The Tommy Gun Blues, 2

In 1887 Terenzio Scalpanetti was born in a small gypsy enclave camped near Sant'Erasmo, a village outside the Sicilian city of Palermo.  His mother was a young gypsy girl, wild and aloof, but her pride was humbled and a bottomless rage thrust into her soul when she was caught and raped by the ne'er-do-well youngest son of a local Sicilian merchant.  Terenzio was raised by a girl-woman still tempestuously fighting her own battles to discover herself, to live with her fate, and she both loved and hated her son, as she loved and hated herself and her own life.

The young man grew up among gypsies and learned their bohemian ways, but in his 9th year under the eyes of heaven he fell in with a group of toughs from Palermo and began to disown his gypsy roots.  He became a Sicilian and discovered that half of his heritage, but even his group of ruffians were discomfited by Terenzio's fits of rage and cruelty.  They never saw his tearful remorse when he huddled alone on the seashore of Sant'Erasmo, looking down on the gypsy fires and recognizing in himself the selfishness that had so hurt his own mother.

As the years passed and he grew into a young man, his conscience was gradually drowned out by the drives of youth.  His ruthless bravado, his fearlessness, his insistence upon being respected and his hunger for stature, recognition, and belonging eventually led him to the attention of the local Cosa Nostra, and he was accosted by Dante Calvino, a mafia scout of sorts who befriended him.  Terenzio was dazzled by Calvino's seemingly limitless access to money, women, and the better things; until then he had considered a full belly and sated loins the occasional highlights of a hard-scrabble life on the streets rolling drunks, beating up private citizens, purse snatching, and the like.  Calvino-- himself an ambitious but low-level foot soldier-- had access to trattorias which served hot food at all hours, houses of comfort in which women (some of them washed!) would lie with him, and wine which was clearly distinguishable from rancid vinegar.  Terenzio at 14 was overwhelmed and resolved to dedicate himself to the lifestyle of the organized criminal.

It was about this time when the health of his maternal grandmother failed and through intermediaries Terenzio was called to her deathbed.  Haughty and ill at ease among his family, dressed in the low-class clothing of a Sicilian dandy, so different from the free-flowing dramatic garments of the gypsies, used to the profane jostle of insults of young men rather than the stylized interactions of the gypsies:  Terenzio alienated everyone he met that night.  His mother saw the likeness of her assailant in her son's face and loathed him.  Her embrace was perfunctory, stiff, and Terenzio felt the rejection.  The men of the family envied his apparent prosperity which however pathetic in the grand scheme contrasted mightily with their homespun rags.  They sneered at his walk, his newfound accent and jargon, and he in turn bore himself with all the more insufferable arrogance.

As he sat at his grandmother's side, she turned her rheumy eyes and looked at him without recognition.  Something in her face touched him and the little boy who had been asserted himself.  "Grandmother, it is I, Terenzio, your little grandson."  She blinked slowly, then peered closer.  Her breath came laboured, but she raised a hand and touched his cheek.

"You are grown," she whispered hoarsely, and the rattle of her lungs made pale the faces of those around her.  "You are a man now."  Terenzio flushed red as visions of his debauchery flashed through his mind:  his beatings of those weaker, his lustful hours with harlots, his thievery, his drunken crimes of cruelty and evil.