The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
5
The baker, Nazorine, pudgy and crusty as his great Italian loaves, still dusty with flour, 
scowled at his wife, his nubile daughter, Katherine, and his baker’s helper, Enzo. Enzo 
had changed into his prisoner-of-war uniform with its green-lettered armband and was 
terrified that this scene would make him late reporting back to Governor’s Island. One of 
the many thousands of Italian Army prisoners paroled daily to work in the American 
economy, he lived in constant fear of that parole being revoked. And so the little comedy 
being played now was, for him, a serious business. 
Nazorine asked fiercely, “Have you dishonored my family? Have you given my daughter 
a little package to remember you by now that the war is over and you know America will 
kick your ass back to your village full of shit in Sicily?” 
Enzo, a very short, strongly built boy, put his hand over his heart and said almost in 
tears, yet cleverly, “Padrone, I swear by the Holy Virgin I have never taken advantage of 
your kindness. I love your daughter with all respect. I ask for her hand with all respect. I 
know I have no right, but if they send me back to Italy I can never come back to 
America. I will never be able to marry Katherine.” 
Nazorine’s wife, Filomena, spoke to the point. “Stop all this foolishness,” she said to her 
pudgy husband. “You know what you must do. Keep Enzo here, send him to hide with 
our cousins in Long Island.” 
Katherine was weeping. She was already plump, homely and sprouting a faint 
moustache. She would never get a husband as handsome as Enzo, never find another 
man who touched her body in secret places with such respectful love. “I’ll go and live in 
Italy,” she screamed at her father. “I’ll run away if you don’t keep Enzo here.” 
Nazorine glanced at her shrewdly. She was a “hot number” this daughter of his. He had 
seen her brush her swelling buttocks against Enzo’s front when the baker’s helper 
squeezed behind her to fill the counter baskets with hot loaves from the oven. The 
young rascal’s hot loaf would be in her oven, Nazorine thought lewdly, if proper steps 
were not taken. Enzo must be kept in America and be made an American citizen. And 
there was only one man who could arrange such an affair. The Godfather. Don 
Corleone. 
* * *
All of these people and many others received engraved invitations to the wedding of 
Miss Constanzia Corleone, to be celebrated on the last Saturday in August 1945. The 
father of the bride, Don Vito Corleone, never forgot his old friends and neighbors though 

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