The Corsican (11 page)

When the Guerini family found him in the mountains a week later, they had already heard of young Marcosi's vengeance. It so impressed Papa Guerini that he adopted the boy at once and told his two sons that from that moment they would consider him a brother. But he was not given the Guerini name, which Papa insisted would be as dangerous as his own for the present. After two weeks of thought, Papa renamed him Buonaparte Sartene. The first name, Papa explained, was owing to his love of history and Corsica's great hero. The second was the name of a village far to the south. The French, he had said, thought all Corsicans were ignorant, and because of that if they discovered his new name, they would look in the area of that village. If he remained in the north he would be safe.

But safety came from another source. Within months, World War I erupted, and for the next three years he lived in the mountains with the Guerinis, relatively safe from Frenchmen occupied with war. Papa Guerini was truly a father to him during that time, teaching him the ways of the mountains and how to earn his bread despite the enslavement by the French. Throughout that period travelers along the coast lived in fear of Guerini raids, and banks in the larger villages repeatedly suffered the indignity of unauthorized withdrawals.

Papa, who never used his given name, Pierre, was a large jovial man with a full black beard and bald head that was constantly covered with a black beret, even when he slept. He carried a thick cane that had been fitted for a sword, and a
lupara
, the short-barreled shotgun common to the mountains. His sons, Antoine and Barthélemy—known as Mémé—were several years older than Buonaparte, but quickly took him under their wing and taught him all they knew. In exchange, Buonaparte would spend his evenings by the campfire teaching them Corsican history and filling them with his endless stories about Napoleon.

They were still in the mountains when the war ended in 1918. The news was brought to them from Bastia by Papa's favorite niece, a surprisingly self-possessed girl of seventeen whose raven-black hair and soft dark eyes immediately attracted young Sartene. He had seen her before in Bastia, but only briefly. Her name was Maria Guerini and she was the daughter of Papa's only brother, who had been killed by French police when she was only a child. There was a simple peasant beauty about her and a great deal of the mischief that was in Papa. She was more like him, in fact, than were either Antoine or Mémé, who were dour and serious most of the time.

He did not speak to her during the two days she remained with them, except when normal amenities required it. But he watched her almost constantly. Mémé and Antoine noticed and teased him about it in private. He suspected that Papa had noticed as well, although he gave no outward indication. She was just so beautiful Sartene could not help himself. And she was strong and healthy, the way Corsican women were expected to be. Not like the frail, delicate, washed-out women who came to the island for the sun, or to recuperate from some imagined illness. He had seen those women since he was a child and could never understand why men found them attractive, with their small breasts and narrow waists. They could not serve a man as a partner through life, he had decided. They could only be one added burden.

Maria was different. Her dark olive skin was soft and rich and she moved gracefully yet with an undeniable strength. And she was not awed in the presence of men. She kept silent on matters she knew nothing about, but freely told them what she thought, when she felt she did. And her loyalty to Papa reminded him of his own sister. That, and other things as well.

The evening of the day she left he approached Papa as he sat alone before their campfire and, with great nervousness, asked formally for the right to court his niece.

Papa listened to the words solemnly, stroking his bushy beard with one hand. He did not speak for several moments, then looked up at the sky, rotating his head along the horizon. “Funny,” he said, “I've not seen any lightning in the past two days. How is it you were struck then?”

Buonaparte stammered helplessly, and Papa burst forth with a roar of laughter, then slapped him on the back so hard he almost tumbled forward into the fire. He reached out and took Buonaparte's face between his hands, pulled him close and kissed him on the forehead. Then he held Buonaparte's face away in his bearlike grasp, and his eyes filled with tears. “Buonaparte, nothing would give me more joy. But are you sure?” he added with a growl.

“Yes, Papa. I'm sure.”

“Good,” Papa roared. “Then it is done. Later in the week, when we've gotten you some decent clothes and some gifts to bring with you, we'll go to Bastia and I'll speak to Maria's mother.”

Papa looked at him for a long time, his eyes still warm, but with an added touch of seriousness. He held his hands in front of his chest, as if in prayer, then shook them up and down.

“But before I do, you must tell me about your future, what you plan for your life. This is an important decision you make, this decision to marry. And it means great responsibility. No longer will you be able to worry just about yourself. There will be a woman, and one day, God willing, there will be children.”

Buonaparte's brow knitted; he stared deeply into Papa's face, searching for some clue. “I don't understand?” Papa roared. “Your life, you donkey. What will you do with your life?”

Buonaparte's eyes seemed bewildered. “I planned to stay here,” he said. “I planned to work with my family. With you, and Mémé, and Antoine. The French would never let me have any other life.”

Papa leaned forward, his eyes coming hard from his bearded face. “And if they would? Would you then choose another life?”

Buonaparte thought for several moments. He stared into the fire, his mind searching out his own feelings. He looked back at Papa, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Yes, I would, Papa. I would like very much to be respectable. I would like very much to do good, honest work, and earn my bread and come home to my family at night, and not worry about the police coming to my door. But here, in Corsica, I have only two choices. To be what I am, or to be a victim of the French. And I don't want to be any man's victim.”

Papa sat back and pulled on his beard. He stared at his boots, then back at the young man seated before him. When he spoke his voice was soft. “You have learned much these past years,” he said. “And you have spoken a great truth, something that many men never learn their whole lives.” He leaned forward and placed his hand gently on Buonaparte's knee. “A man can only be what fate allows him to be. True, there are different paths he can follow, but even those paths are chosen by fate. When I say this, I don't mean that a man can't become rich or powerful or respected because fate won't allow it. Any man can do this if he has the courage. But he must know where to find the path.” Papa squeezed Buonaparte's leg and smiled through his ragged beard. “I'm a simple man, and in understanding life, I've always thought of each man being surrounded by a circle. Some men have very big circles, some very small. But within each circle are the paths. It's the man who seeks a path outside his circle who fails.” He raised one bearlike hand and let it fall. “For us it is a very small circle. The French have seen to that, and they will continue to see to it. A Corsican who wants to earn his bread with honor will always be so much shit to them, a criminal to be spat upon, to be hated.” He paused, bringing one hand up in a massive fist. “But also to be feared and respected.” The fist fell away and he smiled again, his head nodding slowly. “And fate will condemn men like that to remain criminals in their eyes. The French and their kind will never understand our need for honor, our need to give more to our families and our friends than they would allow us.”

