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part of Sicily and precautions had to be taken against the enemies of the
Corleone Family, whose long arms also stretched to this island refuge. Don
Tommasino put armed guards around his villa and the two shepherds, Calo and
Fabrizzio, were fixtures inside the walls. So Michael and his wife had to remain
on the villa grounds. Michael passed the time by teaching Apollonia to read and
write English and to drive the 5_ù along the inner walls of the villa. About this
time Don Tommasino seemed to be preoccupied and poor company. He was still
having trouble with the new Mafia in the town of Palermo, Dr. Taza said.
One night in the garden an old village woman who worked in the
house as a servant brought a dish of fresh olives and then turned to Michael and
said, “Is it true what everybody is saying that you are the son of Don Corleone in
New York City, the Godfather?”
Michael saw Don Tommasino shaking his head in disgust at the
general knowledge of their secret. But the old crone was looking at him in so
concerned a fashion, as if it was important for her to know the truth, that
Michael nodded. “Do you know my father?” he asked.
The woman’s name was Filomena and her face was as wrinkled and
brown as a walnut, her brown-stained teeth showing through the shell of her
flesh. For the first time since he had been in the villa she smiled at him. “The
Godfather saved my life once,” she said, “and my brains too.” She made a
gesture toward her head.
She obviously wanted to say something else so Michael smiled to
encourage her. She asked almost fearfully, “Is it true that Luca Brasi is dead?”
Michael nodded again and was surprised at the look of release on the
old woman’s face. Filomena crossed herself and said, “God forgive me, but may
his soul roast in hell for eternity.”

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Michael remembered his old curiosity about Brasi, and had the sudden
intuition that this woman knew the story Hagen and Sonny had refused to tell
him. He poured the woman a glass of wine and made her sit down. “Tell me
about my father and Luca Brasi,” he said gently. “I know some of it, but how did
they become friends and why was Brasi so devoted to my father? Don’t be
afraid, come tell me.”
Filomena ‘s wrinkled face, her raisin-black eyes, turned to Don
Tommasino, who in some way signaled his permission. And so Filomena passed
the evening for them by telling her story.
Thirty years before, Filomena had been a midwife in New York City,
on Tenth Avenue, servicing the Italian colony. The women were always
pregnant and she prospered. She taught doctors a few things when they tried to
interfere in a difficult birth. Her husband was then a prosperous grocery store
owner, dead now poor soul, she blessed him, though he had been a card player
and wencher who never thought to put aside for hard times. In any event one
cursed night thirty years ago when all honest people were long in their beds,
there came a knocking on Filomena’s door. She was by no means frightened, it
was the quiet hour babes prudently chose to enter safely into this sinful world,
and so she dressed and opened the door. Outside it was Luca Brasi whose
reputation even then was fearsome. It was known also that he was a bachelor.
And so Filomena was immediately frightened. She thought he had come to do
her husband harm, that perhaps her husband had foolishly refused Brasi some
small favor.
But Brasi had come on the usual errand. He told Filomena that there
was a woman about to give birth, that the house was out of the neighborhood
some distance away and that she was to come with him. Filomena immediately
sensed something amiss. Brasi’s brutal face looked almost like that of a madman
that night, he was obviously in the grip of some demon. She tried to protest that
she attended only women whose history she knew but he shoved a handful of
green dollars in her hand and ordered her roughly to come along with him. She
was too frightened to refuse.
In the street was a Ford, its driver of the same feather as Luca Brasi.
The drive was no more than thirty minutes to a small frame house in Long Island
City right over the bridge. A two-family house but obviously now tenanted only
by Brasi and his gang. For there were some other ruffians in the kitchen playing
cards and drinking. Brasi took Filomena up the stairs to a bedroom. In the bed
was a young pretty girl who looked Irish, her face painted, her hair red; and with

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a belly swollen like a sow. The poor girl was so frightened. When she saw Brasi
she turned her head away in terror, yes terror, and indeed the look of hatred on
Brasi’s evil face was the most frightening thing she had ever seen in her life.
(Here Filomena crossed herself again.)
To make a long story short,
Brasi left the room. Two of his men assisted the midwife and the baby was born,
the mother was exhausted and went into a deep sleep. Brasi was summoned and
Filomena, who had wrapped the newborn child in an extra blanket, extended the
bundle to him and said, “If you’re the father, take her. My work is finished.”
Brasi glared at her, malevolent, insanity stamped on his face. “Yes,
I’m the father,” he said. “But I don’t want any of that race to live. Take it down
to the basement and throw it into the furnace.”
For a moment Filomena thought she had not understood him properly.
She was puzzled by his use of the word “race.” Did he mean because the girl
was not Italian? Or did he mean because the girl was obviously of the lowest
type; a whore in short? Or did he mean that anything springing from his loins he
forbade to live. And then she was sure he was making a brutal joke. She said
shortly, “It’s your child, do what you want.” And she tried to hand him the
bundle.
At this time the exhausted mother awoke and turned on her side to face
them. She was just in time to see Brasi thrust violently at the bundle, crushing
the newborn infant against Filomena’s chest. She called out weakly, “Luc, Luc,
I’m sorry,” and Brasi turned to face her.
It was terrible, Filomena said now. So terrible. They were like two
mad animals. They were not human. The hatred they bore each other blazed
through the room. Nothing else, not even the newborn infant, existed for them at
that moment. And yet there was a strange passion. A bloody, demonical lust so
unnatural you knew they were damned forever. Then Luca Brasi turned back to
Filomena and said harshly, “Do what I tell you, I’ll make you rich.”
Filomena could not speak in her terror. She shook her head. Finally
she managed to whisper, “You do it, you’re the father, do it if you like.” But
Brasi didn’t answer. Instead he drew a knife from inside his shirt. ‘I’ll cut your
throat,” he said.
She must have gone into shock then because the next thing she
remembered they were all standing in the basement of the house in front of a
square iron furnace. Filomena was still holding the blanketed baby, which had
not made a sound. (Maybe if it had cried, maybe if I had been shrewd enough to
pinch it, Filomena said, that monster would have shown mercy.)
One

