The other shepherd was more outgoing, younger, and had seen something of the world. Mostly oceans, since he had been a sailor in the Italian navy during the war and had just had time enough to get himself tattooed before his ship was sunk and he was captured by the British. But the tattoo made him a famous man in his village. Sicilians do not often let themselves be tattooed, they do not have the opportunity nor the inclination. (The shepherd, Fabrizzio, had done so primarily to cover a splotchy red birthmark on his belly. ) And yet the Mafia market carts had gaily painted scenes on their sides, beautifully primitive paintings done with loving care. In any case, Fabrizzio, back in his native village, was not too proud of that tattoo on his chest, though it showed a subject dear to the Sicilian “honor,” a husband stabbing a naked man and woman entwined together on the hairy floor of his belly. Fabrizzio would joke with Michael and ask questions about America, for of course it was impossible to keep them in the dark about his true nationality. Still, they did not know exactly who he was except that he was in hiding and there could be no babbling about him. Fabrizzio sometimes brought Michael a fresh cheese still sweating the milk that formed it.

  They walked along dusty country roads passing donkeys pulling gaily painted carts. The land was filled with pink flowers, orange orchards, groves of almond and olive trees, all blooming. That had been one of the surprises. Michael had expected a barren land because of the legendary poverty of Sicilians. And yet he had found it a land of gushing plenty, carpeted with flowers scented by lemon blossoms. It was so beautiful that he wondered how its people could bear to leave it. How terrible man had been to his fellow man could be measured by the great exodus from what seemed to be a Garden of Eden.

  He had planned to walk to the coastal village of Mazara, and then take a bus back to Corleone in the evening, and so tire himself out and be able to sleep. The two shepherds wore rucksacks filled with bread and cheese they could eat on the way. They carried their luparas quite openly as if out for a day’s hunting.

  It was a most beautiful morning. Michael felt as he had felt when as a child he had gone out early on a summer day to play ball. Then each day had been freshly washed, freshly painted. And so it was now. Sicily was carpeted in gaudy flowers, the scent of orange and lemon blossoms so heavy that even with his facial injury which pressed on the sinuses, he could smell it.

  The smashing on the left side of his face had completely healed but the bone had formed improperly and the pressure on his sinuses made his left eye hurt. It also made his nose run continually, he filled up handkerchiefs with mucus and often blew his nose out onto the ground as the local peasants did, a habit that had disgusted him when he was a boy and had seen old Italians, disdaining handkerchiefs as English foppery, blowout their noses in the asphalt gutters.

  His face too felt “heavy.” Dr. Taza had told him that this was due to the pressure on his sinuses caused by the badly healed fracture. Dr. Taza called it an eggshell fracture of the zygoma; that if it had been treated before the bones knitted, it could have been easily remedied by a minor surgical procedure using an instrument like a spoon to push out the bone to its proper shape. Now, however, said the doctor, he would have to check into a Palermo hospital and undergo a major procedure called maxillo-facial surgery where the bone would be broken again. That was enough for Michael. He refused. And yet more than the pain, more than the nose dripping, he was bothered by the feeling of heaviness in his face.

  He never reached the coast that day. After going about fifteen miles he and his shepherds stopped in the cool green watery shade of an orange grove to eat lunch and drink their wine. Fabrizzio was chattering about how he would someday get to America. After drinking and eating they lolled in the shade and Fabrizzio unbuttoned his shirt and contracted his stomach muscles to make the tattoo come alive. The naked couple on his chest writhed in a lover’s agony and the dagger thrust by the husband quivered in their transfixed flesh. It amused them. It was while this was going on that Michael was hit with what the Sicilians call “the thunderbolt.”

  Beyond the orange grove lay the green ribboned fields of a baronial estate. Down the road from the grove was a villa so Roman it looked as if it had been dug up from the ruins of Pompeii. It was a little palace with a huge marble portico and fluted Grecian columns and through those columns came a bevy of village girls flanked by two stout matrons clad in black. They were from the village and had obviously fulfilled their ancient duty to the local baron by cleaning his villa and otherwise preparing it for his winter sojourn. Now they were going into the fields to pick the flowers with which they would fill the rooms. They were gathering the pink sulla, purple wisteria, mixing them with orange and lemon blossoms. The girls, not seeing the men resting in the orange grove, came closer and closer.

