ABSTRACT: An episode is here related that is only a side issue but important in "black [i.e., Fascist, ed.] folklore" which collects Mafia matters: A »Corriere della Sera journalist was told that an engineer, Francesco Nasalli Flores, had reported to the Italian head public prosecutor that his brother-in-law, Gen. Dalla Chiesa of the Carabinieri, kept a blackbird in his office that repeated continually a phrase which everyone interpreted as being "Ciao, Carlo, you're going to die". According to Sciascia the story "may appear to excite the imagination, but it certainly makes no sense". According to the writer, the arrest of Dalla Chiesa's presumed killer may could be merely for "show", the fruit of an atmosphere analogous to the one that gave birth to the blackbird anecdote.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, October 8, 1982)

There is a nursery rhyme about some blackbirds to which Agatha Christie gave a macabre turn by making it represent a series of crimes. And there is the blackbird of Renato Fucini's »Vestro , a story which once cheered some of our school hours and which today no one reads anymore. Giovanni Russo finds that there may also be a blackbird of mine, from one of my stories - and it is the blackbird of Gen. Dalla Chiesa. But it seems to me that this blackbird stands somewhere in the middle between the macabre ones of Agatha Christie and the comical one of Fucini, and in any case it would create the problem for me - always a difficult one for a writer - of the true and the likely. I mean, the story of the talking blackbird could be true, but as to the order and form of a story that wants to narrate, here and now, something about the Mafia, it is absolutely improbable.

In the way it was told to Antonio Ferrari (Corriere della

Sera, Monday, October 4) it seems true. Or better: it seemed true. True at least for the person who told it, who was the engineer Francesco Naselli Flores, the general's brother-in-law. Ferrari recorded the story, between obligatory quotation marks, that the engineer told to the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Republic Vincenzo Pajno: "My brother-in-law kept a talking blackbird in his office at police headquarters. And the blackbird, which was delivered to me twenty days ago, stubbornly continues to repeat the phrase: »Ciao Carlo, you're going to die . Who taught it to say this terrible threat? Believe me, sir, it is becoming an obsession." The next day the engineer denied this very clear and unequivocal declaration. "The blackbird", he stated, "clearly says »Ciao Carlo ". But then it adds something indistinct which the engineer sometimes takes to be "you're going to die" but which the other family members find indistinct. Consequently one doesn't understand why he spoke about the blackbird and to the Public

Prosecutor of the Republic.

The news went the rounds of the newspapers and made a great impression on many. Neither did denying it do any good. It plays such a big role in the murky folklore which soaks up Mafia affairs that no one takes the trouble to examine its improbability and notices that the engineer himself can justifiably be affected by it and fall into the psychosis of the murky folklore.

But in order to take for true this story - which could be true - one must choose among the following hypotheses:

1) A Mafia "mole" in the Palermo police headquarters, and even in the police chief's apartment, had the task of teaching the blackbird to pronounce and repeat that phrase in order to terrorise the general by giving him a sample of the Mafia's omnipresence and power of penetration. Only that the effect would have been a different one: the general searching out the mole and identifying him with no great difficulty.

2) The general's blackbird was replaced by another taught to repeat that phrase. But the risk would still be great that the general would search out and find the mole.

3) That the general himself, as a kind of reverse charm, to ward off the even by evoking it, had himself taught the blackbird that phrase. In the unlikeliness of the story, this last would turn out to the most probable hypothesis. Or at least the most sensible one. Because the story may appear to excite the imagination, but it certainly makes no sense. And I am dwelling on it - or rather taking it as a sample - just in order to show how much common sense is lacking - and how much nonsense there is which comes close to the ridiculous - in all the rumours, stories, inferences and hypotheses that circulate around so serious and painful a fact as the assassination of the Palermo police chief.

What is worrisome, on the other hand - worrisome for two reasons - is the quip attributed by the newspapers to the presumed killer of the general when he was arrested in Calabria a few days ago. It seems that as soon as he - one Nicola Alvaro by name - heard the reason for his arrest, exclaimed: "Oh, thank God!" Which means that he remembered perfectly well where he was, what he was doing, and who was with him at the time the general was killed. And that leaves two possibilities: that his recollection with regard to this case is let us say an artificial one, well constructed and resistant to all attacks; or it is we can say a real one founded on truth.

Certainly the readiness of the quip - if the story is authentic - lets some suspicion arise. But if it is instead based on truth we will once again be faced with one of those police operations which an authoritative judge in the Moro case defined as being put on for show. An operation, that is, which is done exclusively in order to give the public the impression that something is being done. And the public has had many proofs of such a criterion (so to speak, because what in fact is lacking is a criterion), which is to say, many disappointments. Let's hope this is not going to be another one.