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of the men must have opened the furnace door, the fire now was visible. And
then she was alone with Brasi in that basement with its sweating pipes, its mousy
odor. Brasi had his knife out again. And there could be no doubting that he
would kill her. There were the flames, there were Brasi’s eyes. His face was the
gargoyle of the devil, it was not human, it was not sane. He pushed her toward
the open furnace door.
At this point Filomena fell silent. She folded her bony hands in her lap
and looked directly at Michael. He knew what she wanted, how she wanted to
tell him, without using her voice. He asked gently, “Did you do it?” She nodded.
It was only after another glass of wine and crossing herself and
muttering a prayer that she continued her story. She was given a bundle of
money and driven home. She understood that if she uttered a word about what
had happened she would be killed. But two days later Brasi murdered the young
Irish girl, the mother of the infant, and was arrested by the police. Filomena,
frightened out of her wits, went to the Godfather and told her story. He ordered
her to keep silent, that he would attend to everything. At that time Brasi did not
work for Don Corleone.
Before Don Corleone could set matters aright, Luca Brasi tried to
commit suicide in his cell, hacking at his throat with a piece of glass. He was
transferred to the prison hospital and by the time he recovered Don Corleone had
arranged everything. The police did not have a case they could prove in court
and Luca Brasi was released.
Though Don Corleone assured Filomena that she had nothing to fear
from either Luca Brasi or the police, she had no peace. Her nerves were
shattered and she could no longer work at her profession. Finally she persuaded
her husband to sell the grocery store and they returned to Italy. Her husband was
a good man, had been told everything and understood. But he was a weak man
and in Italy squandered the fortune they had both slaved in America to earn. And
so after he died she had become a servant. So Filomena ended her story. She had
another glass of wine and said to Michael, “I bless the name of your father. He
always sent me money when I asked, he saved me from Brasi. Tell him I say a
prayer for his soul every night and that he shouldn’t fear dying.”
After she had left, Michael asked Don Tommasino, “Is her story true?”
The capo-mafioso nodded. And Michael thought, no wonder nobody wanted to
tell him the story. Some story. Some Luca.
The next morning Michael wanted to discuss the whole thing with Don
Tommasino but learned that the old man had been called to Palermo by an

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urgent message delivered by a courier. That evening Don Tommasino returned
and took Michael aside. News had come from America, he said. News that it
grieved him to tell. Santino Corleone had been killed.

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Chapter 24
The Sicilian sun, early-morning lemon-colored, filled Michael’s
bedroom. He awoke and, feeling Apollonia’s satiny body against his own sleep-
warm skin, made her come awake with love. When they were done, even all the
months of complete possession could not stop him from marveling at her beauty
and her passion.
She left the bedroom to wash and dress in the bathroom down the hall.
Michael, still naked, the morning sun refreshing his body, lit a cigarette and
relaxed on the bed. This was the last morning they would spend in this house and
the villa. Don Tommasino had arranged for him to be transferred to another town
on the southern coast of Sicily. Apollonia, in the first month of pregnancy,
wanted to visit with her family for a few weeks and would join him at the new
hiding place after the visit.
The night before, Don Tommasino had sat with Michael in the garden
after Apollonia had gone to bed. The Don had been worried and tired, and
admitted that he was concerned about Michael’s safety. “Your marriage brought
you into sight,” he told Michael. “I’m surprised your father hasn’t made
arrangements for you to go someplace else. In any case I’m having my own
troubles with the young Turks in Palermo. I’ve offered some fair arrangements
so that they can wet their beaks more than they deserve, but those scum want
everything. I can’t understand their attitude. They’ve tried a few little tricks but
I’m not so easy to kill. They must know I’m too strong for them to hold me so
cheaply. But that’s the trouble with young people, no matter how talented. They
don’t reason things out and they want all the water in the well.”
And then Don Tommasino had told Michael that the two shepherds,
Fabrizzio and Calo, would go with him as bodyguards in the Alfa Romeo. Don
Tommasino would say his goodbyes tonight since he would be off early in the
morning, at dawn, to see to his affairs in Palermo. Also, Michael was not to tell
Dr. Taza about the move, since the doctor planned to spend the evening in
Palermo and might blab.
Michael had known Don Tommasino was in trouble. Armed guards
patrolled the walls of the villa at night and a few faithful shepherds with their