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Crime, Networks and Power: Transformation of Sicilian Cosa Nostra 1st Edition Vincenzo Scalia
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-28049-7
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To Fany
1 The Origins of the Mafia as a Criminal Phenomenon and as a Spirit 6
2 The Abolition of Feudalism, Mafia in the Unified Kingdom and I Mafiusi di la Vicaria 17
3 Public and Private Enquiries on the Criminal Consortium ... but the Mafia Doesn’t Exist 36
4 Mafia and Politics in Sicilian Society at the End of the 19th Century: The Notarbartolo Affair, the Formation of ‘Sicilianism’ and Consolidation of the Mafia Mystique
5 The Literature of Defence and the ‘Heresy’ of Don Sturzo
6 The Popular Legitimisation of the Mafia: The Beati Paoli and the Mafioso as an Avenger 89
7 Fascism and the Surrender of the Mafia, the Allied Invasion and the Return of the Villains
8 The Breaking Point: Danilo Dolci and a New Image of the Mafia
9 Leonardo Sciascia: The Writer as the Public
Preface
With a turnover estimated at over 180 billion euros (Unimpresa 2014), which allegedly accounts for about 10% of Italy’s GDP (in 2013), the Italian mafias are certainly as wealthy as ever. Although there are many other organised criminal groups operating and emerging in many countries, none of them have so far shown the sophistication and the insightfulness necessary to fill the Italian mafias’ shoes.
The Sicilian mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) is perhaps the most intriguing criminal phenomenon in the world, an unparalleled organised criminal grouping that, over almost two centuries, has been able not only to permeate successfully the licit and illicit economy, politics and civil society but also to influence and exercise authoritative power over both the underworld and the upper-world.
This criminal phenomenon has been a captivating conundrum for scholars of different disciplines who have tried to explain with various paradigms the reasons behind the emergence and consolidation of the Sicilian mafia.
This book is an analysis of the social and cultural representations of the Sicilian mafia which have been popularised for many decades in the Italian public and cultural debate, representations ranging from legitimisation to denunciation.
It seeks to highlight how the mafia as a criminal and cultural phenomenon was already present in the emergent, post-Risorgimento, Liberal state, but it remained largely unrecognised until the second half of the 20th century – and it was even defended by a wide range of intellectuals as an element of the Sicilian character and culture. From these apologetic defences emerged the Sicilian ‘pathology’, later known as sicilianismo, and the mystique of the mafia.
In spite of important investigations at the end of the 19th century, together with the acute analysis by Franchetti and Sonnino, Alongi and Colajanni, and the Notarbartolo affaire, which provided proof of the connivance between mafia and politics, for many decades the public and scientific debate was dominated by the paradigm of the mafia as individual attitude and behaviour. Alongside the latter challenge posed by the Sicilianist movement1 in the first decades of the 20th century, an old conceptualisation of the mafia as secret society found prominence with the publication of the novel I Beati Paoli by Luigi Natoli.
The plot concerned a secret sect, the Beati Paoli, which administered justice in situations where weakness and corruption of public authorities occurred, opposing short-sighted legalistic approaches and avenging the sufferings of oppressed people. The novel consolidated the myth of the mafioso as a social avenger and the mafia itself as a chivalrous organisation founded on a code of honour.2
In the first half of the 20th century only one Sicilian intellectual, Don Luigi Sturzo, a Catholic priest and founder of the Popular Party in Italy, recognised the mafia for what it was: a violent, criminal phenomenon. Fascism marked a decisive turn in the fight against the mafia due to the actions of the prefect Cesare Mori, but his campaign did not substantially alter the image and legitimacy of the organised criminal group.
Only in the post-World War II period did the mafia come to be viewed, above all, as organised crime and corruption and, consequently, as an organisation to be denounced. This transformation was primarily due to the engagement of sociologist Danilo Dolci and Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia, both of whom alerted public opinion to the fact that behind the mafia lay a web of political and economic interests.
The mafia, no longer colourful and eulogistic, is apparent in both the documentary-investigatory writing of Danilo Dolci and the fiction of Leonardo Sciascia. They have revealed the inner, non-romanticised nature of Cosa Nostra. Their writing is no longer contemplative, folkloristic, and commendatory, but has become a matter of conscience and condemnation. This new literary production made slow progress to begin with, but after the publication of Spreco (Waste) in 1960 by Danilo Dolci and Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl) in 1961 by Leonardo Sciascia, the theme of the mafia becomes central.
Notes
1. A cultural and political movement that was promoted by Sicily’s ruling strata and developed in order to oppose what was perceived as an indiscriminate criminalisation of all Sicilians by the Italian law enforcement apparatus and Italian public opinion as a whole.
2. The novel was inspired by a book titled I Beati Paoli by Sicilian writer Vincenzo Linares, published on 20 and 30 December 1836 for the magazine Il vapore.
Acknowledgements
Each work – and, even more, a book – is nurtured by ideas, suggestions, stimuli, considerations and various supports. This book would not have been possible without the help of individuals and institutions.
I owe a special debt to Professor Joseph Farrell. With competence and attention he monitored the development of this study. I am also grateful to Professor Antonio Motta and the Study Centre on Leonardo Sciascia. Special thanks go to my friend, Professor Glynis Cousin, who patiently followed the progress of this work and who has always encouraged me to go ahead despite the tough times. And also, my friend Barbara Pederzini with her nitpicking read of the first draft of the work.
I was very fortunate to spend some time in Sicily between the mid-1990s and early 2000s while also pursuing the research for this book. I am especially indebted to Danilo Dolci’s family, collaborators and friends in Partinico and Trappeto. A special thanks to his son Amico, who allowed me to research at Centro Studi e Iniziative in Partinico and at the Borgo di Dio, and to Benedetto Zenone in Trappeto and Vito La Fata at Cesie who keep alive Dolci’s name and his initiatives.
I am also grateful to Professor Giuseppe Casarrubea in Partinico and Umberto Santino and Anna Puglisi for their valuable advice.
During my frequent visits to Sicily with my students, I also greatly benefited from the help of Addiopizzo Travel. In particular, Edo Zaffuto gave me valuable suggestions on the legacy of Danilo Dolci on the antiracket organisation.
Several people read the manuscript of Challenging the Mafia Mystique I am especially indebted to my colleagues in the Department of International Studies and Social Science at Coventry University. The book has benefited greatly from discussion with Simon May, who also patiently re-read the final manuscript before submission, Professor Bruce Baker, Alex Thompson, Simon Massey, Cheryl Hudson and Tom Thurnell-Reid, who each provided constructive criticism and valuable advice. Equally, I extend my appreciation for generous and astute feedback on earlier drafts of the book. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my colleagues Monica Massari at University Federico II in Naples and Vittorio Coco at the University of Palermo. Thanks also to colleagues in my previous Department of Italian Studies: Dr. Marina Orsini-Jones, David Jones and my former head of department Janet Lewis.
x
Acknowledgements
In Sicily I have discussed the content of this book with my colleagues and friends Giuseppe Giura, Salvo Cincimino and the anti-mafia prosecutor Gery Ferrara, who were kind enough to comment on sections of the manuscript. I remain amazed and humbled by their generosity.
All my graduate and post-graduate students also deserve my sincere thanks for the exciting exchanges in several seminars and during the numerous study trips to Sicily.
Throughout its preparation, I have received clear-sighted guidance and continuous support from my very patient editor Julia Willan, at Palgrave Macmillan, and her assistant Dominic Walker.
I am also grateful to the University of Strathclyde for the granting of a scholarship that allowed me to undertake this study and pursue my research in Sicily. I am also indebted to Coventry University for granting me a sabbatical to complete the book.
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Susy Kimbell and Claire Edgley who helped me with the translation of earlier drafts of the manuscript.
A special mention to my friend Vaggelis, unbeatable barista at Ottobar in Athens, who made the corrections of the last drafts more bearable with his delicious coffees.
I would also like to thank the numerous people whom I might have forgotten to mention here but were supportive and helpful with this project.
Any mistakes and misinterpretations in Challenging the Mafia Mystique are, obviously, my own responsibility.
I am very grateful to my parents and my sister’s family; they always supported and encouraged me at difficult times and have been a source of inspiration.
I dedicate this book to my wife, Fany, and our children Giovanni and Teresa Sofia. A small thank you for the daily support and encouragement, for the love and affection received, and for enduring my difficult company while this work was in progress.
