Matteo Falcone (Story of the Month)

Matteo Falcone is a man of about fifty, with knotted muscles, sinewy arms, broad between the shoulders, light in his movements as a cat, with two large eyes from which strong, piercing rays shine, thin lips, and curly black hair. His fame has spread throughout his homeland — the island of Corsica — for his wondrous power of hitting the mark: whenever he shot, he hit, whether by night or by day. He is pleasant in company and of an easy temper; but if he is wounded or insulted, he is a bitter enemy, full of defiance and might, and he will set aside his very humanity until he has attained his purpose against his adversary...

Matteo Falcone left the birthplace where he was born and raised for the port of Porto-Vecchio in the south of the island, to live there a life of quiet and peace of mind in a humble country house surrounded by a forest of tangled trees and interlacing branches, far from the din and tumult of life. He spent an age of his life tending with his own hands a plot of land and a few flocks of sheep, and from all this he gained wealth that raised him to the rank of the countryside's notables and rich men; and withal he is generous and liberal, open of hand and of face, quick to do good, slow to do evil.

Matteo married Giuseppa when young, and by her was granted three daughters, who all married, and he was able to find help in his daughters' husbands; yet his heart remained sorrowful, grieving that God had not answered him with a boy to carry for him some of the burdens and troubles of life that weighed upon him. Then... then came the bearer of glad tidings... The days smiled upon him with a child who was the family's sweet hope, its only one, the heir of its name and its wealth... Fortunato. The child grew up the delight of both his father's and his mother's eyes; they watched over him and lavished on him their tenderness and care, and then they set about rearing him to be the equal of his father. He grew up with the signs of courage and comeliness in his eyes, and the marks of strength and vigor in his body...

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On the bright morning of an autumn day — the child being ten years old — the father and his wife set out to see how their sheep were faring. The son wanted to go with them, but the father insisted that he stay by the house to guard it.

The hours slipped by while the child, alone, now stretched himself at ease before the door under the gentle rays of the sun, now delighted in gazing at the lofty trees of the forest and the towering mountains within sight, and now relished the beautiful fancies stirring in his head as he imagined that he would visit the city on Sunday and see his uncle the commandant, and roam through its quarters and behold things he had been denied for an age. The thought took hold of him and he smiled — but a sound robbed him of the pleasure of his fancy and startled him from his place, and he sprang up to see... and he felt as though his heart were being torn out with dread and fear, for what he had heard was the sound of gunshots, rapid and successive, drawing nearer to him little by little. He cast his gaze all around, and nothing appeared to him but a figure slipping toward him out of the forest, stumbling on his way and laboring in his gait from the effects of pain and fatigue, blood dripping from his thigh.

No wonder — for this was a criminal who had stolen away, while the night lay still, toward the city; the soldiers had closed in on him, and he had yielded and submitted after a struggle; then he found a way out and broke loose, seeking freedom and smashing the prison fetters that awaited him a few steps away, while they were on his trail, unwearied by effort and untouched by fatigue, pursuing him with a hail from their rifles, while he held them off with bullets and flight at one and the same time. He was huge of frame, animal in appearance, wretched in aspect, ragged of clothing, with a thick, untrimmed beard, disheveled and dusty, striking fright and terror into the soul — yet his burdens had left him broken and weak.

Then he came up to the boy and stood before him, asking him to find him a way out: "I am Gianetto Sanpiero. The police are on my trail, and I cannot flee. Shall I not find refuge in your house?" The child turned away from him — at first — and refused him what he asked; so the man began to threaten and menace. But the child could see what pain he was suffering and what exhaustion had come over him, and he leapt away, saying: "Neither can your rifle reach me, for you lack ammunition, nor can your dagger gain any purpose against me, for I am in a strong fortress against it!" The man sensed how his affair would end, and he rushed to entreat the boy's pity in humility, to placate him gently, waving before him a silver coin which he toyed with in his fingers. Pity and mercy awoke in the boy's heart, and in the coin he saw the wage of the good he would render, and his gaze fastened upon it... Then his lips parted in a delicate smile as he slipped the coin into his pocket and arranged the hay over the wounded criminal; then he set about wiping away the traces of blood with precision and skill, and then lay down before the door as though nothing had happened...

After a while the police came, headed by an officer... It was Teodoro Gamba, Fortunato's cousin — a young man brimming over with strength and energy, who hunts down criminals and felons without pity or compassion for them, and tracks their traces without respite or leniency...