Papa stopped speaking, taking time to look deeply into Buonaparte's face. “Is this, then, the life you choose?”

Buonaparte's lips formed a soft, understanding smile. “Yes, Papa. It's the life I choose. I'll help you make the French regret they made our circle so small.”

Papa threw back his head and bellowed like a wild bull. “Good,” he shouted. “Fuck the French, then, if they have no sense of humor.”

The courtship was an arduous and nerve-racking process for the would-be bride and groom. They were allowed to meet only on Sundays and then only when the family was present, and on those occasions it was not considered proper for them to speak directly to each other. Instead, Maria spoke to her mother, who repeated the words to Buonaparte. He, in turn, followed the same ritual, using Papa Guerini as his intermediary. After a month had passed, they were allowed to go for walks and speak directly to each other, but always within the view and hearing of relatives who followed closely behind. Touching of any kind was forbidden.

They were married in January 1919, in the small village of Cervione, twenty-five miles south of Bastia, at the home of a friend of the Guerini family. It was a safe village for the Guerinis, one that would provide adequate warning of movement by the police. But as usual the police lived in blessed ignorance of the Guerinis and the wedding feast continued past midnight without interruption.

During the feast Papa and Antoine became very drunk. It was a great day for each. Antoine had married a year earlier, but his wife had been forced to remain in Bastia, because she would have been left alone and unprotected at their camp when the men were away on business matters. Now, with Maria there as well, Antoine could have his wife and the one son she had already borne him with him at the camp. For Papa it meant the presence of his grandson, a fact that so pleased him he was drunk by midafternoon and dancing so wildly that his beret had fallen unnoticed to the ground.

Buonaparte and Maria left the feast late in the afternoon by donkey cart for the long, slow journey back to the encampment on Mount Cinto. When they arrived they found the family had built them a small thatched hut, like the one used by the men. A short distance away was a third hut, which would be occupied by Antoine and his family after the newlyweds had been given adequate time to learn about each other.

The first night together surprised and pleased Sartene. He had expected his wife to be frightened, timid, and he came to her gently as they stood inside the hut.

She pushed him away. “First you go to the cart and get the sheet I brought for the bed,” she said.

He reached out to her again. “The sheet isn't important to me,” he said, misunderstanding her meaning.

“It's important to me,” she said, pushing him away again. “Tomorrow my mother and aunts will come to take the sheet back to the village. They would be ashamed if a bloodstained sheet was not given over to be washed.”

He smiled at her, embarrassed by his naiveté, and went quickly to the cart. When he returned she spread the sheet carefully on the bed, then, keeping her back to him, asked him to help her undress. As the clothing fell away, exposing her smooth olive skin, she turned to him, her eyes fired by passion. This time when he reached for her there was no resistance, only a pressing of their bodies, so uncontrolled it both thrilled and frightened him.

It was an excitement that remained with them in the months to come, and by the following November, one year after they had first met, she delivered a son. But the delivery was cruel, the child much too large, and the doctors in Bastia warned that another birth would certainly mean her death.

From that time on Sartene practiced abstinence, except for the few days of her menstrual period. She had come to mean too much to him, and he knew that his obligation as a man was to protect her and his son above all else.

With the end of the war, black-market goods became the lifeblood of Europe, and the Guerinis changed with the times and made smuggling their primary business activity. Buonaparte, now in his early twenties, quickly became a major part of that effort. His knowledge of the seacoast and of boats overcame a major drawback for the mountain-dwelling Guerini clan, and Papa jokingly dubbed him “admiral” of his navy.

Within a year, business grew beyond all their hopes, and Marseille became the base of the Guerinis' new operation, its rough, violent docks a new training ground for Sartene and his “brothers.” Like most Corsicans, the Guerini clan lived in the Corsican ghetto near the docks, a series of narrow streets lined with tenements, each building connecting to the next like an elaborate network of tunnels that thwarted the periodic searches of the police.

“When the hound has a cold, the fox can hide most easily under his nose,” Papa had proclaimed, adding that the large noses of the French were “always filled with snot. If their pricks could smell we would be in trouble,” he had explained. “It is the only part of his body a Frenchman pays attention to.”

And he was proved right. The French never found him. Death found him first.

In 1921, Papa Guerini lay mortally ill and the
three
Guerini brothers gathered at his bedside to receive his final benedictions. Antoine and Mémé were now in their early thirties; Buonaparte was twenty-seven. All three had matured into hard young men, nurtured by the mountains and then seasoned by the cunning and cruelty needed to survive the endless bloodbath that was Marseille.

Lying in his bed, his face a pale gray with the approach of death, Papa Guerini still possessed the impish joviality that had always filled his eyes. His now gray beard lay on his chest outside the covers and his black beret was fixed firmly on the top of his bald head. Next to the bed, leaning against a nightstand, the sword cane and
lupara
were within easy reach.

Standing there, Sartene looked down at the weapons, then back at the old man he had learned to love like a father. Papa caught the movement of his eyes and smiled weakly through his beard.

“Just in case the police beat the devil to my door,” he whispered.

“Maybe St. Pierre, your namesake, will come instead. Papa,” Sartene argued.