Introduction
The theme of this book is the formation, consolidation and challenges of the mystique of the Sicilian mafia. Arguments for and against the mafia have been examined by following the evolution of the Sicilian culture (or those who are exposed to it) and the development of the mafia itself. The work examines the social and cultural representations of the mafia circulated in the public and cultural debate since the emergence of the criminal consortium in Sicily. These features are essential, in my opinion, for a comprehensive understanding of the nature and distinctions of the mafia.
This book attempts an interdisciplinary analysis of the image of the mafia, and a chronological approach seemed to be the most suitable. For this reason, sources have been chosen which give the best explanation for each of the periods analysed. None of the individual authors or texts can be understood apart from the effort to interpret them within their historical, political, economic, social and intellectual contexts. For all of these sources, the same question has been asked: how does this document present the mafia?
Various literary forms have been used (the letter-diary by Brydone, the drama by Sturzo, the reports by Mori, the sociological enquiries by Dolci, the detective stories by Sciascia) because literature cannot be considered a rigid term, an autonomous entity which can be separated from other forms of writing. The boundaries of literary texts are dissolving, and literature is certainly a complex field of study and research closely linked to the dynamic and contradictory aspects of reality. Moreover, each chapter is divided into the public and cultural representation of the criminal phenomenon.
The analysis has not adopted the same approach as Massimo Onofri, author one of the most recent book on literature and mafia, Tutti a casa
di Don Mariano (We’ll Meet at Don Mariano’s), because while his analysis is acute and detailed, it also partially neglects some important authors.
The figure of Brydone and the importance of his letter-diary in which the enlightened Scotsman noted with acumen the surprising alliance between nobles and ‘proto-mafiosi’ are ignored by Onofri. A mere passing mention is given to the diffusion of mafioso ideology in the Natoli’s novel, I Beati Paoli. The only work which is non-justificatory, the play La Mafia by Don Luigi Sturzo, is not even mentioned in Tutti a casa di Don Mariano
The most serious omission in Onofri’s book is, however, the scarce attention paid to Danilo Dolci, who is a revolutionary figure in antimafia thought. These omissions give this work new force and originality. Brydone, Sturzo, Natoli, but above all Dolci, are figures who are fundamental for understanding how the image of the mafia has changed; from defence to denunciation.
This work, however, does not consider the wealth of writings by Dolci and Sciascia on other themes which post-date the period concentrated on that, no doubt, deserve more specific attention. Regarding Sciascia, this work analyses only Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl) of his mafia trilogy, because it is the most complete and forward-looking, and it opens up a window on the world of the mafia. Il giorno is a truly anti-mafia novel, a socio-political enquiry filled with many metaphors and images of Sicily. It contains some prophetic elements (which can be found again in Il contesto [The Context] published in 1971) and interweaves several thematic threads, such as the Sicilian cultural substrate and mafioso behaviour, the intimate link between the interdependence of the mafia and the family (followed up in his novel A ciascuno il suo [To Each His Own]).
The great quantity of available texts has made a careful, sometimes drastic selection necessary. The writings have been selected on the basis that they best represent the most important phases in the development of the image of the mafia, with special attention paid to works published in those years, omitting texts where the references to the mafia seemed episodic or insignificant.
Defining a name, the etymology of the word
The word ‘mafia’ has unclear and probably very ancient origins. In the Florentine dialect, as Novacco suggests, the term mafia indicated ‘poverty or misery’, and the Piedmontese term mafiun had a very similar meaning: uomo piccino, a small-minded or petty person (Novacco 1964, p.207).
In Sicily, however, the meaning is quite different. The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia claims to have found the word mafia used as the nickname for a witch, ‘Caterina la Licatisa’, in an official document containing a list of heretics formed during an Act of Faith celebrated in Palermo in 1658. The document notes that Caterina was ‘nomata ancora Maffia’, which indicated ‘boldness, desire for power and arrogance’ (Sciascia 1970, p.74).
The genesis of the meaning found in Palermo today is of uncertain origin. Various authors believe the term derives from Arabic. The historian Vittorio Frosini, for example, supports a connection with the name of the Saracen tribe that ruled the city of Palermo ‘during the period of Muslim domination in Sicily’ called Ma Afir (Frosini 1970, p.19).
Others believe it derives from mahias, meaning ‘bold or braggart’ (Hess 1993, p.4). Another theory, which supports the Arabic origin, relates the word mafia to the noun màha, quarries or caves in the Marsala region, used as places of refuge by the persecuted Saracens, and subsequently as hideouts for other fugitives (Lestingi 1993, p.5). On the same basis, Lo Schiavo suggests a variant, not supported by any evidence however, that these caves were places where meetings were held or probably where the supporters of Italian unity and organisers-in-hiding of the rural squads encouraged by Garibaldi sought refuge. These places gave their name to the mafia, ‘in other words, people from the mafie’ (Lo Schiavo 1962, p.29). Lo Schiavo subsequently states that the term would have been used as an adjective in the sense of ‘superior, masculine, handsome’ and handed down through popular language (Lo Schiavo 1962, p.171).
The Arabic origin of the word appears, in any case, quite plausible even if, with the passing of time, and with the diffusion of the term, the most extravagant conjectures are given credence. One such example is that the word mafia is ‘the deformation of the word mu afah’. Mu in fact translates as inviolability, strength, vigour, and afah means to secure, protect. Thus mafia means ‘an association that provided security for its members’ (Candida 1956, p.56).
The first literary work that, in philological terms, used the word mafioso or mafiusi dates back to 1862 and is a play by Mosca and Rizzotto entitled I Mafiusi della Vicaria (The Mafiosi of the Vicaria). The inspiration for the play seems to have come from a meeting between Rizzotto and the former offender Gioacchino d’Angelo, who provided Rizzotto with a lot of interesting suggestions, including a term that, thanks to this play, ‘Chi vurissi fai u mafiusu cu mia?’ (‘Are you trying to play boss with me?’) became very famous (Novacco 1964, p.208). The play’s scenes take place inside the prison of Palermo (la Vicaria), where the characters take
advantage of the particular respect shown to them as members of an association with special hierarchies and initiation rites. It is important to point out that, for the first time, the term mafia (although used exclusively in the title of the piece) is linked to a system of hidden power exerted exclusively by a criminal organisation. In any case, the play only mentions mafiosi, not mafia. The organisation in the text is indicated, though only vaguely, by the name Camorra. Since the play, the word has been used for members of sects, sometimes imaginary, or for ‘the followers of a secret association of criminals, powerful and “respected” men, which does not mean respectable, but capable of commanding respect’ (Novacco 1964, p.192).
The word mafia being used to mean an organised criminal organisation first occurred in an official document dated April 1865, a letter written by the prefect Filippo Gualtiero, during a period in which there was bitter controversy over the conditions of law and order in Sicily and governmental responsibilities. In his report to the Minister of the Interior, the prefect noted a ‘serious and prolonged misunderstanding between the country and the authorities, which helps to ensure that the so-called Maffia, or criminal association, grows with impertinence’.1
The first etymological reconstruction of the term in Sicily was attempted by Traina in his Nuovo vocabolario Siciliano-italiano of 1868 where he defines the mafia as a
neologism indicating actions, words or more of those who want to boast: boldness. // Self-assurance, apparent impudence: Self-confidence. // Action or words of someone who wants to pretend to be more than he is: POTTATA. // Insolence, arrogance: haughtiness. Pride, pomp: self-conceit. // Collective noun of all the ‘mafiusi’. (hired assassins are called Smaferi in Tuscany); and maffia expresses poverty, and real poverty is to consider oneself a great man for one’s brute force alone; he who displays rather great brutality, namely being a great beast. (Traina 1868)
Mortillaro, in the third edition of his Nuovo dizionario siciliano-italiano (1881), and in full accordance with the Sicilian sentiment, defines the word mafia as a ‘Piedmontese term’ introduced in the rest of Italy to indicate ‘camorra’. According to Giuseppe Pitrè,2 the famous ethnologist born in Palermo, the word was already in use around the mid-19th century in the popular Borgo neighbourhood of Palermo, where it expressed ‘beauty’ or ‘excellence’; a pretty girl, for example, ‘ha della mafia’, is ‘mafiusa’, or ‘mafiusedda’. In addition, a neat house can be
‘una casa mafiusa’ or ‘ammafiata’. Even fruit and domestic objects sold by street vendors were ‘mafiusi’, and brooms were sold with the cry of ‘haju scupi d’a mafia! Haju chiddi mafiusi veru’. Referring back to its primitive significance, and providing an influential foundation for many others after him, Pitrè defines the noun of mafioso, when referring to a man, as a synonym of ‘superiority, self-assurance, manliness’, an exaggerated consideration of individual strength and intolerance of other people’s arrogance, ‘a brave and violent man who won’t stand any nonsense from anyone; in this case being a mafioso is necessary, better still, indispensable’ (Pitrè Vol. II 1889, pp.289–90). From 1865 onwards, the word mafia (maffia for a short period) is used and abused to indicate both organised criminal associations committing abuse and violence, and groups of courageous men protecting the defenceless.
