Godfather 01 The Godfather pdfdrive com

part of Michael’s Western Family.
Time helped heal the old wounds. Connie Corleone was reconciled to
her brother Michael. Indeed not more than a week after her terrible accusations
she apologized to Michael for what she had said and assured Kay that there had
been no truth in her words, that it had been only a young widow hysteria.
Connie Corleone easily found a new husband; in fact, she did not wait
the year of respect before filling her bed again with a fine young fellow who had
come to work for the Corleone Family as a male secretary. A boy from a reliable
Italian family but graduated from the top business college in America. Naturally
his marriage to the sister of the Don made his future assured.
Kay Adams Corleone had delighted her in-laws by taking instruction
in the Catholic religion and joining that faith. Her two boys were also, naturally,
being brought up in that church, as was required. Michael himself had not been
too pleased by this development. He would have preferred the children to be
Protestant, it was more American.
To her surprise, Kay came to love living in Nevada. She loved the
scenery, the hills and canyons of garishly red rock, the burning deserts, the
unexpected and blessedly refreshing lakes, even the heat. Her two boys rode
their own ponies. She had real servants, not bodyguards. And Michael lived a
more normal life. He owned a construction business; he joined the
businessmen’s clubs and civic committees; he had a healthy interest in local
politics without interfering publicly. It was a good life. Kay was happy that they
were closing down their New York house and that Las Vegas would be truly

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their permanent home. She hated coming back to New York. And so on this last
trip she had arranged all the packing and shipping of goods with the utmost
efficiency and speed, and now on the final day she felt that same urgency to
leave that longtime patients feel when it is time to be discharged from the
hospital.
On that final day, Kay Adams Corleone woke at dawn. She could hear
the roar of the truck motors outside on the mall. The trucks that would empty all
the houses of furniture. The Corleone Family would be flying back to Las Vegas
in the afternoon, including Mama Corleone.
When Kay came out of the bathroom, Michael was propped up on his
pillow smoking a cigarette. “Why the hell do you have to go to church every
morning?” he said. “I don’t mind Sundays, but why the hell during the week?
You’re as bad as my mother.” He reached over in the darkness and switched on
the table light.
Kay sat at the edge of the bed to pull on her stockings. “You know
how converted Catholics are,” she said. “They take it more seriously.”
Michael reached over to touch her thigh, on the warm skin where the
top of her nylon hose ended. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m taking Communion this
morning.”
He didn’t try to hold her when she got up from the bed. He said,
smiling slightly, “If you’re such a strict Catholic, how come you let the kids
duck going to church so much?”
She felt uncomfortable and she was wary. He was studying her with
what she thought of privately as his “Don’s” eye. “They have plenty of time,”
she said. “When we get back home, I’ll make them attend more.”
She kissed him goodbye before she left. Outside the house the air was
already getting warm. The summer sun rising in the east was red. Kay walked to
where her car was parked near the gates of the mall. Mama Corleone, dressed in
her widow black, was already sitting in it, waiting for her. It had become a set
routine, early Mass, every morning, together.
Kay kissed the old woman’s wrinkled cheek, then got behind the
wheel. Mama Corleone asked suspiciously, “You eata breakfast?”
“No,” Kay said.
The old woman nodded her head approvingly. Kay had once forgotten
that it was forbidden to take food from midnight on before receiving Holy
Communion. That had been a long time ago, but Mama Corleone never trusted
her after that and always checked. “You feel all right?” the old woman asked.

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“Yes,” Kay said.
The church was small and desolate in the early morning sunlight. Its
stained-glass windows shielded the interior from heat, it would be cool there, a
place to rest. Kay helped her mother-in-law up the white stone steps and then let
her go before her. The old woman preferred a pew up front, close to the altar.
Kay waited on the steps for an extra minute. She was always reluctant at this last
moment, always a little fearful.
Finally she entered the cool darkness. She took the holy water on her
fingertips and made the sign of the cross, fleetingly touched her wet fingertips to
her parched lips. Candles flickered redly before the saints, the Christ on his
cross. Kay genuflected before entering her row and then knelt on the hard
wooden rail of the pew to wait for her call to communion. She bowed her head
as if she were praying, but she was not quite ready for that.
It was only here in these dim, vaulted churches that she allowed
herself to think about her husband’s other life. About that terrible night a year
ago when he had deliberately used all their trust and love in each other to make
her believe his lie that he had not killed his sister’s husband.
She had left him because of that lie, not because of the deed. The next
morning she had taken the children away with her to her parents’ house in New
Hampshire. Without a word to anyone, without really knowing what action she
meant to take. Michael had immediately understood. He had called her the first
day and then left her alone. It was a week before the limousine from New York
pulled up in front of her house with Tom Hagen.
She had spent a long terrible afternoon with Tom Hagen, the most
terrible afternoon of her life. They had gone for a walk in the woods outside her
little town and Hagen had not been gentle.
Kay had made the mistake of trying to be cruelly flippant, a role to
which she was not suited. “Did Mike send you up here to threaten me?” she
asked. “I expected to see some of the ‘boys’ get out of the car with their machine
guns to make me go back.”
For the first time since she had known him, she saw Hagen angry. He
said harshly, “That’s the worst kind of juvenile crap I’ve ever heard. I never
expected that from a woman like you. Come on, Kay.”
“All right,” she said.
They walked along the green country road. Hagen asked quietly, “Why
did you run away?”

