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BOOK VIII

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Chapter 29
Michael Corleone had taken precautions against every eventuality. His
planning was faultless, his security impeccable. He was patient, hoping to use
the full year to prepare. But he was not to get his necessary year because fate
itself took a stand against him, and in the most surprising fashion. For it was the
Godfather, the great Don himself, who failed Michael Corleone.
On one sunny Sunday morning, while the women were at church, Don
Vito Corleone dressed in his gardening uniform: baggy gray trousers, a faded
blue shirt, battered dirty-brown fedora decorated by a stained gray silk hatband.
The Don had gained considerable weight in his few years and worked on his
tomato vines, he said, for the sake of his health. But he deceived no one.
The truth was, he loved tending his garden; he loved the sight of it
early on a morning. It brought back his childhood in Sicily sixty years ago,
brought it back without the terror, the sorrow of his own father’s death. Now the
beans in their rows grew little white flowers on top; strong green stalks of
scallion fenced everything in. At the foot of the garden a spouted barrel stood
guard. It was filled with liquidy cow manure, the finest garden fertilizer. Also in
that lower part of the garden were the square wooden frames he had built with
his own hands, the sticks cross-tied with thick white string. Over these frames
crawled the tomato vines.
The Don hastened to water his garden. It must be done before the sun
waxed too hot and turned the water into a prism of fire that could burn his lettuce
leaves like paper. Sun was more important than water, water also was important;
but the two, imprudently mixed, could cause great misfortune.
The Don moved through his garden hunting for ants. If ants were
present, it meant that lice were in his vegetables and the ants were going after the
lice and he would have to spray.
He had watered just in time. The sun was becoming hot and the Don
thought, “Prudence. Prudence.” But there were just a few more plants to be
supported by sticks and he bent down again. He would go back into the house
when he finished this last row.
Quite suddenly it felt as if the sun had come down very close to his
head. The air filled with dancing golden specks. Michael’s oldest boy came
running through the garden toward where the Don knelt and the boy was
enveloped by a yellow shield of blinding light. But the Don was not to be

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tricked, he was too old a hand. Death hid behind that flaming yellow shield
ready to pounce out on him and the Don with a wave of his hand warned the boy
away from his presence. Just in time. The sledgehammer blow inside his chest
made him choke for air. The Don pitched forward into the earth.
The boy raced away to call his father. Michael Corleone and some
men at the mall gate ran to the garden and found the Don lying prone, clutchiour
andfuls of earth. They lifted the Don up and carried him to the shade of his
stone-flagged patio. Michael knelt beside his father, holding his hand, while the
other men called for an ambulance and doctor.
With a great effort the Don opened his eyes to see his son once more.
The massive heart attack had turned his ruddy face almost blue. He was in
extremis. He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and
he whispered, “Life is so beautiful.”
He was spared the sight of his women’s tears, dying before they came
back from church, dying before the ambulance arrived, or the doctor. He died
surrounded by men, holding the hand of the son he had most loved.
The funeral was royal. The Five Families sent their Dons and