The Barber from Palermo

Book summary

In "The Barber from Palermo" by Marianna Ramondetta, Giacomo's journey unfolds against the backdrop of 1866 Sicily, where a brutal uprising forces his family to flee to the vineyards. At sixteen, he embarks on a perilous voyage to America, encountering threats, illness, and a hidden key along the way. In New York, he adopts the name James and becomes entangled in gang warfare, secrets of a stolen chalice, and an unjust murder accusation. With the jewels' location and pursuers known, New York in 1901 sets the stage for a suspenseful historical adventure, where James' past and present converge, testing the boundaries of his conscience and survival.

Excerpt from The Barber from Palermo

Giacomo Vincenzo Bongiorno tossed in his small cot. He had gone to bed hours ago, but his mother had been silly to think that he could sleep. She was silly also to think that he was unaware of what was happening in the center of Palermo, too close to his front door.

His father, a local barber, with his best friend Lorenzo, had organized a campaign to break free of Italy. They wanted their own town councils, their own police force, their own judicial system and, when they paid taxes, they wanted those taxes to go towards the betterment of Sicily, not to the beautification of Rome or displaying art in Florence.

They wanted their freedom.

But Italy was not having any of this and they were sending soldiers to take possession of the island and drive the insurgents out.

Soldiers with guns and bombs. And what could a few townsmen do - how could they fight?

It was hopeless and if it were he, Giacomo, he would just give up. But that wasn’t his father. His father would stand on his principal, he wasn’t a coward.

Well, Giacomo wouldn’t be a coward either.

He was ten years old. He was old enough to fight.

Was he old enough to die?

He slipped out of bed and reached for his sandals. He knew that his mother would be in the parlor, saying the rosary while she rocked his little sister, Antonina.

She had reminded her husband, again and again, that the Italian soldiers were men, just like him, fathers and sons, who were being sent into battle, probably some against their will. They were not monsters. She believed that no good could come of violence and begged Giacomo’s father to stay out of the protest. But her pleas fell on deaf ears.

If Giacomo wanted to go outside, he couldn’t just walk out the front door, not without his mother seeing him. He’d have to jump out the window.

Slowly Giacomo tiptoed forward, hoping that his mother wouldn’t hear him, especially when the window creaked. He was on the second floor. The small apartment was above the barber shop, but it wasn’t the first time Giacomo had sneaked out. But never for such an important reason as this.

He was just about to crank open the window when he heard shouting. Had the fighting moved even closer - now right outside his door?

Giacomo stepped back and watched in horror as the sight unfolded in front of him.

A group of men, some of them he recognized were running, holding bricks, Mr. Carnceo, who owned the town bakery, Mr. Moretti, the schoolteacher, who had taught Giacomo to read, Mr. Bruno, who sold wine out of his small home, Mr. Russo, the shoemaker, Mr. Esposito, the jeweler, and Father Bianchi the pastor of St. Agatha’s.

There were other men also, men Giacomo didn’t recognize. Perhaps they were from the neighboring villages, San Vito LoCapo, Cefalu, Trapani, Marsala. They had come to join the fight, holding concrete and large hunting knives. A few of the men had guns.

Then Giacomo spotted his father and his heart pounded. His father was not a large man, barely five foot four inches, with a small, lean body, a heart-shaped face, a shock of pitch-black hair (which he dyed religiously) and a pencil-thin mustache. He looked lost among the stronger, taller, heavier men, even if he was grasping a single shot pistol.

Where was Lorenzo Grasso? Wasn’t he the one who had organized the revolt? Why wasn’t he standing by Giacomo’s father?

Suddenly, in a spilt second everything changed. Hundreds of men in gray unforms surged forward, carrying rifles and revolvers. So many of them, equipped against a small knot of town people.

A voice thundered, loud and clear. “Your leader Lorenzo Grasso has been executed. Put down your weapons and end this futile battle. You can’t possibly win a war against us. I beg you, don’t make us do this. It’s suicide.”

It was suicide, even Giacomo knew that. And he also knew that this was the moment when they could have surrendered.

And they missed it.

It was impossible to see which man struck the first blow.

But suddenly the air was full of smoke, bricks were flying, bullets were pinging, and men were screaming.

The roar of gunfire was punctuated with the sounds of hopeless cries, of loud groans. Giacomo saw a man running with part of his face missing, his nose dangling, his teeth protruding from one of his cheeks.

He was running away one moment, the next moment he fell down in a fountain of blood, shot in the back.

Within minutes the battlefield was covered in gore, in amputated limbs. Giacomo didn’t want to keep watching but he couldn’t turn away, not until he knew that his father was safe. But he could hardly see his father, among the corpses of the slaughtered men.

And then he did.

His father had a young soldier by the neck, his arm held tightly, his gun pointed at the soldier’s head. The soldier’s uniform was covered with blood, and, even from the distance, Giacomo could see that the soldier wasn’t a grown man at all. He looked like a young boy, maybe just a few years older than Giacomo himself.

