Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part four, chapter 21

English

On the evening of June 21, two men reasoned like two good friends, at the corner of an alley that today bears the name of Brugno, opposite the plan of the Cathedral. He passed the round: And they held their hand, and gave themselves goodbye, and separated themselves, one from another, and the other from there, and saluted the chief. Little by two hours in the night; the streets were deserted; the dark Cassaro, long, was lost in the darkness just broken by the light of the bright sky of stars. A few dancing lanterns at the bottom of the earth crossed the darkness for a moment.

The round passed by, descending down the Cassaro to watch if the taverns and shops were closed, according to the banquets of the Senate; and then, looking, crawling along the walls without making any noise, those two men returned to the corner of the alley where they had been. This time they were wearing black irons, despite the heat.

One of them whispered:

"Come. He stopped to talk to the patrol."

In fact, looking down into the Cassaro, they saw the lantern of the quarry, standing still, illuminating the guards and a black man. Then the man fell apart and the lantern moved.

Then the two men withdrew into the dark alley, and cast the irons behind their shoulders, and found their arms armed with carabines. They lurked on both sides of the alley, in the compartments of two doors with weapons ready.

They heard the beating of a stick on the pavement approaching little by little; a man passed, he noticed nothing; the shadow in that narrow alley was so deep, that he let nothing see, even the most exercised eye.

The man passed by two or three steps the height of the alley; the two lurkers came out of their hiding place, reached the corner, aimed, fired.

The two flames tore through the night; two blows revolted tremendously: The man scrambled on the ground without a lamentation. And the two were upon him, and bowed down upon him, and looked at him:

"He's dead. Let's go."

They immediately went back into the alley, but without making any noise; they seemed to have no shoes on their feet. When they were protected by the shadows they began to run to the cookie road, where they began to walk with their ordinary pace, like two people who came peacefully.

They didn't have the capes or the carabines anymore. Mysterious hands, in the shadow of the alley, had made them disappear; any round could have stopped them, without suspecting anything.

They walked the way of the cookies, went down to Ballarò towards the Prophet's House, and chased themselves into an alleyway.

One of them imitated the quail song.

Another similar song answered.

Then they entered the square of the SS. Forty Martyrs and sprinkled in a little door, which mysteriously closed behind their shoulders.

Meanwhile the two shots of rifle, which in the night looked like two cannons, had immediately animated and illuminated the road. It was dinner time, and of course those two formidable thunders, which had made the windows of nearby houses tremble, interrupted the quiet collection of families. The men opened the balconies and the windows; the door of some shop was opened; suspicious heads looked out and looked; all said the same thing:

"There's a killer!..."

But no one dared to go out, not already for fear of some shot, as much as not to get in the way of justice. From the bottom of the Cassaro was the round; from the floor of the Royal Palace there were three or four half-dressed soldiers, who went by hooking swords or farsets.

The round came for the first: Then the most curious came out of the shops, from the houses, some carrying oil lamps or lanterns. Everyone crowded around the fallen man lying bites, with his arms stretched out, open, his legs wide, in a pool of blood.

The head of the patrol shouted:

"Back up! Back up!... make way."

The birri began to play with the alabards to make way, and immediately the caporonda bowed and turned the fallen, on whose dusty face fell the light of the lantern of the quarry and the lamps. A cry came out of all mouths:

"Matteo Lo Vecchio!"

"The birro!..."

It was amazement for everyone, an astonishment in which it was not difficult to feel some satisfaction. From the street to those who were at the balconies, to the newcomers, the news was given with a pleasure that seemed the vent of revenge waited and arrived.

"They killed Matteo Lo Vecchio!..."

"They killed that piece of birro!"

A voice weaves his eulogy with a word:

"Finally!"

And another one added as a comment:

"They had lost too much time!..."

"He's dead. Forgive me! Two shots free God!... It's no use taking him to the hospital. Get a ladder."

Two birri ran to the nearby Duomo where they were sure to find as many as they wanted and returned shortly after with a short ladder to piers; they laid the corpse there and lifted it up, like a catalect, over their shoulders, they went to the Albergheria, followed by a crowd of people laughing, shouting cheerfully, he was saying to those who looked out, to those who met:

"They killed Matteo Lo Vecchio!"