The term Cosa Nostra (our thing, or our concern) indicates the organised crime of mafioso character which took root in the United States towards the end of the 19th century (initially it was referred to in the media as the Black Hand or the Sicilian Mafia, but it united groups of criminals from all over Italy, not only Sicily). From the 1930s onwards, and under the guidance of Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, the criminal organisation formed an interstate syndicate strongly linked to political power. From then on, the organisation operated in drug trafficking, gambling, ‘protection’ rackets and other criminal activities, becoming one of the most powerful mafia groupings around the world. From the end of the 1960s, the word Cosa Nostra was imported back to Italy where it is used, together with the old term mafia, to indicate the Sicilian criminal organisation.
Even the more recent term Cosa Nostra has a parallel history with the word mafia: it derives, in fact, from the interaction between external interpretation and internal repossession. Used for the first time in the United States in the late 1950s by a mafioso informant Joseph Valachi ‘during the hearing of the McClellan Commission, it was widely understood as a proper name: Cosa Nostra. Fostered by a conspirational FBI and disseminated by the media, this designation gained wide popularity and eventually replaced the term Mafia’ (Lewis 1964, p.15). In his famous autobiography, Bonanno writes, ‘I often used to hear this expression from Vincent Mangano. He used it idiomatically, as I use the phrase in my world’. Bonanno then adds that what he calls ‘my tradition’ was referred to in several ways: ‘some prefer the word Mafia, others liked Cosa Nostra. These are all metaphors’ (Bonanno 1993, p.18).
The Origins of the Mafia as a Criminal Phenomenon and as a Spirit
Hypothesising an origin
The precise origins of the mafia are still unknown; criminal associations vaguely similar to those of today existed during the period preceding unification, even if during that period the word mafia was not used. Some signs of proto-mafioso practices can already be found in the 16th and 17th century, yet these signs are not clear enough to be defined as part of the process that with time would be recognised and defined by the word mafia.
A series of hypotheses date the origin of the mafia to the mid-19th century, after the landing of Garibaldi in Sicily, but the historian Santi Correnti from Catania states, somewhat questionably, that ‘the origins of the mafia are lost in the mists of time’ (Correnti 1972, p.226). The Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia has also given his interpretation of the mafia as a phenomenon already in existence for some time: ‘In 1838 the mafia already existed: but with a different name (or nameless)’ (Sciascia 1970, p.75). In fact, the writer of Racalmuto refers to the presence of associations with corporate structures as the maestranze1 (early forms of trade unions) before 1800 to which the viceroy reformer Domenico Caracciolo feels he must pay particular attention, ‘displayed with some sensational arrests’ which revealed ‘certain connections between nobility and criminality’ (ibid.). Expert on the history of the mafia, Orazio Cancilia is bewildered by the claims to a 19th-century origin of the phenomenon, maintaining that ‘I do not know nor have I been able to ascertain when it revealed itself for the first time on the island, but I note its presence already in the third decade of the 16th century’ (Cancilia 1987, p.16), several centuries before the word mafia spread, following the theatrical play I mafiusi della vicaria in 1862. After
the 16th century, Cancilia adds, ‘it has always characterised the history of the island: in the cities as a connivance between criminality and institutions, in rural towns as an exercise of feudal power with systems and methods that did not exclude the recourse to abuse and exploitation’ (Cancilia 1987, p.16). Francesco Renda, scholar of the history of the mafia, has also supported the theory ‘that the mafia as an “affair”, that is, as a spirit, as behaviour of the individual and also as a criminal association sworn to practice organised violence, was not created in the context of the inclusion of the island as part of the national State’, but existed before the process of unification, and had assumed ‘distinct and precise manifestations’ (Renda 1984, p.197). Renda refers to the Beati Paoli,2 a secret 18th-century sect, ‘whose oral and written traditions prefigured the mafia archetype as an “honoured society”, one that practices violence, including murder, with good intentions, to do justice and defend the weak against the strong’ (Renda 1984, p.197). In more certain historical terms, and recording evident signs of mafioso behaviour, the testimonies of foreign travellers visiting Sicily around the end of the 18th century should also be remembered, as we will see later with the Scottish writer Patrick Brydone. They describe typical proto-mafia situations, such as the practice common among noblemen of employing bandits and criminals, or alternatively, ‘the institutional precedent of the compagnie d’armi, where the State, in the interests of public safety, collaborated with bandits and criminals, on the principle that the thieves or criminals are paid so that they don’t steal or will keep the other villains under control’ (Renda 1984, p.197). Another historian, Paolo Pezzino, notes that the first organisational forms of mafia date back at least ‘to the revolutionary Sicilian tradition around 1800 and directly implicate elements of the working classes who use the bourgeois society of previous decades as a model’ (Pezzino 1990, p.17). During the period in which ‘the mafia was not called mafia’, a few proto-mafia social figures emerged, who paradoxically are cut down to size just as the term mafia with its derivatives becomes a word used and abused by the press of that time. This is the period during which the creation of the centralised State occurs and alliances form between the criminal phenomenon and the world of politics and institutions.
Feudal Sicily
During the course of the various foreign dominations of Sicily that followed one after another, the island’s inhabitants were never quite strong enough to be independent, nor so weak as to be completely dominated or absorbed by the power of the continent. This allowed
the island’s inhabitants to conserve some of their privileges and keep their freedom intact. Power in 17th-century Sicilian society was divided between the Spanish Crown and the nobility, and every attempt by the central government to claim greater power was hindered. The bureaucracy was inefficient and disorganised, and the lack of effective communication links made movement across the island nearly impossible. With the diffusion of the large estates, the more rural areas of the island, far from both Palermo and the Crown, became ideal areas for groups of bandits to control.
In the 17th century, Sicilian economic policy was entirely based on the exploitation of the feudal system. This was not just a ‘political structure through which the sovereign or “il signore” granted a vassal some of his territory to use and administrate’ (Tessitore 1997, p.34), but above all represented the large latifondi (vast agricultural estates) that were often badly managed. The old clientele system of the Roman Empire was replaced by feudalism – the new political order originally established in France in the 7th century, which then spread over the rest of Europe.
The revolutions, the demographic and economic changes, and the various dominations left the feudal structure unaltered throughout. The central powers were naturally in favour of such a system in their territories and often consolidated the privileges or power of the barons in exchange for donations or duties. After 1621, the acquisition (obviously upon financial payment) of the mero e misto impero3 allowed free exercise of jurisdictional power within defined territorial districts. The landowners were almost completely exempt from the traditions of vassalage that had existed until then, and this laid the foundation for the formation of lots of small independent states. The political situation of the 17th century was such that ‘we cannot speak of misgovernment in Sicily, but of non-government, which is something much worse than the former eventuality, which, when it occurs, at least guarantees a tangible presence of the state, (even if negative)’ ( Castiglione 1987, p.11). The absenteeism and indifference of the central institutions created a power vacuum, which was even more evident in the more remote and more inaccessible areas of the island and became a formidable element in the growth and development of the proto-mafioso phenomenon.
The emergence of the gabelloti
The absenteeism of the traditional ruling figures in the rural areas, for whom the feudal estate had represented an instrument of domination for centuries, generated a power vacuum that was promptly filled by a
new and unscrupulous emerging class. The barons had in fact leased many of their large estates to gabelloti (administrators), who very quickly saw their economic and political powers increase.
