A Brilliant Darkness

The story of the burnt baby—”the outrageous Majorana affair”—is so improbable that it may prove useful to consider a fictional prelude: a short story from La Paura di Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri; a tale well tuned to the world of Sicilian vendetta.

Detective Salvo Montalbano, a multibook character renowned for his cynical attitude toward Sicilian officialdom, comes across a story that has its roots more than fifty years in the past. An old lady on her deathbed confesses to a priest, who is, naturally, bound to silence. But the priest then drops disturbing hints to the detective.

The old lady had had a friend who’d asked her for rat poison many years before, while going through a difficult phase with her husband: a good-for-nothing who slept around, spent his nights playing cards, and ran up large debts that his wife then had to pay. The old lady had easy access to poison, since her own husband, recently deceased, had left her a pharmacy. But seeing the obvious intent in her friend’s request, she gave her a harmless white powder instead.

A few weeks later, her friend’s husband felt unwell while playing cards late at night. He was brought home, the doctor reporting that it was nothing more serious than the effects of excess. He recommended rest, less drinking and smoking, and left the wife a medicine—a white powder—asking her to administer it to the patient. The next morning, the wife was still locked in their bedroom when the servants broke in to find her in a state of shock, her husband bathing in his own shit and vomiting his guts out.

He died shortly afterwards, and the wife promptly confessed that instead of giving him the medicine, she’d poisoned her husband. Fifty years later, the old lady who’d provided the “poison” still feels guilty and insistently murmurs to the priest, “It was not rat poison!” before she expires.

Given the long period of time that has elapsed since the original events, it takes Montalbano quite an effort to find out what actually entered the official records. It appears that the wife did go to prison at first—after all, she confessed her crime. However, the case was reopened several times. Her father was an important politician (read: a powerful mafioso) who was engaged in open warfare with several political enemies (read: competing Mafia factions). He claimed that his daughter had been forced to confess under duress by his enemies and ordered an autopsy in Palermo. After careful testing, the doctors found no evidence of poison in the husband’s corpse. The woman was promptly released . . . still claiming that she really had poisoned her husband.

Naturally, her father’s enemies argued that he had bribed the doctors and asked for an independent autopsy to be carried out in Florence. The body parts, however, were lost on the way there, and when they eventually arrived six months later, had quite possibly been tampered with. When the second examination was finally performed, it did reveal poison . . . and in such large amounts! Questioned as to how the Palermo doctors could possibly have missed it, the Florence doctors explained that they mustn’t have tried “the right chemical.” The poison they’d found could only be detected by means of one particular chemical. The woman returned to jail, despite her father’s protests.

The archetypal Sicilian mêlée is now installed: what a richness of layers, what depths of corruption! You can see Montalbano’s dilemma: A woman seeks revenge on her husband with poison that isn’t poison; however, her husband does die from poisoning. Palermo doctors, paid by her father, find no poison in the body, whereas an “independent” inquiry committee, bribed by his political enemies, does find poison in the body. There are at least two levels of vendetta, but could there be yet a third? Could someone else have poisoned the husband? But then what a coincidence. . . . This is genuine Sicilian intrigue, strand after strand of political and emotional battle intertwining, different layers of feuds and revenges combining in a web where cause and effect can no longer be distinguished.

But amid the confusion, the clever detective smells a rat. Why did the old lady feel so guilty about this incident? How could she not be sure she’d given her friend an innocuous substance? It’s not a mistake easily made. And if she did know that it wasn’t rat poison, it would surely have been enough to tell the police her version of the story to get her friend’s sentence reduced, the crime diminished to mere intention to murder. Was she protecting someone? What else might be hiding beneath the topsoil?

It is then that two developments come to the aid of the detective. First, he finds out that while the Palermo doctors were writing their report, one of them had died. Another doctor had stepped in to complete the work, and it appeared that after backhanding the initial doctors the mafioso father hadn’t bribed the new doctor. Being scrupulous, the new doctor had repeated all the tests himself before signing the report. And although this detail was included only in his case notes—not the report itself—he had tried the missing chemical alluded to by the Florence doctors. With a negative result.

To Montalbano this proved beyond doubt that the man hadn’t been poisoned, but had died of natural causes. Even though both sets of doctors were corrupt, the Palermo doctors didn’t need to lie, so the final Palermo doctor didn’t even have to be dishonest.

