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On the slopes of Monte Pizzuta, Terranova watched the scene through his field glasses. At first he thought people were falling to the ground out of terror, and then he saw motionless bodies sprawled with that peculiar abandon of death and he struck the machine gunner away from his weapon. But as his machine gun fell silent, he could still hear the gun on Monte Cumeta chattering. Terranova thought Passatempo had not yet seen that the gunfire had been aimed too low and people were being massacred. After a few minutes the other gun stopped and an awful stillness filled the Portella della Ginestra. Then floating up to the twin mountain peaks came the wails of the living, the shrieks of the wounded and the dying. Terranova signaled his men to gather close, had them dismantle the machine gun, and then led them away around the other side of the mountain to make their escape. As they did so he was pondering whether he should return to Guiliano to report this tragedy. He was afraid Guiliano might execute him and his men out of hand. Yet he was sure Guiliano would give him a fair hearing, and he and his men could truly swear that they had elevated their fire. He would return to headquarters and report. He wondered if Passatempo would do the same.

By the time Silvio Ferra found his wife and children, the machine guns had stopped. His family was unhurt and were starting to rise from the ground. He flung them down again and made them stay prone for another fifteen minutes. He saw a man on a horse galloping toward Piani dei Greci to get help from the carabinieri barracks, and when the man was not shot off his horse he knew the attack was over. He got up.

From the tabletop of the plain that crowned the Portella della Ginestra, thousands of people were streaming back to their villages at the bottom of the mountains. And on the ground were the dead and wounded, their families crouched over them weeping. The proud banners they had carried that morning were lying in the dust, their dark golds, brilliant greens and solitary reds startlingly bright in the noon sun. Silvio Ferra left his family to help the wounded. He stopped some of the fleeing men and made them serve as stretcher bearers. He saw with horror that some of the dead were children, and some were women. He felt the tears come to his eyes. All his teachers were wrong, those believers in political action. Voters would never change Sicily. It was all foolishness. They would have to murder to get their rights.

It was Hector Adonis who brought the news to Guiliano at Pisciotta's bedside. Guiliano immediately went to his mountain headquarters, leaving Pisciotta to recover without his personal protection.

There on the cliffs above Montelepre, he summoned Passatempo and Terranova.

"Let me warn you before you speak," Guiliano began. "Whoever is responsible will be found out no matter how long it takes. And the longer it takes the more severe the punishment. If it was an honest mistake, confess now and I promise you won't suffer death."

Passatempo and Terranova had never seen such fury in Guiliano before. They stood rigid, not daring to move as Guiliano interrogated them. They swore their guns had been elevated to fire over the heads of the crowd, and when they had observed the people being hit, they had halted the guns.

Guiliano next questioned the men in the squads and the men on the machine guns. He pieced the scene together. Terranova's machine gun had fired about five minutes before being halted. Passatempo's about ten minutes. The gunners swore they had fired above the heads of the crowds. None of them would admit they had possibly made an error or depressed the angle of the guns in any way.

After he dismissed them, Guiliano sat alone. He felt, for the first time since he had become a bandit, a sense of intolerable shame. In more than four years as an outlaw he could boast that he had never harmed the poor. That boast was no longer true. He had massacred them. In his innermost heart he could no longer think of himself as a hero. Then he thought over the possibilities. It could have been a mistake: His band was fine with lupare, but the heavy machine guns were not too familiar to them. Firing downward, it was possible they had misjudged the angle. He could not believe that Terranova or Passatempo had played him false, but there was always the awful possibility that one or both had been bribed to commit the massacre. Also, it had occurred to him the moment he heard the news that there might have been a third ambush party.

But surely, if it had been deliberate, more people would have been shot. Surely it would have been a far more terrible slaughter. Unless, Guiliano thought, the aim of the massacre had been to disgrace the name of Guiliano. And whose idea had it been, the attack on the Portella della Ginestra? The coincidence was too much for him to swallow.

The inevitable and humiliating truth was that he had been outwitted by Don Croce.

CHAPTER 21

The massacre at the Portella della Ginestra shocked all of Italy. Newspapers screamed in glaring headlines the slaughter of innocent men, women and children. There were fifteen dead and over fifty wounded. At first there was speculation that the Mafia had committed the massacre, and indeed Silvio Ferra gave speeches laying the deed at the feet of Don Croce. But the Don had been prepared for this. Secret members of the Friends of the Friends swore before magistrates that they had seen Passatempo and Terranova set their ambush. The people of Sicily wondered why Guiliano did not deny this outrageous charge in one of his famous letters to the newspapers. He was uncharacteristically silent.

Two weeks before the national election, Silvio Ferra rode on his bicycle from San Giuseppe Jato to the town of Piani dei Greci. He cycled along the river Jato and skirted the base of the mountain. On the road he passed two men who shouted at him to stop, but he cycled on swiftly. Looking back he saw the two men trudging after patiently but he soon outdistanced them and left them far behind. By the time he entered the village of Piani dei Greci, they were no longer in sight. Ferra spent the next three hours in the Socialist community house with other party leaders from the surrounding area. When they were done it was twilight, and he was anxious to get home before dark. He walked his bicycle through the central square, greeting cheerily some of the villagers he knew. Suddenly four men surrounded him. Silvio Ferra recognized one of them as the Mafia chief of Montelepre, and he felt a sense of relief. He had known Quintana as a child, and Ferra also knew that the Mafia was very careful in this corner of Sicily not to irritate Guiliano or break his rules about "insults to the poor." And so he greeted Quintana with a smile and said, "You're a long way from home."

Quintana said, "Hello, my friend. We'll walk along with you for a bit. Don't make a fuss and you won't be hurt. We just want to reason with you."

"Reason with me here," Silvio Ferra said. He felt the first thrill of fear, the same fear that he felt on the battlegrounds of war, a fear he knew he could master. And so now he restrained himself from doing something foolish. Two of the men arranged themselves alongside him and gripped his arms. They propelled him gently across the square. The bicycle rolled free, then toppled over on its side.

Ferra saw the people of the village sitting outside their homes become aware of what was happening. Surely they would come to his aid. But the massacre at the Portella della Ginestra, the general reign of terror, had broken their spirits. Not one of them raised an outcry. Silvio Ferra dug his heels into the ground and tried to turn back to the community house. Even this far away he could see some of his fellow party workers framed in the doorway. Couldn't they see he was in trouble? But nobody left the frame of light. He called out, "Help me." There was no movement in the village and Silvio Ferra felt a deep sense of shame for them.