Page 78 of The Sicilian Inheritance

I was the lead in a play that I hadn’t tried out for, had never even seen the script for, but it was sure as hell time for me to write myself in. Nino continued for a few moments more, basically accusing me of being a colonizer with questionable morals and motives. Giusy eventually stopped translating.

The door in the back of the hall creaked open and once again everyone pivoted, eager for another character to take the stage. I recognized him, but it took me a moment to remember where from. Then it clicked. The man from yesterday morning, the grungy guy on the bench who took my photo, was walking into the hall and sneaking a seat in the back row.

“My secret weapon,” Giusy said.

“You know him?”

“I invited him.”

“Who is he?”

“A reporter.”

“Did you have me followed in Palermo?”

She pretended not to hear the question. “You being here, this dispute over the land, an American woman versus members of the Cosa Nostra. That’s interesting for a reporter. No?”

“The Cosa Nostra?”

“My cousin. His friend. I told you all about him when we went to dinner. They are associates for the Abruzzi Family. Always have been. That farm hasn’t made money in years, but they let the Abruzzi store their drugs on the land and then they transport them in the sheep’s asses when the carcasses are shipped to the mainland. But the Sicilian government has cracked down. So my cousin wants to get rid of the land. He has big dreams of moving to Ibiza and becoming a DJ and a rapper, but to do that he needs money. He has two girlfriends and they both have kids, so he will need to pay them off if he wants to leave. He was counting on selling his land and your land to get enough to be able to tell them both to piss off and to finance his dreams of becoming Tiësto. But now you are here and he is angry.”

Giusy teetered up the aisle to take her turn at the podium. Raguzzo scooched closer to translate for me, but his commentary wasn’t nearly as thorough or as colorful as Giusy’s. She held up a copy of the deed for the land and pointed to me.

“She is saying that since more than a million men left Sicily around the turn of the century that all of us have family members in America. Some of us have been supported by them over the years. She says Serafina Forte wanted you to have this land.”

When Giusy mentioned the name Serafina Forte, groans erupted from some in the room. Yet when I turned, I saw the group of old women in black dresses perk up and I took a closer look at them.

Calculating the women’s ages was impossible. They could have been sixty or a hundred and ten. They couldn’t possibly remember Serafina, if they were even alive before she was murdered. But their mothers would have known her. There was even a small chance that some of the older ones had been brought into this world by her hands.

Giusy ignored the discontent in the room and continued. She said there was nothing wrong with an Italian American returning to their homeland to claim their legacy and that I was the rightful owner of the land.

Raguzzo nodded along. “Giusy is good. She is earning her twenty percent.”

“I thought it was ten percent.”

“I am sure it is a sliding scale. What is money anyway? I will go next and say that I believe your deed is legally binding, that you are the rightful owner of the land, and then there will be time for discussion.”

When Giusy stepped down, Raguzzo replaced her at the microphone. He gave his official two cents and opened the floor to the audience.

A local man in pants tighter than pantyhose asked a rapid-fire succession of rhetorical questions about whether the land ever could have legally belonged to my great-grandmother, whether it was given in good faith or she tricked the owner into passing it on to her with her magic.

“He is an idiot. He works for my cousin,” Giusy explained. “He wants to remind everyone in the village that she was a witch who used her feminine powers to tempt men.”

The man stepped down from the podium and was followed by another who said the exact same thing. Then Nicolo, the sculptor, stood and slowly made his way to the front. A hush settled over the entire room.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Giusy as I rooted around in my backpack for the documents I obtained in Palermo, trying to figure out how I could inject myself into the proceedings.

“I do not know.” She looked as surprised as everyone else in the hall.

Nicolo spoke in clear and careful Italian with perfect diction. I wondered if it was for my benefit but then I looked at the sheikh, who no longer had his translator whispering in his ear, and I realized he must also speak Italian and that Nicolo wanted him to understand.

Nicolo’s voice was smooth as fresh cream and he mesmerized the crowd with his showmanship, clearly honed from years of courting art investors in America. In simple prose he said he knew Serafina Marsala only briefly at the start of his life, when he was taken to her clinic and she treated him for malaria. For months she nursed him back to health. He described her careful bedside manner and the way she looked after everyone in the clinic. She was a godly woman, he insisted, a good woman, a woman who did much for the village, who saved hundreds of lives during the terrible flus that ravaged the island in the 1920s. I glanced at the old women in the back of the room and saw them nodding along. Tears formed in my own eyes, but I squeezed them shut to keep the waterworks at bay. Bursting into ugly sobs would do nothing to help my case.

“Serafina Forte Marsala deserves our respect and so does her kin, one of whom is here in this courtroom.” He nodded to me and finished with an admonishment. “We have demonized a woman who did nothing but keep our village alive. Why? Because we enjoy petty gossip? Let this girl who has traveled so far claim her rightful inheritance.”

I almost expected a standing ovation once he was finished but it wasn’t that kind of crowd. Still, the nods of respect Nicolo received as he hobbled through the center aisle of the room and right out the door were enough to show his message was acknowledged. He leaned in to squeeze my shoulder on his way out. I wished I could follow him, but instead I took advantage of the empty podium and approached it. I’d practiced my speech, writing it all out in Italian in Pippo’s car.

“I am Sara Marsala. I know I’m a stranger to your town. I’ve only just arrived but I want you to know how much this village meant to my family. I was sent here by my great-aunt Rosie, who was born here nearly a hundred years ago. This place meant so much to her and she wanted me to bring her remains here. It was her final wish.”

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