Second, he learns that the old lady left Italy to live abroad shortly after the original “poisoning” incident. She sold everything, including the pharmacy left to her by her husband, and Montalbano discovers that the new owner is still alive and is the sort of old man who likes to talk at length about the past. The old pharmacist recalls that one day, while the woman was checking the business records before completing the sale, he’d caught her in great distemper, indeed shouting with rage, her nerves completely out of control. He’d never found out the cause but the old man manages to place this episode just before the poisoning occurred; i.e., after the old woman had given the fake poison to her friend. All then becomes clear to Montalbano.

He only needs proof, and illegally breaking into the place where the old woman’s belongings are stored confirms his theory. Among her possessions he finds several letters between her late husband and the “friend” to whom she’d given the powder. Her husband and friend had been lovers and the letters are cruel, unforgivable. Not only were they cheating on her, but they made fun of her in their correspondence: of her sexual frigidity, her character, her physical flaws.

The old woman felt guilty on her deathbed not because she might have given her friend rat poison by mistake. Her silence, regarding the fact she knew it was not rat poison, was the third and final level of vendetta, and the cause of her guilt. She’d been responsible for her friend’s long jail sentence, and worse, for her friend’s lifelong remorse for having “killed” her husband. The priest enlisted Montalbano because the friend turned out to be still alive, presumably still believing she’d poisoned her husband. But Montalbano, having satisfied his curiosity, does precisely nothing about it.

Contrived? You read worse things in La Sicilia newspaper. Or closer to the topic of this book, in the history of the Majorana family. Except that the burnt-baby case is only formally similar to Montalbano’s story: Its contents are infinitely more gruesome and the emotions involved much more disturbing. Not to mention that the Majorana “case” was enacted by very real people—just ask the innocent baby who was caught in the middle.

The dead-baby case was closed shortly before Ettore’s collapse, but its inception goes back some eight years, to the summer of 1924, when Ettore was eighteen. At the house of Antonio Amato, a wealthy confectionary industrialist, a terrible fire broke out in the bedroom where his only son—a baby—was asleep. Tongues of fire soon engulfed the cradle, turning the space between mattress and mosquito net into an inferno and burning little Cicciuzzo Amato to a crisp. Although the incident was initially seen as a misfortune, closer examination revealed that the cot had been doused with a flammable liquid. Further police investigation, Sicilian style, extracted a confession from the culprit: a sixteen-year-old nursemaid, Carmela Gagliardi, who turned out to be mentally retarded.

In the logic of the half-wit, she explained to the police that her family had forced her to work for the Amatos whereas she wanted to work for another family, the Platanias, who were fond of her and to whom she had become attached. Therefore she had burnt the Amatos’ baby.

Besides being simple, the poor girl had good reasons to be emotionally disturbed. Her brother sexually abused her; her mother spanked her on a regular basis; she had to work hard while her sister idled away at home; the same sister was betrothed to a boy Carmela had dated and still loved and who had previously sworn eternal love to her before assaulting her . . . the ubiquitous Sicilian cataclysm.

But just as in Montalbano’s chronicle, or any other good Sicilian tale, one layer of vendetta doesn’t suffice; and another was already running in parallel, ready to pounce upon the case. It concerned the Majorana family. As chance would have it, two of Antonio Amato’s sisters were married to Ettore’s uncles Giuseppe (the eldest brother) and Dante (the fourth). When I described Ettore’s family, I hope I gave you the correct impression: These were men of great distinction—jurists, deputies, senators, and rectors.

For reasons not clear to me, Antonio’s sisters had been cut out of the family will, which Antonio had thus collected whole. But in Italy the law compels a certain portion of every will to be given to all the children, regardless of the wishes of the testator.⁴³ “La legitima”—the legitimate, or the fair one—prevents any child from being entirely cut off and left destitute. Antonio had chosen to ignore this law, but Dante and Giuseppe, as knowledgeable lawyers, requested that he restore la legitima to his sisters. A battle then developed along the following improving lines:

The Majoranas proposed that the matter be amicably settled by means of sum X. Antonio countered by offering one-fifth of X. Counteroffers were made. Antonio didn’t budge. The matter was taken to court, the Majoranas’ natural environment. The court ruled that Antonio should pay seven-fifths of X; i.e., 40 percent more than the Majoranas originally asked for. Antonio was left with a big chip on his shoulder.

I leave it to the reader to work out who started “hinting” to the police that the reasons given by Carmela Gagliardi, the retarded maid, weren’t good enough; that someone else must have been behind her crime, and that Dante and perhaps Giuseppe should be investigated. Suitably buttered up, the police put “pressure” on Carmela, who duly produced a second confession.

