After five months of exile in Sicily, Michael Corleone came finally to understand his father's character and his destiny. He came to understand men like Luca Brasi, the ruthless caporegime Clemenza, his mother's resignation and acceptance of her role. For in Sicily he saw what they would have been if they had chosen not to struggle against their fate. He understood why the Don always said, "A man has only one destiny." He came to understand the contempt for authority and legal government, the hatred1 for any man who broke omerta, the law of silence.
Dressed in old clothes and a billed cap, Michael had been transported from the ship docked at Palermo to the interior of the Sicilian island, to the very heart of a province controlled by the Mafia, where the local capo-mafioso was greatly indebted to his father for some past service. The province held the town of Corleone, whose name the Don had taken when he emigrated to America so long ago. But there were no longer any of the Don's relatives alive. The women had died of old age. All the men had been killed in vendettas3 or had also emigrated, either to America, Brazil or to some other province on the Italian mainland. He was to learn later that this small poverty-stricken town had the highest murder rate of any place in the world.
Michael was installed as a guest in the home of a bachelor uncle of the capo-mafioso. The uncle, in his seventies, was also the doctor for the district. The capo-mafioso was a man in his late fifties named Don Tommasino and he operated as the gabbellotto for a huge estate belonging to one of Sicily's most noble families. The gabbellotto, a sort of overseer to the estates of the rich, also guaranteed that the poor would not try to claim land not being cultivated, would not try to encroach in any way on the estate, by poaching or trying to farm it as squatters. In short, the gabbellotto was a mafioso who for a certain sum of money protected the real estate of the rich from all claims made on it by the poor, legal or illegal. When any poor peasant tried to implement4 the law which permitted him to buy uncultivated land, the gabbellotto frightened him off with threats of bodily harm or death. It was that simple.
Don Tommasino also controlled the water rights in the area and vetoed the local building of any new dams by the Roman government. Such dams would ruin the lucrative5 business of selling water from the artesian wells he controlled, make water too cheap, ruin the whole important water economy so laboriously6 built up over hundreds of years. However, Don Tommasino was an old-fashioned Mafia chief and would have nothing to do with dope traffic or prostitution. In this Don Tommasino was at odds7 with the new breed of Mafia leaders springing up in big cities like Palermo, new men who, influenced by American gangsters8 deported9 to Italy, had no such scruples10.
The Mafia chief was an extremely portly man, a "man with a belly11," literally12 as well as is the figurative sense that meant a man able to inspire fear in his fellow men. Under his protection, Michael had nothing to fear, yet it was considered necessary to keep the fugitive's identity a secret. And so Michael was restricted to the walled estate of Dr. Taza, the Don's uncle.
Dr. Taza was tall for a Sicilian, almost six feet, and had ruddy cheeks and snow-white hair. Though in his seventies, he went every week to Palermo to pay his respects to the younger prostitutes of that city, the younger the better. Dr. Taza's other vice2 was reading. He read everything and talked about what he read to his fellow townsmen, patients who were illiterate13 (scanned and fully15 proofed by iliter8) peasants, the estate shepherds, and this gave him a local reputation for foolishness. What did books have to do with them?
In the evenings Dr. Taza, Don Tommasino and Michael sat in the huge garden populated with these marble statues that on this island seemed to grow out of the garden as magically as the black heady grapes. Dr. Taza loved to tell stories about the Mafia and its exploits over the centuries and in Michael Corleone he had a fascinated listener. There were times when even Don Tommasino would be carried away by the balmy air, the fruity, intoxicating16 wine, the elegant and quiet comfort of the garden, and tell a story from his own practical experience. The doctor was the legend, the Don the reality.
In this antique garden, Michael Corleone learned about the roots from which his father grew. That the word "Mafia" had originally meant place of refuge. Then it became the name for the secret organization that sprang up to fight against the rulers who had crushed the country and its people for centuries. Sicily was a land that had been more cruelly raped17 than any other in history. The Inquisition had tortured rich and poor alike. The landowning barons19 and the princes of the Catholic Church exercised absolute power over the shepherds and farmers. The police were the instruments of their power and so identified with them that to be called a policeman is the foulest20 insult one Sicilian can hurl21 at another.
Faced with the savagery23 of this absolute power, the suffering people learned never to betray their anger and their hatred for fear of being crushed. They learned never to make themselves vulnerable by uttering any sort of threat since giving such a warning insured a quick reprisal24. They learned that society was their enemy and so when they sought redress25 for their wrongs they went to the rebel underground, the Mafia. And the Mafia cemented its power by originating the law of silence, the omerta. In the countryside of Sicily a stranger asking directions to the nearest town will not even receive the courtesy of an answer. And the greatest crime any member of the Mafia could commit would be to tell the police the name of the man who had just shot him or done him any kind of injury. Omerta became the religion of the people. A woman whose husband has been murdered would not tell the police the name of her husband's murderer, not even of her child's murderer,, her daughter's raper26.
