As every day for the past decade or so, as with dawn breaking, Bussetta Sylvestero woke up from his slumber.
At this moment, it is the most beautiful moment of the day in Sicily, even more beautiful than dusk - there is no wind, the surrounding is elegant and quiet, the air is cool and pleasant, and the faint fragrance of grapes and gardenias, lemon blossoms and other wildflowers is always permeated.
Bussetta turned on the lamp at the head of the bed. The small room was shrouded in a hazy yellow light, the furniture was rudimentary, a square table with a coffee pot, a cup, a solid wooden chair, a single bed, a hanger under the window, and nothing big else. It was neat and tidy like the boudoir of a young girl.
He dressed meticulously, as if he were going to meet some important person. Then he began methodically brewing coffee while washing.
Like every morning in the last decade.
It is a Franciscan monastery in the town of Montleprey in the south of Sicily. It is only twenty miles away from the famous town of Corleone. At that time, an orphan in the town of Lyon escaped the pursuit and killing of the enemy family, fled to the United States through hardships, and finally became a great figure after unremitting efforts and struggles, as well as fate. His name was Vito Corleone.
While waiting for the coffee to be brewed, Bussetta once again recalls his life, the first half of his life full of drama and legend.
As a native of Sicily, he never believed in fate and had no hope for reality. His parents, ordinary peasants, worked the barren lands of Sicily, working as coolies for the rich and nobles, and even so, the family was still hungry. At the age of eighteen, in order to be able to eat a full meal and to improve the living conditions of his family, he responded to the government's call to join the army and participated in the First World War.
The brutality of the war made him more aware of reality, and also honed his mind and body. He became a good hand in the army, long and strong, once dealing with two enemies with bare hands, but still won easily. Toward the end of the war, he received bad news from his hometown that his father had made threatening remarks in a trivial dispute with his neighbors, and that night two mafia had broken into his house and brutally murdered both of them.
"Poor Sicilians, that's it." The superior officer shook his head as he relayed the bad news to Bussetta. In Sicily, except for the sweet smell in the air, the appearance is gentle and speakable, everything is as cruel and merciless as a knife. In Sicily, you can't say anything threatening to anyone, because that usually means a deadly declaration of war, and the mafia is the 'enforcer' of all these disputes. The cost is only two: relationship and money.
Bussetta was in pain, and he tried to control his body and expression, not to paralyze himself, nor to let the tears flow. He didn't say a word, he was already silent, and few people had heard him speak since.
After the war, back in Sicily, his identity naturally changed from a soldier to a gendarmerie. He asked his superiors for three days off, after which one of the two mafia men who had killed his parents had his throat cut in his sleep and the other had his head broken with an oar on a fishing boat alone. The family that had an argument with his father swallowed the poison mixed in the meal at dinner, and when they were discovered, they all bled to death.
Of course, everyone knew who did all this, but no one had seen Bussetta locally. At the end of the three-day holiday, Bussetta returned on time to report to the team and became an ordinary gendarmerie corporal stationed in the town of Montleprey.
If it weren't for the appearance of the bandit Salvador Giriano, as the lyrics sing: "Once thought life was like this, the calm heart refused to start another wave." "The rest of Buserta's life, which is already like ashes in her heart, may just float like duckweed, let the rain blow and let the wind blow, let time wrap itself in the calm aging and death, and meet the unknown accidents of life." The only certainty is that he will not, like most adult men, try to find a woman who can make him give his warmth and love, start a family, marry and have children, and let his bloodline continue in the cruel but beautiful land of Sicily.
Of course, he had also taken off his gendarmerie uniform on a day off and walked into a brothel in Palermo, where strange women could make him forget his pain for a short time, but could not give him comfort.
The coffee was boiling, and Bussetta flipped the upside-down cup on the table over, filling it so that the foam of the coffee almost spilled out of the cup. He took a sip lightly, and the hot stream flowed through the gastrointestinal tract.
On the day Of Guiriano's appearance, most of the gendarmes in the town of Montleprey were out on mission, leaving him with three subordinates. Giriano and his cousin Pisotta, who suffered from severe tuberculosis, drove a carriage full of wine to the camp gate. The disguised kind countenance of the handsome and sturdy young lad who was as strong as a stone statue made Bussetta, who had always been strict and cold, let down his guard, forgetting that the word cunning was something that penetrated deep into the marrow of the Sicilians, and that the bandit Giriano, disguised as a peasant man, pointed a gun at his head.
At that moment, he had no despair, no fear, not even anger.
He had only a deep sense of humiliation.
The natural beastly rage that had been lurking deep in his body burst forth, and with astonishing speed and movement, he snatched back the pistol that Giliano had unloaded, and then pulled the trigger at Giriano.
But fate is such a trickery.
The pistol's firing pin made a loud metallic sound, but it hit a dud. Immediately after, Giriano and Pisciotta held him to death. Pisciotta pressed his dagger against his throat.
