Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
Шрифт:
blood relationships, a family loyalty severe even for a society where family loyalty came
before loyalty to a wife.
The Bocchicchio Family, extending out to third cousins, had once numbered nearly
two hundred when they ruled the particular economy of a small section of southern
Sicily. The income for the entire family then came from four or five flour mills, by no
means owned communally, but assuring labor and bread and a minimal security for all
Family members. This was enough, with intermarriages, for them to present a common
front against their enemies.
No competing mill, no dam that would create a water supply to their competitors or
ruin their own selling of water, was allowed to be built in their corner of Sicily. A powerful
landowning baron once tried to erect his own mill strictly for his personal use. The mill
was burned down. He called on the carabineri (полицейские /итал./) and higher
authorities, who arrested three of the Bocchicchio Family. Even before the trial the
manor house of the baron was torched (подожжен; torch –
(обвинительный акт [in'daitmnt]) and accusations were withdrawn. A few months later
one of the highest functionaries in the Italian government arrived in Sicily and tried to
solve the chronic water shortage of that island by proposing a huge dam. Engineers
arrived from Rome to do surveys while watched by grim natives, members of the
Bocchicchio clan. Police flooded the area, housed in a specially built barracks.
It looked like nothing could stop the dam from being built and supplies and equipment
had actually been unloaded in Palermo. That was as far as they got. The Bocchicchios
had contacted fellow Mafia chiefs and extracted agreements for their aid. The heavy
equipment was sabotaged, the lighter equipment stolen. Mafia deputies in the Italian
Parliament launched a bureaucratic counterattack against the planners. This went on for
several years and in that time Mussolini came to power. The dictator decreed that the
dam must be built. It was not. The dictator had known that the Mafia would be a threat
to his regime, forming what amounted to a separate authority from his own. He gave full
powers to a high police official, who promptly solved the problem by throwing everybody
into jail or deporting them to penal work islands. In a few short years he had broken the
power of the Mafia, simply by arbitrarily arresting anyone even suspected of being a
mafioso. And so also brought ruin to a great many innocent families.
The Bocchicchios had been rash enough to resort to force against this unlimited
power. Half of the men were killed in armed combat, the other half deported to penal
island colonies. There were only a handful left when arrangements were made for them
to emigrate to America via the clandestine underground route of jumping ship through
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Canada. There were almost twenty immigrants and they settled in a small town not far
from New York City, in the Hudson Valley, where by starting at the very bottom they
worked their way up to owning a garbage hauling firm (фирма
haul – тянуть, тащить, волочить; перевозить) and their own trucks. They became
prosperous because they had no competition. They had no competition because
competitors found their trucks burned and sabotaged. One persistent fellow who
undercut prices was found buried in the garbage he had picked up during the day,
smothered (to smother [‘smр] – душить; задохнуться) to death.
But as the men married, to Sicilian girls, needless to say, children came, and the
garbage business though providing a living, was not really enough to pay for the finer
things America had to offer. And so, as a diversification (ответвление; боковая линия;
/здесь/ дополнительное занятие), the Bocchicchio Family became negotiators and
hostages in the peace efforts of warring Mafia families.
A strain of stupidity ran through the Bocchicchio clan, or perhaps they were just
primitive. In any case they recognized their limitations and knew they could not compete
with other Mafia families in the struggle to organize and control more sophisticated
business structures like prostitution, gambling, dope and public fraud (обман,
мошенничество /здесь – государства/ [fro:d]). They were straight-from-the-shoulder
(сплеча, прямо, без обиняков) people who could offer a gift to an ordinary patrolman
but did not know how to approach a political bagman. They had only two assets. Their
honor and their ferocity.
A Bocchicchio never lied, never committed an act of treachery. Such behavior was too
complicated. Also, a Bocchicchio never forgot an injury and never left it unavenged no
matter what the cost. And so by accident they stumbled into what would prove to be
their most lucrative profession.
When warring families wanted to make peace and arrange a parley, the Bocchicchio
clan was contacted. The head of the clan would handle the initial negotiations and