Justice had never been forthcoming from the authorities and so the people had always gone to the Robin27 Hood28 Mafia. And to some extent the Mafia still fulfilled this role. People turned to their local capo-mafioso for help in every emergency. He was their social worker, their district captain ready with a basket of food and a job, their protector.
But what Dr. Taza did not add, what Michael learned on his own in the months that followed, was that the Mafia in Sicily had become the illegal arm of the rich and even the auxiliary29 police of the legal and political structure. It had become a degenerate30 capitalist structure, anti-communist, anti-liberal, placing its own taxes on every form of business endeavor no matter how small.
Michael Corleone understood for the first time why men like his father chose to become thieves and murderers rather than members of the legal society. The poverty and fear and degradation31 were too awful to be acceptable to any man of spirit. And in America some emigrating Sicilians had assumed there would be an equally cruel authority.
Dr. Taza offered to take Michael into Palermo with him on his weekly visit to the bordello but Michael refused. His flight to Sicily had prevented him from getting proper medical treatment for his smashed jaw32 and he now carried a memento33 from Captain McCluskey on the left side of his face. The bones had knitted badly, throwing his profile askew34, giving him the appearance of depravity when viewed from that side. He had always been vain about his looks and this upset him more than he thought possible. The pain that came and went he didn't mind at all, Dr. Taza gave him some pills that deadened it. Taza offered to treat his face but Michael refused. He had been there long enough to learn that Dr. Taza was perhaps the worst physician in Sicily. Dr. Taza read everything but his medical literature, which he admitted he could not understand. He had passed his medical exams through the good offices of the most important Mafia chief in Sicily who had made a special trip to Palermo to confer with Taza's professors about what grades they should give him. And this too showed how the Mafia in Sicily was cancerous to the society it inhabited. Merit meant nothing. Talent meant nothing. Work meant nothing. The Mafia Godfather gave you your profession as a gift.
Michael had plenty of time to think things out. During the day he took walks in the countryside, always accompanied by two of the shepherds attached to Don Tommasino's estate. The shepherds of the island were often recruited to act as the Mafia's hired killers35 and did their job simply to earn money to live. Michael thought about his father's organization. If it continued to prosper36 it would grow into what had happened here on this island, so cancerous that it would destroy the whole country. Sicily was already a land of ghosts, its men emigrating to every other country on earth to be able to earn their bread, or simply to escape being murdered for exercising their political and economic freedoms.
On his long walks the most striking thing in Michael's eyes was the magnificent beauty of the country; he walked through the orange orchards37 that formed shady deep caverns38 through the countryside with their ancient conduits splashing water out of the fanged39 mouths of great snake stones carved before Christ. Houses built like ancient Roman villas41, with huge marble portals and great vaulted42 rooms, falling into ruins or inhabited by stray sheep. On the horizon the bony hills shone like picked bleached43 bones piled high. Gardens and fields, sparkly green, decorated the desert landscape like bright emerald necklaces. And sometimes he walked as far as the town of Corleone, its eighteen thousand people strung out in dwellings44 that pitted the side of the nearest mountain, the mean hovels built out of black rock quarried45 from that mountain. In the last year there had been over sixty murders in Corleone and it seemed that death shadowed the town. Further on, the wood of Ficuzza broke the savage22 monotony of arable46 plain.
His two shepherd bodyguards47 always carried their luparas with them when accompanying Michael on his walks. The deadly Sicilian shotgun was the favorite weapon of the Mafia. Indeed the police chief sent by Mussolini to clean the Mafia out of Sicily had, as one of his first steps, ordered all stone walls in Sicily to be knocked down to not more than three feet in height so that murderers with their luparas could not use the walls as ambush48 points for their assassinations49. This didn't help much and the police minister solved his problem by arresting and deporting50 to penal51 colonies any male suspected of being a mafioso.
When the island of Sicily was liberated52 by the Allied53 Armies, the American military government officials believed that anyone imprisoned54 by the Fascist55 regime was a democrat56 and many of these mafiosi were appointed as mayors of villages or interpreters to the military government. This good fortune enabled the Mafia to reconstitute itself and become more formidable than ever before.
The long walks, a bottle of strong wine at night with a heavy plate of pasta and meat, enabled Michael to sleep. There were books in Italian in Dr. Taza's library and though Michael spoke58 dialect Italian and had taken some college courses in Italian, his reading of these books took a great deal of effort and time. His speech became almost accentiess and, though he could never pass as a native of the district, it would be believed that he was one of those strange Italians from the far north of Italy bordering the Swiss and Germans.