In true soap-opera style, however, the plan backfired. Instead of incriminating the Majoranas, the girl, perhaps predictably, chose to take revenge on more immediate targets who had slighted her. First of all, her previous lover, now betrothed to her sister: It was he, she said, who’d given her a white glass bottle filled with petrol to burn the baby. Then her mother and brother: They were the ones, she insisted, who had forced her to do the terrible deed against her wishes. For some reason she spared her sister; maybe leaving her out of jail was part of her sweet revenge. But with four people now involved in the affair, it took several twists, turns and further twists to bring the blame back to the Majoranas, as initially intended. At any given time at least one of those imprisoned denied any involvement.

A few years later, after much bribery, all jailed parties finally agreed on a story. By then, Carmela’s brother had gone mad, which didn’t deter the police. The case was reopened. Yes, they were all part of a conspiracy to burn Amato’s baby and they had acted at the command of Dante Majorana. He’d given them money as well as a green bottle filled with benzene. The fact that Dante had no motive to take revenge on Antonio (quite the reverse) was ignored in court. And how the white petrol bottle changed color and content in the intervening years also seems to have gone unnoticed. Dante Majorana was jailed, together with his wife Sara, sister of Antonio. The second level of vendetta was complete.

It then took three long years for the defense to dismantle the prosecution’s case. Part of the problem was that the judge was compelled by law to follow the rule that “children always tell the truth” (!?), and therefore Carmela Gagliardi couldn’t have lied. Furthermore, Italian law at the time ruled that a second confession is more reliable than the first. Against these absurd rules, the defense produced evidence that witnesses had been roughed up by the Mafia, that the Majoranas lacked any motive, and that the forensic proofs produced by the prosecution were deeply flawed. But I suspect that, in the end, the Majoranas may simply have resorted to counterbribery.

Eight years after the case had started, the by now grown-up Carmela, sobbing and sniveling, confessed for the third time: “I alone am guilty.” I’m amazed this stood up in court, given that she was no longer a child. But as Sciascia puts it, “Were it not for her tears, her remorse, no one would have remembered that, at the heart of that labyrinth of hate, falsehood, and despair lay the little corpse of Cicciuzzo Amato, the baby burnt to death in his cot.”

The murdered-baby tribulations affected Ettore tremendously. Laura Fermi wrote that “Ettore wanted to prove his uncle’s innocence, clear him of a suspicion that could not fail to taint the entire Majorana family. . . . The ordeal was too great a strain on Ettore’s sensitive temperament. After his return from Germany Ettore became a recluse.” Amaldi, who kept in touch with Ettore during his dark period of reclusion, stated that “This incident would have had a decisive influence on Ettore’s attitude to life.” The family has protested against these views. Ettore wasn’t a blood relative of the burnt baby. But he was very close to the accused uncle and aunt.

It’s been said that he wrote to his uncle Dante “almost every day” while he was in jail. Another source said that he was so incensed at the court’s hypocrisy that he offered to defend his uncle in court, putting his logical skills into action. “I don’t believe in lawyers,” Ettore told physicist Gleb Wataghin. “They’re all idiots; I shall write the defense of my uncle myself: I know what happened, I’ve talked to him.”⁴⁴ I very much doubt whether anyone took Ettore’s opinions seriously: After all, the court case was not a matter for logical argument but for political manipulation and kickbacks. Ettore meant well, though, and this incident reveals much about his personality. In an ideal world things would be resolved in the way Ettore proposed. As it was, mathematical logic had nothing to do with the court trial; indeed, justice had nothing much to do with it either.

It certainly must have disturbed a person as private as Ettore to see his name associated with what was referred to in the sensational press as the “delitto della culla” (the cot murder) or the “outrageous Majorana affair.” And then there is what might lie beneath the surface.

Let’s face it: None of this makes any sense! It just doesn’t square, as was the case in Camilleri’s story. Burning a baby is an act of such extreme violence—even for an emotionally and sexually abused mental retard—that I have to believe yet another layer must have been present, hidden below the two surface layers, just as in Montalbano’s tale. A cornuto tier, perhaps: a crime of passion of some sort, motivated by stronger venom and malice.

I don’t want to start a conspiracy theory, let alone suggest anything concrete. But I’m absolutely sure there must be more in the “outrageous Majorana affair” than meets the eye, providing a final sense of logic for that which, on the surface, has none. Perhaps this hidden layer is even more “outrageous” than the obvious two—perhaps it has the simplicity of the one uncovered by Montalbano. And who knows how it may have mingled with Ettore’s own tragedy; or not.