The Godfather, Page 2

  The Don’s role as a Lone Ranger becomes legendary, as evidenced years later at the wedding that opens the book. We first meet Don Corleone, in fact, in his role as a fixer of problems, not as a mobster. A trio of protagonists, each with a personal difficulty, appeals to the Don for help, which he will deliver with colorful effectiveness. His philosophy—on the surface based on friendship and neighborly barter, like that of a country doctor who is paid in chickens or fresh produce—has a certain American appeal:

  Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution to that man’s woe. His reward? Friendship, the repectful title of “Don,” and sometimes the more affectionate saluation of “Godfather.” And perhaps, to show respect only, never for profit, some humble gift—a gallon of homemade wine or a basket of peppered taralles specially baked to grace his Christmas table. It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service. (p. 11)

  Don Corleone’s ability to deliver implies that he is not just the Godfather, but in fact God. In his son Michael’s assessment, “He takes everything personal. Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes” (p.138).

  Of course, we know that the activities of the Corleone family are not good ones. We know that ultimately a system like theirs cannot take the place of laws and courts, and we need look no farther than the Don’s hometown for evidence of this. By the time he left Corleone as a child, the village was tormented by violence, danger, and feuds brought on by the Mafia, which served as the village’s “second government, far more powerful than the official one in Rome” (p.183). The techniques Vito Corleone continues in America are the very ones that made it necessary for him to leave Sicily.

  But still, on a purely visceral level, there is something oddly attractive about the world presented in The Godfather and about the ubiquitous control over that world that the Corleone family holds. In 1969, this must have been a striking fantasy to readers who felt that the traditional institutions of power and authority in America were seriously in question. Or to today’s readers, for that matter. Deep in our hearts we probably all long for the ability to mete out swift and effective justice to those over whom we have no power. We may all know someone we’d like to see sleeping with a horse’s head, if not with the fishes. In our popular stories, we continue to want a Western hero, but not a sanitized one. The Godfather was a modern story, in which the dark side and justice were elided and confused.

  THE GODFATHER SPENT nearly seventy weeks on bestseller lists, and more than twenty million copies of the book have been sold. Many more people know of the story, however, through its first two film adaptations, both of which won the Academy Award for best picture. The first film was the top-grossing movie of 1972, and the top-selling video of 1980, the first year in which Billboard published such a list. Mario Puzo cowrote the screenplays for all three of the Godfather films, the first two of which won Oscars as well.

  The mob movie genre had been around for a long time, but until 1972, most of these films were moral tales about the nasty doings of gangsters. One could, of course, read between the frames and see the characters in films like Little Caesar (1930) and The Public Enemy (1931) as romantically attractive, as did many young boys, who added gangsters to cowboys and Indians as part of their playground repertoire. Still, these were clearly stories meant to expose the unmitigated evil of the bad guys. On TV, starting in 1959, The Untouchables told the story of Prohibition-era gangsters from the standpoint of the heroic, incorruptible federal agents out to get them.

  As the novel had, the movies about the Corleone family transformed the genre. The first two Godfather films are among the most critically acclaimed in the history of American movies, and other acclaimed movies, most notably Goodfellas (1990), have built on the new tradition. One cannot imagine The Sopranos without the Godfather films, to which characters in the HBO TV series occasionally make reference.

  As was the case with other spectacularly popular American novels, such as Huckleberry Finn and Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, and the genre it inspired, has been attacked for the nature of its ethnic portrayals. These concerns became more pronounced with the release of the films. The objections of the Italian-American community were not unfounded. In fact they were a testament to the power of the myth wrought by The Godfather. Images of Italian-Americans as mobsters, the argument went, had dissolved every other cultural image of Italian-Americans, including Columbus Day.

  In the end, however, the mob story is as popular as it is because it represents a larger American story. This nation has a long tradition of throwing off one authority in favor of another, sometimes with violence, and many of our ancestors came here as fugitives from the law. America is a rowdy culture, and both its history and its present are filled with wise guys.

  For Anthony Cleri

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  BOOK I

  Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

  —BALZAC

  Chapter 1

  Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.

  The judge, a formidably heavy-featured man, rolled up the sleeves of his black robe as if to physically chastise the two young men standing before the bench. His face was cold with majestic contempt. But there was something false in all this that Amerigo Bonasera sensed but did not yet understand.

  “You acted like the worst kind of degenerates,” the judge said harshly. Yes, yes, thought Amerigo Bonasera. Animals. Animals. The two young men, glossy hair crew cut, scrubbed clean-cut faces composed into humble contrition, bowed their heads in submission.