The distortion of the left side of his face made him more native. It was the kind of disfigurement common in Sicily because of the lack of medical care. The little injury that cannot lie patched up simply for lack of money. Many children, many men, bore disfigurements that in America would have been repaired by minor59 surgery or sophisticated medical treatments.
Michael often thought of Kay, of her smile, her body, and always felt a twinge o€ conscience at leaving her so brutally60 without a word of farewell. Oddly enough his conscience was never troubled by the two men he had murdered; Sollozzo had tried to kill his father, Captain McCluskey had disfigured him for life.
Dr. Taza always kept after him about getting surgery done for his lopsided face, especially when Michael asked him for pain-killing drugs, the pain getting worse as time went on, and more frequent. Taza explained that there was a facial nerve below the eye from which radiated a whole complex of nerves. Indeed, this was the favorite spot for Mafia torturers, who searched it out on the cheeks of their victims with the needle-fine point of an ice pick. That particular nerve in Michael's fee had been injured or perhaps there was a splinter of bone lanced into it. Simple surgery in a Palermo hospital would permanently62 relieve the pain.
Michael refused. When the doctor asked why, Michael grinned and said, "It's something from home."
And he really didn't mind the pain, which was more an ache, a small throbbing63 in his skull64, like a motored apparatus65 running in liquid to purify it.
It was nearly seven months of leisurely66 rustic67 living before Michael felt real boredom68. At about this time Don Tommasino became very busy and was seldom seen at the villa40. He was having his troubles with the "new Mafia" springing up in Palermo, young men who were making a fortune out of the postwar construction boom in that city. With this wealth they were trying to encroach on the country fiefs of oldtime Mafia leaders whom they contemptuously labeled Moustache Petes. Don Tommasino was kept busy defending his domain69. And so Michael was deprived of the old man's company and had to be content with Dr. Taza's stories, which were beginning to repeat themselves.
One morning Michael decided70 to take a long hike to the mountains beyond Corleone. He was, naturally, accompa nied by the two shepherd bodyguards. This was not really a protection against enemies of the Corleone Family. It was simply too dangerous for anyone not a native to go wandering about by himself. It was dangerous enough for a native. The region was loaded with bandits, with Mafia partisans71 fighting against each other and endangering everybody else in the process. He might also be mistaken for a pagliaio thief.
A pagliaio is a straw-thatched but erected72 in the fields to house farming tools and to provide shelter for the agricultural laborers73 so that they will not have to carry them on the long walk from their homes in the village. In Sicily the peasant does not live on the land he cultivates. It is too dangerous and any arable land, if he owns it, is too precious. Rather, he lives in his village and at sunrise begins his voyage out to work in distant fields, a commuter74 on foot. A worker who arrived at his pagliaio and found it looted was an injured man indeed. The bread was taken out of his mouth for that day. The Mafia, after the law proved helpless, took this interest of the peasant under its protection and solved the problem in typical fashion. It hunted down and slaughtered75 all pagliaio thieves. It was inevitable76 that some innocents suffered. It was possible that if Michael wandered past a pagliaio that had just been looted he might be adjudged the criminal unless he had somebody to vouch77 for him.
So on one sunny morning he started hiking across the fields followed by his two faithful shepherds. One of them was a plain simple fellow, almost moronic78, silent as the dead and with a face as impassive as an Indian. He had the wiry small build of the typical Sicilian before they ran to the fat of middle age. His name was Calo.
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 tattooed80 before his ship was sunk and he was captured by the British. But the tattoo79 made him a famous man in his village. Sicilians do not often let themselves be tattooed, they do not have the opportunity nor the inclination81. (The shepherd, Fabrizzio, had done so primarily to cover a splotchy red birthmark on his belly.) And yet the Mafia market carts had gaily82 painted scenes on their sides, beautifully primitive83 paintings done with loving care. In any case, Fabrizzio, back is 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 babbling84 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, groves85 of almond and olive trees, all blooming. That had been one of the surprises. Michael had expected a barren land because of the legendary87 poverty of Sicilians. And yet he had found it a land of gushing88 plenty, carpeted with flowers scented90 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 exodus91 from what seemed to be a Garden of Eden.
He had planned to walk to the coastal92 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 is gaudy93 flowers, the scent89 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 site of his face had completely healed but the bone had formed improperly94 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, disdaining95 handkerchiefs as English foppery, blow out their noses in the asphalt gutters96.
