They were reciting the rosary after dinner at the canonry in Santa Margherita, when suddenly a gunshot rang out in the dark.
The canon turned pale, with the beads still in his hand, and the women crossed themselves, straining their ears, while the dogs in the yard barked furiously. Almost immediately an answering shot resounded in the gorge beneath the Fortress.
‘Jesus and Mary, what on earth could that be?’ exclaimed the maid from the kitchen doorway.
‘Quiet everyone!’ cried the canon, as white as a sheet. ‘I’m trying to listen.’
And he went and stood at the window, behind the shutter. The dogs had calmed down, and outside the wind could be heard in the valley. All at once the barking resumed even louder than before, and in the midst of it, at intervals, came the sound of someone banging at the gate with a stone.
‘Don’t let anyone in!’ shouted the canon, running to fetch the rifle at his bedside, beneath the crucifix. His hands were shaking. Then, amid the uproar, someone was heard shouting on the other side of the gate. ‘Open up, your reverence, it’s me, Surfareddu!’ And when the bailiff down on the ground floor finally went out to quieten the dogs and unbolt the gate, in came Surfareddu, with a grim look on his face, and the shotgun he was holding still warm in his hand.
‘What’s going on, Grippino? What happened?’ asked the canon.
‘What’s going on, your reverence is that while you’re asleep and resting, I’m risking my life to protect what’s yours,’ replied Surfareddu.
And, standing on the threshold, rocking on his feet in that particular way of his, he described what had happened. He had not been able to sleep because it was so hot, and had gone to stand at the door of his hut, over there on the mound, when he heard a noise in the gorge, where the orchard was, a noise of a kind distinguishable only to his ears, and to Bellina, a thin mangy bitch that followed at his heels. Someone was beating down oranges and other fruit in the orchard. No wind ever made a rustling like that – and then intervals of silence while they filled their sacks. So he had taken his gun from beside the door of his hut, the old long-barrelled flintlock with brass fittings that he held his hand. Talk about fate! Because this was the last night he was to spend at Santa Margherita. He had given notice to the priest at Easter, with no hard feelings on either side, and on the first of September he was supposed to move to his new boss’s place, over in Vizzini. Only the day before, everything had been settled up with the priest. And this was the thirty-first of August: a dark and starless night. Bellina went ahead of him, with her nose to wind, keeping quiet, just as he had taught her. He walked very slowly, picking his feet up so that no rustling of the hay would be heard. And the dog looked back every ten paces to see if he was behind. When they reached the gorge, he said quietly to Bellina, ‘Get back!’ And he took cover behind a big walnut tree. Then he gave a call: ‘Ayee!’
‘A call, God forbid!’ the priest used to say, ‘that would make your flesh creep, coming from Surfareddu, a man who in his capacity as watchman was responsible for more than one murder.’
‘Then,’ Surfareddu went on, ‘then they shot at me at close range – bang! Fortunately I responded to the flash of their guns. There were three of them, and I heard screams. Go and look in the orchard, my man must be still there.’
‘Oh, what have you done, you villain!’ exclaimed the priest, while the women wailed among themselves. ‘Now the magistrate and the police will be turning up, and you’re leaving me in a mess.’
‘Is that all the thanks I get from your reverence?’ Surfareddu replied curtly. ‘If they’d waited to rob you until I’d left your service, it would have better for me too, as I wouldn’t have had this run-in with the law again.’
‘Now get on your way to the Grilli, and tell the steward that I sent you. You’ll be needed there tomorrow. But for the love of God, don’t let anyone see you, now that it’s the prickly pear season and there are people all over these hillsides. Who knows what this incident is going to cost me? It would have been better if you’d turned a blind eye.’
‘Oh no, your reverence! As long as I’m in your service, Surfareddu is not going to tolerate any infringement of this kind! They knew I was the watchman on your farm until August the thirty-first. So much the worse for them! I’m certainly not throwing my gunpowder away!’