The officer smiled as he walked toward his cousin Fortunato, asking him for news of the fugitive criminal: "Did you not see a man pass by you just now?" The boy said: "Ah yes — a man pass by me just now!" The officer said: "Yes, a man with a long beard, with blood streaming from his thigh." Said Fortunato, making sport of his cousin: "Yes, I remember now — it was the priest. He was riding his beautiful horse Piero..." The officer's anger flared to see the boy mocking him, and he said: "You did see him — where is he? Speak, you rascal, or else..." And the boy went on jeering at the officer: "Do you suppose I could have seen him while I was sleeping peacefully?" Said the exasperated officer harshly: "Speak, you cursed boy — he passed by you just now!" And the boy answered, smiling in derision: "I am Fortunato, and this is the house of my father, Matteo Falcone. Would you care to take your rest?" The officer's patience gave out, and he burst forth in fury, ordering the police: "Into the house, comrades — this devil must have hidden the criminal!" The police set off to carry out their orders, and the officer seized the boy by the ear to hold him back, while he squirmed and shouted: "My father Matteo Falcone will not be pleased that a band of strangers should enter his house while he is away!" And the officer began to threaten the boy: "Woe to you, and woe again! Do you not know that I can carry you off to Corte or to Bastia and cast you into the depths of a prison, dragging chains of iron, and then set your neck between the two edges of the guillotine as requital for what you have done?" And the boy dissolved in laughter at what he heard...

The police came back having met with disappointment and failure, and one of them came to the officer, saying: "We found no one — let us try some other road than this!"

Astonishment showed on Officer Gamba's face when it seemed to him that he had been dealt defeat, and he grew troubled at finding no path to his prey; for the house was before him, and he could see all that was in it in one flashing glance — it was nothing but a single room bare of furniture. Confusion had mastered him, while the boy at his side petted his cat and smiled at the perplexity they were in.

O wasted effort, O disappointed hope! They were about to turn back after all the effort they had spent and the hardship they had met — but the officer's eyes gleamed when a flash of hope appeared to him. He had threatened the boy, and threats had availed nothing; he had menaced him, and menace had gained nothing; so let him knock at another door — perhaps... He turned to the boy: "Fortunato, I thought ill of you, but I have found you brave and clever. Would that you might come with me!" Said Fortunato, still making sport of his cousin: "Gamba, hurry to your work, or Gianetto will vanish and you will never find him!" The officer drew out his silver watch, saying: "Would you not like to have a watch like this, and strut in pride among your fellows through the streets of the city, with it hanging on your chest like a medal, while the people around you look and marvel, then press toward you asking 'What time is it?' and you smile..." And it seemed to the officer that from the child's eyes there shot a ray of hope and a ray of greed as he stared hard at the watch, saying: "No, I do not want it. When I am older, my uncle the commandant will give me a watch finer than this." The officer said: "Truly — yet his son has a watch like this one, and he is younger than you." The boy imagined the officer was mocking him to draw him on, and said: "Are you making fun of me?" Said the officer, holding the watch out to him, hope having returned to him once more: "Here it is — take it, and then tell me: where is the criminal Gianetto?" And the boy came forward calmly toward the watch, little by little, seeing it blazing and glittering under the rays of the sun, dazzling to the eye; then he grasped it, turning it over in his hands, brightening, his features smoothing, while his soul whispered to him: "Throw the coin back to its owner, and take this, for it is dearer and more precious!" And in the boy's soul the forces of fidelity and greed wrestled together: shall he betray his pledge and break his covenants? But the watch... the watch! Shall he lose it now that his hands have closed upon it?

And covetousness and greed and the love of money together overcame him, as he stood facing his cousin the officer, with the heap of hay behind him; and he raised his hand calmly, pointing backward... to the heap of hay...

The police rushed to scatter the heap of hay this way and that, and it opened upon a wounded man who could not carry himself. In the blink of an eye the police stripped Gianetto of his rifle and his dagger and bound him fast; yet he managed to turn his gaze toward the boy, sparks flying from his eye-sockets, and then he spat, saying: "You—!" The boy threw back his coin, but Gianetto, too occupied to heed it, said to the officer: "My dear Gamba: I cannot walk, so you will be forced to carry me!" The officer drew himself up with hauteur and pride, and turned his cheek away in arrogance, then said: "The intoxication of triumph and the pleasure of victory rouse in me a strength by which I could carry you alone upon my shoulder until you reach the city." And the police dispersed — some dressing Gianetto's wounds, some preparing him a litter of straw, with the officer standing over them, watching... And a few steps away, the boy Fortunato was toying with his watch, joyful and beaming... And while each was at his work, unflagging and undelaying, Matteo Falcone and his wife came down...