The rural landowners had managed, over time, to create a certain independence and to increase their wealth, thanks to an equidistant association with the central power (the Crown) and those who lived on the large estate. The figure of the baron, therefore, had become an indispensable point of reference for all the social structure. When the absentee barons employed the gabelloti to run their estates, these emerging entrepreneurial land managers immediately filled the power vacuum created in that equidistant relationship.
On the large estates, there had once been a notable industry of produce linked to animal rearing. Over the course of centuries, the demand for grain production fell, which led to a rise in unemployment among herdsmen, who often went to swell the ranks of the brigands: the classic bandits of the Sicilian countryside were in fact herdsmen. In addition, the decrease in pastures, occurring simultaneously to a growth in the population, had increased the value of animals. Theft of cattle was a very common activity because of the low risks and assured income involved, yet it called for cooperation between the perpetrators, swiftness in the transferral of the stolen animals, and control of the markets in the various towns. The thefts were committed by ‘small, very fluid organisations, men who united to carry out a task and could then disband’ (Crisantino 1994, p.22). The weakness of the central state certainly represented a favourable circumstance in creating united, highly motivated gangs; the king and his laws were distant institutions, and the barons, moreover, often had agreements of mutual protection with the members of these gangs.4
Even if at this early stage brigandage cannot be compared precisely to the mafioso phenomenon as it developed from the start of the 19th century, by the end of the 1500s and early 1600s it was already a factor that contributed decisively to the affirmation of the proto-mafia. It was during this period that several noblemen made offers of protection to some criminal gangs in exchange for their own personal safety. Sicily during this period was a society in which power was divided between the Crown and the barons, and every attempt by the State to claim greater power was thwarted. The central government, however, refused to take responsibility for the problem of security. The noble landowners in the 16th and 17th centuries ran into the same problems faced by the medieval lords and thus frequently decided to adopt a policy of compromise with the criminal organisations.
As a result of the new status quo, the viceroy was compelled to reassess the feudal lords as an instrument of power and, above all, adopt a much more permissive and lenient policy than in the past, establishing connections of a nature that today could be defined as political-mafioso, involving concessions such as impunity to well-known accomplices and assassins, who then used their impunity to continue to exert violence. The intention was ‘on the one hand to repay those who had remained loyal to the institutions, and on the other hand to recover the loyalty of those barons who had at times rebelled against the Spanish monarchy, with a conciliatory policy backed by Madrid’ (Cancilla 1984, p.18). Another decisive factor in the origin of the mafia was the protection granted to the feudality when crimes were committed.
In the 17th century, the situation worsened. Numerous ‘proclamations’, grida and prammatiche, were issued to discourage brigandage and those who supported it.5 The situation regarding public order also deteriorated – above all in the rural areas – so in order to avoid the continuous incursions of the bandits, many representatives of the local powers came to agreements by providing them with secure lodging on their own farms. The government attempted to fight this phenomenon by creating the so-called Compagnie d’armi.
The recruitment for the Compagnie d’armi often drew from bandits and rebels, and the ability to use weapons and to accept a customary life of violence were fundamental requirements. In the more remote and inaccessible areas where the state institutions were completely absent or had difficulty making their presence felt, the landowners employed the so-called campieri (field guards), who took care of the safety of the employer and his estate. Here, too, rebels or criminals who, paid by noblemen, should have fought the organised gangs were instead often in agreement with these very groups of bandits. Both the Compagnie d’armi and the campieri undertook the service of public security in exchange for a ‘fixed price’ from landowners and ‘they were responsible ... for any losses caused by extortion or thefts of the bandits’ (Tessitore 1997, p.50).
The church also had a particular position. The Sicilian clergy, thanks to the Apostolica Legazia,6 did not depend on the discipline and jurisdiction of the Roman Curia, but rather on the Spanish King. As Novacco finely notes: ‘by entering into the network of privileges, the church recreated the social and cultural profile of the environment’ (Novacco 1963, p.62).
A paradoxical situation is consequently created in the corrupt Sicily of the 17th century. The monopoly of violence, usually a privilege of
The Origins of the Mafia as a Criminal 11
the State authorities, was legally entrusted to groups of criminals, the Compagnie d’armi, and the campieri, who in the social pyramid of the time represented a structure that, with good reason, can be defined as proto-mafia.
Literary representations of the mafia ante litteram: Scottish traveller Brydone and the ‘Sicilian bandits’
It is possible to surmise, therefore, that the criminal phenomenon defined as a proto-mafia had roots that went back much further than the post-unification period and, most importantly, was not born and nurtured amid those centres that are generally identified as marginal, but rather among the well-to-do pillars of society. The Sicilian aristocracy, with their protective, tolerant culture, did not shy from alliances with groups of villains in order to further reinforce their own hegemony and undermine the power of the Crown.
Despite the commitment of the various viceroys to reforms, banditry continued to remain an impenetrable force. The complicity and protection of the barons certainly played an important role in the development of a ‘mafioso mafia mentality/spirit’: this particular situation was created in the 18th century, where the certainty of being exempt from state justice encouraged the nobility and the rest of the well-to-do classes to assume attitudes that were often illegal, themselves becoming highly criminal factors.
This was the situation described in 1770 by the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone, who was quite rightly considered ‘the first to have discovered that unexplored land called Sicily’ (Tuzet 1955, p.34) in the literary sense, thanks to the publication of his successful book A Tour through Sicily and Malta: In a Series of Letters to William Beckford (Brydone 1790). 7
The traditional itinerary of the ‘grand tour’ of Europe consisted of visits to the principle artistic centres of Italy, with Naples at the extreme southern border. Brydone, however, on the advice of Sir William Hamilton, ‘inviato straordinario e ministro plenipotenziario di Sua Maestà britannica alla Corte di Napoli’ (Brydone 1968, p.17), ventured as far as Sicily.
European knowledge of Sicily, until that period, was extremely limited. One should bear in mind that the Encyclopédie, a monumental piece of work that listed all the treasures of 18th-century Europe, described Palermo in 1766 as ‘the city with an archbishopric and a small, almost forgotten port because it was destroyed by an earthquake’, which rings
more of myth than a description of an actual place. With regards to Sicily, the text ended: ‘To be brief, Sicily has nothing considerable today except for its mountains and the Inquisitional tribunal’ (Frosini, 1970, p.14). Brydone received a university education, served in the army and soon became a ‘travelling preceptor’ (Tuzet 1955, p.36), or a tutor who travelled with some Scottish noblemen.
The journey that Brydone undertook in the island in 1770 became an opportunity for a correspondence in diary form with his friend William Beckford. The Scottish writer is a ‘philosopher ... of the Enlightenment’ (Tuzet 1955, p.38) with the best qualities of Scottish travellers. He has no illusions; ‘his eyes often twinkle with 18th century irony, as he observes people and things’ (Renda 1968, p.18). It is also possible to see in his work indications of a new sensitivity, influenced by Scottish Enlightenment ideas. Brydone observes and imagines with brilliant humour; he is curious to experience and penetrate the Sicilian usages and customs. During his journey around Sicily, Brydone encounters, with great amazement, a mafia ante litteram. He is the first intellectual of a certain prestige to produce a very articulate description of the criminal phenomenon that, with great irony, he defines as an ‘honourable order’ (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.75), an honourable brotherhood containing all of the elements of an organisation that a century later will be defined as mafia. The Scottish traveller is provided with letters of recommendation that open the doors to the powerful Sicilian palaces. He observes with great astonishment that the most powerful and important noblemen, such as the Prince of Villafranca, governor of Messina, uses as guards ‘the most daring, and most hardened villains, perhaps, that are to be met with upon earth’; people who, in other countries, Brydone notes with wonder, ‘would have been broken upon the wheel or hung in chains, but are here publicly protected, and universally feared and respected’ (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.74). These are villains who, as the same prince had told him, usually lived in Val Demoni (as that part of eastern Sicily was named), in a mountain with an infinite number of caves and underground tunnels, where nobody had ever managed to drive them out. Accordingly, the nobleman, aware that ‘they [the villains] are known to be perfectly determined and resolute, never failing to take a dreadful revenge on all who have offended them’, decided ‘not only as the safest, but likewise as the wisest and the most polite scheme, to become their declared patron and protector’ (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.75). Those who had deemed it convenient to leave the mountain and its forests, even if only temporarily, ‘were sure to meet with good encouragement and security in his service; they enjoyed the most unbounded confidence, which
The Origins of the Mafia as a Criminal 13
in no instance they have ever yet been found to make an improper or dishonest use of’ (Ibid.).
