"You look like one of those ruffian English lords in the movies," she said. "I must cut your hair, but not in the kitchen. It will blow into my pots and spoil your dinner. Come into the other room."
Guiliano was amused by her sternness. She was assuming the role of an aunt or mother as if to prevent any show of a more tender feeling. He was aware of the sexuality behind it, but he was wary. In this area he was inexperienced and he did not want to look foolish. It was like the guerrilla warfare he waged in the mountains; he would not commit himself until all the odds were on his side. This was not scouted terrain. But the last year of commanding and killing men made his natural boyish fear seem more like a joke, the rejection by a woman not so paralyzing to his ego. And despite his reputation for chastity, he had gone to Palermo with his friends to visit prostitutes. But that was before he had become an outlaw and acquired the dignity of a bandit chief, and of course a romantic hero who would never do such a thing.
La Venera led him into the small living room cluttered with stuffed furniture, small tables topped with black varnished wood. On these tables were photographs of her dead husband and dead child, singly and together. Some were of La Venera with her family. The photos were framed in black oval wood, the prints tinged with sepia brown. Guiliano was surprised by the beauty of La Venera in these younger, happier days, especially when she was dressed in pretty, youthful clothes. There was a formal portrait of her alone, dressed in a dark red dress, that struck him to the heart. And for a moment he thought of her husband and how many crimes he must have committed to bring her such finery. "Don't look at those pictures," La Venera said with a sad smile. "That was in a time when I thought the world could make me happy." He realized that one of the reasons she had brought him into this room was to make him see these pictures.
She kicked the small stool from a corner of the room and Guiliano sat on it. From a leather box, beautifully made and stitched with gold, she took scissors, razor and comb – a prize the bandit Candeleria had brought home one Christmas from one of his crimes. Then she went into the bedroom and brought a white cloth which she hung over Guiliano's shoulders. She also brought a wooden bowl which she placed on the table beside her. A jeep went by the house.
She said, "Should I bring your guns from the kitchen? Would you be more comfortable?"
Guiliano looked at her calmly. He seemed absolutely serene. He did not want to alarm her. They both knew the jeep going by was full of carabinieri on their way to raid the Guiliano home. But he knew two things: If the carabinieri came here and tried to enter the barred door, Pisciotta and his men would massacre them all; and before he had left the kitchen he had moved the stove so that no one could raise the trapdoor.
He touched her gently on the arm. "No," he said. "I don't need my guns unless you plan to cut my throat with that razor." They both laughed.
And then she began to cut Turi Guiliano's hair. She did so carefully and slowly, grasping strands to snip, then depositing the hair into the wooden bowl. Guiliano sat very quietly. Mesmerized by the tiny snipping noises, he stared at the walls of the room. On them were huge portraits of La Venera's husband, the great bandit Candeleria. But great only in this little province of Sicily, Guiliano thought, his youthful pride already in competition with the dead husband.
Rutillo Candeleria had been a handsome man. He had a high forehead surmounted by wavy chestnut hair carefully cut, and Guiliano wondered if his wife had cut it for him. His face was adorned with full cavalry mustaches which made him seem older, though he had only been thirty-five when the carabinieri shot him. Now his face looked down from the oval portrait almost kindly, in a benediction. Only the eyes and mouth betrayed his ferocity. And yet at the same time there was a resignation in that face, as if he knew what his fate must be. Like all who raised their hands against the world and tore from it what they wished by violence and murder, like others who made personal law and tried to rule society with it. he must come finally to sudden death.
The wooden bowl was filling with glossy brown hair, clumped like the nests of small birds. Guiliano felt La Venera's legs pressed against his back; her heat came through the rough cotton of her dress. When she moved in front of him to cut around his forehead she kept well away from his leg, but when she had to lean forward, the swelling of her bust almost brushed against his lips and the clean heavy scent of her body made his face as warm as if he were standing before a fire. The portraits on the wall were blotted out.
She swiveled her rounded hips to deposit another clump of hair in the wooden bowl. For one moment her thigh rested against his arm and he could feel the silky skin even through the heavy black dress. He made his body steady as a rock. She leaned against him harder. To keep himself from pulling up her skirt and clasping those thighs, he said jokingly, "Are we Samson and Delilah?"
She stepped away from him suddenly. And he was surprised by the tears running down her face. Without thinking he put his hands on her body and pulled her closer. Slowly she reached out and lay the silver scissors across the mound of brown hair that filled the wooden bowl.
And then his hands were under her black mourning dress and clutching her warm thighs. She bent down and covered his mouth with hers as if she would swallow it. Their initial tenderness was a second's spark that roared into an animal passion fed by her three years of chaste widowhood, his springing from the sweet lust of a young man who had never tasted the love of a woman but only the bought exercise of whores.
For that first moment, Guiliano lost all sense of himself and his world. La Venera's body was so lush, and it burned with a tropical heat that went to his very bones. Her breasts were fuller than he could ever have imagined; the black widow's dress had cleverly disguised and protected them. At the sight of those oval globes of flesh he felt the blood pounding in his head. And then they were on the floor making love and taking off their clothing at the same time. She kept whispering, "Turi, Turi," in an agonized voice, but he said nothing. He was lost in the smell, the heat and fleshiness of her body. When they finished, she led him into the bedroom and they made love again. He could not believe the pleasure he found in her body, and even felt some dismay at his own surrender and was only comforted that she succumbed even more completely.
When he fell asleep she stared down into his face for a long time. She imprinted it on her memory in fear she would never see him alive again. For she remembered the last night she had slept with her husband before he died, when she had turned her back after making love and fallen asleep and ever since could not remember the sweet mask that comes over every lover's face. She had turned her back because she could not bear the fearful nervousness of her husband when he was in the house, his terror of being trapped so that he could never fall asleep, the way he started up if she rose from the bed to cook or do some chore. She marveled now at Guiliano's calm; she loved him for it. She loved him because, unlike her husband, he did not bring his guns to bed, he did not interrupt his lovemaking to listen for the sound of lurking enemies, he did not smoke or drink and tell his fears. He was gentle in his speech, but took his pleasure with fearless and concentrated passion. She rose noiselessly from the bed and still he did not stir. She waited a moment and then went out and into the kitchen to cook him her best dish.
When he left her house in the morning he went through the front door, stepping out carelessly but with guns hidden beneath his jacket. He had told her he would not stop to say goodbye to his mother and asked her to do so for him, to let her know he was safe. She was frightened at his boldness, not knowing he had a small army in the town, not noticing that he had held her door open a few minutes before he went out so that Pisciotta would be warned and would eliminate any carabinieri going by.