【正文】 ll the guests were applauding him. Older women grabbed his arm to bee his next partner. The younger men respectfully cleared off the floor and clapped their hands in time to the mandolin39。s foolish display of anger, the tantrum served a purpose. It would convince the interlopers that their presence was unexpected and unprepared for. So Don Corleone himself was not angry. He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, forted by the knowledge that in this world there es a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.But now in the garden, behind the house, a fourpiece band began to play. All the guests had arrived. Don Corleone put the intruders out of his mind and led his two sons to the wedding feast.**********There were, now, hundreds of guests in the huge garden, some dancing on the wooden platform bedecked with flowers, others sitting at long tables piled high with spicy food and gallon jugs of black, homemade wine. The bride, Connie Corleone, sat in splendor at a special raised table with her groom, the maid of honor, bridesmaids and ushers. It was a rustic setting in the old Italian style. Not to the bride39。t own the street. They can do what they please.Sonny39。s express mand when he did so.Don Corleone had no desire, no intention, of letting his youngest son be killed in the service of a power foreign to himself. Doctors had been bribed, secret arrangements had been made. A great deal of money had been spent to take the proper precautions. But Michael was twentyone years of age and nothing could be done against his own willfulness. He enlisted and fought over the Pacific Ocean. He became a Captain and won medals. In 1944 his picture was printed in Life magazine with a photo layout of his deeds. A friend had shown Don Corleone the magazine (his family did not dare), and the Don had grunted disdainfully and said, He performs those miracles for strangers.When Michael Corleone was discharged early in 1945 to recover from a disabling wound, he had no idea that his father had arranged his release. He stayed home for a few weeks, then, without consulting anyone, entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and so he left his father39。s business, there were many who doubted that he would bee 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 bowshaped 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.The third son, Michael Corleone, did not stand with his father and his two brothers but sat at a table in the most secluded corner of the garden. But even there he could not escape the attentions of the family friends.Michael Corleone was the youngest son of the Don and the only child who had refused the great man39。s wife and her friends and the gaily festooned oneacre garden itself had been decorated by the young girlchums of the bride.Don Corleone received everyone rich and poor, powerful and humble with an equal show of love. He slighted no one. That was his character. And the guests so exclaimed at how well he looked in his tux that an inexperienced observer might easily have 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。s troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution of that man39。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 Enzo39。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 edy 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 e back to America. I will never be able to marry Katherine.Nazorine39。t. And she was giggling at him. Spreadeagled on the floor, her brocaded gown hitched up above her thighs, she taunted him between giggles. Come on, stick it in. Stick it in, Johnny, that39。s key in the door, but he kept drinking until she walked into the room and stood before him. She was to him so very beautiful, the angelic face, soulful violet eyes, the delicately fragile but perfectly formed body. On the screen her beauty was magnified, spiritualized. A hundred million men all over the world were in love with the face of Margot Ashton. And paid to see it on the screen.Where the hell were you? Johnny Fontane asked.Out fucking, she said.She had misjudged his drunkenness. He sprang over the cocktail table and grabbed