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 surgical97 procedure using an instrument like a spoon to push out the bone to its proper shape. Now, however, said the doo tor, 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 watery98 shade of an orange grove86 to eat lunch and drink their wine. Fabrizzio was chattering99 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 writhed100 in a lover's agony and the dagger101 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 portico102 and fluted103 Grecian columns and through those columns came a bevy104 of village girls flanked by two stout105 matrons clad in black. They were from the village and had obviously fulfilled their ancient duty to the local baron18 by cleaning his villa and otherwise preparing it for his winter sojourn106. Now they were going into the fields to pick the flowers with which they would fill the rooms. They were gathering107 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 ripened108 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 poised110, 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 exquisite111 dark creaminess and her eyes, enormous, dark violet or brown but dark with long heavy lashes112 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 hoarsely113. 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 lustful114. 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 pointed57 toward the grove. The girls fled laughing, with the black-clad, stout matrons scolding them on.
As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing115, his heart pounding in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging through his body, through all its extremities116 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 tie 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 deserted117 except for small boys and a meandering118 donkey.
The proprietor119 of the café came to serve them. He was a short, burly man, almost dwarfish120 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 jug121 and it was even better than he claimed, dark purple and as powerful as a brandy. Fabrizzo 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 cafe 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 curdy122, "No. I don't know any girl like that." He vanished from the terrace into his café.
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 grimaced123 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 mischief124. I think we'd better start walking toward Corleone."
Despite his months on the island Michael still could not get used to the Sicilian touchiness125 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 bastard126 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 manly127. This was the first time the shepherds had seen the Corleone stare. Don Tommasino, knowing Michael's true identity and deed, had always been wary128 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 rigid129 white face, his anger that came off him like cold smoke off ice, sobered their laughter and snuffed out their familiar friendliness130.
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 café. 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 wariness131 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 shrugged132, more wary still, knowing he was not dealing133 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 supervision134 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 amazement135. Fabrizzio whispered in awe136, "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 snarled137 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 grudgingly138, "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 inquiries139 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 goodwill140, 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 happen. 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 grunted141. "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 interfere142 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."
Dr. Taza said, "I'll coat it with a drug before you have to see her. It makes your flesh a little numb143 but, don't worry, you won't be kissing her for a while yet." Both doctor and Don smiled at this witticism144.
By Sunday, Michael had an Alfa Romeo, battered145 but serviceable. He had also made a bus trip to Palermo to buy presents for the girl and her family. He had learned that the girl's name was Apollonia and every night he thought of her lovely face and her lovely name. He had to drink a good deal of wine to get some sleep and orders were given to the old women servants in the house to leave a chilled bottle at his bedside. He drank.it empty every night.
On Sunday, to the tolling146 of church bells that covered all of Sicily, he drove the Alfa Romeo to the village and parked it just outside the café. Calo and Fabrizzio were in the back seat with their luparas and Michael told them they were to wait in the café, they were not to come to the house. The café was closed but Vitelli was there waiting for them, leaning against the railing of his empty terrace.
They shook hands all around and Michael took the three packages, the presents, and trudged147 up the hill with Vitelli to his home. This proved to be larger than the usual village hut, the Vitellis were not poverty-stricken.
Inside the house was familiar with statues of the Madonna entombed in glass, votive lights flickering148 redly at their feet. The two sons were waiting, also dressed in their Sunday black. They were two sturdy young men just out of their teens but liking149 older because of their hard work on the farm. The mother was a vigorous woman, as stout as her husband. There was no sign of the girl.
After the introductions, which Michael did not even hear, they sat in the room that might possibly have been a living room or just as easily the formal dining room. It was cluttered150 with all kinds of furniture and not very large but for Sicily it was middle-class splendor151.
Michael gave Signor Vitelli and Signora Vitelli their presents. For the father it was a gold cigar-cutter, for the mother a bolt of the finest cloth purchasable in Palermo. He still had one package for the girl. His presents were received with reserved thanks. The gifts were a little too premature152, he should not have given anything until his second visit.
The father said to him, in man-to-man country fashion, "Don't think we're so of no account to welcome strangers into our house so easily. But Don Tommasino vouched153 for you personally and nobody in this province would ever doubt the word of that good man. And so we make you welcome. But I must tell you that if your intentions are serious about my daughter, we will have to know a little more about you and your family. You can understand, your family is from this country."
Michael nodded and said politely, "I will tell you anything you wish to know anytime."
Signor Vitelli held up a hand. "I'm not a nosy154 man. Let's see if it's necessary first. Right now you're welcome in my house as a friend of Don Tommasino."
