© Шитова Л. Ф., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2018

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BOOK I

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.

Balzac

Chapter 1

Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court^[1] and waited for vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her^[2].

The judge rolled up the sleeves of his black robe.

“You acted like the worst kind of degenerates,” the judge said harshly. The two young men bowed their heads.

The judge went on. “You acted like wild beasts in a jungle and you are fortunate you did not sexually molest^[3] that poor girl or I’d put you behind bars^[4] for twenty years.” He spoke again.

“But because of your youth, your clean records^[5], because of your fine families, I sentence you to three years’ confinement to the penitentiary. Sentence to be suspended^[6].”

Only forty years of professional mourning kept the 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^[7] went free? It had all been a farce. He watched the happy parents around their darling sons. Oh, they were all happy now, they were smiling now.

Out of control, Bonasera shouted, “You will weep as I have wept – I will make you weep as your children make me weep”. A huge bailiff moved quickly to where Bonasera stood. But it was not necessary.

He turned to his wife and told her, “They have made fools of us.” He paused and then made his decision. “For justice we must go on our knees to Don Corleone.”

In a richly decorated Los Angeles hotel suite, Johnny Fontane was as jealously drunk as any ordinary husband. It was four in the morning and he was having drunken fantasies of murdering his 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 going down. 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, violet eyes, the delicately fragile but perfectly formed body. 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^[8],” she said.

He jumped 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 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 beat her but he was not hitting her hard enough. He couldn’t. And she was giggling at him. Spread on the floor, 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 protected her. Margot rolled away, and got to her feet facing him. “Poor Johnny. Goodbye, 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 humiliating despair overwhelmed him.^[9] But as he had learned to survive the jungle of Hollywood, he picked up the phone and called for a car to take him to the airport. There was one person who could save him. He would go back to New York to the one man with the power, the wisdom, he needed and a love he still trusted. His Godfather Corleone.

The baker, Nazorine, still dusty with flour, scowled at his wife, his daughter, Katherine, and his baker’s helper, Enzo. Enzo was one of the many thousands of Italian Army prisoners allowed daily to work in the American economy but he lived in constant fear that he would be sent back to Italy. 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^[10]?”

Enzo, a very short, strongly built boy, put his hand over his heart and said almost in tears, “Padrone^[11], I swear by the Holy Virgin I have never taken advantage of your kindness^[12]. I love your daughter with all respect and I ask for her hand. But if they send me back to Italy I can never come back to America. I will never be able to marry Katherine.”

Katherine was weeping. “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. She was a “hot number^[13]” this daughter of his. He had seen her brush her buttocks against Enzo’s front. The young man’s hot loaf would soon be in her oven, Nazorine thought. Enzo must be kept in America and be made an American citizen. And there was only one man who could arrange such an afaf ir. The Godfather. Don Corleone.

All of these people and many others received invitations to the wedding of Miss Constanzia Corleone, to be celebrated 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 great occasion. The war with the Japanese had just ended so there would not be any fear for their sons fighting in the Army. A wedding was just what people needed to show their joy.

And so on that Saturday morning the friends of Don Corleone came from New York City to do him honor^[14]. 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.

Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, state your friendship. And then, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart and he would solve that man’s problem. 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^[15]. It was understood, it was mere good manners, to say that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time for 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. Many of them owed their good fortune in life to the Don^[16] and on this occasion felt free to call him “Godfather” to his face. Don Corleone received everyone – rich and poor, powerful and humble – with an equal show of love. That was his character.

Standing at the door with him were two of his three sons. The eldest, baptized Santino but called Sonny by everyone except his father, was looked at askance^[17] by the older Italian men; with admiration by the younger. Sonny Corleone was tall for a first-generation American of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his bushy, curly hair made him look even taller. His face was that of a gross Cupid, the features even^[18]. He was built as powerfully as a bull and it was common knowledge that he was so generously endowed by nature^[19] that his wife feared the marriage bed as unbelievers once feared the rack^[20].

Here at the wedding feast, some young matrons measured Sonny Corleone with confident eyes. But on this particular day they were wasting their time. Sonny Corleone, despite the presence of his wife and three small children, had plans for his sister’s maid of honor, Lucy Mancini. She had flirted with Sonny in the past week and squeezed his hand that morning at the altar.

The second son, Frederico, called Fred or Fredo, was a child every Italian prayed to the saints for. Dutiful, loyal, always at the service of his father, living with his parents at age thirty. He was short and burly, not handsome but with the same Cupid head of the family. Despite all these virtues he did not have that personal magnetism, that animal force, so necessary for a leader of men, and he was not expected to inherit the family business.

The third son, Michael Corleone, did not stand with his father and his two brothers but sat at a table in the corner of the garden. But even there he could not escape the attentions of the family friends.

