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The Human Contract (fiction)

By Walter Donway

December 5, 2015

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Things might have taken a different turn if Elena Terranova had not been thinking, at that moment, of Evan. Tears had come to her eyes—tears yet again—as she recalled his voice on the phone that final time. The pain, the despair, had dried up like a dying plant so that Evan’s voice no longer was a living thing. He had let go. “I won’t call again,” he said, his tone parched of emotion. “And don’t call; I can’t stand it.”

Elena’s elbows were resting on the kitchen table, her face pressed into her hands, and the tears trickling between her fingers when she heard the sounds from the den. First came the sharp cry of surprise, shock, and then a longer moan. And then the crash that made the floor shake. Her father was big.

No one in New York City—no one but a Roman emperor, Nero or Tiberius—could be compared with Salvatore Lucius Terranova. He could order the death of anyone and his capos and soldiers would go into action—reluctantly, perhaps, if the target were a district attorney, say, or a NYPD captain. But he had not issued such an order in at least 15 years, which is why the family prospered. Don Terranova—the honorary title attached mostly because of the movie—was in business and murder was a costly decision. He had ordered the deaths of dozens of men, but all were known pieces on the board. He knew what game he was playing.

He had not begun as boss of a crime family that ran the Brooklyn and Bronx protection rackets, numbers game, brothels, carting—and murder. He had begun as a freelance tough off the boat from Sicily—tough but very smart. He had come to the attention of the Italian crime families who preferred to have him “inside the tent, pissing out…”

He still had the build that as a young man earned him the nickname, “the Sicilian Ram,” but now he dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and bowties, even at home in Bay Ridge in his office. If you wanted to talk with Salvatore Terranova, you came to Bay Ridge—the section of Brooklyn by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. You stopped at the black iron gates in the 12-foot-high red-brick wall, where two guys seemed to hang out all day. You stated your business and the gate might or might not swing open, so you could pull into the courtyard with the circular driveway. This was not only the “office,” it was the “family” headquarters, and home, and the citadel.

 

When Elena flung open the door of the den with a cry, “Daddy!” Don Terranova lay on the floor, one arm reaching as though for the door, his big head almost in the fireplace. In his black suit and white shirt, he looked like a mannequin tipped over in an expensive men’s shop.

Elena knelt beside him, her hand reaching out, but not daring to touch him. “Daddy, I’ll help you up. Come on…!”

His face, with its coarse features, was red, an impossibly deep red as though boiled. When he spoke, it was in sounds that seemed pushed from his chest by some enormous effort. And still, it was only a hoarse whisper. He was shaking his head.

“No, call,” he squeezed from his chest. “Call… I need help. It’s my heart…” Then, suddenly, “Oh, God!” It was a cry so shrill that Elena jerked back.

Crazily, it reminded her of Evan’s shaking voice from his hospital bed at the time no painkiller could banish his agony.

“Yes!” she said, “Yes! Yes, Daddy. I have to… Call, I’ll call…”

She was 16, slender—almost willowy—with dark southern Italian hair, shiny with blue highlights, hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back. Evan had shaken his head almost in disbelief as he ran his fingers through that hair and gazed into her eyes. They were eyes with the flashing depths of Sicilian heat—fire held in check like a volcano.

That was all he had done, all Evan had done, sitting in the car in the sweep of parking spaces where lovers liked to park and gaze over New York Harbor. All he had done was touch her hair, in wonderment. It was Elena who had kissed him, her lips gentle at first gentle, then her hands seizing his hair and crushing his mouth to hers. And that had been all. The volcano had smoked, smoldered, but not erupted. When she told her girlfriends at school, she had not exaggerated—well, not really. And they had asked, voices low, “And he’s not even Italian, Sicilian?”

She shook her head, smiling, and the dimples in her cheeks deepened. She had been proud; Evan was an attractive Jewish boy, a year older than Elena. “I haven’t decided to marry him,” she announced, with a distinctly sophisticated air.

“You’d better not,” said one of the girls, giggling.

“I can make my own decisions, thank you,” she said.

“Elena, I wouldn’t tell your father,” said her best friend, Sophia.

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Elena breezily. “It was just a kiss, after all.” It had been her first kiss. The thought of it released a heat that started low, in her belly, and swept up into her face, so she blushed.

 

Now, she had seized the telephone, an old-fashioned black telephone with a curling cord that stretched. But it was the strangest thing; her hand shot out to phone’s dial, but her finger would not move. It stopped as though with a will of its own.

She was staring down at her father, the Don who decided who would live and who die. But now he didn’t decide. God had taken that power from him, given it to Elena. That is how she thought of it.

She had begun to tremble—her hands, then her lips, and then down there, at her knees, so the muscles inside her thighs twitched.

“Call!” wheezed the Don, and it sounded like a plea; but then, in just moments, the voice lashed her with such murderous rage that Elena’s hand released the telephone receiver. It clattered to the floor.

“What’s the matter with you, you fool?” he had gasped, but then: “Do it, do it or…” and the voice was commanding, louder, as though animated by an accustomed energy of making a threat.

She knew his power, how he could hurt her anyway he wished, or kill her. He might kill her even for hesitating to twirl the dial of the phone, to begin to dial the three digits that would summon help. All she had to say was “My father is having a heart attack.”

When she reached down to pick up the receiver, she was blinking rapidly, blinking back tears of anguish. She glanced up, just briefly. Now, the dark eyes in the uplifted face had an expression of incredulousness, the beginning of a realization. But that had not obliterated calculation. “You must call, Elena. Your mother, your brother, our home… Why…” and suddenly his whole body jerked and his face clenched like a fist in his agony, his eyes pressed tight, his lips bared back to reveal his teeth.