The Prince of Villafranca had considered it prudent to recruit them under his flag and provided them with his family livery, thus making them feared and respected: ‘They are clothed in the prince’s livery, yellow and green, with silver lace’. The nobleman, governor of Messina, states:
that, however criminal they may be with regard to society in general, yet, with respect to one another, and to every person to whom they have once professed it, they have ever maintained the most unshaken fidelity and wear likewise a badge of their honourable order, which entitles them to universal fear and respect from the people. (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.76)
This is, of course, how mafiosi love to consider themselves. The guards of the escort are people worthy of the utmost loyalty and resoluteness, who can be completely trusted:
He says he has likewise ordered two of the most desperate fellows in the whole island to accompany us; adding in a sort of whisper, that we need be under no apprehension, for if any person should presume to impose upon us to the value of a single baiocc, they would certainly put them to death. (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.77)
This is a colourful yet precise representation of the characteristic of an ‘honourable brotherhood’ that will, in time, be named the ‘mafia spirit’. Even though the Scottish traveller presents the savage guards with a strong sense of caricature, it is hard to agree with the French critic Helen Tuzet when she states that he ‘thus begins the legend of the Sicilian brigand’ (Tuzet 1955, p.47), nor when she claims that Brydone allows himself to be seduced
by the picturesque aspect of the situation, and shows an almost Byronesque taste for these ‘desperate fellows’; he notes that mix of chivalry and ferocity (their most romantic ideal, he says, is their sense of honour), and he describes for us the figure of the ‘haughty robber’, prestigious but surely idealised; this is the brigand a la Alexandre Dumas. (Tuzet 1955, p.47)
Despite his humour and irony, Brydone represents the bandits of the convoy as a group of criminals that through the use of violence applies
its own laws, its own special tribunal, without turning to state law. He introduces a group of villains which, as previously mentioned, principally serves the nobleman. These are not people forced into banditry by poverty and injustice, but rather people who use violence and threats as a profession. During his journey, Brydone notes that even though ‘the magistrates have often been obliged to protect them, and even pay court’, the conduct of the guards of the Prince of Villa Franca has always been irreproachable and full of reverence towards the travellers who prefer to hire a couple of these individuals, from city to city, to be assured of their own safety. It is, in any case, money well spent because:
they will protect him from impositions of every kind, and scorn to go halves with the landlord, like most other conductors and travelling servants; and will defend them with their lives, if there is occasion, that those of their number, who have thus enlisted themselves in the service of society, are known and respected by the other banditti all over the island; and the persons of those they accompany are ever held sacred. (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.78)
Brydone notes that the two uomini d’onore (men of honour) who head the prince’s militia told him some of their incredible adventures, and they quite openly admitted to having kidnapped and killed several people; ‘Mas tutti, tutti honorabilmente’ – that is, ‘they did not do it in a dastardly manner, nor without just provocation’ (Brydone 1790, Vol.II, p.51), as common brigands would usually do. With irony and sarcasm, Brydone observes that they represent ‘the most respectable people of the island, and have by much the highest and most romantic notions of what they call their point of honour’ (Brydone 1790, Vol.II, p.52). In the entertaining pages of his letter-diary, Brydone illustrates with spirit and acumen some of the tales told by their escort, where hilarity and ferocity are strangely merged. This is the case, for example, of the brother of one of these eroici banditi (heroic bandits) who, needing money and not knowing how to earn any, decided to exploit the name and authority of his feared and respected brother, quite sure that the trick would not be easily discovered. The designated victim was a poor country priest whom the scoundrel brother asked for money. When the uomo di rispetto (respected man) discovered the trick, he did not hesitate to kill his brother to clear his own good name; and thus the recurring theme of honour, found in all the pages of literature about the mafia also appears in the diary of the traveller (Brydone 1790, Vol.II, p.52). There are also other anecdotes which clarify the relationship of
mutual protection between the noble class and the representatives of the honoured confraternity:
a number of people were found digging in a place where some treasure was supposed to have been hid during the plague: as this had been forbidden under most severe penalties, they were immediately carried to prison and expected merciless treatment; but luckily for the others, one of these heroes happened to be of the number. He wrote to the Prince of VillaFranca, and made use of such powerful arguments in their favour, that they were all immediately set at liberty. (Brydone 1790, Vol.I, p.79)
The success of Brydone’s book is only in part due to the animated, amusing lightness of his style. In the second volume of his letter-diary, there are in fact pages of keen analysis of the reasons for the underdevelopment of the island and its consequences. The enlightened Scotsman indicates that the feudal estate in Sicily is the economic and social cause for the lack of development (one whole century before the denunciation made by Franchetti and Sonnino).8 In this second volume, Brydone and company move towards Palermo, and it is these pages which best reveal the sensibility of the Scottish traveller in denouncing the inequalities and tyranny which oppress Sicily and its inhabitants. Particularly important are his thoughts about the general structure of society, the church, the absolute monarchy and the aristocracy, where he favours those forces – not necessarily the bourgeoisie (a middle class does not really exist in Sicily at this time) – which are to some extent more liberal and ‘progressive’.
Brydone, despite his links to the island nobility and the viceroy, suggests a new, broader, more dynamic vision of man and the development of society. In an age where it was common to talk only about brigands, he is one of the first to denounce in his writings the distortions of the old feudal system (commenting ironically about the Sicilian noblemen who defend its purity).
Brydone’s description of island society in the 18th century is fundamental for anyone looking for the deepest roots of the Sicilian mafia.
The class of the facinorosi, who provide the escort for Brydone and his companions for all of the journey around Sicily, grew out of the class of servants, field guards and gabelloti who rented the estates. In fact, from the end of the 18th century, as the Scottish writer notes, a close network of relationships developed between bands of criminals (the company that escorts the Scottish traveller, or poor farmers obliged
to give refuge to bandits) and the noble landowners (who guarantee the organisation and the protection of the ‘honourable order’). The noble class had various reasons for dealing with criminal groups. These did not just include the justifiable reason of defence of their property and lives, but rather, above all, the capacity to demonstrate that their own auctoritas (authority) comes before the law of the Crown. In Sicily, criminality and power have common links and interests; here they do not compete with each other, and one does not weaken the other, as in all other European societies. Here the connivance and collusion represent a constant element of island life.
Brydone’s analysis of Sicily during this period – of its domination by Spain’s distant and foreign government, of its legislation based on privilege, and of its social relationships and economic life – helps to explain why small bands, thanks to potent influences, managed to transform the functions of intermediaries or guardians of public order into a system for private profit. The members of these confraternities, working on the sidelines of public life, created solid positions of privilege. Shielded by an effective impunity, these groups blackmailed, exerted pressure, threatened and often acted violently, almost always to sort out private conflicts of interest. This reveals a cultura criminale (criminal culture), providing evidence for mafiosi groups ante litteram. To conclude, it seems that, just as Franchetti will do a century later (of course, with differences due to the period and culture), Brydone identifies this ‘honourable order’ as the profound and natural expression of certain class relationships. This contrasts with the conclusions reached by those who, a few decades later, claim that the presence of the mafia is a sporadic phenomenon.
The Abolition of Feudalism, Mafia in the Unified Kingdom and I Mafiusi di la Vicaria
The emergence of the mafioso phenomenon during the pre-Risorgimento period in Sicily
Opposition to the Bourbon dynasty was not always liberal, and the opposition following the reforms that were introduced after the abolition of feudalism in 1812, during the restoration of the Bourbons, certainly was not. The process of reform began under the viceroy, Domenico Caracciolo (1781–86), a Neapolitan marquis who had been ambassador in France for a while, where he was imbued with philosophical ideas. The reforms carried out by Caracciolo were numerous and aimed to limit the increasingly arrogant ‘proto-mafioso’ class that was forming. The most important reforms include the abolition of the Sant’Uffizio (religious tribunal) and the limitations placed on excessive feudal power. The Inquisition that represented the political-religious power of the Spanish Catholics in Sicily was nothing more than a coagulation of the interests of political clientele that had corrupted the institutions of the viceroyalty. The reformatory efforts of the new viceroy were directed against the barons and their feudal privileges. Many of the abuses that had previously affected the workers were also abolished. This encouraged the magistracy to aim for independence from the barons and to carry out their own roles with impartiality. The reforms restricted the jurisdictional authority of the landowners within the remit of public safety, attempted to free Sicily from old prejudices, and, for the first time, actively sought to assert the presence of the state in a situation that by this time only recognised authoritarian bodies and had been produced by a real anti-state. The viceroy was the forerunner of the reformatory process that shortly after formally abolished the feudal system, with the promulgation of the constitution in 1812.
