ABSTRACT: In the introduction to his articles on justice and on the Mafia in the last ten years, Leonardo Sciascia tells of his meeting with President of the Italian Republic Sandro Pertini (2) and of his subsequent letter to Pertini in his capacity as head of the CSM [High Council of Magistrates], on the Tortora (3) case and on his disappointment at not receiving a reply. From that moment on Sciascia's negative judgement is strengthened "with regard to Pertini and with regard to what was happening in the administration of justice". His concern that one would end by fighting the Mafia with the same methods the Fascists used.

(Leonardo Sciascia, »TO BE REMEMBERED IN THE FUTURE , Bompiani publishers, December 1989)

In a diary of Colette Rosselli's published in Milan in 1986 (»Ma non troppo , Longanesi publishers) an entry dated June 15, 1982 is the spirited and exact recollection of a lunch at the Quirinal Palace (4) to which Sandro Pertini, then President of the Republic, had invited us. It is worth quoting the entire page:

"When President Pertini came to have lunch with us last March, he stood and looked for a long while at Clerici's painting (»The Minotaur Publicly Accuses His Mother ) and I took the occasion to tell him that it would not be hard to arrange for him to meet the artist since we were great friends. He replied: "He is a great artist, I would be very pleased, bring him to lunch at my place one day".

The occasion arose two days later when the President had invited me to lunch at the Quirinal Palace. I informed Fabrizio who declared in a fit of enthusiasm that he would bring him a painting in oils. The next day he had changed his mind: He would bring him a tempera. And on the day of the invitation he had decided: I would bring him a serigraph. In exchange, could he invite his friend Sciascia?

The President, duly informed, immediately acquiesced: Sciascia had recently attacked him in I don't remember what magazine and he was anxious to confute him and make him change his mind.

In fact, we hardly seat ourselves in the small parlour for aperitifs when he attacks him, grumbling affectionately as is his way.

But Sciascia, impenetrable as a stone, allows him to let off steam.

The President flirts a while longer and then loses his patience: "But reply for goodness' sake! Let's hear what you think!"

And finally Sciascia speaks: 'Mr. President...'

'The hell with Mr. President! Do you see how you refuse to consider me a comrade, that you treat me like an enemy?'

Sciascia: 'But you [using the formal Italian form "lei" for "you"] don't let me speak...'

Pertini: 'Since when do you use "lei" to me?'

And once again Sciascia holes up in his most Sicilian of silences. Nevertheless, when Pertini, going from subject to subject in a monologue, hits on the subject of the Mafia, Sciascia re-emerges: 'I am grateful to the Head of State...'

Alas, here he is cut off again: 'Stop with the Head of State, I don't like the definition'.

But this time Sciascia is determined to continue. He corrects himself and proceeds: 'I am grateful to the President of the Republic for giving me the opportunity of bringing to his attention a problem of the greatest importance: the plague of the Mafia in Sicily. A plague that cannot be weakened without rigorous bank controls, and of that, Mr. President, you alone can persuade the government'.

Pertini listened to him with a frown. He will talk about it, he replies, with his friend Spadolini, then he corrects himself: "with the competent authorities" and he immediately invites us to join him at table since the waiter has just announced that lunch is ready. But it is clear that Sciascia has spoiled his lunch. At about 2.30 we take our leave, all of us dissatisfied. The President because he is aware that he has not seduced anyone. Sciascia because he is convinced he has wasted his subtle words. Clerici because he has been entirely ignored. I because I have not had much fun."

I must confess in all sincerity that what in me appears to be coldness, pugnacity, even arrogance, is nothing but timidity and discretion. And, in my habitually discreet way, I appreciated President Pertini's cordial and familiar welcome. For which reason, recalling that occasion, on October 3 a year later, when the Tortora case exploded, I sent a registered letter to Pertini, who as President of the Republic was also head of the High Council of Magistrates, in which I briefly described to him the disastrous distortions that had characterised from the beginning the approach of the Neapolitan judges to the Tortora case. I wrote:

"Dear Mr. President,

About a month ago, in the »Corriere della Sera (5), I published an article in which I not only expressed my personal conviction of Tortora's innocence, but tried to give an objective basis to it, while criticising at the same time the excessive »irresponsibility which magistrates enjoy in our country of which the behaviour of those Neapolitan ones who were dealing with the Camorra (6) was another proof.

The fact that of 856 arrest warrants a good 200 were addressed to people who had nothing to do with the business except for the misfortune of having the same names; the fact that these people were kept in segregation for days without knowing the charges against them - these were facts already unbearable to the juridical conscience and culture which ought not to be (and most definitely is not) foreign to us. But what am I saying - days? In »La Repubblica on September 25 they report on that poor sailor from Eboli who was arrested because of his name and released after three months. And I am told that in a town in Campania about ten people all having the same name were arrested in the attempt to find a single person accused of belonging to the Camorra. This fact appears incredible, but if it is true the judge capable of having recourse to such a provision does not deserve the name - let alone the functions - of judge.

Unfortunately such injustices perpetrated to the damage, as Manzoni (7) would say, of "working people and small businessmen" elude us, elude public opinion. But the case of Tortora, due to the popularity he acquired on television, is presented daily in the newspapers to the conscience of those with any conscience. The constant infractions of secrecy during the investigation on the part of the judicial offices, although harmful and a kind of defamation of the accused, has good aspects in that it permits the public to form an opinion. And I am convinced, my dear Mr. President, that you live in such cordial rapport with the better part of our countrymen as to know already the direction public opinion is taking with regard to this case. Just as I believe that you will not have missed either the letter of Dr. Carlo Spagna to »La Repubblica (8) (September 24) and the interview Adriano Baglivo did with an unnamed magistrate published by »Corriere della Sera on October 1. And to both of these the attorney Dal

l'Ora replied, it seems to me, impeccably. And with regard to the interview, in the place where the judge maintains that the press which has taken up the defence of Tortora has done so for purely commercial reasons, I would like you to know that it was I who proposed that the Corriere intervene and begin a debate. And it is unnecessary to say how much bad faith and absurdity there is in the statement of the commercial interests that I can have.