And off he went, while it was still dark, with his shotgun over his shoulder and Bellina at his heels. No one in the house at Santa Margherita slept another wink that night, for fear of thieves and the thought of that man lying on the ground in the orchard. At daybreak, when passersby began to appear on the path opposite, up on the Fortress, the canon ventured out, armed to the teeth and with all the farmworkers behind him, to see what had happened. The women wailed, ‘Don’t go, your reverence!’
But just outside the yard they found that Luigino had sneaked out with the rest of them.
‘Take that child away,’ shouted his uncle, the canon.
‘No! I want to come and see, too!’ screamed the boy. And the sight that met his eyes at such a young age remained imprinted on his mind ever afterwards, for as long as he lived.
A few steps into the orchard, he lay on the ground, under an old diseased olive tree, his face the ashen colour of dying men. He had dragged himself on his hands and knees to a pile of empty sacks and there he had remained all night long. His companions had run off carrying all the full sacks with them. Nearby was a patch of earth raked by his fingernails and all blackened with blood.
‘Ah! Your reverence,’ mumbled the dying man. ‘I’ve been killed for the sake of few olives!’
The canon gave him absolution. Then, around midday, the magistrate arrived with the police, ready to blame the canon and tie him up like a criminal. Fortunately there were all the farmworkers and the bailiff and his family as witnesses. Nevertheless, the magistrate railed against this servant of God who was like some ancient baron in his arrogant behaviour, and employed the likes of Surfareddu as watchmen and had people killed for the sake of a few olives. He wanted the murderer handed over dead or alive, and the canon perjured himself, swearing that it was all a complete mystery to him. Until after a while the magistrate accused him of being an accessory, and instigator, and threatened to have him tied up by the police anyway. And so the shouting went on, and the to-ing and fro-ing under the orange trees in the orchard, while the doctor and the registrar did their duty regarding the dead man lying on the empty sacks.
Then the table was moved into the shade in the orchard because of the heat, and the women persuaded the magistrate to take some refreshment because it was starting to get late. The cook excelled herself: marcaroni, sauces of every kind, and even the ladies went to great lengths so that the table should not disgrace anyone on that occasion. The magistrate ended up licking his fingers.
Afterwards, the registrar turned back a bit of the tablecloth from one corner, and hurriedly wrote out a ten-line report, with the signature of the witnesses and everything else, while the magistrate drank the coffee that had been specially made with the coffee machine, and the farm workers looked on from a distance, half hidden among the orange trees. Finally the canon himself went to fetch a bottle of an aged muscatel that would have raised the dead.
Meanwhile, the body had been perfunctorily buried beneath the old diseased olive tree. When the time came to leave, the magistrate accepted a bunch of flowers from the ladies, who had two large baskets of the finest fruit loaded into the saddlepacks of the registrar’s mule; and the canon accompanied the visitors to the edge of his estate.
The next day a messenger arrived from the district administration office to say that the magistrate had lost his watchkey in the orchard, and could they have a good search for it, as it was sure to be there.
‘Give me two days, and we’ll find it,’ the canon had conveyed to him. And he wrote at once to a friend in Caltagirone, asking him to buy a watchkey. A fine gold key that cost him two onze, and he sent it to the magistrate, saying, ‘Is this the key you lost, magistrate?’
‘Yes indeed it is,’ the latter replied. And the legal proceedings followed their course in a straightforward manner, up to the events of 1860, and Surfareddu returned to work as a watchman after Garibaldi’s pardon, till he was stoned to death in a dispute with some watchmen over certain pasturing rights. And whenever the canon spoke about what had happened that night that caused him such trouble, he would say of the magistrate of that time, ‘He was a gentleman! Because instead of just losing the key, he might have had me looking for the watch and chain as well!’
In the orchard, under the old tree where the olive thief is buried, grow cabbages as big as the heads of children.