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with an old grandam, deaf and quite blind, who could do nothing for her own support, but sat all day in a wicker chair by the lattice or the stove, according as the season was hot or cold, and mumbled a little inarticulately over her worn wooden beads.
Her employers allowed Lili to bring these boxes to decorate at home, and she painted at them almost from dawn to night. She swept, she washed, she stewed, she fried, she dusted; she did all the housework of her two little rooms; she tended the old woman in all ways; and she did all these things with such cleanliness and deftness that the attics were wholesome as a palace; and though her pay was very small, she yet found means and time to have her linen spotless and make her pots and pans shine like silver and gold, and to give a grace to all the place, with the song of a happy bird and the fragrance of flowers that blossomed their best and their sweetest for her sake, when they would fain have withered to the root and died in their vain longing for the pure breath of the fields and the cool of a green woodland world.
It was a little, simple, hard life, no doubt,—a life one would have said scarce worth all the trouble it took to get bread enough to keep it going,—a hard life, coloring always the same eternal little prints all day long, no matter how sweet the summer day might be, or how hot the tired eyes.
A hard life, with all the wondrous, glorious, wasteful, splendid life of the beautiful city around it in so terrible a contrast; with the roll of the carriages day and night on the stones beneath, and the pattering of the innumerable feet below, all hurrying to some pleasure, and every moment some burst of music or some chime of bells or some ripple of laughter on the air. A hard life, sitting one’s self in a little dusky garret in the roof, and straining one’s sight for two sous an hour, and listening to an old woman’s childish mutterings and reproaches, and having always to shake the head in refusal of the neighbors’ invitations to a day in the woods or a sail on the river. A hard life, no doubt, when one is young and a woman, and has soft, shining eyes and a red, curling mouth. And yet Lili was content.
Content, because she was a French girl; because she had always been poor, and thought two sous an hour riches; because she loved the helpless old creature whose senses had all died while her body lived on; because she was an artist at heart, and saw beautiful things round her even when she scoured her brasses and washed down her bare floor.
Content, because with it all she managed to gather a certain “sweetness and light” into her youth of toil; and when she could give herself a few hours’ holiday, and could go beyond the barriers, and roam a little in the wooded places, and come home with a knot of primroses or a plume of lilac in her hands, she was glad and grateful as though she had been given gold and gems.
Ah! In the lives of you who have wealth and leisure we, the flowers, are but one thing among many: we have a thousand rivals in your porcelains, your jewels, your luxuries, your intaglios, your mosaics, all your treasures of art, all your baubles of fancy. But in the lives of the poor we are alone: we are all the art, all the treasure, all the grace, all the beauty of outline, all the purity of hue, that they possess: often we are all their innocence and all their religion too.
Why do you not set yourselves to make us more abundant in those joyless homes, in those sunless windows?
Now this street of hers was very narrow: it was full of old houses, that nodded their heads close together as they talked, like your old crones over their fireside gossip.
I could, from my place in the window, see right into the opposite garret window. It had nothing of my nation in it, save a poor colorless stone-wort, who got a dismal living in the gutter of the roof, yet who too, in his humble way, did good and had his friends, and paid the sun and the dew for calling him into being. For on that rainpipe the little dusty, thirsty sparrows would rest and bathe and plume themselves, and bury their beaks in the pale stone-crop, and twitter with one another joyfully, and make believe that they were in some green and amber meadow in the country in the cowslip time.
I did not care much for the stone-crop or the sparrows; but in the third summer of my captivity there with Lili the garret casement opposite stood always open, as ours did, and I could watch its tenant night and day as I chose.
He had an interest for me.
He was handsome, and about thirty years old; with a sad and noble face, and dark eyes full of dreams, and cheeks terribly hollow, and clothes terribly threadbare.
He thought no eyes were on him when my lattice looked dark, for his garret, like ours, was so high that no glance from the street ever went to it. Indeed, when does a crowd ever pause to look at a garret, unless by chance a man have hanged himself out of its window? That in thousands of garrets men may be dying by inches for lack of bread, lack of hope, lack of justice, is not enough to draw any eyes upward to them from the pavement.
He thought himself unseen, and I watched him many a long hour of the summer night when I sighed at my square open pane in the hot, sulphurous mists of the street, and tried to see the stars and could not. For, between me and the one small breadth of sky which alone the innumerable roofs left visible, a vintner had hung out a huge gilded imperial crown as a sign on his roof-tree; and the crown, with its sham gold turning black in the shadow, hung between me and the planets.
I knew that there must be many human souls in a like plight with myself, with the light of heaven blocked from them by a gilded tyranny; and yet I sighed and sighed and sighed, thinking of the white, pure stars of Provence throbbing in her violet skies.
A rose is hardly wiser than a poet, you see; neither rose nor poet will be comforted, and be content to dwell in darkness because a crown of tinsel swings on high.
Well, not seeing the stars as I strove to do, I took refuge in sorrow for my neighbor. It is well for your poet when he turns to a like resource. Too often I hear he takes, instead, to the wine-cellar which yawns under the crown that he curses.
My neighbor, I soon saw, was poorer even than we were. He was a painter, and he painted beautiful things. But his canvases and the necessaries of his art were nearly all that his empty attic had in it; and when, after working many hours with a wretched glimmer of oil, he would come to his lattice and lean out, and try, as I had tried, to
see the stars, and fail, as I had failed, I saw that he was haggard, pallid, and weary unto death with two dire diseases,—hunger and ambition.
He could not see the stars because of the crown, but in time, in those long midsummer nights, he came to see a little glow-worm amongst my blossoms, which in a manner, perhaps, did nearly as well.
He came to notice Lili at her work. Often she had to sit up half the night to get enough coloring done to make up the due amount of labor; and she sat at her little deal table, with her little feeble lamp, with her beautiful hair coiled up in a great knot and her pretty head drooping so wearily—as we do in the long days of drought—but never once looking off, nor giving way to rebellion or fatigue, though from the whole city without there came one ceaseless sound, like the sound of an endless sea; which truly it was—the sea of pleasure.
Not for want of coaxings, not for want of tempters, various and subtle, and dangers often and perilously sweet, did Lili sit there in her solitude earning two sous an hour with straining sight and aching nerves that the old paralytic creature within might have bed and board without alms. Lili had been sore beset in a thousand ways, for she was very fair to see; but she was proud and she was innocent, and she kept her courage and her honor; yea, though you smile— though she dwelt under an attic roof, and that roof a roof of Paris.
My neighbor, in the old gabled window over the way, leaning above his stone-wort, saw her one night thus at work by her lamp, with the silver ear-rings, that were her sole heirloom and her sole wealth, drooped against the soft hues and curves of her graceful throat.
And when he had looked once, he looked every night, and found her there; and I, who could see straight into his chamber, saw that he went and made a picture of it all—of me, and the bird in the cage, and the little old dusky lamp, and Lili with her silver ear-rings and her pretty, drooping head.
Every day he worked at the picture, and every night he put his light out and came and sat in the dark square of his lattice, and gazed
across the street through my leaves and my blossoms at my mistress. Lili knew nothing of this watch which he kept on her; she had put up a little blind of white network, and she fancied that it kept out every eye when it was up; and often she took even that away, because she had not the heart to deprive me of the few faint breezes which the sultry weather gave us.
She never saw him in his dark hole in the old gable there, and I never betrayed him—not I. Roses have been the flowers of silence ever since the world began. Are we not the flowers of love?
“Who is he?” I asked of my gossip the vine. The vine had lived fifty years in the street, and knew the stories and sorrows of all the human bees in the hive.
“He is called René Claude,” said the vine. “He is a man of genius. He is very poor.”
“You use synonyms,” murmured the old balsam, who heard.
