The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton Page A

Pietrosanto was made Minister of Public Waters, which meant that he was in charge of the fountain and the water tower. Under Giovanni’s direction the spillways were cleared and the pump was put back in working order by Longo, and all the drains on the terraces were cleared and patched, and for the first time in twenty years there was water on the terraces for the grapevines. It isn’t a great deal of water, but it is enough to keep a dry spell from becoming a drought, something that Someone greater than Bombolini had not seen fit to do.
    Under his brother Pietro, the other powerful member of the family, the organization called Minute Men of Santa Vittoria was formed.
    â€œWhy do you want to waste your time on this?” Fabio asked Bombolini.
    The mayor held up his hand. “‘The chief foundations of all states are good laws and good arms.’ I have no say in the matter. The Master says we must have an army.”
    At the start people laughed at the army, but as they drilled in the Piazza of the People after work and the twenty men got better at their drill, the people began to turn out to watch them. Pietrosanto has a voice that can break windows, and the drill was impressive. Every soldier was allowed to wear a red arm band on Sunday and to sport a hawk’s feather in his hat, and soon every young man in Santa Vittoria was hungry for a feather, but the army was held to twenty because that was the number of weapons we had.
    There were others. Commissioner of Sanitation, Master of the Scales, Minister for Bread and Pasta, Minister for Advanced Education, Minister for Affairs of the Aged.
    He closed the second meeting of the Grand Council with these words. “A wise man once said, “The first impression one gets of a new ruler and his brains is from seeing the men he has chosen to have around him.’” He put down his hand. “Men of Santa Vittoria. By these standards I submit that I must be judged a genius.”
    At first they felt that Bombolini was being egotistical, but as they went home and the words rolled around in their heads and they began to see what they meant, they were, of course, flattered. And as Bombolini had told Fabio, if you can’t buy your way by money the next best way is to buy your way with flattery, because as every Italian knows, flattery will always get you somewhere.
    There were mistakes. One morning Bombolini decided to please the people by bringing democracy to the water fountain. For several hundred years, for reasons no longer known, several families had had the right to go to the head of the line waiting for water at the fountain and to fill their jugs first. One morning the women found this sign on the fountain.
    In The Eyes of God There Are No Preferred People.
    First Come, First Served.
    Order of Bombolini, Mayor
    The proclamations were now signed with one initial only in the manner of the Caesars. The experiment in democracy went well until Rosa Bombolini came across the piazza with her seven-gallon aluminum jug, modern and progressive, the only one of its kind in Santa Vittoria, and went to the head of the line as was her privilege. Pietro Pietrosanto, as head of the army, was in charge of the new policy that morning.
    â€œBack,” he told her. “To the end of the line. You know the order.”
    â€œI know my rights,” she shouted. She pushed against Pietrosanto with her large and powerful chest. “You go tell him this. Tell him that no fat-ass Sicilian ragpicker is going to come up here and rob the rights of any Casamassima.”
    â€œThere is nothing to do,” Bombolini told his general, “but to seize the offender’s water jug.”
    A seven-gallon water jug is a true weapon, especially when it is used unexpectedly. The head of the army went down in the Piazza of the People exactly like a bull struck with a sledge hammer. Pietrosanto might have pressed charges. They might have taken her down the mountain to