“Don’t touch that,” Claudia said, admonishing her little daughter to stand back from the grimy toilet in the corner of the cell. ‘What’s the use,’ Claudia thought. ‘It’s a filthy place in a filthy city in a filthy country.’ She sometimes hated her husband Paolo for the protests he insisted upon.
Paolo Infante had railed against the government of Benito Mussolini for years, but never as loudly as now when his puppet prefect, Cesari Mori, had taken absolute control of the city. Known for unmerciful treatment, Mori would imprison the protesters if he could capture them, or imprison the man’s family if he could not. In this case, Paolo had eluded capture and so his wife and daughter were now in Mori’s filthy jail cell.
The prefect of Palermo was remade into the mold of his benefactor Mussoli