“He is an artist,” the vine continued. “He is young. He comes from the south. His people are guides in the Pyrenees. He is a dreamer of dreams. He has taught himself many things. He has eloquence too. There is a little club at the back of the house which I climb over. I throw a tendril or two in at the crevices and listen. The shutters are closed. It is forbidden by law for men to meet so. There René speaks by the hour, superbly. Such a rush of words, such a glance, such a voice, like the roll of musketry in anger, like the sigh of music in sadness! Though I am old, it makes the little sap there is left in me thrill and grow warm. He paints beautiful things too; so the two swallows say who build under his eaves; but I suppose it is not of much use: no one believes in him, and he almost starves. He is young yet, and feels the strength in him, and still strives to do great things for the world that does not care a jot whether he lives or dies. He will go on so a little longer. Then he will end like me. I used to try and bring forth the best grapes I could, though they had shut me away from any sun to ripen them and any dews to cleanse the dust from them. But no one cared. No one gave me a drop of water to still my thirst, nor pushed away a brick to give me a ray more of light. So I ceased to try and produce for their good; and I only took just so
much trouble as would keep life in me myself. It will be the same with this man.”
I, being young and a rose, the flower loved of the poets, thought the vine was a cynic, as many of you human creatures grow to be in the years of your age when the leaves of your life fall sere. I watched René long and often. He was handsome, he suffered much; and when the night was far spent he would come to his hole in the gable and gaze with tender, dreaming eyes past my pale foliage to the face of Lili. I grew to care for him, and I disbelieved the prophecy of the vine; and I promised myself that one summer or another, near or far, the swallows, when they came from the tawny African world to build in the eaves of the city, would find their old friend flown and living no more in a garret, but in some art-palace where men knew his fame.
So I dreamed—I, a little white rose, exiled in the passage of a city, seeing the pale moonlight reflected on the gray walls and the dark windows, and trying to cheat myself by a thousand fancies into the faith that I once more blossomed in the old, sweet, leafy gardenways in Provence.
One night—the hottest night of the year—Lili came to my side by the open lattice. It was very late; her work was done for the night. She stood a moment, with her lips rested softly on me, looking down on the pavement that glistened like silver in the sleeping rays of the moon.
For the first time she saw the painter René watching her from his niche in the gable, with eyes that glowed and yet were dim.
I think women foresee with certain prescience when they will be loved. She drew the lattice quickly to, and blew the lamp out: she kissed me in the darkness. Because her heart was glad or sorry? Both, perhaps.
Love makes one selfish. For the first time she left my lattice closed all through the oppressive hours until daybreak.
“Whenever a woman sees anything out of her window that makes her eager to look again, she always shuts the shutter. Why, I wonder?” said the balsam to me.
“That she may peep unsuspected through a chink,” said the vine round the corner, who could overhear.
It was profane of the vine, and in regard to Lili untrue. She did not know very well, I dare say, why she withdrew herself on that sudden impulse, as the pimpernel shuts itself up at the touch of a raindrop.
But she did not stay to look through a crevice; she went straight to her little narrow bed, and told her beads and prayed, and slept till the cock crew in a stable near and the summer daybreak came.
She might have been in a chamber all mirror and velvet and azure and gold in any one of the ten thousand places of pleasure, and been leaning over gilded balconies under the lime leaves, tossing up little paper balloons in the air for gay wagers of love and wine and jewels. Pleasure had asked her more than once to come down from her attic and go with its crowds; for she was fair of feature and lithe of limb, though only a work-girl of Paris. And she would not, but slept here under the eaves, as the swallows did.
“We have not seen enough, little rose, you and I,” she would say to me with a smile and a sigh. “But it is better to be a little pale, and live a little in the dark, and be a little cramped in a garret window, than to live grand in the sun for a moment, and the next to be tossed away in a gutter. And one can be so happy anyhow—almost anyhow!— when one is young. If I could only see a very little piece more of the sky, and get every Sunday out to the dear woods, and live one floor
lower, so that the winters were not quite so cold and the summers not quite so hot, and find a little more time to go to mass in the cathedral, and be able to buy a pretty blue-and-white home of porcelain for you, I should ask nothing more of the blessed Mary— nothing more upon earth.”
She had had the same simple bead-roll of innocent wishes ever since the first hour that she had raised me from the dust of the street; and it would, I doubt not, have remained her only one all the years of her life, till she should have glided down into a serene and cheerful old age of poverty and labor under that very same roof, without the blessed Mary ever deigning to harken or answer. Would have done so if the painter René could have seen the stars, and so had not been driven to look instead at the glow-worm through my leaves.
But after that night on which she shut to the lattice so suddenly, I think the bead-roll lengthened—lengthened, though for some time the addition to it was written on her heart in a mystical language which she did not try to translate even to herself—I suppose fearing its meaning.
René made approaches to his neighbor’s friendship soon after that night. He was but an art student, the son of a poor mountaineer, and with scarce a thing he could call his own except an easel of deal, a few plaster casts, and a bed of straw. She was but a working-girl, born of Breton peasants, and owning as her sole treasures two silver ear-rings and a white rose.
But for all that, no courtship could have been more reverential on the one side or fuller of modest grace on the other if the scene of it had been a palace of princes or a château of the nobles.
He spoke very little.
The vine had said that at the club round the corner he was very eloquent, with all the impassioned and fierce eloquence common to men of the south. But with Lili he was almost mute. The vine, who knew human nature well—as vines always do, since their juices unlock the secret thoughts of men and bring to daylight their darkest
passions—the vine said that such silence in one by nature eloquent showed the force of his love and its delicacy.
This may be so: I hardly know My lover the wind, when he is amorous, is loud; but then it is true his loves are not often very constant.
René chiefly wooed her by gentle service. He brought her little lovely wild flowers, for which he ransacked the woods of St. Germains and Meudon. He carried the billets of her firewood up the seven long, twisting, dirty flights of stairs. He fought for her with the wicked old porteress at the door downstairs. He played to her in the gray of the evening on a quaint, simple flute, a relic of his boyhood, the sad, wild, touching airs of his own southern mountains—played at his open window while the lamps burned through the dusk, till the people listened at their doors and casements and gathered in groups in the passage below, and said to one another, “How clever he is!— and he starves.”
He did starve very often, or at least he had to teach himself to keep down hunger with a morsel of black chaff-bread and a stray roll of tobacco. And yet I could see that he had become happy.
Lili never asked him within her door. All the words they exchanged were from their open lattices, with the space of the roadway between them.
I heard every syllable they spoke, and they were on the one side most innocent and on the other most reverential. Ay, though you may not believe it—you who know the people of Paris from the travesties of theatres and the slanders of salons.
And all this time secretly he worked on at her portrait. He worked out of my sight and hers, in the inner part of his garret, but the swallows saw and told me. There are never any secrets between birds and flowers.
We used to live in Paradise together, and we love one another as exiles do; and we hold in our cups the raindrops to slake the thirst of the birds, and the birds in return bring to us from many lands and over many waters tidings of those lost ones who have been torn from
us to strike the roots of our race in far-off soils and under distant suns.
Late in the summer of the year, one wonderful fête-day, Lili did for once get out to the woods, the old kindly green woods of Vincennes.
A neighbor on a lower floor, a woman who made poor, scentless, senseless, miserable imitations of all my race in paper, sat with the old bedridden grandmother while Lili took her holiday—so rare in her life, though she was one of the motes in the bright champagne of the dancing air of Paris. I missed her sorely on each of those few sparse days of her absence, but for her I rejoiced.
“Je reste: tu ’t’en vas,” says the rose to the butterfly in the poem; and I said so in my thoughts to her.
She went to the broad level grass, to the golden fields of the sunshine, to the sound of the bees murmuring over the wild purple thyme, to the sight of the great snowy clouds slowly sailing over the sweet blue freedom of heaven—to all the things of my birthright and my deathless remembrance—all that no woman can love as a rose can love them.
But I was not jealous; nay, not though she had cramped me in a little earth-bound cell of clay. I envied wistfully indeed, as I envied the swallows their wings which cleft the air, asking no man’s leave for their liberty. But I would not have maimed a swallow’s pinion had I had the power, and I would not have abridged an hour of Lili’s freedom. Flowers are like your poets: they give ungrudgingly, and, like all lavish givers, are seldom recompensed in kind.
