The villages were so old that most of the houses were built of stone, and some had no windows but only small apertures covered with iron discs. Many families housed their animals in the rooms in which they lived. The town bakeries kept goats and young lambs huddled by their ovens, and if a freshly baked loaf dropped to the floor it would usually hit a pile of dung.
The village men hired themselves out as laborers to wealthy landowners for a dollar a day and sometimes even less, not enough to feed their families. So when the nuns and priests, "Black Crows," came with their packets of macaroni and charity clothes, the villagers swore the necessary oaths: to vote for the Christian Democrats.
But in the regional election of April 1948 they had treacherously voted overwhelmingly for the Communist or Socialist parties. This had enraged Don Croce who thought that the local Mafia chief controlled the area. But the Don declared that it was the disrespect to the Catholic Church that saddened him. How could devout Sicilians have so deceived the holy sisters who with Christian charity put bread into the mouths of their children?
The Cardinal of Palermo also was vexed. He had made a special trip to say a Mass in the two villages and had warned them not to vote for the Communists. He had blessed their children and even baptized them, and still they had turned on their Church. He summoned the village priests to Palermo and warned them that they must increase their efforts for the national elections. Not only in the political interests of the Church but to save ignorant souls from hell.
Minister Trezza was not so surprised. He was Sicilian and knew the island's history. The people of the two villages had always been proud and ferocious fighters against the rich in Sicily and the tyranny of Rome. They had been the first to join Garibaldi, and before that they had fought the French and Moorish rulers of the island. In Piani dei Greci the villagers descended from Greeks who had fled to Sicily to escape Turkish invaders. These villagers still retained their Greek customs, spoke the language and observed the Greek holidays by wearing ancient costumes. But it had been a stronghold of the Mafia which had always fostered rebellion. So Minister Trezza was disappointed by Don Croce's performance, his inability to educate them. But he also knew that the vote in the villages and the whole surrounding countryside had been engineered by one man, a Socialist party organizer named Silvio Ferra.
Silvio Ferra was a highly decorated soldier in the Italian Army of World War II. He had won his medals in the African campaign and then had been captured by the American Army. He had been an inmate of a prisoner of war camp in the United States where he had attended educational courses designed to make prisoners understand the democratic process. He had not quite believed them until he had been given permission to work outside the camp for a baker in the local town. He had been amazed at the freedom of American life, the ease with which hard work could be turned into a lasting prosperity, the upward mobility of the lower classes. In Sicily the hardest-working peasant could only hope to provide food and shelter for his children; there could be no provision for the future.
When he was returned to his native Sicily, Silvio Ferra became an ardent advocate of America. But he soon saw that the Christian Democratic party was a tool of the rich and so joined a Socialist Workers' study group in Palermo. He had a thirst for education and a passion for books. Soon he had gobbled up all the theories of Marx and Engels and then joined the Socialist party. He was given the assignment of organizing the party club in San Giuseppe Jato.
In four years he had done what the agitators from the north of Italy could not do. He had translated the Red Revolution and Socialist doctrine into Sicilian terms. He convinced them that a vote for the Socialist party meant getting a piece of land. He preached that the great estates of the nobles should be broken up since the nobles left them uncultivated. Land that could grow wheat for their children. He convinced them that under a Socialist government the corruption of Sicilian society could be wiped out. There would be no bribing of officials for preference, no one would have to give a priest a pair of eggs to read a letter from America, the village postman would not have to be given a token lira to ensure delivery of mail, men would not have to auction off the labor of their bodies at a pittance to work the fields of dukes and barons. There would be an end to starvation wages, and the officials of the government would be servants of the people, as it was in America. Silvio Ferra quoted chapter and verse to show that the official Catholic Church propped up the debased capitalistic system, yet he never attacked the Virgin Mary, the diversified useful saints, or a belief in Jesus. On Easter mornings he greeted his neighbors with the traditional, "Christ is risen." On Sundays he went to Mass. His wife and children were strictly supervised in true Sicilian style for he was a believer in all the old values, the son's absolute devotion for his mother, respect for his father, the sense of obligation for his most obscure cousins.
When the Mafia cosc h e in San Giuseppe Jato warned him that he was going too far, he smiled and intimated that in the future he would welcome their friendship, though in his heart he knew that the last and greatest battle would be against the Mafia. When Don Croce sent special messengers to try to make an accommodation, he put them off. Such was his reputation for bravery in the war, the respect in which he was held in the village and his indication that he would be judicious with the Friends of the Friends that Don Croce decided to be patient, especially since he was sure the election was won anyway.
But most of all Silvio Ferra had a sympathy for his fellow man, a rare quality in the Sicilian peasant. If a neighbor became ill he brought food for his family, he did chores for ailing old widows who lived alone, he cheered all those men who eked out a bare living and were fearful of their futures. He proclaimed a new dawn of hope under the Socialist party. When he gave political speeches he used the southern rhetoric so dearly loved by Sicilians. He did not explain the economic theories of Marx but spoke with fire of the vengeance owed to those who had oppressed the peasants for centuries. "As bread is sweet to us," he said, "so is the blood of the poor to the rich who drink it."
It was Silvio Ferra who organized a cooperative of laboring men who refused to submit to the labor auction where the lowest wage got the work. He established a set wage per day, and the nobility was forced to meet it at harvesting or watch their olives, grapes and grain rot. And so Silvio Ferra was a marked man.
What saved him was that he was under the protection of Turi Guiliano. That had been one of the considerations that had persuaded Don Croce to stay his hand. Silvio Ferra had been born in Montelepre. Even as a youth his qualities had been evident. Turi Guiliano had admired him extravagantly, though they had not been close friends because of the difference in their ages – Guiliano was four years younger – and because Silvio had gone off to war. Silvio had returned a much decorated hero. He met a girl from San Giuseppe Jato and moved there to marry her. And as the political fame of Ferra grew, Guiliano let it be known the man was his friend though their politics were different. Thus when Guiliano began his program to "educate" the voters of Sicily, he gave orders that no action was to be taken against the village of San Giuseppe Jato or the person of Silvio Ferra.
Ferra had heard of this and was clever enough to send a message to Guiliano thanking him and saying he would be of service to Guiliano at his command. The message was sent via Ferra's parents who still lived in Montelepre with their other children. One of the children was a young girl named Justina, only fifteen, who carried the note to the Guiliano home to deliver it to his mother. It so happened that Guiliano was visiting at the time and was there to receive the message personally. At fifteen most Sicilian girls are already women, and she fell in love with Turi Guiliano, as how could she not? His physical power, his feline grace fascinated her so that she stared at him almost rudely.