Vendettas or had also emigrated, either to America, Brazil or to some other province on

the Italian mainland. He was to learn later that this small poverty-stricken town had the

highest murder rate of any place in the world.

Michael was installed as a guest in the home of a bachelor uncle of the capo-mafioso.

The uncle, in his seventies, was also the doctor for the district. The capo-mafioso was a

man in his late fifties named Don Tommasino and he operated as the gabbellotto for a

huge estate belonging to one of Sicily's most noble families. The gabbellotto, a sort of

overseer to the estates of the rich, also guaranteed that the poor would not try to claim

land not being cultivated, would not try to encroach (вторгаться, покушаться на чужие

права) in any way on the estate, by poaching (to poach – браконьерствовать;

незаконно вторгаться в чужие владения) or trying to farm it as squatters

(поселившийся незаконно на незанятой земле; to squat – сидеть на корточках). In

short, the gabbellotto was a mafioso who for a certain sum of money protected the real

estate of the rich from all claims made on it by the poor, legal or illegal. When any poor

peasant tried to implement (выполнять, осуществлять, обеспечивать выполнение)

the law which permitted him to buy uncultivated land, the gabbellotto frightened him off

with threats of bodily harm or death. It was that simple.

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Don Tommasino also controlled the water rights in the area and vetoed the local

building of any new dams by the Roman government. Such dams would ruin the

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lucrative business of selling water from the artesian wells he controlled, make water too

cheap, ruin the whole important water economy so laboriously built up over hundreds of

years. However, Don Tommasino was an old-fashioned Mafia chief and would have

nothing to do with dope traffic or prostitution. In this Don Tommasino was at odds with

the new breed of Mafia leaders springing up in big cities like Palermo, new men who,

influenced by American gangsters deported to Italy, had no such scruples.

The Mafia chief was an extremely portly (полный, дородный; представительный)

man, a "man with a belly," literally as well as in the figurative sense that meant a man

able to inspire fear in his fellow men. Under his protection, Michael had nothing to fear,

yet it was considered necessary to keep the fugitive's identity a secret. And so Michael

was restricted to the walled estate of Dr. Taza, the Don's uncle.

Dr. Taza was tall for a Sicilian, almost six feet, and had ruddy cheeks and snow-white

hair. Though in his seventies, he went every week to Palermo to pay his respects to the

younger prostitutes of that city, the younger the better. Dr. Taza's other vice was

reading. He read everything and talked about what he read to his fellow townsmen,

patients who were illiterate peasants, the estate shepherds, and this gave him a local

reputation for foolishness. What did books have to do with them?

In the evenings Dr. Taza, Don Tommasino and Michael sat in the huge garden

populated with those marble statues that on this island seemed to grow out of the

garden as magically as the black heady grapes. Dr. Taza loved to tell stories about the

Mafia and its exploits over the centuries and in Michael Corleone he had a fascinated

listener. There were times when even Don Tommasino would be carried away by the

balmy air, the fruity, intoxicating wine, the elegant and quiet comfort of the garden, and

tell a story from his own practical experience. The doctor was the legend, the Don the

reality.

In this antique garden, Michael Corleone learned about the roots from which his father

grew. That the word "Mafia" had originally meant place of refuge. Then it became the

name for the secret organization that sprang up to fight against the rulers who had

crushed the country and its people for centuries. Sicily was a land that had been more

cruelly raped than any other in history. The Inquisition had tortured rich and poor alike.

The landowning barons and the princes of the Catholic Church exercised absolute

power over the shepherds and farmers. The police were the instruments of their power

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and so identified with them that to be called a policeman is the foulest insult one Sicilian

can hurl (бросать, швырять) at another.

Faced with the savagery of this absolute power, the suffering people learned never to

betray their anger and their hatred for fear of being crushed. They learned never to

make themselves vulnerable by uttering any sort of threat since giving such a warning

insured a quick reprisal (репрессалия). They learned that society was their enemy and

so when they sought redress for their wrongs they went to the rebel underground the

Mafia. And the Mafia cemented its power by originating the law of silence, the omerta.

In the countryside of Sicily a stranger asking directions to the nearest town will not even

receive the courtesy of an answer. And the greatest crime any member of the Mafia

could commit would be to tell the police the name of the man who had just shot him or

done him any kind of injury. Omerta became the religion of the people. A woman whose

husband has been murdered would not tell the police the name of her husband's

murderer, not even of her child's murderer, her daughter's raper.

Justice had never been forthcoming (предстоящий, грядущий; ожидаемый) from the

authorities and so the people had always gone to the Robin Hood Mafia. And to some

extent the Mafia still fulfilled this role. People turned to their local capo-mafioso for help