  They were dressed in cheap gaily printed frocks that clung to their bodies. They were still in their teens but with the full womanliness sun-drenched flesh ripened into so quickly. Three or four of them started chasing one girl, chasing her toward the grove. The girl being chased held a bunch of huge purple grapes in her left hand and with her right hand was picking grapes off the cluster and throwing them at her pursuers. She had a crown of ringleted hair as purple-black as the grapes and her body seemed to be bursting out of its skin.

  Just short of the grove she poised, startled, her eyes having caught the alien color of the men’s shirts. She stood there up on her toes poised like a deer to run. She was very close now, close enough for the men to see every feature of her face.

  She was all ovals--oval-shaped eyes, the bones of her face, the contour of her brow. Her skin was an exquisite dark creaminess and her eyes, enormous, dark violet or brown but dark with long heavy lashes shadowed her lovely face. Her mouth was rich without being gross, sweet without being weak and dyed dark red with the juice of the grapes. She was so incredibly lovely that Fabrizzio murmured, “Jesus Christ, take my soul, I’m dying,” as a joke, but the words came out a little too hoarsely. As if she had heard him, the girl came down off her toes and whirled away from them and fled back to her pursuers. Her haunches moved like an animal’s beneath the tight print of her dress; as pagan and as innocently lustful. When she reached her friends she whirled around again and her face was like a dark hollow against the field of bright flowers. She extended an arm, the hand full of grapes pointed toward the grove. The girls fled laughing, with the black-clad, stout matrons scolding them on.

  As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing, his heart pounding in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging through his body, through all its extremities and pounding against the tips of his fingers, the tips of his toes. All the perfumes of the island came rushing in on the wind, orange, lemon blossoms, grapes, flowers. It seemed as if his body had sprung away from him out of himself. And then he heard the two shepherds laughing.

  “You got hit by the thunderbolt, eh?” Fabrizzio said, clapping him on the shoulder. Even Calo became friendly, patting him on the arm and saying, “Easy, man, easy,” but with affection. As if Michael had been hit by a car. Fabrizzio handed him a wine bottle and Michael took a long slug. It cleared his head.

  “What the hell are you damn sheep lovers talking about?” he said.

  Both men laughed. Calo, his honest face filled with the utmost seriousness, said, “You can’t hide the thunderbolt. When it hits you, everybody can see it. Christ, man, don’t be ashamed of it, some men pray for the thunderbolt. You’re a lucky fellow.”

  Michael wasn’t too pleased about his emotions being so easily read. But this was the first time in his life such a thing had happened to him. It was nothing like his adolescent crushes, it was nothing like the love he’d had for Kay, a love based as much on her sweetness, her intelligence and the polarity of the fair and dark. This was an overwhelming desire for possession, this was an unerasable printing of the girl’s face on his brain and he knew she would haunt his memory every day of his life if he did not possess her. His life had become simplified, focused on one point, everything else was unworthy of even a moment’s attention. During his exile he’ had always thought of Kay, though he felt they could never again be lovers or even friends. He was, after all was said, a murderer, a Mafioso who had “made his bones.” But now Kay was wiped completely out of his consciousness.

  Fabrizzio said briskly, “I’ll go to the village, we’ll find out about her. Who knows, she may be more available than we think. There’s only one cure for the thunderbolt, eh, Calo?”

  The other shepherd nodded his head gravely. Michael didn’t say anything. He followed the two shepherds as they started down the road to the nearby village into which the flock of girls had disappeared.

  The village was grouped around the usual central square with its fountain. But it was on a main route so there were some stores, wine shops and one little café with three tables out on a small terrace. The shepherds sat at one of the tables and Michael joined them. There was no sign of the girls, not a trace. The village seemed deserted except for small boys and a meandering donkey.

