TE23 Double Feature

A Conspiracy of Talkers

Gaetano Savatteri

the jeep had careened sideways on two wheels helplessly skidding, unable to gain traction, spewing rocks and dust. From his side, Adano saw almond trees flying towards him. Semino’s face didn’t change — he had the same silent, focused expression since leaving Palermo. He managed to bring the jeep to a stop, the back half dangling in midair. With the help of some peasants, they’d managed to get back on the road and on their way. But from that moment — he hadn’t said a word before — Semino didn’t stop talking. He told Lieutenant Adano about his grandfather Calogero Castrenze who emigrated to New York before the Great War, about his years in Brooklyn and then his move to Buffalo, about the fact that he’d been the best shoemaker in his hometown, but there was hunger, not even crustabred to eat, and that’s why he’d left with his wife and four children. Two had died but the girl, his mother, married someone from back home who lived in Buffalo and he, Salvatore, was born in America, but they’d always called him Sam though his mother used to call him Semino, bless her soul, which was surely in heaven, a sainted woman who’d made sacrifices so he and his brother could grow up healthy but she died when Semino was ten, tenny ears , so his father went back home to get married because a man with two kids can’t 321

2 “I can’t even think about it, Signor Lieutenant. If we hadn’t been laki, veri laki , we’d be with the souls in purgatory right now.” The jeep was lurching down the road. Its headlights revealed gaps in the pavement, avoided at the last second with a sudden skid. Lieutenant Adano’s knuckles were white from the effort of hanging onto the vehicle for hours. It was raining. The dust on the windshield had turned into a dark coating of mud. “Are you sure you can see all right?” the lieutenant asked Semino in Italian. “ Donworri , Lieutenant. Eyes like a cat, Lieutenant.” Once more Lieutenant Adano leafed through his mental phrasebooks — from the Italian dialect of his grandfather to the Sicilian-American of his aunt Cettina, whom he’d listened to as a child. He came back to Semino’s words, still not trusting in the road. Or the driver. Sure, veri laki . Extremely laki along a hairpin curve on the mountain road near Vicari, where 320