Like sex, Mafia and politics were not to be mentioned in front of the children. Until the age of 10, I was home-educated at our family estate in the south of Sicily and, as an avid listener of adults’ conversation, I became a proficient “reader” of the gestures, stares, fragments and eloquent silences that are an integral part of our language. And so I formed my own child’s view of the Mafia. More powerful than the state and cloaked in secrecy, the Mafia oppressed through fear and violence, rich and poor alike, with impunity. It was wise not to talk of it: nobody knew exactly who was a Mafioso, or an informer. Those who obeyed would be “protected”. Those who challenged it did so at their peril. They might receive “soft” warnings - anonymous letters, packages containing animal excrement, telephone threats, ambush. More likely, punishment: damage to property, slaughter of herds, theft, arson, violence, kidnapping and, in the last resort and ineluctably, death. Most killings, however, were internal, due to power struggles or punishment for breaching omerta, its code of silence.
As long as I can remember, I worried about our own safety. The servants talked of foiled abductions of cousins and friends - some relatives no longer spent the summer in their estates - and of a banditry that plagued the countryside for a decade after the Allies’ landing in 1943. I dreaded the car journeys across the island. On the mountain passes my mother would take off her necklace and earrings and hide them, without uttering a word, and a silent anxiety would choke me. In our country house we felt protected: the overseer, who was not a Mafioso, kept discreet watch, fully armed on his mare. But, suddenly, our walks would be restricted; later, without any explanation, things would return to normal. I magnified the risks and kept watch at all times; I became an acute observer, learning to recognise each car from its engine noise, each driver from the frequency of gear changes.
