An edition of How I became a bandit
(2014)
How I became a bandit
by Carmine Crocco Donatelli
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Last edited by barbara luciana di fiore
July 20, 2014 | History
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How I became a bandit
13/07/2014, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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1500501514 9781500501518
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE – THE CHILDHOOD
On the 27th of March 1889 in St. Stefano’s bathroom, where I serve my term of imprisonment, I begin to write my memories; by reading this test, do not expect things that make the human soul be joyful, but rather that make him feel sad and horrified.
My country, called Rionero in Vulture, is located in the district of Melfi, in Basilicata, Italy, and is on the slope of a hill to the east of a mountain named Monticchio. The entire territory is covered with vineyards, olive groves, vegetables, chestnut trees, fields, forests and pastures, full of wonderful vegetation. According to some people, its population is made of 12,000 inhabitants among those there is the real Lucania prototype, mentioned by Telemachus. To the south of this beautiful country, set a few meters away from the body of the country itself, there are about twenty houses of a single floor, placed along the slope of a bank whose height varies between 25 and 50 meters. Each of these houses was inhabited by a family of poor farmers and cultivators, who working hard kept misery and hunger away. However, among those people there were the shoemaker, who was a secret spy of the Bourbon police, the stone-cutter, some decurions, the gossip, the tailor and the school teacher, for those who could pay for him.
Those families were formed by 200 inhabitants, more or less; if we add to these people a hundred animals, among those there were sheeps, goats, oxes, pigs and donkeys, which are part of the poor, we will have the amount of five hundred animated beings, all inhabitants of those smoked hovels.
Yet, in that place there were glorious, old and mutilated veterans of Napoleon, covered with wounds that they had got in Spain, Prussia, Austria, and against the Cossacks of the priest; there were a lot of men who had endured the Bourbon, Republican, Murattian, Bonapartist turpitudes and other misfortunes. There were respectable old ladies, who were still virgin and had not given in to the French, Jacobin and Spanish filths, during the fishy days when men protected themselves thanks to their own strengths, since governments, while waiting for fighting against each other, shot helpless men as they need their blood, imprisoned innocent people as they need money, as they need revenge. In the long winter evenings, those old men told each other the wonderful stories of their turbulent lives, of the battles they won, of the valuable actions they had made, of the blood that flowed along the battlefields full of dead and wounded people, which toughened our souls because of our warlike and bellicose nature.
In one of those houses that I mentioned above, the first Sunday of June 1830 I was born from Francesco Crocco Donatelli and Maria Gera from Santo Mauro.
My mother married in 1824 and from this year up to 1836 when I began to remember events, my mother gave birth to five children, named Donato, Carmine, who is me, Rosina, Antonio, and Marco; the sixth was to come into the world, but God was envious of our happiness and began to scourge us. Now I want to tell about the happiness of a poor family.
My father was a shepherd and a farmer; when he married his wife, he went away from his father, bought a few sheeps and a few goats, and after depriving a noble family of a piece of land which they had rent, he began to sow wheat, legumes, formentone and a little hemp. Thanks to his daily work he earned enough money to pay the rent to the owner and provide for the survival of the family, while thanks to the sheeps and the goats he earned other money in order to pay for the household expenses. My mother had inherited a mound of land, where vineyards were planted, and they were our delight; she had also two little houses and was a wool worker, thanks to which she was able to feed her family.
Both my father and my mother, God has called them to peace, gave us everything. It was nice in the morning when my father opened the fold and the goats came outside, hopping along the grazing areas, while we all, as kids, ran together and raced with each other looking for flowers to bring to our mother.
And my mother had a lot of goodness in his eyes full of love, a lot of love in its behavior full of care, a lot of constant willingness to work! He got up at dawn, prepared her husband’s saddlebag, tidied her house, took care of her children, and with a lot of energy she began to work, sure to earn her 40 cents before sunset.
How much patience a mother should have in raising her children! A baby cries, screams as much as they can do and the mother does her best to calm them, and she often does not succeed in doing it. She feeds them and they say no; she gives them a piece of bread, and they throw it away; she gives them a toy and they break it; she puts them down on the floor and they roll in the mud; she puts them into the cradle and they jump off, and the mother is full of patience, kisses them and covers them with love. Yet, I met some men who said,”They are just women and nothing else!”, how much contempt for women. Shut up male: women are the mothers of men, women are the wifes of men, there is no life without them. Women are the daughters of men, there are no happy fathers without them; and finally women are the sisters of men, there are no happy brothers without them, neither a happy family.
