"Laura Resnick - Under a Sky More Fiercely Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

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Under a Sky More Fiercely Blue
by Laura Resnick
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Copyright (c)1994 Laura Resnick
First published in By Any Other Fame, DAW Books, January 1994

Fictionwise Contemporary
Alternate History


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_In July of 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily, and the Fascist government
toppled five weeks later. Despite two decades of decline under Fascism, the
Sicilian Mafia quickly stepped into the power breach -- with notable help from
the Americans. _
_Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who was serving a thirty year prison sentence
in America, was paroled in 1946 due to his "extensive and valuable aid to the
Navy during the war." The most powerful figure in organized crime, he was
immediately deported to Italy, where he lived in reluctant exile until his
death in 1962. _
_Luciano is officially recorded as having used his influence on the New
York waterfront as part of a counter-intelligence effort to prevent
anticipated sabotage by the Nazis. It is rumored, however, that he did far
more than that. Although Luciano denied it until his death, legend has it that
he was personally smuggled into Sicily in early 1943 to convince Don Calogero
Vizzini and the Sicilian Mafia to assist the Allied invasion, in exchange for
which they would be given the run of the island after the war._
****
The almond trees were in bloom the day he fell out of the sky. Their blossoms
were puffs of pale pink, their appearance strangely similar to the round,
sunburned faces of the German soldiers. My mother always said that the almond
tree, the first of all trees to flower each year, was a symbol of hope. But in
February of 1943, Sicily was a place where hope had been eaten alive by
foreign invaders. And not just the Germans; the Nazis merely stole whatever
the Fascists neglected to take.
We ate what little was left over, rations which were not fit to feed a
rat -- and which were barely plentiful enough to sustain one, anyhow. All that
winter, oranges were our main sustenance. And so at thirteen, I was a small,
skinny boy with sunken eyes and sallow skin. How pathetic and sickly I must