Matteo Falcone stood bewildered, understanding nothing of what was around him; but Gamba rushed to tell the story, praising Fortunato and thanking him for the good he had rendered him, and went on: "This wicked criminal fought us off with strength and force, then burrowed into the hay so that not one of us could sense his presence — and had it not been for Fortunato..." The father and the mother cried out together: "Fortunato!..." Said the officer calmly: "Yes — had it not been for Fortunato, we could never have found him, and all the hardship we suffered and all the effort we spent would have gone for nothing. I shall inform his uncle the commandant, that he may send him a handsome reward, and I shall enter your name and his in the report I submit to the public prosecutor." The father felt the full weight of the blow, and his heart cracked when it appeared to him that his son had sold his honor for a paltry price; and from the depths he gave a faint cry, like the echo of the beating of his wounded heart: "The shame — oh, the shame!" Then he turned and found Gianetto flung upon a bed of straw, bound to it without gentleness or mercy;

and he fixed his gaze on the man and could not turn it away — in his head grief and regret, on his face gloom and sorrow, in his eyes anguish and heartbreak. And he saw the man turn his eyes toward the house, spit, and say: "Here — here is the house of the base traitors!"

What man would let his soul whisper to him to insult this Corsican, who suspects that his dignity might be dented or his guarded honor debased? Woe to him... woe to any man whose lips part with a word from which Matteo scents insult and mockery — for a single shot from his rifle, or a single thrust of his dagger, is the only punishment for whoever does it! Nor will his mind be at ease or his heart be calm until he washes away the insult in the blood of the brazen boaster! But... but what is he to do, when it is his own son who has dented his honor and stained his good name? He felt the stabs of pain cutting into his heart, and he saw scandal and disgrace in what his son had done, and he put his hand to his burning brow while cares tore at him...

The son, seeing what was written on his father's face, wished to placate the poor man; he turned his face toward the house and walked heavily, then came back with a vessel full of milk in his hands, and offered it in humility and submission to Gianetto — but the man screamed in his face: "Away with you — away, you—!" Then he turned to a policeman at his side and asked him for water... He drank from the hand of the policeman who, only a while before, had been pouring a hail of lead upon him — but as for the son of Matteo... "Matteo Falcone"...

The officer and the police set off carrying the criminal to the city, while Matteo and Giuseppa stood in their places with bowed heads, her face darkened, and the boy between them turning his eyes now to his mother's face and now to his father's, beside himself. Then the father looked at his son with cruelty and said in a hoarse voice like the crash of thunder: "Well done, what you have done!" The boy shrieked in terror: "Father — I—!" and flung himself down kneeling at his father's feet, the tears scattering from his eyes, begging him for tenderness and mercy. The father shouted: "Away, away, you wretch!" — and he froze where he was.

The mother saw the end of the chain dangling from the boy's vest pocket and said: "Where did you get this?" He said: "My cousin Gamba gave it to me." The father tore it off violently and hurled it hard against a rock, so that it shattered into pieces, saying: "This is the first traitor in our family." And the child's tears poured down once more, while Matteo stared at him with hard, blazing looks; then he walked in silence toward the forest with his rifle on his shoulder, and then... then he called the boy, who followed him weeping. Giuseppa set off after them, her heart quaking, the earth all but reeling beneath her from excess of grief, and she seized her husband's arm, imploring him: "Matteo, Matteo — he is your son!" The man said in wrath: "Go back — go back! He is my son, and I am his father!" The woman clutched her son to her with all her strength, as though she would wrest him from his father's hands, shedding hot tears. Then she returned to the house to kneel before the image of the Virgin and pray in devout supplication.

In the forest, by a great rock, the man stopped and called his son: "Come — come here, boy. Kneel and say your prayers!" But the boy rushed toward his father: "Father, do not kill me!" The man roared a roar that made the place ring and shook the boy's strength from him: "Say your prayers!" The boy obeyed under compulsion; then after a while he raised his head with tears in his eyes, and the man said: "Have you finished them?" The boy crept toward his father: "Ah, father! Do not kill me! Mercy, father, and pardon! I will never do the like again. I will ask my uncle the commandant to treat his prisoner kindly. Do not kill me!! I am your son — I have done wrong, and I beg forgiveness and pity!" Then he poured out words to soften what had hardened in his father's heart — but the father had already leveled his rifle at him, saying:

"May God forgive you."

The boy wanted to fall upon his father's feet and kiss them, but death gave him no respite... The shot rang out and lodged in the child's heart, and he fell, writhing and thrashing in his gushing blood, moaning: "Ah — ah — ah, father!"

And Matteo turned back without casting a single glance at the boy's lifeless body. The mother — kneeling at prayer before the statue of the Virgin — heard the report of the gunshot, and her very liver split with grief and anguish, her heart torn with alarm for her son, when it appeared to her that she had lost him forever; then she rushed out in the madness of a bereaved mother, calamity grinding her without mercy. A few steps from the house she saw the father returning with bowed head, dazed, cares dividing him and sorrows contending over him, now that the sentence had been carried out; and she rushed at him crying: "My son! What — what have you done?" And the man answered in a faint, weak voice, with the moans of a man struck to the heart: "Justice — justice, my dear Giuseppa!" She said: "And where is he?" He said: "There — there on the slope. I shall bury him. He is dead — I shall pray my Lord's forgiveness for him!"

Translated by:
Kamil Mahmoud Habib