Judge Surra (5 page)

“Don't let anyone even think of asking me for favours regarding court matters while Judge Surra is in office,” was the first declaration he made to his followers.

The judge himself remained for three years in charge of the Montelusa court, making it an example of efficiency, propriety and impartiality. His only relaxation was to go hunting every so often on his own. Attanasio had found him a good dog.

He was then recalled to Turin, where his wife found him somewhat overweight, and put him on a diet.

But memory of him lingered on in Montelusa for decades and decades. And when the court became once again less efficient, less scrupulous, less impartial and less transparent than he had wished and had made it, there were those who would sigh regretfully: “In the days of Judge Surra …”

I forgot one detail. The judge never did find the time to read the report by Don Pietro Ulloa which ex-President Fallarino had presented to him. Indeed, when he went back to Turin, he left it in Montelusa.

TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH FARRELL

I quote here a passage from Don Pietro Ulloa's report which would undoubtedly have been of interest to Judge Surra, if he had read it.

There is not one public employee in Sicily who has not prostrated himself at the feet of some powerful figure and who has not considered taking advantage of his office. This general corruption has caused people to have recourse to certain, exceedingly strange and dangerous remedies. There are in many towns and villages Brotherhoods, who do not meet, who have no other link than subservience to a head who may be here a landowner or there a parish priest. A common fund provides for needs, perhaps to exonerate an official, perhaps to win him over, perhaps to protect an official or to convict an innocent party.

In other words, Judge Surra knew nothing of the existence of the Brotherhood, which was already known in his day as the “riga” and which somewhere along the way lost one “f”.

The question is: had he known, would his attitude have been different?

We sincerely believe not.

We believe, on the contrary, that he preferred to remain in ignorance of its existence. He acted as though it were not there, and in so doing he unwittingly nullified it.

A.C.