Think about what Guerazzi wrote: “you must respect the woman because her mother was so” and if you do not deeply feel this respect in yourself, grasp the plow and hoe the ground, you do not deserve a better fate.
I felt a so powerful and a so strong affection for my mother, that in those moments when my desire was at his maximum level his memory acted as a stimulus, and she appeared before my eyes with her proud look, staring strongly at my face, as if to say “Hit, lay claim to me, the others did not feel pity for me, for your father and for your sister.”
And now after so many years I repeat that a child who has the luck to be born from a virtuous mother, if she receives the slightest insult from an overbearing man and does not take revenge, her child is a coward, an insignificant man. So when I was born and I believed that I had a role in this world, because of an outrage to my poor mother, I worked hard to kill a lot of people and I marvelously managed to do that!
Forgive the outburst of a sorrowful soul, my dear reader, and be polite with me, agree with me and let’s go to my place. You will not find sofas, dressers, tables, chairs and other objects, there is nothing luxurious or comfortable. These are two small houses blackened by the passing of the time and by the smoke; one of them is used as a barn and a stable for the animals, in the other one we sleep. Can you see that miserable bed supported by rotten beams and rusted trestles? My father and my mother sleep there; in the near little bed we, three siblings, sleep, all in swaddling bands as stockfishes. Can you see in the big basket? There, our little sister sleeps; and in the cradle, suspended on the bed and manufactured with a few wicker and straw, Marco, the last born, come into the world just a few months ago, sleeps. Here is my mother who works with the wool, can you see her? She is totally stained with oil. Look at that smoked chest, it contains pumpernickel, formentone, broad beans, peas and little grain with which we could make white bread when God punishes us with diseases. It is the harvest done by my father, God knows how much sweat he poured for a few legumes! Raise your eyes to the ceiling, can you see how blackened are those beams because of the smoke and the walls full of soot? Can you feel the smell of goats, sheeps, rabbits, chickens? What do you say about it? On the window sill of a fake window there are the kitchen utensils, pots, pans and dishes made of clay, wooden spoons, a copper pot, that’s all. I take advantage of your goodness and I invite you to sit on these wooden seats, made with an ax by my father, so I will have the pleasure to introduce you to my uncle Martino, my school teacher. He is an old first gunnery sergeant and during the siege of Saragossa in Spain he lost his left leg carried away by a cannon ball; he was born here. There is another old man who had his arm cut off by a Uhlan and now that poor man lives by begging, because the Bourbon government has not recognized the poor pension he had from Gioacchino Murat.
Further, there is another old blind man; he lost his sight in Berezina, and now he lives singing verbum caro. But you came here to know other sort of things and not to hear about a lame, a mutilated and a blind. But I want to conclude that the governments, generally speaking, never look at where children of poverty were born, nor how they make a living, and they do not anything to mitigate their poverty in some ways and remove their ignorance. Instead they look for them when they are all men able to live by themselves and to give some relief to their older parents. So the governor, without forgetting one of them, take them all as they were his property and he does what he pleases with them.
The pretext is beautiful, the Homeland, the Law, the first is a whore, the second is even worse.
And the Homeland and the Law have rights and duties, and want the blood of the children of poverty. But is there a law that is equal for everyone? Do not tell me that, do not to talk about this tremendous giant, because I know that the fair law never existed nor will exist as long as God will not exterminate us all. My innocent father did not find neither the law nor the justice; instead Don Vincenzo C. found it, he was the murderer of my mother. As for me, I do not hate neither the law nor the government, I owe them my life, but then I repeat again what Mastrogianni and Victor Hugo wrote: “Let him live in misery and infamy!”.
And here I am to the reasons why there was the spark that from 1860 to 1864 caused so much blood in Puglia and Basilicata.