"Really?"

It was amazement, a general satisfaction; the procession enlarged; in short the dead had a procession that accompanied him home, filling that narrow and winding alley that from the ascent of the Banditore leads to the Albergheria, and which now bears the name of the birro. The guards and the captain had to use spades to prevent the crowd from invading the house.

"Throw him down!... She's a bastard!..."

"She doesn't deserve to be here!..."

"He's excommunicated..."

"If the "reprinters" come, we'll match them!..."

But a woman looked out at the window, hurled down, weeping, shouting,

"That's not true! That's not true! He wasn't excommunicated anymore. He had been reblessed by the Vicar General!"

But the crowd scrambled:

"Birro was! birro and infamous!..."

The chatter lasted until late now, when the sleep began to loosen the crowd. Then two or three women, dressed in black, with loose hair entered the house. Matteo Lo Vecchio was stripped, washed, clothed with newer clothes, without shoes however, being not convenient to show up to the Lord with shoes at his feet. Then they put him on the bed, lying down: They lit candles at your feet, and they sat down on the ground and began to weep, to complain, to remember the facts and goodness of the dead.

"Do you remember when he came with his new shoes?"

"Ah, bitter me!..."

"How beautiful it was when he rode!"

"Ah, bitter me!..."

All night, sitting on the floor, with loose hair, beating his chest, beating his hands, the "repitators," the remnant of the ancient prephycs, complained before that dead man, stretched out with his hands crossed on his belly and tied by a rosary, the face falsified horribly by a smear of terror, made more frightening by a cotton cap, tragically funny.

In the morning other guards came to defend the house from possible aggressions. The president Don Antonino Negri, warned by the head of the ring, had given orders in this regard, because the birro, the wisest, the hardest, the most terrible of his subjects had Christian funerals, like any other good citizen. The alley was guarded by gates guards who held back the marmalade and the bad boys of the nearby market, who gathered in an attitude far from benevolent.

At dawn the news that Matteo Lo Vecchio had been killed had already spread throughout the district and had awakened in all souls a vivid sense of satisfaction.

The terror that the birro had spread throughout the city, the hatreds that had accumulated throughout his career, the tears scattered by hundreds of victims, the cruelty of his ways, all this produced a feeling of relief and joy, as a desired liberation and expected every day, and finally occurred.

"Blessed are those hands!..."

"Blessed are those cracks!"

Then he began to snake a voice:

"It was the Beati Paoli!..."

"He was sentenced to death!"

"May they be blessed now and forever!"

The road of the Albergheria was in ferment: All they talked about was the death of Matteo Lo Vecchio. Now they were waiting for funerals; they wanted to see if there was a company that had the courage to accompany and, as was said, "association" the corpse of the excommunicated one.

Did the Vicar General absolve him and rebless him? What did it matter? He had not removed from him all the bribes he had committed, crying out for revenge.

"They're going to throw him on the Cavallacci road."

"That one, even dead, will make the last "infamous"."

"Not even St. Michael the Archangel could escape from the birro!..."

After lunch, here are the poor of Serraglio with the cross and the congregation of Sabica to accompany the dead. It was a general astonishment.

"How? How? Are we going to bury him like a good Christian?"

They were scandalized and all murmuring with certain menacing and murky faces, which put awe at the poor and the confreres. Someone apologized. It had been the order of President Negri; after all it was baptized flesh and had been acquitted; this was the great reason that, however, did not satisfy anyone.

A drape of birri and algozini armed with spades, swords and long knotty sticks restrained the population, but not so as to prevent the turmoil that heralds the irrepressible bursts.

Then came the parish. The poor priest was throwing suspicious looks around, with a face that meant: "The Lord sends me good!..."

The procession began: the corpse placed on the cataletto with the Hands on the cross were raised on the shoulders of the porters, preceded by the poor of Serraglio and the Parish, followed by the confreres, surrounded by birri and algozini. But as soon as he came out of the alley and went down to the Albergheria, a whisper arose, like the outcrop of a distant marousus who went away growing up, turned into a storm of whistling, screaming, imperishing.

