all of them, the memory that troubled him most was when, as a conscript, he was on patrol at the Camaro Infantry Regiment on 28 December 1908.
At dawn on that day, Messina was destroyed by an earthquake and seaquake. He survived by a miracle. The barracks had imploded in a few moments, and the ammunition storage area had blown up. As luck would have it, he was on patrol along the outer perimeter and was thrown twenty metres by the shock wave. He had been deaf in one ear for fifteen days but could not benefit from any recovery because he was needed to shovel through the rubble of the devastated city.
After that event, he spent a month and a half among the corpses, and the memory of those few survivors being pulled out alive from the ruins of the massacre still made him flinch. At the time, the Command had taken care to send a dispatch only to the families of the dead soldiers; there was no news of the living. Moreover, Zi Peppe hadn’t heard anything about his family, whether the earthquake had affected the villages in the Nebrodi mountains.
Only in March 1909, when he had finished his military service, he returned to San Giorgio.
He had not even had time to rejoice at the safe return of his loved ones when hunger and the crisis forced his father to embark him for America in May of that year.
After 29 days spent between Messina, Naples, and the Atlantic Ocean, he arrived in New York on 26 June 1909.
He was 20 years old and, arrived in the New Continent, had been admitted to the quarantine area of the Ellis Island Immigrant Reception Centre for a month because of suspected bronchopneumonia.
During those long days as a prisoner-sick man, he had met some shady Sicilian emigrants, who had hired him for some ‘special commissions’.
A few revolver shots he had dodged, a few others he had fired, and he had thus created a ‘respectable reputation’ for himself, thanks to his charisma and cleverness in smuggling whisky.
After six years, he was called up as a soldier in Italy because of the Great War. If he had stayed in America, he would have been considered a deserter and couldn’t have returned to Sicily any more.
Therefore, he had decided to return home, and, soon, young Peppe, from the charming and dangerous New York, found himself in the Cavalry Regiment Savoia on the Isonzo front.
He saw more dead people killed in one day on the Karst than in six years in New York!
When he returned, he carried the signs of war with him, and, suddenly, the American dream had vanished completely. The mere thought of returning to the Wild West that was America in the early 1900s made him shudder.
The Messina earthquake, the American mafia, the war, too much blood, and the too many deaths in so few years had worn him out.
He chose the quiet life of a farmer and decided to stay in San Giorgio.
There he began his second life.
A year after the end of the Great War, he met Nunzia and got married. Slowly, they began to cultivate the land, raise animals, and have children.
In November 1921, his first son, Ture, was born.
Ture was now 20 years old.
He was a bright and solid young man. As the eldest of the large family, he was, by right and by duty, the right-hand man of Zi Peppe Pileri, who had brought him up on hoe and bread from an early age.
Young Ture was meek, but not a few times he came home red with rage and fisticuffs. He never offended anyone, he was respectful towards his elders, and he didn’t let anyone push him around.
His brothers were still little and only helped out on some occasions, such as during the harvest, the grape harvest, or the olive and hazelnut picking.
Ture, on the other hand, was already of an age to serve the family full-time. When he didn’t go with his father, because there wasn’t much work, he was hired by someone and walked home in the evening because there was only one mule in the family, used by Zi Peppe. If he had any luck, on the way back, there was a cart that would take him to San Basilio, and from there, he would continue along the mule track that connected the two villages. Sometimes, however, he had no luck and arrived in San Giorgio wet to the bone because, on the way, he had been caught in a gale and, in order to not remain in the dark, had walked without shelter under the pouring rain.
Since the beginning of the war, things had got worse for the family because the local farmers no longer hired Ture on a day-to-day basis. They seemed resentful because he had managed to be exempted from the military service, thanks to a recommendation his father had provided him with.
It was as if those men were complaining that Zi Peppe had not also recommended their sons. Strong arms were needed. The war was causing hunger and mourning for almost a year over those desolate lands of the Nebrodi mountains.
Zi Peppe knew well that some things were better done by himself and for himself, so he had pulled some strings only for his son Ture. Besides, he knew from experience that, if the situation were reversed, they would have provided only for their children so as not to lower the chance of saving them from the war.
He had succeeded, and he did not even feel guilty about it. He saw Ture working hard for his brothers and sisters and knew he had done the right thing.
Honest as he was, however, he did carry a little guilt inside: he had had to bow down to lord Marchiolo, a hardened fascist, who had rank and power at the Military District of Tortorici.
He had swallowed many bitter pills just for his son, to keep him with him in the fields and, above all, to save him from the horrors he had experienced on the Karst, and from almost certain death.
For this reason, when ‘Gnura Mena had cast the evil eye on him, he had felt it all over him! It was not just the words of a charlatan, but a common feeling that had crept into the souls and minds of the other villagers: why were their sons at war, while Ture, young and strong, was still serving his father?
The war had taken many strong arms from their families, and this was the major gripe.
People were starving, and hunger claimed more victims than war. And it took no prisoners.
III
At first, Ture wanted nothing to do with going to war, hearing his father’s gruesome tales. As soon as he was exempted from military duties, he went back to his village, and the next day he set off to work in the fields.
Summer arrived.
With time, however, this privilege began to take its toll on him, as he felt the eyes of everyone, especially the families who had soldiers at the front.
His behaviour began to be affected: he withdrew into himself. He became more and more quarrelsome and grumpy. Sometimes, when people asked him why he wasn’t at war, he would tell them stories he made up at the moment. He said he was waiting for being called to the front to some of them. Or that he was about to leave the following month. To others, that he was about to embark from Messina or that any more soldiers were needed. Time passed, and, at the end of July 1941, Ture was still in the fields harvesting with his father.
After a time, most people began to disbelieve these excuses, and many others, who learned the truth, accused him of being a coward, of bringing dishonour to their village. And even if they did not spit such contempt in his face