We cast all our world of blossom, all our treasury of fragrance, at the feet of the one we love; and then, having spent ourselves in that too abundant sacrifice, you cry, “A yellow, faded thing!—to the dust-hole with it!” and root us up violently and fling us to rot with the refuse and offal; not remembering the days when our burden of beauty made sunlight in your darkest places, and brought the odors of a lost paradise to breathe over your bed of fever.
Well, there is one consolation. Just so likewise do you deal with your human wonder-flower of genius.
Lili went for her day in the green midsummer world—she and a little blithe, happy-hearted group of young work-people—and I stayed in the garret window, hot and thirsty, and drooping and pale, choked by the dust that drifted up from the pavement, and hearing little all day long save the quarrels of the sparrows and the whir of the engine wheels in a baking-house close at hand.
For it was some great day or other, when all Paris was out en fête, and every one was away from his or her home, except such people as the old bedridden woman and the cripple who watched her. So, at least, the white roof-pigeons told me, who flew where they listed, and saw the whole splendid city beneath them—saw all its glistening of arms and its sheen of palace roofs, all its gilded domes and its white, wide squares, all its crowds, many-hued as a field of tulips, and its flashing eagles golden as the sun.
When I had been alone two hours, and whilst the old building was silent and empty, there came across the street from his own dwelling-place the artist René, with a parcel beneath his arm.
He came up the stairs with a light, noiseless step, and pushed open the door of our attic. He paused on the threshold a moment, with the sort of reverent, hushed look on his face that I had seen on the faces of one or two swarthy, bearded, scarred soldiers as they paused before the picinas at the door of the little chapel which stood in my sight on the other side of our street.
Then he entered, placed that which he carried on a wooden chair fronting the light, uncovered it, and went quietly out again, without the women in the inner closet hearing him.
What he had brought was the canvas I had seen grow under his hand, the painting of me and the lamp and Lili. I do not doubt how he had done it; it was surely the little attic window, homely and true in likeness, and yet he had glorified us all, and so framed in my leaves and my white flowers, the low oil flame and the fair head of my mistress, that there was that in the little picture which made me tremble and yet be glad. On a slender slip of paper attached to it there was written, “Il n’y a pas de nuit sans étoile.”
Of him I saw no more. The picture kept me silent company all the day.
At evening Lili came. It was late. She brought with her a sweet, cool perfume of dewy mosses and fresh leaves and strawberry plants— sweet as honey. She came in with a dark, dreamy brilliance in her eyes and long coils of foliage in her hands. She brought to the canary chickweed and a leaf of lettuce. She kissed me and laid wet mosses on my parching roots, and fanned me with the breath of her fresh lips. She took to the old women within a huge cabbage leaf full of cherries, having, I doubt not, gone herself without in order to bring the ruddy fruit to them.
She had been happy, but she was very quiet. To those who love the country as she and I did, and, thus loving it, have to dwell in cities, there is as much of pain, perhaps, as of pleasure in a fleeting glimpse of the lost heaven.
She was tired, and sat for a while, and did not see the painting, for it was dusk. She only saw it when she rose and turned to light the lamp; then, with a little shrill cry, she fell on her knees before it in her wonder and her awe, and laughed and sobbed a little, and then was still again, looking at this likeness of herself.
The written words took her long to spell out, for she could scarcely read, but when she had mastered them, her head sank on her breast with a flush and a smile, like the glow of the dawn over Provence, I thought.
She knew whence it came, no doubt, though there were many artists and students of art in that street.
But then there was only one who had watched her night after night as men watched the stars of old to read their fates in the heavens.
Lili was only a young ouvrière, she was only a girl of the people: she had quick emotions and innocent impulses; she had led her life straightly because it was her nature, as it is of the lilies—her namesakes, my cousins—to grow straight to the light, pure and spotless. But she was of the populace; she was frank, fearless, and strong, despite all her dreams. She was glad, and she sought not to
hide it. With a gracious impulse of gratitude she turned to the lattice and leaned past me, and looked for my neighbor.
He was there in the gloom; he strove not to be seen, but a stray ray from a lamp at the vintner’s gleamed on his handsome dark face, lean and pallid and yearning and sad, but full of force and of soul like a head of Rembrandt’s. Lili stretched her hands to him with a noble, candid gesture and a sweet, tremulous laugh: “What you have given me!—it is you?—it is you?”
“Mademoiselle forgives?” he murmured, leaning as far out as the gable would permit. The street was still deserted, and very quiet. The theatres were all open to the people that night free, and bursts of music from many quarters rolled in through the sultry darkness.
Lili colored over all her fair, pale face, even as I have seen my sisters’ white breasts glow to a wondrous, wavering warmth as the sun of the west kissed them. She drew her breath with a quick sigh. She did not answer him in words, but with a sudden movement of exquisite eloquence she broke from me my fairest and my last-born blossom and threw it from her lattice into his.
Then, as he caught it, she closed the lattice with a swift, trembling hand, and left the chamber dark, and fled to the little sleeping-closet where her crucifix and her mother’s rosary hung together above her bed.
As for me, I was left bereaved and bleeding. The dew which waters the growth of your human love is usually the tears or blood of some martyred life.
I loved Lili.
I prayed, as my torn stem quivered and my fairest begotten sank to her death in the night and the silence, that I might be the first and the last to suffer from the human love born that night.
I, a rose—Love’s flower.
PART SECOND.
N , before that summer was gone, these two were betrothed to one another, and my little fair dead daughter, all faded and scentless though her half-opened leaves were, remained always on René’s heart as a tender and treasured relic.
They were betrothed, I say—not wedded, for they were so terribly poor.
Many a day he, I think, had not so much as a crust to eat; and there passed many weeks when the works on his canvas stood unfinished because he had not wherewithal to buy the oils and the colors to finish them.
René was frightfully poor, indeed; but then, being an artist and a poet, and the lover of a fair and noble woman, and a dreamer of dreams, and a man God-gifted, he was no longer wretched. For the life of a painter is beautiful when he is still young, and loves truly, and has a genius in him stronger than all calamity, and hears a voice in which he believes say always in his ear: “Fear nothing. Men must believe as I do in thee, one day And meanwhile we can wait!” And a painter in Paris, even though he starve on a few sous a day, can have so much that is lovely and full of picturesque charm in his daily pursuits: the long, wondrous galleries full of the arts he adores; the “réalité de l’idéal” around him in that perfect world; the slow, sweet, studious hours in the calm wherein all that is great in humanity alone survives; the trance—half adoration, half aspiration, at once desire and despair—before the face of the Mona Lisa; then, without, the streets so glad and so gay in the sweet, living sunshine; the quiver of green leaves among gilded balconies; the groups at every turn about the doors; the glow of color in market-place and peopled square; the quaint gray piles in old historic ways; the stones, from every one of
which some voice from the imperishable Past cries out; the green, silent woods, the little leafy villages, the winding waters garden-girt; the forest heights, with the city gleaming and golden in the plain;—all these are his. With these—and youth—who shall dare say he is not rich—ay, though his board be empty and his cup be dry?
I had not loved Paris—I, a little imprisoned rose, caged in a clay pot, and seeing nothing but the sky-line of the roofs. But I grew to love it, hearing from René and from Lili of all the poetry and gladness that Paris made possible in their young and burdened lives, and which could have been thus possible in no other city of the earth.
City of Pleasure you have called her, and with truth; but why not also City of the Poor? for that city, like herself, has remembered the poor in her pleasure, and given to them, no less than to the richest, the treasure of her laughing sunlight, of her melodious music, of her gracious hues, of her million flowers, of her shady leaves, of her divine ideals.
O world! when you let Paris die you will let your last youth die with her! Your rich will mourn a paradise deserted, but your poor will have need to weep with tears of blood for the ruin of the sole Eden whose sunlight sought them in their shadow, whose music found them in their loneliness, whose glad green ways were open to their tired feet, whose radiance smiled the sorrow from their aching eyes, and in whose wildest errors and whose vainest dreams their woes and needs were unforgotten.
Well, this little, humble love-idyl, which grew into being in an attic, had a tender grace of its own; and I watched it with tenderness, and it seemed to me fresh as the dews of the morning in the midst of the hot, stifling world.
They could not marry: he had nothing but famine for his wedding-gift, and all the little that she made was taken for the food and wine of the bedridden old grandam in that religious execution of a filial duty which is so habitual in the French family-life that no one dreams counting it as a virtue.