Despite the drug painted inside his nose, Michael actually smelled the girl's presence in the room. He turned and she was standing in the arched doorway155 that led to the back of the house. The smell was of fresh flowers and lemon blossoms but she wore nothing in her hair of jet black curls, nothing on her plain severe black dress, obviously her Sunday best. She gave him a quick glance and a tiny smile before she cast her eyes down demurely156 and sat down next to her mother.
Again Michael felt that shortness of breath, that flooding through his body of something that was not so much desire as an insane possessiveness. He understood for the first time the classical jealousy157 of the Italian male. He was at that moment ready to kill anyone who touched this girl, who tried to claim her, take her away from him. He wanted to own her as wildly as a miser158 wants to own gold coins, as hungrily as a sharecropper wants to own his own land. Nothing was going to stop him from owning this girl, possessing her, locking her in a house and keeping her prisoner only for himself. He didn't want anyone even to see her. When she turned to smile at one of her brothers Michael gave that young man a murderous look without even realizing it. The family could see it was a classical case of the "thunderbolt" and they were reassured159. This young man would be putty in their daughter's hands until they were married. After that of course things would change but it wouldn't matter.
Michael had bought himself some new clothes in Palermo and was no longer the roughly dressed peasant, and it was obvious to the family that he was a Don of some kind. His smashed face did not make him as evil-looking as he believed; because his other profile was so handsome it made the disfigurement interesting even. And in any case this was a land where to be called disfigured you had to compete with a host of men who had suffered extreme physical misfortune.
Michael looked directly at the girl, the lovely ovals of her face. Her lips now he could see were almost blue so dark was the blood pulsating160 in them. He said, not daring to speak her name, "I saw you by the orange groves the other day. When you ran away. I hope I didn't frighten you?"
The girl raised her eyes to him for just a fraction. She shook her head. But the loveliness of those eyes had made Michael look away. The mother said tartly161, "Apollonia, speak to the poor fellow, he's come miles to see you," but the girl's long jet lashes remained closed like wings over her eyes. Michael handed her the present wrapped in gold paper and the girl put it in her lap. The father said, "Open it, girl," but her hands did not move. Her hands were small and brown, an urchin's hands. The mother reached over and opened the package impatiently, yet careful not to tear the precious paper. The red velvet162 jeweler's box gave her pause, she had never held such a thing in her hands and didn't know how to spring its catch. But she got it open on pure instinct and then took out the present.
It was a heavy gold chain to be worn as a necklace, and it awed163 them not only because of its obvious value but because a gift of gold in this society was also a statement of the most serious intentions. It was no less than a proposal of matrimony, or rather the signal that there was the intention to propose matrimony. They could no longer doubt the seriousness of this stranger. And they could not doubt his substance.
Apollonia still had not touched her present. Her mother held it up for her to see and she raised those long lashes for a moment and then she looked directly at Michael, her doelike brown eyes grave, and said, "Grazie." It was the first time he had heard her voice.
It had all the velvety164 softness of youth and shyness and it set Michael's ears ringing. He kept looking away from her and talking to the father and mother simply because looking at her confused him so much. But he noticed that despite the conservative looseness of her dress her body almost shone through the cloth with sheer sensuality. And he noticed the darkening of her skin blushing, the dark creamy skin, going darker with the blood surging to her feet.
Finally Michael rose to go and the family rose too. They said their good-byes formally, the girl at last confronting him as they shook hands, and he felt the shock of her skin on his skin, her skin warm and rough, peasant skin. The father walked down the hill with him to his car and invited him to Sunday dinner the next week. Michael nodded but he knew he couldn't wait a week to see the girl again.
He didn't. The next day, without his shepherds, he drove to the village and sat on the garden terrace of the café to chat with her father. Signor Vitelli took pity on him and sent for his wife and daughter to come down to the café to join them. This meeting was less awkward. The girl Apollonia was less shy, and spoke more. She was dressed in her everyday print frock which suited her coloring much better.
The next day the same thing happened. Only this time Apollonia was wearing the gold chain he had given her. He smiled at her then, knowing that this was a signal to him. He walked with her up the hill, her mother close behind them. But it was impossible for the two young people to keep their bodies from brushing against each other and once Apollonia stumbled and fell against him so that he had to hold her and her body so warm and alive in his hands started a deep wave of blood rising in his body. They could not see the mother behind them smiling because her daughter was a mountain goat and had not stumbled on this path since she was an infant in diapers. And smiling because this was the only way this young man was going to get his hands on her daughter until the marriage.
This went on for two weeks. Michael brought her presents every time he came and gradually she became less shy. But they could never meet without a chaperone being present. She was just a village girl, barely literate14, (scanned and fully proofed by iliter8) with no idea of the world, but she had a freshness, an eagerness for life that, with help of the language barrier, made her seem interesting. Everything went very swiftly at Michael's request. And because the girl was not only fascinated by him but knew he must be rich, a wedding date was set for the Sunday two weeks away.