He waited calmly for death, but Giriano prevented Pisciotta from killing him, lifted him up from the ground with admiration, and quickly embraced him. "You're an amazing person." Giriano said.
Buceta failed to summon up the courage to fight back a second time, and he watched Giriano and the others loot the armory and then sail away.
There is no doubt that what awaited him was a trial and punishment by a court-martial, and he spent a full year and a half in prison. During this year and a half, the bandit Giriano became a household hero throughout Sicily. Newspapers covered his story all day, and Bussetta watched in prison as Giriano grew into Italy's number one bandit who dared to confront the government and the mafia.
Enemies of the Mafia?
The more Buceta knew about Giriano, the more he liked him, and the more people in Sicily dared to make enemies of the mafia? Bussetta, who had always hated the Mafia, was still in prison and made a decision.
The day after his release from prison, he went straight to the depths of the mountains where Giriano was hiding, found Giliano, and willingly became Giriano's subordinate, of course, gaining Giriano's complete trust, and he passed a rather cold test.
I miss the days in the depths of the mountains, when they robbed houses and distributed the money and food they had stolen to the poor, helping the poor and solving all injustices. In his spare time, he got drunk in the quiet mountains, and then fell into a deep sleep, forgetting all his pains and sorrows.
If Bussetta has lived meaningfully in this world as an adult, it must be these days. Fast forward five years, Giriano began to tire of being a bandit, and the government army attacked them more and more severely, Giriano had a long conversation with Bussetta, he had reached a secret agreement with the government and the mafia, preparing to go into exile in the United States, he ordered Busseta to go to England. The British had Brother Bussetta who had been born and died together during the war.
Bussetta agreed that while it was not what he wanted to give up their careers at that point, he fully understood Giriano's ideas that he had never been a selfish person, in every way.
In the plan of michael Corleone, the future godfather of the son of the American mafia leader Vito Corleone, Giriano would sneak across the line that night, toss the seashore, take a speedboat to Africa on the other side, and then divert to the United States. The two embraced each other goodbye, and Bussetta refused the money Guiliano had given him, and walked alone to the other side of the mountain.
On the morning of the third day, a disguised Bussetta had just bought a ticket to England when he was stunned by a huge newspaper headline that read, "Number One Bandit Salvador Giriano Arrested and Killed."
Bussetta immediately turned and left customs, tearing off the ticket in his hand. It took him a full week to get in touch with Michael Collion and figure out the true cause of Giriano's death. At first he certainly thought that Giriano's death was related to Michael, but Michael and many other sources proved that Giriano actually died at the hands of his second-in-command, his cousin, his lifelong friend and childhood playmate Pisciotta.
Pisciotta made an ugly deal with the Mafia, thus assassinating Giriano.
Bussetta decided to avenge Giriano at all costs, but it was difficult to ascend to the heavens, and Picciota was protected in a special prison in Palermo, and it was impossible to get close to Pisciotta, let alone Bussetta, not even a bird.
After some futile efforts, Bussetta understood the fact that in Sicily he could not achieve revenge without the help of the mafia. But he would rather die than find anyone other than Michael, who saw in Michael Collion the shadow of Giriano, equally handsome, cold, full of mysterious power, and worthy of respect, different from the other mafia 'sincerity'.
He made a straightforward request to Michael, who pondered for a moment and analyzed all the pros and cons, perhaps out of selfishness, perhaps out of sympathy, or perhaps out of respect for Giriano and Bussetta, and he agreed to him.
Bussetta said, "I have to do this myself, and after that, my life is yours." ”
Michael hugged him gratefully.
One day, carrying all the necessary documents, he walked into the special prison, into the prison pharmacy, and replaced a bottle of streptomycin for tuberculosis with a carefully sealed strip mixed with the original medicine. The pharmacy supervisor and guard turned a blind eye to this.
Twenty minutes later, he heard Pisciota's heart-rending cries of pain coming from the emergency room on the other end of the hallway, and he walked calmly, where doctors and guards were pretending to rescue him. Bussetta took one last look at the dying Pisciotta, then tucked a note into Pisciotta's shirt pocket.
The note read: "This is the end of betrayal!" ”
Bussetta took the last sip of her coffee and put the cup in the sink to wash it carefully, and from the window, the sun had jumped out of the horizon, and soon the land would become a hot wave.
Michael respected Bussetta's own ideas and arranged for Bussetta to live in the monastery before returning to the United States.
"Do whatever you want. If one day — and maybe that day will never come — I'll let you know when I need you. ”
There was a knock at the door, and Bussetta put down the coffee cup in her hand, dried her hands, and opened the door.
The abbot walked in.
"There's a message from someone in the United States." The dean said, "Someone needs you, everything is arranged, and you will leave for the United States tonight." ”
e/n/a
Ps: There are a lot of people interested in the story of this mysterious bodyguard, And Bussetta is his name in the script. The rest of the plot is all fiction, based on Mario Puzo's Sicilians, the movie The Godfather 2, and the script. Readers should not spray, the right to read the story.