We are in 1836. One morning in April, Donato, my older brother and I were back from our uncle Martino’s school. A few minutes after entering home Donato was sent to collect the grass for the rabbits and I went to buy some salt to cook. We ran as fast as rats do, one of us to the east and the other to the west and fifteen minutes later we were back; each having done their own duty very well, there was no beating, since when we made the slightest mistake there were slaps and clouts. To me my mother’s beatings were so tasty that I sometimes made mistakes on purpose to have them. It was lunch time and we sat around a table with a large bowl of steaming soup on it, we began to eat, while my mother gave milk to her little son. This group, which was happy even if it was poor, made Satan so envious, that he wanted to destroy them, and forever; in another corner of the room there was another group of happy animals, rabbits and chickens eating the grass collected by Donato, and the Devil, perhaps even jealous of the beasts, wanted to disturb that happiness; indeed he used those beasts to bring misfortune into our house.
Unexpectedly, a beautiful greyhound dog came into our room with a jump and after grabbing a rabbit ran outside. After seeing what had happened we all began to scream and went outside to make the animal leave its prey. It disturbed our joy, but unfortunately the rabbit was dead. Donato, who was going to pick up a cudgel, hit with a tremendous blow the dog’s head, and the magnificent greyhound fell down dead on the spot. Unhappily, that dog belonged to a rich man, named Vincenzo C… who after noticing that his dog wasn’t near there, turned back and as he found it dead near our house, addressed a million of insults to my mother’s place, and began to beat us with his whip. My mother tried to apologize, to beg pardon, to beg for pity, but it was all a wasting of breath, and the man, absolutely wanting to know who had killed his dog, went on punching the poor Donato, holding him by his arm. Then my mother after seeing his son being scourged, did her best to protect him; she put her little son, who was in her arms, on the ground and rushed furiously towards the man, but he was really mad and vigorously kicked her into her belly, which made her fall to the ground half dead.
The brutal man, after committing the crime and having given vent to his infamous anger, cried as the vilest of human beings could do. Don Vincenzo did so.
After having nearly killed a 5-month-pregnant woman, he locked himself in his room, and began to cry. He cried not for fear of the law, for fear of the justice, of a sentence, that certainly would have been given to the poor like us; he knew very well that the justice lives millions and millions of meters away from the houses of the rich and the powerful, but he cried for the shame and the remorse. The frightened relatives rushed over, a doctor arrived, but my mother did not recover consciousness; God chose to let her open her eyes. But it would have been better for her if she had never opened them!
From April 1836 to May 1839 the poor woman was forced to stay in bed. Who can say how much we cried, the oldest of us was eight years old, the youngest was only two! Who would have thought about us? Who would have washed us, combed our hair, tidied clothes? Who would have stroked us? Oh, how often I craved my mother loving slaps!
My father could not leave his job, we would have died of hunger. Our aunt was a thief and a glutton but she began to take care of the house; she stole everything she found before her eyes, devoured everything was good, leaving the bad and smelly food to us. Goodbye schools, goodbye uncle Martino, relatives, classmates, friends, goodbye everyone!
Despair and misery are with us. Death and prison are there for the miserable!
Yet, we have a Master overhead, God, a man on the earth, the King. In that period our King was Francesco II and our Queen was Maria Cristina; the Neapolitans’ holy and good King; but they only took care of parties and glory, while we were dying of hunger.
After a strenuous abortion my mother seemed to improve, it was then that my father went to Venosa, under the Santangelo lords’ control to shear the sheeps and to harvest wheat.
In the meanwhile, Don Vincenzo C., the murderer of my mother, locked in his palace, had thought to the danger of a revenge and, wisely, had managed to make my father leave his role as a local guard, in consequence of which he had to abandon his rifle.
But God always punishes people; one morning Don Vincenzo, alone, went to the countryside on a superb black horse. He was armed like an old knight; he had some guns attached to the saddle, a rifle to the bandolier and a dagger. But, in spite of all this stuff, before he could get to the area called La Torre, about three miles far from Rionero, he was shot, which made him fall to the ground bleeding. Another man was watching over him and, informed of that trip by a spy, after measuring the time and the place, gave vent to his hatred, almost certain of his impunity, as he knew that he would not have been accused of the unsuccessful murder, because he would have infamously blamed on another man, thanks to contemptible and misleading statements.
