The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
7
thought the Don himself was the lucky groom. 
Standing at the door with him were two of his three sons. The eldest, baptized Santino 
but called Sonny by everyone except his father, was looked at askance by the older 
Italian men; with admiration by the younger. Sonny Corleone was tall for a 
first-generation American of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his crop of bushy, 
curly hair made him look even taller. His face was that of a gross Cupid, the features 
even but the bow-shaped lips thickly sensual, the dimpled cleft chin in some curious way 
obscene. He was built as powerfully as a bull and it was common knowledge that he 
was so generously endowed by nature that his martyred wife feared the marriage bed 
as unbelievers once feared the rack. It was whispered that when as a youth he had 
visited houses of ill fame, even the most hardened and fearless putain, after an awed 
inspection of his massive organ, demanded double price. 
Here at the wedding feast, some young matrons, wide-hipped, wide-mouthed, measured 
Sonny Corleone with coolly confident eyes. But on this particular day they were wasting 
their time. Sonny Corleone, despite the presence of his wife and three small children, 
had plans for his sister’s maid of honor, Lucy Mancini. This young girl, fully aware, sat at 
a garden table in her pink formal gown, a tiara of flowers in her glossy black hair. She 
had flirted with Sonny in the past week of rehearsals and squeezed his hand that 
morning at the altar. A maiden could do no more. 
She did not care that he would never be the great man his father had proved to be. 
Sonny Corleone had strength, he had courage. He was generous and his heart was 
admitted to be as big as his organ. Yet he did not have his father’s humility but instead a 
quick, hot temper that led him into errors of judgment. Though he was a great help in his 
father’s business, there were many who doubted that he would become the heir to it. 
The second son, Frederico, called Fred or Fredo,was a child every Italian prayed to the 
saints for. Dutiful, loyal, always at the service of his father, living with his parents at age 
thirty. He was short and burly, not handsome but with the same Cupid head of the 
family, the curly helmet of hair over the round face and sensual bow-shaped lips. Only, 
in Fred, these lips were not sensual but granitelike. Inclined to dourness, he was still a 
crutch to his father, never disputed him, never embarrassed him by scandalous behavior 
with women. Despite all these virtues he did not have that personal magnetism, that 
animal force, so necessary for a leader of men, and he too was not expected to inherit 
the family business. 

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