Michael Corleone was the youngest son of the Don and the only child who had refused the great man’s direction. He did not have the heavy, Cupid-shaped face of the other children, and his jet black hair was straight rather than curly. He was handsome in a delicate way.

Now this youngest son sat in the corner of the garden to demonstrate his separation from father and family. Beside him sat the American girl everyone had heard about but whom no one had seen until this day. He had, of course, shown the proper respect and introduced her to everyone at the wedding, including his family. They were not impressed with her. She was too thin, she was too fair, her face was too intelligent for a woman, her manner too free for a maiden. Her name, too, was outlandish to their ears; she called herself Kay Adams. Every guest noticed that the Don paid no particular attention to this third son. Michael had been his favorite before the war and obviously the chosen heir to run the family business when the proper moment came. He had all the quiet force and intelligence of his great father. But when World War II began, Michael Corleone volunteered for the Marine Corps^[21].

Don Corleone had no desire of letting his youngest son be killed in the service. Doctors had been bribed, secret arrangements had been made, a great deal of money had been spent. But Michael was twenty-one years of age and nothing could be done against his own will. He became a Captain and won medals. In 1944, when his picture was printed in Life magazine, the Don had sighed and said, “He performs those miracles for strangers.”

When Michael Corleone was discharged early in 1945 because of his wound, he stayed home for a few weeks, then, without consulting anyone, entered Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and so he left his father’s house.

Michael Corleone was amusing Kay Adams by telling her little stories about some of the more colorful wedding guests. Finally her attention was caught by a small group of men. The men were Amerigo Bonasera, Nazorine the Baker, Anthony Coppola and Luca Brasi. She noticed that these four men did not seem particularly happy. Michael smiled. “No, they’re not,” he said. “They’re waiting to see my father in private. They have favors to ask.^[22]”

There were, now, hundreds of guests in the huge garden, some dancing on the wooden platform decorated with flowers, others sitting at long tables with spicy food and jugs of homemade wine. The bride, Connie Corleone, sat at a special raised table with her groom. It was a rustic setting^[23] in the old Italian style. Not to the bride’s taste, but Connie had agreed to a “guinea^[24]” wedding to please her father because she had so displeased him in her choice of a husband.

The groom, Carlo Rizzi, was born of a Sicilian father and the North Italian mother from whom he had inherited his blond hair and blue eyes. His parents lived in Nevada and Carlo had left that state because of a little trouble with the law. In New York he met Sonny Corleone and so met the sister. Don Corleone, of course, sent trusted friends to Nevada and they reported that Carlo’s police trouble was not serious. They also came back with detailed information on legal gambling in Nevada which greatly interested the Don who profited from everything.

Connie Corleone was a not quite pretty girl, thin and nervous and certain to become shrewish later in life. But today, transformed by her white bridal gown and eager virginity, she was so radiant as to be almost beautiful.

She thought Carlo incredibly handsome. He filled her glass with wine. He was courteous to her as if they were both actors in a play. But he kept looking toward the huge silk purse the bride wore on her right shoulder and which was now stuffed full of money envelopes. Carlo Rizzi smiled. It was only the beginning. He had, after all, married into a royal family. They would have to take care of him.^[25]

Peter Clemenza was rotating young girls around the wooden dance floor in a rustic Tarantella. Immensely tall, immensely huge, he danced with such skill, his hard belly bumping the breasts of younger, tinier women, that all the guests were applauding him. When Clemenza finally collapsed in a chair, Paulie Gatto brought him a glass of icy wine and wiped the perspiring brow of his boss with his silk handkerchief^[26]. But instead of thanking Paulie Clemenza said, “Do your job. Take a walk around the neighborhood and see everything is OK.”

The band took a refreshment break.^[27] A young man named Nino Valenti picked up a mandolin, put his left foot up on a chair and began to sing a Sicilian love song. His face was handsome though bloated by continual drinking and he was already a little drunk. The women shrieked with joy and the men shouted the last word of each stanza with the singer.

Sonny Corleone made his way to the bride’s table and sat down beside young Lucy Mancini, the maid of honor.

They were safe. His wife was in the kitchen putting the last touches on the serving of the wedding cake. Sonny whispered a few words in the young girl’s ear and she rose. Sonny waited a few minutes and then casually followed her.

All eyes followed them. The maid of honor, Americanized by three years of college, was a ripe girl who already had a “reputation”. Now holding her pink gown up off the ground, Lucy Mancini went into the house, smiling with false innocence, ran lightly up the stairs to the bathroom. She stayed there for a few moments. When she came out Sonny Corleone was on the landing above, beckoning her upward.

From behind the closed window of Don Corleone’s “ofcif e”, Thomas Hagen watched the wedding party. The walls behind him were filled with law books. Hagen was the Don’s lawyer and acting Consigliere