  The proprietor of the café came to serve them. He was a short, burly man, almost dwarfish but he greeted them cheerfully and set a dish of chickpeas at their table. “You’re strangers here,” he said, “so let me advise you. Try my wine. The grapes come from my own farm and it’s made by my sons themselves. They mix it with oranges and lemons. It’s the best wine in Italy.”

  They let him bring the wine in a jug and it was even better than he claimed, dark purple and as powerful as a brandy. Fabrizzio said to the café proprietor, “You know all the girls here, I’ll bet. We saw some beauties coming down the road, one in particular got our friend here hit with the thunderbolt.” He motioned to Michael.

  The café owner looked at Michael with new interest. The cracked face had seemed quite ordinary to him before, not worth a second glance. But a man hit with the thunderbolt was another matter. “You had better bring a few bottles home with you, my friend,” he said. “You’ll need help in getting to sleep tonight.”

  Michael asked the man, “Do you know a girl with her hair all curly? Very creamy skin, very big eyes, very dark eyes. Do you know a girl like that in the village?”

  The café owner said curtly, “No. I don’t know any girl like that.” He vanished from the terrace into his cafe.

  The three men drank their wine slowly, finished off the jug and called for more. The owner did not reappear. Fabrizzio went into the café after him. When Fabrizzio came out he grimaced and said to Michael, “Just as I thought, it’s his daughter we were talking about and now he’s in the back boiling up his blood to do us a mischief. I think we’d better start walking toward Corleone.”

  Despite his months on the island Michael still could not get used to the Sicilian touchiness on matters of sex, and this was extreme even for a Sicilian. But the two shepherds seemed to take it as a matter of course. They were waiting for him to leave. Fabrizzio said, “The old bastard mentioned he has two sons, big tough lads that he has only to whistle up. Let’s get going.”

  Michael gave him a cold stare. Up to now he had been a quiet, gentle young man, a typical American, except that since he was hiding in Sicily he must have done something manly. This was the first time the shepherds had seen the Corleone stare. Don Tommasino, knowing Michael’s true identity and deed, had always been wary of him, treating him as a fellow “man of respect.” But these unsophisticated sheep herders had come to their own opinion of Michael, and not a wise one. The cold look, Michael’s rigid white face, his anger that came off him like cold smoke off ice, sobered their laughter and snuffed out their familiar friendliness.

  When he saw he had their proper, respectful attention Michael said to them, “Get that man out here to me.”

  They didn’t hesitate. They shouldered their luparas and went into the dark coolness of the cafe. A few seconds later they reappeared with the café owner between them. The stubby man looked in no way frightened but his anger had a certain wariness about it.

  Michael leaned back in his chair and studied the man for a moment. Then he said very quietly, “I understand I’ve offended you by talking about your daughter. I offer you my apologies, I’m a stranger in this country, I don’t know the customs that well. Let me say this. I meant no disrespect to you or her.”

  The shepherd bodyguards were impressed. Michael’s voice had never sounded like this before when speaking to them. There was command and authority in it though he was making an apology. The café owner shrugged, more wary still, knowing he was not dealing with some farmboy. “Who are you and what do you want from my daughter?”

  Without even hesitating Michael said, “I am an American hiding in Sicily, from the police of my country. My name is Michael. You can inform the police and make your fortune but then your daughter would lose a father rather than gain a husband. In any case I want to meet your daughter. With your permission and under the supervision of your family. With all decorum. With all respect. I’m an honorable man and I don’t think of dishonoring your daughter. I want to meet her, talk to her and then if it hits us both right we’ll marry. If not, you’ll never see me again. She may find me unsympathetic after all, and no man can remedy that. But when the proper time comes I’ll tell you everything about me that a wife’s father should know.”

  All three men were looking at him with amazement. Fabrizzio whispered in awe, “It’s the real thunderbolt.” The café owner, for the first time, didn’t look so confident, or contemptuous; his anger was not so sure. Finally he asked, “ Are you a friend of the friends?”

