The Sicilian   ::   Puzo Mario

Naked, she was shy at first, holdingher hands down between her legs. Her skin was golden. She was slim but with the full breasts of a mature woman. When he kissed her, she averted her head slightly so he touched only a corner of her mouth. He was patient, not with a lover's skill but with the tactical sense that had served him so well when he waged his guerrilla wars. She had let down her long jet black hair so that it screened her full breasts and he stroked her hair and talked about the first time he had seen her as a woman that fateful day in Palermo. How beautiful she had been then. He recited from memory some of the poems he had written about her when he was alone in the mountains and dreamed about her beauty. She relaxed in the bed, the goose quilt over her body. Guiliano rested on top of the cover, but she averted her eyes.

Justina told him how she had fallen in love with him the day she had carried over a message from her brother and how crushed she had been when she realized he had not recognized her as the little girl whose money he had replaced years before. She told him how she had said prayers for him every night since she was eleven years old, that she had loved him since that day. Turi Guiliano had an extraordinary feeling of happiness listening to her tell this. That she loved him, that she thought and dreamed of him while he was alone in the mountains. He kept stroking her hair and she caught his hand and held it, her own warm and dry. "Were you surprised when I asked your father to speak to you about marriage?" he asked her.

She smiled a sly, triumphant smile. "Not after you stared at me in Palermo," she said. "From that day I prepared myself for you."

He leaned over to kiss her full lips which were a dark winey red, and this time she did not avert her face. He was surprised by the sweetness of her mouth, the sweetness of her breath and the responsiveness of his own flesh. For the first time in his life he felt his body melting and falling away from him. He started to shiver, and Justina threw back the goose quilt so that he could come into the bed with her. She rolled over to her side so she could put her arms around him, so they could flow together, and the feel of her body was different from any other body he had ever touched. She closed her eyes.

Turi Guiliano kissed her mouth, her closed eyes and then her breasts, the skin so fragile that the heat of flesh almost burned his lips. He was stunned by the smell of her, so sweet, uninfected by the pain of life, so far removed from death.