  The judge went on. “You acted like wild beasts in a jungle and you are fortunate you did not sexually molest that poor girl or I’d put you behind bars for twenty years.” The judge paused, his eyes beneath impressively thick brows flickered slyly toward the sallow-faced Amerigo Bonasera, then lowered to a stack of probation reports before him. He frowned and shrugged as if convinced against his own natural desire. He spoke again.

  “But because of your youth, your clean records, because of your fine families, and because the law in its majesty does not seek vengeance, I hereby sentence you to three years’ confinement to the penitentiary. Sentence to be suspended.”

  Only forty years of professional mourning kept the overwhelming frustration and hatred from showing on Amerigo Bonasera’s face. His beautiful young daughter was still in the hospital with her broken jaw wired together; and now these two animales went free? It had all been a farce. He watched the happy parents cluster around their darling sons. Oh, they were all happy now, they were smiling now.

  The black bile, sourly bitter, rose in Bonasera’s throat, overflowed through tightly clenched teeth. He used his white linen pocket handkerchief and held it against his lips. He was standing so when the two young men strode freely up the aisle, confident and cool-eyed, smiling, not giving him so much as a glance. He let them pass without saying a word, pressing the fresh linen against his mouth.

  The parents of the animales were coming by now, two men and two women his age but more American in their dress. They glanced at him, shamefaced, yet in their eyes was an odd, triumphant defiance.

  Out of control, Bonasera leaned forward toward the aisle and shouted hoarsely, “You will weep as I have wept—I will make you weep as your c
hildren make me weep”—the linen at his eyes now. The defense attorneys bringing up the rear swept their clients forward in a tight little band, enveloping the two young men, who had started back down the aisle as if to protect their parents. A huge bailiff moved quickly to block the row in which Bonasera stood. But it was not necessary.

  All his years in America, Amerigo Bonasera had trusted in law and order. And he had prospered thereby. Now, though his brain smoked with hatred, though wild visions of buying a gun and killing the two young men jangled the very bones of his skull, Bonasera turned to his still uncomprehending wife and explained to her, “They have made fools of us.” He paused and then made his decision, no longer fearing the cost. “For justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone.”

  IN A GARISHLY DECORATED Los Angeles hotel suite, Johnny Fontane was as jealously drunk as any ordinary husband. Sprawled on a red couch, he drank straight from the bottle of scotch in his hand, then washed the taste away by dunking his mouth in a crystal bucket of ice cubes and water. It was four in the morning and he was spinning drunken fantasies of murdering his trampy wife when she got home. If she ever did come home. It was too late to call his first wife and ask about the kids and he felt funny about calling any of his friends now that his career was plunging downhill. There had been a time when they would have been delighted, flattered by his calling them at four in the morning but now he bored them. He could even smile a little to himself as he thought that on the way up Johnny Fontane’s troubles had fascinated some of the greatest female stars in America.

  Gulping at his bottle of scotch, he heard finally his wife’s key in the door, but he kept drinking until she walked into the room and stood before him. She was to him so very beautiful, the angelic face, soulful violet eyes, the delicately fragile but perfectly formed body. On the screen her beauty was magnified, spiritualized. A hundred million men all over the world were in love with the face of Margot Ashton. And paid to see it on the screen.

  “Where the hell were you?” Johnny Fontane asked.

  “Out fucking,” she said.

  She had misjudged his drunkenness. He sprang over the cocktail table and grabbed her by the throat. But close up to that magical face, the lovely violet eyes, he lost his anger and became helpless again. She made the mistake of smiling mockingly, saw his fist draw back. She screamed, “Johnny, not in the face, I’m making a picture.”

  She was laughing. He punched her in the stomach and she fell to the floor. He fell on top of her. He could smell her fragrant breath as she gasped for air. He punched her on the arms and on the thigh muscles of her silky tanned legs. He beat her as he had beaten snotty smaller kids long ago when he had been a tough teenager in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. A painful punishment that would leave no lasting disfigurement of loosened teeth or broken nose.

  But he was not hitting her hard enough. He couldn’t. And she was giggling at him. Spread-eagled on the floor, her brocaded gown hitched up above her thighs, she taunted him between giggles. “Come on, stick it in. Stick it in, Johnny, that’s what you really want.”

