injudiciously murdered a political opponent, asking Don Calò to look after him until the storm had blown over. This was done, the fugitive being concealed in the Vizzini house. Later, the young man became an undersecretary of state, and when the Mussolini purge against the Mafia was at its height and Don Calò had been sentenced to five years’ confino , a letter to his grateful ex-protégé was enough to procure his release.
4
T HE CLASH between Mussolini and the Mafia was inevitable, although each side seems to have underestimated the opponent’s strength. Don Calò and the more far-seeing of the Mafia leaders were not the only Sicilians who had thought it advisable to take out an insurance policy by contributing to the Fascist war-chest. The Sicilian nobility also had a paid-up share in Mussolini’s revolution, and an anguished chorus of protest against the virtual expropriation of their land was soon heard in Rome.
It was clear enough to Mussolini that the Mafia had always had a vested interest in national weakness and division, and that their support for the revolutionary governments of the past had regularly been followed by a stab in the back. The pattern of obstruction and sabotage seemed about to be repeated. Fascist officials sent down to replace the old corrupt administrators controlled by the Mafia were ignored. Fascist courts trying criminal cases in which members of the Mafia were implicated found it was just as impossible to obtain convictions as it had been for the democratic courts of old. Although the Fascist hierarchs might rub their hands at the sight of a nation marching in step, unity and discipline applied only to the peninsula. In Palermo a member of the Party could be shot dead at midday, in the middle of the crowded Via Maqueda, in the sight of hundreds of people, without a single person being ready to admit to the police that they had even heard the shot. The cudgels-and- castor-oil methods the squadrista had used so successfully in northern Italy failed in Sicily against the ancient Mafia defence of silence and vengeance. A carabinieri officer reported: ‘Only two kinds of witness exist. The first live in the neighbourhood where a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything, or even heard a shot. The second category are the neighbours of anyone who happens subsequently to be accused of the crime. These have always looked out of their windowwhen the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing peaceably on his balcony a few yards away.’
Disturbing facts came to light as the first enquiries into Mafia activities got under way. It was reported to the Duce that the Mafia had been in complete control of the Sicilian electoral machine, and that the deputies it sent to Parliament spent their time blocking investigations of the Honoured Society’s misdeeds, and specialised in the production of speeches attempting to prove that the Mafia did not exist. At this time the incidence of violent crime was ten times higher in Sicily than in the rest of Italy. The case of the small town of Favara was quoted which had suffered 150 Mafia killings in one year and where the Duce was told only one man in the previous decade had died of natural causes and in old age. More
Similar Books