Now Don Tommasino took a hand. He had received word from America that Michael was not subject to orders but that all elementary precautions should be taken. So Don Tommasino appointed himself the parent of the bridegroom to insure the presence of his own bodyguards. Calo and Fabrizzio were also members of the wedding party from Corieone as was Dr. Taza. The bride and groom165 would live in Dr. Taza's villa surrounded by its stone wall.
The wedding was the usual peasant one. The villagers stood in the streets and threw flowers as the bridal party, principals and guests, went on foot from the church to the bride's home. The wedding procession pelted166 the neighbors with sugar-coated almonds, the traditional wedding candies, and with candies left over made sugary white mountain on the bride's wedding bed, in this case only a symbolic167 one since the first night would be spent in the villa outside Corleone. The wedding feast went on until midnight but bride and groom would leave before that in the Alfa Romeo. When that time came Michael was surprised to find that the mother was coming with them to the Corleone villa at the request of the bride. The father explained: the girl was young, a virgin168, a little frightened, she would need someone to talk to on the morning following her bridal night; to put her on the right track if things went wrong. These matters could sometimes get very tricky169. Michael saw Apollonia looking at him with doubt in her huge doe-brown eyes. He smiled at her and nodded.
And so it came about that they drove back to the villa outside Corleone with the mother-in-law in the car. But the older woman immediately put her head together with the servants of Dr. Taza, gave her daughter a hug and a kiss and disappeared from the scene. Michael and his bride were allowed to go to their huge bedroom alone.
Apollonia was still wearing her bridal costume with a cloak thrown over it. Her trunk and case had been brought up to the room from the car. On a small table was a bottle of wine and a plate of small wedding cakes. The huge canopied170 bed was never out of their vision. The young girl in the center of the room waited for Michael to make the first move.
And now that he had her alone, now that he legally possessed171 her, now that there was no barrier to his enjoying that body and face he had dreamed about every night, Michael could not bring himself to approach her. He watched as she took off the bridal shawl and draped it over a chair, and placed the bridal crown on the small dressing172 table. That table had an array of perfumes and creams that Michael had had sent from Palermo. The girl tallied173 them with her eyes for a moment.
Michael turned off the lights, thinking the girl was waiting for some darkness to shield her body while she undressed. But the Sicilian moon came through the unshuttered windows, bright as gold, and Michael went to close the shutters174 but not all the way, the room would be too warm.
The girl was still standing by the table and so Michael went out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. He and Dr. Taza and Don Tommasino had taken a glass of wine together in the garden while the women had prepared themselves for bed. He had expected to find Apollonia in her nightgown when he returned, already between the covers. He was surprised that the mother had not done this service for her daughter. Maybe Apollonia had wanted him to help her to undress. But he was certain she was too shy, too innocent for such forward behavior.
Coming back into the bedroom, he found it completely dark, someone had closed the shutters all the way. He groped his way toward the bed and could make out the shape of Apollonia's body lying under the covers, her back to him, her body curved away from him and huddled175 up. He undressed and slipped naked beneath the sheets. He stretched out one hand and touched silky naked skin. She had not put on her gown and this boldness delighted him. Slowly, carefully, he put one hand on her shoulder and pressed her body gently so that she would turn to him. She turned slowly and his hand touched her breast, soft, full and then she was in his arms so quickiy that their bodies came together in one line of silken electricity and he finally had his arms around her, was kissing her warm mouth deeply, was crushing her body and breasts against him and then rolling his body on top of hers.
Her flesh and hair taut176 silk, now she was all eagerness, surging against him wildly in a virginal erotic frenzy177. When he entered her she gave a little gasp178 and was still for just a second and then in a powerful forward thrust of her pelvis she locked her satiny legs around his hips179. When they came to the end they were locked together so fiercely, straining against each other so violently, that falling away from each other was like the tremble before death.
That night and the weeks that followed, Michael Corleone came to understand the premium180 put on virginity by socially primitive people. It was a period of sensuality that he had never before experienced, a sensuality mixed with a feeling of masculine power. Apollonia in those first days became almost his slave. Given trust, given affection, a young full-blooded girl aroused from virginity to erotic awareness181 was as delicious as an exactly ripe fruit.