 

All of Elena’s young life, her mother had moved around the mansion, its walled garden, with a kind of grace—but silently, as though nothing was worth discussing. And what was there to discuss—the sorrow? The helplessness? Sometimes the horror when they heard, or got a hint, and dared to say nothing, not to look into Salvatore Terranova’s eyes?

And her brother, Carlo: She had watched him grow up with “the code” and come to realize that that was his future, the future he could not refuse. And she could picture the day he returned, so pale, glancing at no one, not his sister, his mother, and they knew he had become a “made man.”

“A made killer,” Elena had thought. “A killer for his father.”

How did they have a choice? It was the “family.” It was Don Terranova, who decided everything, even who would live. Who was she, her mother, her brother? Who were they to have a choice?

Now, the man no one dared to defy lay on the carpet, staring up at her in shock, rage—but also fear. For the first time she saw fear—or perhaps it had been there all along and she had not noticed.

The feeling in her own chest, that suggestion of sickness just above her heart, was the heart’s wild racing. Anyone, a capo, a soldier, could walk into the den at any moment.

“I will kill you,” whispered the body on the floor, now, the eyes alight with rage, “for this, I will kill you…”

And she could save herself by dialing three numbers.

But save what? Save her life? What life?

She wore only a summer dress, sitting lightly on her delicate shoulders, a dress not even knee length. It could not stop a bullet or a fist… It could be ripped off in a single long sweep and her body would be naked, exposed to anything the men wanted to do to her. How would he kill his own daughter? What would be his pleasure?

“Help me,” sobbed the man on the floor. “Help me. The pain…”

He counted on her. He counted on the human contract, between father and daughter, counted on her choice in a situation like this. But had he honored the contract?

He was suffering. Like Evan, a boy just seventeen she had kissed once. Who had kissed her back. And somehow, the Don had heard of it. It was easy for a few “soldiers” to find Evan, get him in the right place, a private place, and beat him. So easy. He was just a kid going to school, playing sports, in a world that had nothing to do with violence as a way of life.

 

They had beaten him, broken bones, mashed his handsome face, but always there was the knee in the groin, again and again. When they were done, he had been unconscious for some time; he could not know he no longer was a whole man and never would be. Had they been ordered by her father to do that? Were they just sadists? Did it matter?

And then, her calls to the hospital—she dare not visit him, there—which ended when he learned it would be permanent. The damage could not be repaired, the testicles crushed beyond recovery. They must be surgically removed. And that was when his voice lost all life, and he told her, “Don’t call again. I can’t stand it.”

Elena would have gone to him, now; married him; and loved him. She would have said it didn’t matter; they would make a life. And she would have convinced him. She would not have admitted to herself that it was her pride, her capacity for loyalty. She would not have thought that it was the Sicilian woman, who could kill for her love—or her honor. She was an American, an Italian-American, but in reverse, for the “American” came first.

She had confronted her father and ended by screaming at him. He had said only “You, a daughter, accuse your father of a crime. Your family, of a crime.”

And he would say nothing else. Elena, a mere girl, deserved no more. The police had come to school, talked with her, with her friends. And then they had gone to her father. But he had had no part in this thing. And so no one could say who had “done it” for Evan. Except they all knew, of course. Evan’s parents did not live in a world where revenge is private, an eye for an eye; they urged the police to greater effort. They had heard of Don Terranova, everyone had, but they were too angry to fear him. The case was still open; officially, there were “no suspects.”

 

The body was rocking back and forth as though to elude its agony. The eyes, dim with pain, no longer focused on her. She could not hear what he said. It was the faintest whisper, too soft for her to detect anger or fear. Elena walked over and the closed the door of the den.

Then, she knelt beside him. He seemed to try to reach out for her, but the arm no longer obeyed him. And then she heard, clearly, somewhere in the house, a door slam. A voice called out something.

She glanced down him. Had his eyes swept to the side? Had he heard? Did he hope, now, to win in the end? Again came the voice from a further room. Any moment, the door of the den might burst open and the man on the floor become all-powerful, again.

Elena was trembling. When she acted, it was as one might lash out in sheer self-defense, like an animal in a corner. But her movements were deliberate. Kneeling, she raised one knee and placed it on his neck against his throat. She leaned forward, throwing all of her slight weight onto that knee.

Then she cried out in alarm! His hand was on her bare leg! He had no strength, but he was touching her skin, looking at her, his expression undecipherable. She leaned even farther forward, desperately, throwing all her weight onto his windpipe.

Now he made no sound. She could not even hear his breath. Had his face turned a deeper red? She could not tell; it already was scarlet, with a bluish cast. His mouth opened.

The last thing to move were his eyes, closing.

Then, as though jolted by a shock, he jerked up his head, heaving forward his shoulders, and croaked out, “You can’t!” Just as suddenly, his whole body went limp, his arms fell, and his head rolled to the side. His chest no longer rose and fell.

“I can,” replied Elena.

She rose and strode over to the telephone, sweeping it up from the floor. Firmly, she dialed 911. A moment later, she was saying, “I need an ambulance, please.”

When she had provided the seemingly interminable catalog of information, she calmly replaced the receiver.

She did not glance down at him.

She walked to the door and swung it open. She paused a moment, drawing a deep breath, then she screamed, “Daddy is dying!”

 

 

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