The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
280
Beyond the orange grove lay the green ribboned fields of a baronial estate. Down the 
road from the grove was a villa so Roman it looked as if it had been dug up from the 
ruins of Pompeii. It was a little palace with a huge marble portico and fluted Grecian 
columns and through those columns came a bevy of village girls flanked by two stout 
matrons clad in black. They were from the village and had obviously fulfilled their 
ancient duty to the local baron by cleaning his villa and otherwise preparing it for his 
winter sojourn. Now they were going into the fields to pick the flowers with which they 
would fill the rooms. They were gathering the pink sulla, purple wisteria, mixing them 
with orange and lemon blossoms. The girls, not seeing the men resting in the orange 
grove, came closer and closer. 
They were dressed in cheap gaily printed frocks that clung to their bodies. They were 
still in their teens but with the full womanliness sun-drenched flesh ripened into so 
quickly. Three or four of them started chasing one girl, chasing her toward the grove. 
The girl being chased held a bunch of huge purple grapes in her left hand and with her 
right hand was picking grapes off the cluster and throwing them at her pursuers. She 
had a crown of ringleted hair as purple-black as the grapes and her body seemed to be 
bursting out of its skin. 
Just short of the grove she poised, startled, her eyes having caught the alien color of the 
men’s shirts. She stood there up on her toes poised like a deer to run. She was very 
close now, close enough for the men to see every feature of her face. 
She was all ovals– oval-shaped eyes, the bones of her face, the contour of her brow. 
Her skin was an exquisite dark creaminess and her eyes, enormous, dark violet or 
brown but dark with long heavy lashes shadowed her lovely face. Her mouth was rich 
without being gross, sweet without being weak and dyed dark red with the juice of the 
grapes. She was so incredibly lovely that Fabrizzio murmured, “Jesus Christ, take my 
soul, I’m dying,” as a joke, but the words came out a little too hoarsely. As if she had 
heard him, the girl came down off her toes and whirled away from them and. fled back to 
her pursuers. Her haunches moved like an animal’s beneath the tight print of her dress; 
as pagan and as innocently lustful. When she reached her friends she whirled around 
again and her face was like a dark hollow against the field of bright flowers. She 
extended an arm, the hand full of grapes pointed toward the grove. The girls fled 
laughing, with the black-clad, stout matrons scolding them on. 
As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing, his heart pounding in his chest; he 
felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging through his body, through all its extremities and 

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