She on her part brightened up the rather gloomy masculine atmosphere of the villa. She had packed her mother off the very next day after her bridal night and presided at the communal182 table with bright girlish charm. Don Tommasino dined with them every night and Dr. Taza told all his old stories as they drank wine in the garden full of statues garlanded with blood-red flowers, and so the evenings passed pleasantly enough. At night in their bedroom the newly married couple spent hours of feverish183 lovemaking. Michael could not get enough of Apollonia's beautifully sculpted184 body, her honey-colored skin, her huge brown eyes glowing with passion. She had a wonderfully fresh smell, a fleshly smell perfumed by her sex yet almost sweet and unbearably185 aphrodisiacal. Her virginal passion matched his nuptial186 lust109 and often it was dawn when they fell into an exhausted187 slumber188. Sometimes, spent but not yet ready for sleep, Michael sat on the window ledge189 and stared at Apollonia's naked body while she slept. Her face too was lovely in repose190, a perfect face he had seen before only in art books of painted Italian Madonnas who by no stretch of the artist's skill could be thought virginal.
In the first week of their marriage they went on picnics and small trips in the Alfa Romeo. But then Don Tommasino took Michael aside and explained that the marriage had made his presence and identity common knowledge in that part of Sicily and precautions had to be taken against the enemies of the Corleone Family, whose long arms also stretched to this island refuge. Don Tommasino put armed guards around his villa and the two shepherds, Calo and Fabrizzio, were fixtures191 inside the walls. So Michael and his wife had to remain on the villa grounds. Michael passed the time by teaching Apollonia to read and write English and to drive the car along the inner walls of the villa. About this time Don Tommasino seemed to be preoccupied192 and poor company. He was still having trouble with the new Mafia in the town of Palermo, Dr. Taza said.
One night in the garden an old village woman who worked in the house as a servant brought a dish of fresh olives and then turned to Michael and said, "Is it true what everybody is saying that you are the son of Don Corleone in New York City, the Godfather?"
Michael saw Don Tommasino shaking his head in disgust at the general knowledge of their secret. But the old crone was looking at him in so concerned a fashion, as if it was important for her to know the truth, that Michael nodded. "Do you know my father?" he asked.
The woman's name was Filomena and her face was as wrinkled and brown as a walnut193, her brown-stained teeth showing through the shell of her flesh. For the first time since he had been in the villa she smiled at him. "The Godfather saved my life once," she said, "and my brains too." She made a gesture toward her head.
She obviously wanted to say something else so Michael smiled to encourage her. She asked almost fearfully, "Is it true that Luca Brasi is dead?"
Michael nodded again and was surprised at the look of release on the old woman's face. Filomena crossed herself and said, "God forgive me, but may his soul roast in hell for eternity194."
Michael remembered his old curiosity about Brasi, and had the sudden intuition that this woman knew the story Hagen and Sonny had refused to tell him. He poured the woman a glass of wine and made her sit down. "Tell me about my father and Luca Brasi," he said gently. "I know some of it, but how did they become friends and why was Brasi so devoted195 to my father? Don't be afraid, come tell me."
Filomena's wrinkled face, her raisin-black eyes, turned to Don Tommasino, who in some way signaled his permission. And so Filomena passed the evening for them by telling her story.
Thirty years before, Filomena had been a midwife in New York City, on Tenth Avenue, servicing the Italian colony. The women were always pregnant and she prospered196. She taught doctors a few things when they tried to interfere in a difficult birth. Her husband was then a prosperous grocery store owner, dead now poor soul, she blessed him, though he had been a card player and wencher who never thought to put aside for hard times. In any event one cursed night thirty years ago when all honest people were long in their beds, there came a knocking on Filomena's door. She was by no means frightened, it was the quiet hour babes prudently197 chose to enter safely into this sinful world, and so she dressed and opened the door. Outside it was Luca Brasi whose reputation even then was fearsome. It was known also that he was a bachelor. And so Filomena was immedi ately frightened. She thought he had come to do her husband harm, that perhaps her husband had foolishly refusal Brasi some small favor.
But Brasi had come on the usual errand. He told Filomena that there was a woman about to give birth, that the house was out of the neighborhood some distance away and that she was to come with him. Filomena immediately sensed something amiss. Brasi's brutal61 face looked almost like that of a madman that night, he was obviously in the grip of some demon198. She tried to protest that she attended only women whose history she knew but he shoved a handful of green dollars in her hand and ordered her roughly to come along with him. She was too frightened to refuse.