A half-timbered mob put itself at the head of the gloomy procession, psalmating in parody:

"Catameo catameo died the Matteo birro!..."

The birri and the algazini at first with the spades and the sticks grew rudely, good, but as the crowd and the noise grew, their boldness faded and emerged at the bottom of their souls a concern of neighboring and not well known dangers. Someone sent President Negri to that country, who instead of carrying the dead body at night, without equipment, to the ketichella, wanted to honor the birch of a funeral.

"But you know what courage!" was said in the crowd; "they will bury him in St. Antoninus!..."

"To St. Antoninus that hell meat?..."

And then they began to scream threateningly:

"Let him go! Let him go!..."

"Switch the torches! It's a shame!"

There were the most daring who, by joining the gesture with the words, blew loudly and extinguished the candles.

The head of the algazini recommended:

"My Lords, be patient... In the end he was a Christian; he died, acquitted by Monsignor Vicar... A little charity!"

"Charity? Have you had a birro for so many poor people?"

Threatening cries grew more violent than ever; some torso flew; the crowd began pressing the procession, the pushers began... At the corner of the Bosco road, the Sabbath congregation, in view of the bad situation, wandered away.

"Good, good!" cried the crowd; "that's how we do it!... Bravo!..."

They applauded, but the applause was a new threat to those who remained; the birri and the algazini saw themselves exposed to the wrath of the populace that enlarged: For a piece they held on, ashamed to give in, but when they realized that the storm was there to burst furious, one by one, without giving to the eye, who from here, who from there, they went wandering.

When the coffin arrived in the Maqueda street there was no more a guard; it remained at the mercy of the embalmed plebage, which sang a de profundis of imperious and abusive, bumping the porters who carried it. Above the moving heads that poor coffin waved, like an inverted boat abandoned to the waves.

When he arrived at the monastery of the Assumption, the priest, seeing the church open, pale as a dead man, turned around, blew two incomprehensible Latin words, hurriedly trinched a cross on the coffin with the sprinkler and drove himself into the church, glad to have managed well and sooner than he believed, and to leave others in embarrassment.

Then the eight porters hastened the passage; the convent of St. Antoninus was not far away, in a few minutes they arrived, always followed by the people singing:

"Catamean catameum, Matthew the birro is dead!" dead that piece of infamous, throw it like a dog!..."

The convent door was closed. The porters laid their coffin on the ground, knocked; a friar stood and said:

"Here is no place to bury birri..."

And he closed the door.

It was a fine and good villainy; President Negri had paid ten onzes to have Matteo Lo Vecchio buried in that church; the money had pocketed them unscrupulously by the friars; now they had an obligation to take the dead. Oh, yeah! The friars shouted instead of inside:

"Take him away! Take him away!..."

Then, all of a sudden, when the door was wide open, they went out armed with clubs, threw themselves on the porters, beating an orbo and repeating:

"Take him away! Take him away!"

At that fury the porters fled; and the friars after them but reached only one, and dragged him threatening to break his ribs if he did not take away the coffin.

"But I just can't!..."

Among the crowds who laughed and shouted there were some who had the passion of the poor porter and offered to help him: So the sad coffin was lifted up again and resumed the way, staggering over the heads. There near, almost on the shore of Oreto, where the railway workshops now stand, there was a cemetery for the poor people with a chapel curated by a roar. They set out at that time, but the roar closed the gate with a lock.

"Here? You want to bury my birro here? Amidst so many poor people of God?... The excommunicated one? That rascal? You're crazy! There's no place for him here!... Go throw him in the river."

The porters looked at each other; it was beginning to disturb them: Oh, what did they expect them to go around all day with that dead guy on their shoulders? And they consulted one another, and opened the coffin, and drew the body of the coffin. hard and dry, horrible for its expression of terror, under the cotton cap. They stripped him of his clothes, leaving him naked, and mounted on the wall of the cemetery, behind the church, pulled him up, dropped him on the other side, and found a dry well, took that wretched corpse with his kidneys torn and blackened by the wounds, and threw him in with an obscene greeting.

It was heard the dry thud of the body that crumbled against the rocks of the bottom.