Unfortunately, the hand of the coward was trembling, maybe not for the murder he was about to make, but for the false accusation with which he blamed on an innocent person; and so it was that Don Vincenzo C. was touched lightly by the bullet and lost a strand of hair.
The attempted assassination of Don Vincenzo had to be punished even if it would have caused innocent victims; it was necessary to give the guilty to the justice, or at least make some arrests, actually many arrests, to show that Del Carretto General’s men do not stay there without doing anything. Who do you think was the first person arrested?
Right, my father, my own father, who was in Venosa when the crime was committed, in Don Felice Santangelo’s house, nine miles far from Rionero. The statements of his masters in Venosa were useless and the statements of twenty-eight honest people who worked with my father were so, as well. The crime was so obvious, so natural, that no statement could destroy the belief that he was the murderer, therefore, Francesco Donatelli, sent to jail, was subjected to a criminal prosecution.
Five other poor men, responsible for feeding their families, were arrested, as well. The police had found some reasons why they could have committed the crime against Don Vincenzo. According to these reasons they would have had to arrest more people, as the squire’s arrogance was so excessive that he had argued with all the local farmers for numerous reasons, for transit reasons, for waters origin reasons, for rent payments reasons, for harvest division reasons, and so on.
Those strict judges fantasizing about the crime causes did not remember the famous saying “Cherchez la femme!” The instigator had been a woman, one of Don Vincenzo’s friends. How many tears for that filthy woman!
Who can consider the pain of an innocent man in prison, with the danger of falling into the executioner’s hands. The offender does not suffer as his conscience is quiet and we could say: I am guilty and I suffer for a punishment that I deserve; but the innocent never rests, the innocent does not know how to regain his lost liberty, suffers for the infamy that covers his name, and he cries, curses, dams… but in vain.
My father imprisonment had a repercussion on my mother’s bad health. When the poor woman heard of her husband arrest was petrified, she refused to eat and soon went crazy. One day she cried, the day after she laughed, the following day she threw herself off the bed, tried to go out on the street wearing just her nightdress and destroyed everything she found before her eyes, and if we tried to get close to her, she threatened to strangle us. The only person who could get close to her and influence her was her brother, who had a lot of children and had to think of hoeing the ground to feed his family instead of taking care of his sister.
My father wrote agonizing letters from the prison in Potenza, and heartily recommended his relatives, friends, wife and children, but in the meantime our little heritage was about to finish and in a few days we became very poor.
Our uncle, our mother’s brother, made all our relatives gather together, and it was decided that his sister Rosina would have gone with her maternal aunt. Antonio went to a paternal uncle’ place and died shortly afterwards, burned alive; Marco, the youngest, went under the thief aunt control who during our poor mother’s illness stole everything. Donato went to pasture the sheeps at a gentleman’s house, and I did the same but at another lord’s house in Puglia.
I was far from my country, far from my crazy mother, far from my father who was in prison and I grew up putting out the sheeps to pasture, I grew up with the poison in my heart, with the anger in my soul, with the strong desire to hurt people. One day, after a long time, I was told to go to Rionero to try an experiment in order to make my mother regain consciousness. When I entered the house and saw my mother who resembled a skeleton, I ran to hug her, but she pushed me away in horror and said, “Carry this snake far from me.”
Oh merciful God, my mother knew that I was the venomous snake, which had to bite my fellows, which had to poison many families, I had to be transformed into a nasty reptile! If I had considered that prophecy, if I had just meditated on my mother’s rejection, maybe I would not have soiled my hands with so much blood. Actually, what I said is not true; it was because of my mother’s misfortunes that I became a killer, those misfortunes made me inhuman, sometimes ferocious; and when I killed those who asked for pity, I was so cruel right because of the pains my mother had suffered from.
But now thinking about the past is useless, I had to become a killer, and so I did! I had not come back to Puglia, and in spite of my mother’s rejections towards me, the doctor hoped to succeed in something with the poor crazy woman using my person, when one day I heard the bell of the parish with gloomy tolls which was a call to bring all the people together for one of their countrymen’s funeral. Francesco A., called uncle Cecco, was dead.