  Johnny Fontane got up. He hated the woman on the floor but her beauty was a magic shield. Margot rolled away, and in a dancer’s spring was on her feet facing him. She went into a childish mocking dance and chanted, “Johnny never hurt me, Johnny never hurt me.” Then almost sadly with grave beauty she said, “You poor silly bastard, giving me cramps like a kid. Ah, Johnny, you always will be a dumb romantic guinea, you even make love like a kid. You still think screwing is really like those dopey songs you used to sing.” She shook her head and said, “Poor Johnny. Good-bye, Johnny.” She walked into the bedroom and he heard her turn the key in the lock.

  Johnny sat on the floor with his face in his hands. The sick, humiliating despair overwhelmed him. And then the gutter toughness that had helped him survive the jungle of Hollywood made him pick up the phone and call for a car to take him to the airport. There was one person who could save him. He would go back to New York. He would go back to the one man with the power, the wisdom he needed and a love he still trusted. His Godfather Corleone.

  THE BAKER, NAZORINE, pudgy and crusty as his great Italian loaves, still dusty with flour, scowled at his wife, his nubile daughter, Katherine, and his baker’s helper, Enzo. Enzo had changed into his prisoner-of-war uniform with its green-lettered armband and was terrified that this scene would make him late reporting back to Governor’s Island. One of the many thousands of Italian Army prisoners paroled daily to work in the American economy, he lived in constant fear of that parole being revoked. And so the little comedy being played now was, for him, a serious business.

  Nazorine asked fiercely, “Have you dishonored my family? Have you given my daughter a little package to remember you by now that the war is over and you know America will kick your ass back to your village full of shit in Sicily?”

  Enzo, a very short, strongly built boy, put his hand over his heart and said almost in tears, yet cleverly, “Padrone, I swear by the Holy Virgin I have never taken advantage of your kindness. I love your daughter with all respect. I ask for her hand with all respect. I know I have no right, but if they send me back to Italy I can never come back to America. I will never be able to marry Katherine.”

  Nazorine’s wife, Filomena, spoke to the point. “Stop all this foolishness,” she said to her pudgy husband. “You know what you must do. Keep Enzo here, send him to hide with our cousins in Long Island.”

  Katherine was weeping. She was already plump, homely and sprouting a faint moustache. She would never get a husband as handsome as Enzo, never find another man who touched her body in secret places with such respectful love. “I’ll go and live in Italy,” she screamed at her father. “I’ll run away if you don’t keep Enzo here.”

  Nazorine glanced at her shrewdly. She was a “hot number,” this daughter of his. He had seen her brush her swelling buttocks against Enzo’s front when the baker’s helper squeezed behind her to fill the counter baskets with hot loaves from the oven. The young rascal’s hot loaf would be in her oven, Nazorine thought lewdly, if proper steps were not taken. Enzo must be kept in America and be made an American citizen. And there was only one man who could arrange such an affair. The Godfather. Don Corleone.

  ALL OF THESE PEOPLE and many others received engraved invitations to the wedding of Miss Constanzia Corleone, to be celebrated on the last Saturday in August 1945. The father of the bride, Don Vito Corleone, never forgot his old friends and neighbors though he himself now lived in a huge house on Long Island. The reception would be held in that house and the festivities would go on all day. There was no doubt it would be a momentous occasion. The war with the Japanese had just ended so there would not be any nagging fear for their sons fighting in the Army to cloud these festivities. A wedding was just what people needed to show their joy.

  And so on that Saturday morning the friends of Don Corleone streamed out of New York City to do him honor. They bore cream-colored envelopes stuffed with cash as bridal gifts, no checks. Inside each envelope a card established the identity of the giver and the measure of his respect for the Godfather. A respect truly earned.

  Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution of that man’s woe. His reward? Friendship, the respectful title of “Don,” and sometimes the more affectionate salutation of “Godfather.” And perhaps, to show respect only, never for profit, some humble gift—a gallon of homemade wine or a basket of peppered taralles specially baked to grace his Christmas table. It was understood, it was mere go
od manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service.

  Now on this great day, his daughter’s wedding day, Don Vito Corleone stood in the doorway of his Long Beach home to greet his guests, all of them known, all of them trusted. Many of them owed their good fortune in life to the Don and on this intimate occasion felt free to call him “Godfather” to his face. Even the people performing festal services were his friends. The bartender was an old comrade whose gift was all the wedding liquors and his own expert skills. The waiters were the friends of Don Corleone’s sons. The food on the garden picnic tables had been cooked by the Don’s wife and her friends and the gaily festooned one-acre garden itself had been decorated by the young girl-chums of the bride.

  Don Corleone received everyone—rich and poor, powerful and humble—with an equal show of love. He slighted no one. That was his character. And the guests so exclaimed at how well he looked in his tux that an inexperienced observer might easily have thought the Don himself was the lucky groom.