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Kay said, “Because Michael lied to me. Because he made a fool of me
when he stood Godfather to Connie’s boy. He betrayed me. I can’t love a man
like that. I can’t live with it. I can’t let him be father to my children.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hagen said. She turned on
him with now-justified rage. “I mean that he killed his sister’s husband. Do you
understand that?” She paused for a moment. “And he lied to me.”
They walked on for a long time in silence. Finally Hagen said, “You
have no way of really knowing that’s all true. But just for the sake of argument
let’s assume that it’s true. I’m not saying it is, remember. But what if I gave you
what might be some justification for what he did. Or rather some possible
justifications?”
Kay looked at him scornfully. “That’s the first time I’ve seen the
lawyer side of you, Tom. It’s not your best side.”
Hagen grinned. “OK. Just hear me out. What if Carlo had put Sonny
on the spot, fingered him. What if Carlo beating up Connie that time was a
deliberate plot to get Sonny out in the open, that they knew he would take the
route over the Jones Beach Causeway? What if Carlo had been paid to help get
Sonny killed? Then what?”
Kay didn’t answer. Hagen went on. “And what if the Don, a great
man, couldn’t bring himself to do what he had to do, avenge his son’s death by
killing his daughter’s husband? What if that, finally, was too much for him, and
he made Michael his successor, knowing that Michael would take that load off
his shoulders, would take that guilt?”
“It was all over with,” Kay said, tears springing into her eyes.
“Everybody was happy. Why couldn’t Carlo be forgiven? Why couldn’t
everything go on and everybody forget?”
She had led across a meadow to a tree-shaded brook. Hagen sank
down on the grass and sighed. He looked around, sighed again and said, “In this
world you could do it.”
Kay said, “He’s not the man I married.”
Hagen laughed shortly. “If he were, he’d be dead now. You’d be a
widow now. You’d have no problem.”
Kay blazed out at him. “What the hell does that mean? Come on, Tom,
speak out straight once in your life. I know Michael can’t, but you’re not
Sicilian, you can tell a woman the truth, you can treat her like an equal, a fellow
human being.”
There was another long silence. Hagen shook his head. “You’ve got

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Mike wrong. You’re mad because he lied to you. Well, he warned you never to
ask him about business. You’re mad because he was Godfather to Carlo’s boy.
But you made him do that. Actually it was the right move for him to make if he
was going to take action against Carlo. The classical tactical move to win the
victim’s trust.” Hagen gave her a grim smile. “Is that straight enough talk for
you?” But Kay bowed her head.
Hagen went on. “I’ll give you some more straight talk. After the Don
died, Mike was set up to be killed. Do you know who set him up? Tessio. So
Tessio had to be killed. Carlo had to be killed. Because treachery can’t be
forgiven. Michael could have forgiven it, but people never forgive themselves
and so they would always be dangerous. Michael really liked Tessio. He loves
his sister. But he would be shirking his duty to you and his children, to his whole
family, to me and my family, if he let Tessio and Carlo go free. They would
have been a danger to us all, all our lives.”
Kay had been listening to this with tears running down her face. “Is
that what Michael sent you up here to tell me?”
Hagen looked at her in genuine surprise. “No,” he said. “He told me to
tell you you could have everything you want and do everything you want as long
as you take good care of the kids.” Hagen smiled. “He said to tell you that you’re
his Don. That’s just a joke.”
Kay put her hand on Hagen’s arm. “He didn’t order you to tell me all
the other things?”
Hagen hesitated a moment as if debating whether to tell her a final
truth. “You still don’t understand,” he said. “If you told Michael what I’ve told
you today, I’m a dead man.” He paused again. “You and the children are the
only people on this earth he couldn’t harm.”
It was a long five minutes after that Kay rose from the grass and they
started walking back to the house. When they were almost there, Kay said to
Hagen, “After supper, can you drive me and the kids to New York in your car?”
“That’s what I came for,” Hagen said.
A week after she returned to Michael she went to a priest for
instruction to become a Catholic.
From the innermost recess of the church the bell tolled for repentance.
As she had been taught to do, Kay struck her breast lightly with her clenched
hand, the stroke of repentance. The bell tolled again and there was the shuffling
of feet as the communicants left their seats to go to the altar rail. Kay rose to join

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them. She knelt at the altar and from the depths of the church the bell tolled
again. With her closed hand she struck her heart once more. The priest was
before her. She tilted back her head and opened her mouth to receive the papery
thin wafer. This was the most terrible moment of all. Until it melted away and
she could swallow and she could do what she came to do.
Washed clean of sin, a favored supplicant, she bowed her head and
folded her hands over the altar rail. She shifted her body to make her weight less
punishing to her knees.
She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all
anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed
desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of
Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.

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About the Author
Mario Puzo was born on Manhattan’s West Side in a
neighborhood known for decades as Hell’s Kitchen. His first books, The