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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vendettas
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| n.家族世仇( vendetta的名词复数 )；族间仇杀；长期争斗；积怨 | |
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implement
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| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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lucrative
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| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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gangsters
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| 匪徒，歹徒( gangster的名词复数 ) | |
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deported
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| v.将…驱逐出境( deport的过去式和过去分词 )；举止 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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intoxicating
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| a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的 | |
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raped
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| v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸 | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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barons
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| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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foulest
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| adj.恶劣的( foul的最高级 )；邪恶的；难闻的；下流的 | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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savagery
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reprisal
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| n.报复，报仇，报复性劫掠 | |
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redress
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| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
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raper
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| [法] 强奸犯 | |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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auxiliary
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| adj.辅助的，备用的 | |
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degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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memento
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| n.纪念品，令人回忆的东西 | |
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askew
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| adv.斜地；adj.歪斜的 | |
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killers
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| 凶手( killer的名词复数 )； 消灭…者； 致命物； 极难的事 | |
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prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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fanged
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| adj.有尖牙的，有牙根的，有毒牙的 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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quarried
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| v.从采石场采得( quarry的过去式和过去分词 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
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arable
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| adj.可耕的，适合种植的 | |
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bodyguards
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| n.保镖，卫士，警卫员( bodyguard的名词复数 ) | |
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ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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assassinations
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| n.暗杀( assassination的名词复数 ) | |
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deporting
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| v.将…驱逐出境( deport的现在分词 )；举止 | |
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penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fascist
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| adj.法西斯主义的；法西斯党的；n.法西斯主义者，法西斯分子 | |
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56
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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57
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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58
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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59
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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60
brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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61
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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62
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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63
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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64
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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65
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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66
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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67
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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68
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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69
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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70
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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71
partisans
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| 游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙 | |
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72
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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73
laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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74
commuter
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| n.(尤指市郊之间)乘公交车辆上下班者 | |
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75
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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77
vouch
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| v.担保；断定；n.被担保者 | |
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78
moronic
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| a.低能的 | |
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79
tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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80
tattooed
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| v.刺青，文身( tattoo的过去式和过去分词 )；连续有节奏地敲击；作连续有节奏的敲击 | |
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81
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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82
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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83
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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84
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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85
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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86
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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87
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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88
gushing
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| adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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89
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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90
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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91
exodus
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| v.大批离去，成群外出 | |
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92
coastal
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| adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的 | |
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93
gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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94
improperly
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| 不正确地，不适当地 | |
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95
disdaining
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| 鄙视( disdain的现在分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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96
gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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97
surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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98
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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99
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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100
writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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102
portico
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| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
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103
fluted
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| a.有凹槽的 | |
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104
bevy
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| n.一群 | |
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106
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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107
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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108
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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109
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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110
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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111
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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112
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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113
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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114
lustful
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| a.贪婪的；渴望的 | |
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115
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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116
extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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117
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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118
meandering
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| 蜿蜒的河流，漫步，聊天 | |
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119
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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120
dwarfish
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| a.像侏儒的，矮小的 | |
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121
jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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122
curdy
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| adj.成凝乳状的，凝结了的 | |
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123
grimaced
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| v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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124
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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125
touchiness
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| n.易动气，过分敏感 | |
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126
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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127
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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128
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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129
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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130
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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131
wariness
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| n. 注意,小心 | |
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132
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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133
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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134
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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135
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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136
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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137
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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138
grudgingly
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139
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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140
goodwill
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| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
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141
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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142
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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143
numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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144
witticism
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| n.谐语，妙语 | |
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145
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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146
tolling
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| [财]来料加工 | |
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147
trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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148
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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149
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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150
cluttered
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| v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满… | |
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151
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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152
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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153
vouched
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| v.保证( vouch的过去式和过去分词 )；担保；确定；确定地说 | |
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154
nosy
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| adj.鼻子大的，好管闲事的，爱追问的；n.大鼻者 | |
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155
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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156
demurely
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| adv.装成端庄地，认真地 | |
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157
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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158
miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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159
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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160
pulsating
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| adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动 | |
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161
tartly
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| adv.辛辣地，刻薄地 | |
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162
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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163
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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164
velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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165
groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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166
pelted
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| （连续地）投掷( pelt的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续抨击； 攻击； 剥去…的皮 | |
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167
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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168
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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169
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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170
canopied
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| adj. 遮有天篷的 | |
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171
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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172
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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173
tallied
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| v.计算，清点( tally的过去式和过去分词 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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174
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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175
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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176
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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177
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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178
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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179
hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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180
premium
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| n.加付款；赠品；adj.高级的；售价高的 | |
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181
awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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182
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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183
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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184
sculpted
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| adj.经雕塑的 | |
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185
unbearably
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| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
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186
nuptial
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| adj.婚姻的，婚礼的 | |
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187
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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188
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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189
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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190
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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191
fixtures
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| （房屋等的）固定装置( fixture的名词复数 )； 如（浴盆、抽水马桶）； 固定在某位置的人或物； （定期定点举行的）体育活动 | |
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192
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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193
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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194
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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195
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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196
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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197
prudently
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| adv. 谨慎地，慎重地 | |
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198
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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