His father pointed the pistol, his finger on the trigger and then–

He froze just for a second.

A second was all that the soldier needed.

He broke free, grabbed his father’s gun and shot his father in the face.

Now it was Giacomo who was paralyzed. He stood still, watching in horror, telling himself that none of this could possibly be happening, that this was just a crazy nightmare, that soon he would wake up and his papa was safe, in the parlor, talking softly to his mama over the baby’s cradle.

But the sound of bricks shattering the glass and the sight of orange flames drew him out of his stupor.

The soldiers were burning down the town.

Quickly he dashed away from the window as a piece of concrete came hurtling towards him.

He crawled under the cot, his heart hammering in his chest, too shaken to shed a tear.

Holding his hands over his ears, he could not drown out the sound of the dying men, the cries of victory, the cracking of the roaring flames.

Then suddenly his door burst open.

Giacomo felt his pajamas bottom wet with urine as he continued to hide under the bed.

“Giacomo!” His mother sounded frantic. “Where are you?! Giacomo!?”

At first, he couldn’t answer. He could barely breathe, as though something heavy was lying on his chest. Had the horror of what he saw made him mute?

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” his mother shrieked. “Where are you?”

“I’m here, Mama,” he whispered, as he crawled from under the bed.

She released a sigh, standing there, clutching Antonina to her breast. “Thank you, sweet Jesus. We have to leave immediately. The soldiers are burning the town! We’ll go now and, when things calm down, your father can join us.”

Giacomo opened his mouth to say - No, Papa won’t ever be joining us. A young soldier, whose life he had thought about sparing, shot him in the face. But when Giacomo saw the terror in his mother’s eyes, he remained silent.

“Don’t take anything!”

Don’t take anything? Giacomo looked around at the small cell that had been his room for his entire life - the posters of Lenardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus on his wall, the small desk which held the beginning of his novel, a horror story about a man who turns into a wolf and children in a small town-

All those horror stories he had created paled in comparison to what he had just witnessed.

“Hurry up, Giacomo. If the soldiers suspect that we’re hiding your father in this house, they’ll kill us all!” She had barely finished her sentence when a brick soared through the broken window, hurling towards Antonina, missing her head by mere inches. She started to shriek but her cries were drowned out by the rattle of gunfire.

Then it was silent.

And that was the most terrifying sound of all.

“Hurry up.” His mother gave him a gentle push. “We’ll go out the back staircase and head into the forest.”

Giacomo grabbed a pair of pants as he thought about what his mother had just said. The forest. The forest was scary enough in the daylight but at night in the pitch black of the woods? What if there were soldiers camped out there? Would they kill a woman and her children?

Or would they do something worse?

From the top of his small bureau, he grabbed the small plastic statue of The Blessed Mother, which lit up in the dark. Maybe it would protect him.

He was breathless as he followed his mother down the steep stairs, her clutching Antonina and he, holding on to his trousers. He didn’t speak, not even to ask where they might be going because he was afraid that their voices would carry - that the soldiers were already in their home, tearing it to pieces.

He could barely see - the smoke from the fire enveloped them and the ground was soaked with blood, spilling over from the battlefield. He didn’t dare cough - just reminded himself to put one foot in front of another. Once they were in the woods, he stopped and put on his trousers, wishing that his pajamas weren’t wet. He watched his mother dodging the trees, which looked like rifles pointed at the black sky. A half-moon shined through the break of the trees.

He heard the flutter of wings. Looking up, he spotted a group of vultures, against a leaden sky, dark and ominous. No doubt the birds were eager to feast on the dead and the mutilated bodies.

He, like his mother, kept his head down because several times he almost tripped over the decomposing leaves and the twisted roots.

They had gone what seemed to be almost a mile when Giacomo found his voice. “Mama, where are we going?” The thought that they had no destination, that they would have to hide indefinitely in the forest filled him with dread.

“We’re going to Piana degli Albanesi,” his mother said breathlessly.

“Piana degli Albanesi!” Giacomo repeated. “But that’s fifteen miles away.”

“Now it’s fourteen. If we keep walking, we can make it by tomorrow.”

Piana degli Albanesi? And then he knew. “We are going to Grandpapa?”

She nodded.

“But Mama, he threw you out of the house when you married Papa. Papa told me all about it. He said Grandpapa was furious. He had arranged for you to marry a Baron and the thought that you would prefer to be with his barber -”

“He told me to leave.” Giacomo saw his mother stumble and then catch her balance. “And to never return.”

“But - but we are returning.”

“What choice do we have? Our friends won’t take us in. They’re afraid that the soldiers will be searching for Papa and will kill anyone who might be hiding him.”

Should he speak? Should he say, no, they won’t be looking for him. They know he’s already dead. He said nothing.