The offshoot was disguised by a wooden panel covered with a foot of dirt so that workers on the main tunnel would not know it existed. Guiliano had to dig away the dirt and remove the wooden disc. It took him another fifteen minutes to crawl through the narrow space that led under La Venera's house. The trapdoor there led to the kitchen and was covered by a huge iron stove. Guiliano tapped on the trapdoor with the prearranged signal and waited. He tapped again. He never feared bullets, but he feared this darkness. Finally there was a faint noise above him and then the trapdoor was raised. It could not rise all the way because the stove above it broke the plane of the lid. Guiliano had to squeeze through the opening and wound up on his belly on La Venera's kitchen floor.
Though it was the middle of the night, La Venera was still in her usual ill-fitting black dress, the mourning for her husband though he was three years dead. Her feet were bare. She wore no stockings, and as Guiliano rose from the floor he could see the skin on her legs was a startling white, so very much in contrast to the brown skin of her sunburned face and the jet black, coarse and heavily woven hair. For the first time he noticed that her face was not as broad as that of most of the older women in his town, that it was triangular, and though her eyes were dark brown, they had little black flecks in them he had never seen before. In her hand she held a scuttle full of live coals as if ready to throw them at the open trapdoor. Now she calmly slid the coals back into the stove and replaced the lid. She looked a little frightened.
Guiliano reassured her. "It's just a patrol roaming around. When they return to their barracks, I'll leave. But don't worry, I have friends out in the street."
They waited. La Venera made him coffee and they chatted. She noted that he did not have any of the nervous movements of her husband. He did not peer out the windows, his body did not tense at sudden noises in the street. He seemed completely relaxed. She did not know he had trained himself to act this way because of her stories about her husband and because he did not want to alarm his parents, especially his mother. He projected such an air of confidence that she soon forgot the danger he was in and they gossiped about the little happenings of the town.
She asked him if he had received the food she had sent him in the mountains from time to time. He thanked her and said how he and his companions had fallen on her food packets as if they were gifts from the Magi. How his men had complimented her cooking. He did not tell her of the coarse jokes some of his companions had made, that if her lovemaking equaled her cooking she would be a prize indeed. Meanwhile he was watching her closely. She was not being as friendly to him as usual; she did not show that fond tenderness she had always shown in public. He wondered if he had offended her in some way. When the danger was past and it was time for him to leave, they were formal with each other.
Two weeks later, Guiliano came to her again. The winter was near its end, but the mountains were filled with storm gales and the padlocked shrines of saints along the roads were dripping with rain. Guiliano in his cave dreamed of his mother's cooking, a hot bath, his soft bed in his childhood room. And mixed with these longings, much to his surprise, was the memory of the white skin of La Venera's legs. Night had fallen when he whistled up to his bodyguards and took the road down to Montelepre.
His family greeted him with joy. His mother started to cook his favorite dishes and as they were cooking she prepared a hot bath. His father had poured him a glass of anisette when one of the network of spies came to the house and told him that carabinieri patrols were surrounding the town and the Maresciallo himself was about to lead a flying squadron out of the Bellampo Barracks to raid the Guiliano household.
Guiliano went through the closet trapdoor and into the tunnel. It was muddy with rain and the earth clung to him and made the trip long and laborious. When he crawled into La Venera's kitchen his clothes were covered with slime, his face black.
When La Venera saw him, she laughed and it was the first time Guiliano could ever remember her laughing. "You look like a Moor," she said. And for a moment he felt a child's hurt, perhaps because the Moors were always the villains in the puppet shows of Sicily, and instead of being a hero in danger of his life, he could be seen as a villain. Or perhaps because her laugh made her seem inaccessible to his inner desire. She saw that in some way she had injured his vanity. "I'll fill the bath tin and you can get clean," she said. "And I have some of my husband's clothes you can wear while I clean yours."
She had expected him to object, that he would be too nervous to bathe in such a moment of danger. Her husband had been so jumpy when he visited her that he would never undress, never leave his guns out of reach of his hands. But Guiliano smiled at her and took off his heavy jacket and his guns and put them over the wooden box that held her firewood.
It took time to heat pots of water and fill the tin tub. She gave him coffee while they waited and studied him. He was handsome as an angel, she thought, but she was not deceived. Her husband had been as handsome and murdered men. And the bullets that killed him had made him ugly enough, she thought with misery; it was not clever to love a man's face, not in Sicily. How she had wept, but secretly there was the tremendous surge of relief. His death had been certain, once he had turned bandit, and every day she had waited, hoping he would die in the mountains or some far-off town. But he had been shot down before her eyes. And ever since she had been unable to escape the shame, not of his being a bandit, but of his dying an inglorious and not a brave death. He had surrendered and begged for mercy and the carabinieri had massacred him before her eyes. Thank God her daughter had not seen her father slain. A small mercy from Christ.
She saw that Turi Guiliano was watching her with that special light on his face that signaled desire in all men. She knew it well. Her husband's followers often had such a look. But she knew Turi would not try to seduce her, out of respect for his mother, out of respect for her sacrifice in allowing the tunnel to be built.
She left the kitchen and went into the small living room so that he could bathe in privacy. When she left, Guiliano stripped and stepped into the bath. The act of being naked with a woman nearby was erotic to him. He washed with scrupulous care and then put on her husband's clothes. The trousers were a little short and the shirt was tight around his chest so that he had to leave the top buttons undone. The towels she had warmed near the stove were little more than rags, his body still felt damp, and for the first time he realized how poor she was and resolved to supply her with money through his mother.
He called out to La Venera that he was dressed and she came back into the kitchen. She looked him over and said, "But you haven't washed your hair, you have a nest of geckos hiding there." She said this roughly but with a warm affection so that he did not take offense. Like some old grandmother she ran her hands over his matted hair, then took him by the arm and led him to the sink.
Guiliano felt a warm glow where her hand had touched his skull. He quickly put his head under the faucet and she ran water over him and shampooed his hair with the yellow kitchen soap; she had no other. When she did so her body and legs brushed against him and he felt the sudden urge to pass his hands over her breast, her soft belly.
When she finished washing his hair, La Venera made him sit on one of her black enameled kitchen chairs and vigorously dried his hair with a rough, raggedy brown towel. His hair was so long that it covered the collar of his shirt.