“Poor dead, what a pity! What do you want, after all, he was old, may God grant him peace. He confessed and died as a saint. Tomorrow he will have a sung mass and his coffin, he will have the lighting, two offices and the participation of all the brothers belonging to the Saint Sacrament congregation, may he rest in peace…” these were the people’s talks.
In fact, the church had been prepared for a funeral, the altar had been covered with candles, the coffin had been covered with silk and gold drapes, and everyone had gathered to take part in uncle Cecco’s funeral, a venerable good man. And he was really a good man, poor dead. When there were misfortunes he was the first to help, he begged and scolded those who made mistakes; he was jealous of the others’ honor, as he was of his honor, he advised people to do well. I remember his countenance very well, in spite of the passing of the years. He was quite high, he had a broad forehead, big and black eyes, a wide chest, muscular arms and legs, a long, white and shabby beard that gave him a wild look.
The church was crowded with people, the women sobbed beating themselves on the chest, the men were silent and sad, only Don Leonardo Cecero, prior of the parish, looked troubled.
When the mass began, under the sound of a funeral music, after the elevation, Don Leonardo, told the masses that he wanted to speak. Everyone believed that the respectable pastor magnify uncle Cecero’s many virtues, so there was soon a sepulchral silence. Don Leonardo said something like that: “Gentlemen, people, men and women, you all knew Francesco A. Before his death he left five thousand liras to enlarge the church and a thousand of liras for the poor and the indigent of the parish. In addition, he gave me this document begging me to read it in your presence.
“Not all of you can understand the importance of this document in which there are abundant quotations in Latin and Greek, so I will tell you the most important part.
“When there was the Neapolitan Republic, Francesco killed five people living in Mandorano and destroyed their houses, when there was Giuseppe Bonaparte, King of the Two Sicilies, he killed a French because he was jelous of some bad women. In 1809, he slaughtered King Gioacchino Murat special commissioner in one of his wives’ place. He killed the forester Michele Spiarule, and recently, tried to kill Don Vincenzo C.
“Our uncle Cecco tried to go on with this unsuccessful murder to revenge Margherita, a foundling grown up in his place, seduced by D. Vincenzo and obliged to go to a brothel.”
Leonardo invoked the blessing of heaven on the body of the departed, encouraged the faithful to pray for his soul, asked for his forgiveness, to the children and the grandchildren of those who were killed by him and promised that he would soon made King Ferdinando II know all the events, in order to obtain the release of the innocent accused of D. Vincenzo C.’s murder.
So my father was innocent, and his innocence was proclaimed loudly and clearly to everyone. Uncle Cecco did not want to bring the secret of his crimes in his grave. He could have left a good memory of himself, because no one knew that he was guilty, he preferred to get rid of his soul’s remorse; and in my opinion he did well, since he partly amended for his serious sins. I know a lot of people who think or thought about that in a different way, who were, during their life, rich and respectable, and when they died had the honor of a long lasting memory although they were guilty and sad. I know people who, after the collapse of the Bourbon power, were the heads of the repression, had thousands and thousands of shields in their hands, and secretly began practicing with me and my group in order to raise the masses, and afterwards pretending to be liberals, betrayed Francesco II as they had first betrayed Vittorio Emanuele. And since I do not want to blame them, and to give their children or grandchildren those damned souls, I have to die without confessing, even if I could get some people’s close relatives blush with shame, with one single word! But I do not want to alarm the guilty and their relatives, I will not speak; their names will die with me.
The priest Don Leonardo Cecero as a true minister of God does, kept his promise, he was in Naples, talked to Ferdinando II, and my father was released soon. But his freedom was conditioned. After a 31-month-imprisonment, guilty of being a victim’s relative of a gentleman, he began to be observed by the police. And my father decided to surrender and did not want to rebel. Oh wife! oh children! you are the ones who have the power of making the man feel not free to choose what to do.
But it was different for me! I was growing up with hatred in the heart; my body was becoming bigger and a lively desire to avenge all the pains my mother and my father had suffered from was becoming bigger, as well.
When I was 15 I felt I was an adult; I was not afraid of anyone, and I felt the need to prevail on my peers, to stand out from the average man, even if it was dangerous for my life.
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| July 20, 2014 | Edited by barbara luciana di fiore | Edited without comment. |
| July 20, 2014 | Created by barbara luciana di fiore | Added new book. |