Turi Guiliano and his parents and La Venera were drinking coffee and asked the girl if she would like a cup. She refused. Only La Venera noticed how pretty the girl was and was aware of her fascination. Guiliano did not recognize her as the little girl whom he had once met crying in the road and given lire to. Guiliano said to her, "Give your brother my thanks for his offer and tell him not to worry about his mother and father, they will always be under my protection." Justina quickly left the house and dashed back to her parents. From that time on she dreamed of Turi Guiliano as her lover. And she was proud of the affection he had for her brother.
And so when Guiliano agreed to suppress the festival at the Portella della Ginestra, he sent a friendly warning to Silvio Ferra that he should not take part in the May Day meeting. He assured him that none of the villagers of San Giuseppe Jato would be harmed but that there might be some danger he could not protect him from if he persisted in his Socialist party activities. Not that he, Guiliano, would ever do anything to harm him, but the Friends of the Friends were determined to crush the Socialist party in Sicily and Ferra would certainly be one of their targets.
When Silvio Ferra received this note he assumed it was another attempt to frighten him off, instigated by Don Croce. It did not matter. The Socialist party was on the march to victory and he would not miss one of its great celebrations of the victory they had already won.
On May Day of 1948 the populace of the two towns of Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato rose early to start on their long march up mountain trails to the plain beyond the Portella della Ginestra. They were led by bands of musicians from Palermo especially hired for the occasion. Silvio Ferra, flanked by his wife and two children, was in the vanguard of the San Giuseppe Jato procession, proudly carrying one of the huge red flags. Dazzlingly painted carts, with their horses in special red plumes and colorful tasseled blankets, were loaded with cooking pots, huge wooden boxes of spaghetti, enormous wooden bowls for salads. There was a special cart for the jugs of wine. Another cart fitted with blocks of ice carried wheels of cheese, great salami logs and the dough and ovens to bake fresh bread.
Children danced and kicked soccer balls along the column. Men on horseback tested their steeds for the sprint races that were to be a highlight of the afternoon games.
As Silvio Ferra led his townspeople toward the narrow mountain pass called the Portella della Ginestra, the people of Piani dei Greci converged from the other road, holding their red flags and Socialist party standards high. The two crowds mixed, exchanging exuberant greetings as they walked on, gossiping about the latest scandals in their villages and speculating on what their victory in the election would bring, what dangers lay ahead. Despite rumors that there would be trouble on this May Day they were by no means afraid. Rome they despised, the Mafia they feared, but not to submission. After all they had defied both in the last election and nothing had happened.
By noontime more than three thousand people had spread out over the plain. The women started the portable ovens to boil water for pasta, the children were flying kites over which flew the tiny red hawks of Sicily. The Communist Senator, Lo Causi, was going over his notes for the speech he was to deliver; a group of men led by Silvio Ferra was putting together the wooden platform which would hold him and prominent citizens of the two towns. The men helping him were also advising him to keep his introduction of the Senator short – the children were getting hungry.
At that moment there were light popping sounds in the mountain air. Some of the children must have brought firecrackers, Silvio Ferra thought. He turned to look.
On that same morning but much earlier, indeed before the smokey Sicilian sun had risen, two squads of twelve men each had made the march from Guiliano's headquarters in the mountains above Montelepre down to the mountain range which held the Portella della Ginestra. One squad was commanded by Passatempo and the other by Terranova. Each squad carried a heavy machine gun. Passatempo led his men high up on the slopes of Monte Cumeta and carefully supervised the emplacement of his machine gun. Four men were detailed to service and fire it. The remaining men were spread out on the slope with their rifles and lupare to protect them from any attack.
Terranova and his men occupied the slopes of Monte Pizzuta on the other side of the Portella della Ginestra. From this vantage point, the arid plain and the villages below were under the barrels of his machine gun and the rifles of his men. This was to prevent any surprise by the carabinieri if they should venture out from their barracks.
From both mountain slopes men of the Guiliano band watched the townspeople from Piani dei Greci and San Giuseppe Jato make their long marches to the tabletop plain. A few of the men had relatives in these processions, but they felt no twinge of conscience. For Guiliano's instructions had been explicit. The machine guns were to be fired over the heads of crowds until they dispersed and fled back to their villages. Nobody was to be hurt.
Guiliano had planned to go with this expedition and command it personally, but seven days before May Day, Aspanu Pisciotta's weak chest had finally succumbed to a hemorrhage. He had been running up the side of the mountain to the band's headquarters when blood spurted out of his mouth and he collapsed to the ground. His body started rolling downhill. Guiliano, climbing behind him, thought it was one of his cousin's pranks. He stopped the body with his foot and then saw the front of Pisciotta's shirt covered with blood. At first he thought Aspanu had been hit by a sniper and he had missed the sound of the shot. He took Pisciotta in his arms and carried him uphill. Pisciotta was still conscious and kept murmuring, "Put me down, put me down." And Guiliano knew it could not be a bullet. The voice betrayed the weariness of an inner breakage, not the savage trauma of a body violated by metal.
Pisciotta was put on a stretcher and Guiliano led a band of ten men to a doctor in Monreale. The doctor was often used by the band to treat gunshot wounds and could be counted on to keep secrets. But this doctor reported Pisciotta's illness to Don Croce as he had all the other transactions with Guiliano. For the doctor hoped to be appointed head of a Palermo hospital and he knew this would be impossible without Don Croce's blessing.
The doctor brought Pisciotta to the Monreale hospital for further tests and asked Guiliano to remain to wait for the results.
"I'll come back in the morning," Guiliano told the doctor. He detailed four of his men to guard Pisciotta in the hospital and with his other men he went to the home of one of his band to hide.
The next day the doctor told him that Pisciotta needed a drug called streptomycin that could only be obtained in the United States. Guiliano thought about this. He would ask his father and Stefano Andolini to write Don Corleone in America and ask that some be sent. He told the doctor this and asked if Pisciotta could be released from the hospital. The doctor said yes, but only if he rested in bed for several weeks.
So it was that Guiliano was in Monreale taking care of Pisciotta, arranging a house for him to recuperate in, as the attack was made at the Portella della Ginestra.
When Silvio Ferra turned to the sound of the firecrackers, three things registered simultaneously on his mind. The first was the sight of a small boy holding up his arm in astonishment. At the end of it, instead of a hand holding a kite, was a bloody horrible stump, the kite sailing off to the sky above the slopes of Monte Cumeta. The second was his shock of recognition – the firecrackers were machine-gun fire. The third was a great black horse plunging wildly through the crowd, riderless, its flanks streaming blood. Then Silvio Ferra was running through the crowd, searching for his wife and children.