  Since the word Mafia could never be uttered aloud by the ordinary Sicilian, this was as close as the café owner could come to asking if Michael was a member of the Mafia. It was the usual way of asking if someone belonged but it was ordinarily not addressed to the person directly concerned.

  “No,” Michael said. “I’m a stranger in this country.”

  The café owner gave him another look, the smashed left side of his face, the long legs rare in Sicily. He took a look at the two shepherds carrying their luparas quite openly without fear and remembered how they had come into his café and told him their padrone wanted to talk to him. The café owner had snarled that he wanted the son of a bitch out of his terrace and one of the shepherds had said, “Take my word, it’s best you go out and speak to him yourself.” And something had made him come out. Now something made him realize that it would be best to show this stranger some courtesy. He said grudgingly, “Come Sunday afternoon. My name is Vitelli and my house is up there on the hill, above the village. But come here to the café and I’ll take you up.”

  Fabrizzio started to say something but Michael gave him one look and the shepherd’s tongue froze in his mouth. This was not lost on Vitelli. So when Michael stood up and stretched out his hand, the café owner took it and smiled. He would make some inquiries and if the answers were wrong he could always greet Michael with his two sons bearing their own shotguns. The café owner was not without his contacts among the “friends of the friends.” But something told him this was one of those wild strokes of good fortune that Sicilians always believed in, something told him that his daughter’s beauty would make her fortune and her family secure. And it was just as well. Some of the local youths were already beginning to buzz around and this stranger with his broken face could do the necessary job of scaring them off. Vitelli, to show his goodwill, sent the strangers off with a bottle of his best and coldest wine. He noticed that one of the shepherds paid the bill. This impressed him even more, made it clear that Michael was the superior of the two men who accompanied him.

  Michael was no longer interested in his hike. They found a garage and hired a car and driver to take them back to Corleone, and some time before supper, Dr. Taza must have been informed by the shepherds of what had happened. That evening, sitting in the garden, Dr. Taza said to Don Tommasino, “Our friend got hit by the thunderbolt today.”

  Don Tommasino did not seem surprised. He grunted. “I wish some of those young fellows in Palermo would get a thunderbolt, maybe I could get some peace.” He was talking about the new-style Mafia chiefs rising in the big cities of Palermo and challenging the power of old-regime stalwarts like himself.

  Michael said to Tommasino, “I want you to tell those two sheep herders to leave me alone Sunday. I’m going to go to this girl’s family for dinner and I don’t want them hanging around.”

  Don Tommasino shook his head. “I’m responsible to your father for you, don’t ask me that. Another thing, I hear you’ve even talked marriage. I can’t allow that until I’ve sent somebody to speak to your father.”

  Michael Corleone was very careful, this was after all a man of respect. “Don Tommasino, you know my father. He’s a man who goes deaf when somebody says the word no to him. And he doesn’t get his hearing back until they answer him with a yes. Well, he has heard my no many times. I understand about the two guards, I don’t want to cause you trouble, they can come with me Sunday, but if I want to marry I’ll marry. Surely if I don’t permit my own father to interfere with my personal life it would be an insult to him to allow you to do so.”

  The capo-mafioso sighed. “Well, then, marriage it will have to be. I know your thunderbolt. She’s a good girl from a respectable family. You can’t dishonor them without the father trying to kill you, and then you’ll have to shed blood. Besides, I know the family well, I can’t allow it to happen.”

  Michael said, “She may not be able to stand the sight of me, and she’s a very young girl, she’ll think me old.” He saw the two men smiling at him. “I’ll need some money for presents and I think I’ll need a car.”

  The Don nodded. “Fabrizzio will take care of everything, he’s a clever boy, they taught him mechanics in the navy. I’ll give you some money in the morning and I’ll let your father know what’s happening. That I must do.”

  Michael said to Dr. Taza, “Have you got anything that can dry up this damn snot always coming out of my nose? I can’t have that girl seeing me wiping it all the time.”