"The Sicilian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mario Puzo)

[11-06-02] [Version 1.0 - scanned & proofed by Binwiped]

[11-12-02] [Version 2.0 - corrected & formatted by braven]





Mario Puzo





The Sicilian





BOOK I



MICHAEL CORLEONE

1950





Chapter 1



Michael Corleone stood on a long wooden dock in Palermo and watched the great ocean liner set sail for America. He was to have sailed on that ship, but new instructions had come from his father.



He waved goodbye to the men on the little fishing boat who had brought him to this dock, men who had guarded him these past years. The fishing boat rode the white wake of the ocean liner, a brave little duckling after its mother. The men on it waved back; he would see them no more.



The dock itself was alive with scurrying laborers in caps and baggy clothes unloading other ships, loading trucks that had come to the long dock. They were small wiry men who looked more Arabic than Italian, wearing billed caps that obscured their faces. Amongst them would be new bodyguards making sure he came to no harm before he met with Don Croce Malo, Capo di Capi of the "Friends of the Friends," as they were called here in Sicily. Newspapers and the outside world called them the Mafia, but in Sicily the word Mafia never passed the lips of the ordinary citizen. As they would never call Don Croce Malo the Capo di Capi but only "The Good Soul."