In my article, paradoxically, I proposed that judges should be locked up in prison for three days before being permanently invested. You, the president of the CSM, have had a long taste of prison. But allow me to say that to find oneself in prison in the name of an idea, to combat a tyranny, to affirm justice and freedom, is less terrible than to be there, innocent, in a country where the best have struggled and give back its democracy - that is to say its freedom and justice. Unless democracy, freedom and justice are nothing but names, which would be for you and for us a very bitter thing to learn.

Like every Italian who feels and reasons, I put great trust in an intervention on your part.

Calamandrei (9) said that the president of the republic was the guardian of the constitution. I would add that he is also the custodian of the good sense and intelligence that must preside over public affairs."

I had no expectation that Pertini would answer to say that he agreed with me and would intervene as I hoped, but at least that he might give some sign of having received the letter. I thought I had a right to a reply from him - as a citizen even more than as a writer and a person whom he had received a year before with so much familiarity. Instead, total silence. And this made me feel terribly disappointed as well as offended. And from that moment on a more resentful and negative opinion about Pertini and the things that happened in the administration of justice. I had already made spoken and written statements (including on French televiison) of my absolute conviction, not based on feelings but objective and rational, that Enzo Tortora was completely innocent: the proof was there within reach of even the most commonplace critical intelligence. And yet Tortora had to undergo a judicial calvary of three years and three months with lethal consequences.

Condemned by the Naples Court of Assizes to ten years in prison, as I remember, Tortora was completely exonerated by the Appeals Court with a juridically and morally exemplary verdict. And this absolution was confirmed by the Court of Cassation. Tortora's personal sacrifice however had served to give Italians the feeling that the judges could do what they liked, destroy an innocent person's reputation and material possessions, and most of all, deprive him of his freedom. The disquiet in the country was felt most strongly by the Socialists and Radicals who promoted a popular referendum for a law that would make the judges legally responsible in cases like Tortora's. The proposal was passed by the majority of Italian voters, but this result was almost nullified in Parliament.

Meanwhile the problem was opened - admitting that a problem existed, which the government at first denied - of the criminal organisations in the South, principally the Mafia. And the problem was taken on by the institutions as a frontal attack on the Mafia that had finally been opened, but also as a fight for power within the institutions and the political parties themselves. I had been the first one in the history of Italian literature to have represented the Mafia phenomenon without apologising for it, but always with concern that it would end up being fought in the same way the Fascists had fought it (one Mafia against another). Now I was drawn out on the subject by Christopher Duggan's book on the Mafia and Fascism, the Mafia and politics, and wrote some articles of the kind for »Corriere della Sera . It grew into some furious polemics. I was accused of weakening the fight against the Mafia and almost of favouring its existence.

The trouble is that there are so many cretins and even more fanatics. They enjoy such good health - not mental - that they succeed in moving from one kind of fanaticism to another in a perfectly coherent way while remaining essentially immobile within the limits of eternal Italic Fascism. The state which Fascism called "ethical" (one doesn't know of what ethic) is their dream and also their practise. One must, however, admit that they have a sort of good faith: in the face of true ethics, of legality, even of statistics, they believe that the awfulness of the punishments (including death), violent and indiscriminate repression, the abolition of individual rights, are the best tools for fighting certain kinds of crimes and criminal organisations like the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, (10) the Camorra. And they continue to believe it.

This book brings together the pieces I have written in the last ten years on certain crimes and a certain way of administering justice. And on the Mafia. I hope it will be read in a serene frame of mind.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Sciascia, Leonardo - (Racalmuto 1921 - Palermo 1990) Writer, author of famous novels, but also a noted polemic essayist, he participated in Italian civic life for at least twenty years. For one term (1979-1983) he was also a Radical Deputy who fought energetically in civil rights cases (the Tortora case, etc.).

2) Pertini, Sandro - (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990) Italian statesman, Socialist, imprisoned and sent into exile by the Fascists. From 1943 - 1945 fought in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies (1968 -1976), President of the Republic (1978 -1985).

3) Tortora, Enzo - (Genoa 1928 - Milan 1988) Journalist and famous television MC, arrested for drug pushing. Elected to the European Parliament in 1984 on the Radical ticket, he underwent a famous trial in which he was convicted, only to be absolved on appeal. This occasion became the symbol of the Radicals' most important campaign for the reform of justice.

4) Quirinal Palace - The official residence of the President of the Italian Republic.

5) Corriere della Sera - The Milan newspaper generally considered to be the country's most authoritative and prestigious.

6) Camorra - The Neapolitan criminal organisation which is that area's equivalent of the Mafia.

7) Manzoni, Alessandro - (Milan 1785 - 1873) - The greatest Italian writer of the Romantic age, his masterpiece being the novel »I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), one of the landmarks of European 18th Century literature. A Catholic with strong Jansenist overtones, he was open to the liberal ideas he absorbed during the Paris sojourn in his youth where he frequented the most advanced intellectual circles.

8) Repubblica, La - A popular Rome daily paper.

9) Calamandrei, Piero - (Florence 1889 - 1956) Italian jurist, free-lance journalist and statesman. Drafter of codes even during the Fascist period (as a "technical" consultant), later exponent of the anti-Fascist viewpoint of a progressive tendency. Founder of the review »Il Ponte . Constitutionalist.

10) 'Ndrangheta - The criminal organisation which is the Calabrian equivalent of the Mafia.