I have just consulted with Lambert,and he knows these things as he is a man of the world.Also,he has access to U tube which means that truth is therefore undeniable,and he tells me that scarface did not in fact,pass from this world to the next as depicted in the above rendition(albeit backwards).
The actual circumstance surrounding his demise are sketchy at best,given the secrecy to which was his wont in all things pertaining to his personal life,but data has emerged that would indicate a less than heroic termination than hitherto supposed,and it has to do with a box of Pesta.
It was some months before the popularly held and widely distributed sequence of events that of which we have all,until now,laboured with misapprehension.Whilst holidaying in Sicily,Tony was urged by his maternal godmother to visit and pay respects to an aged aunt on the outskirts of Palermo where once as a child,he would play in the dirt with lego bricks,building empires unassailable by his erstwhile chums.On the journey to the remote little hasta where this aged aunt resided,he stopped by at a roadside cabana and was fortunate in being able to acquire two watermelons for just 2000 lira,leaving him only 4500 lira for the rest of the journey.Now this may seem insignificant in terms of general expense,but it was to prove monumental in what followed,due not only to the actual amount tendered,but also to the fact that as a two-for-one offer,the watermelon came with a box of Pesta,and too,the compliments of Nickolianis,the vendor.
Nickers(as he was known locally) was not to know how momentous his kind offer was to later prove.As a young orphaned boy,Nickers had adopted in his own right a lamb,which followed him everywhere,even unto school and church,and this lamb he named Toninio in respect of his childhood hero,John.Now John,who had no inkling of what would later become of the boy he never knew,also known as Nickers,does not figure in any way with what was to shortly transpire with the foreshortened life of Tony,but he did have in his possession two items related to sheephusbandry,namely a crook and a bone handled knife with a notch in the blade fashioned from finest Milan steel around about the time of the German occupation of Rome.John was instrumental however,in the shipment of girls during this dire period from Naples to Rome,where the girl could not prove herself either married,or at the very least supported by family.During his time in Naples,he was to discover that he liked the white lemons of the region better than any he had discovered anywhere in the world,and supposed,as was indeed true,that they held a flavour much remarked upon due in the main to the soil enriched with volcanic ash from the nearby active volcano.
John was a married man of some repute in the region,and whilst the English and American expeditionary forces occupied Naples,his wife was encouraged to work as a chef in the offices shared by both the Americans and the English,although at that time,the English contingent consisted solely of one Officer whos' responsibility was to ensure that all residents had viable means of support.His position was know as "the Marraige Officer" due to the fact that many females of the town would engage themselves with the occupying troops,and it was his job to verify the arrangement based upon the facts he could garner.Now John was somewhat disenchanted with the arrangements regarding his wife but could do nothing to change matters given the instability extant in the region at the time,although he did,as a gesture and nod toward the fierce loyalty displayed by his wife,encourage her to do all she could to give of small displays of national pride.It was for this reason that Mella(Johns wife) made absolutely sure that every meal she cooked and prepared for her employers,contained the three colours of the proud Italian flag.It was a small but nonetheless rewarding gesture,and every evening she relaxed on the broken balcony of her lodging reflecting on her perspicacity and ingenuity.She had the darkest of hair and her eyes were smouldering brown pools of liquid.
After the cessation of hostilities,John and Mella bought an old tank from a hill farmer who had appropriated the tank during the rout of a German Panzer divison from their hideout in caves secreted on the north western slopes of the volcano.They paid 4500 lira for the tank,and you will begin to see where the story has chilling similarities to the occurences leading to the death untimely,of scarfaced Tony,who dropped the box of Pesta before ever reaching his aged aunt,tripped as he stepped into the box,fell awkwardly,dropped both watermelons smashing them beyond economic repair,and dying alone on a pool of his own watermelon juice,but mostly due to a condition he had had since childhood whereby any fall could prove fatal,especially if connected with an inadvertant and some would say,negligent discharge of a small hand gun sometimes kept in the waistband and pointing directly at certain private regions of the male anatomy.It was not an especially gruesome death as gruesome deaths go,and at least it was quick due in no small part to the heady mix of pesta infected watermelon juice which the hapless scarfaced tony imbibed inadvertantly.The tank was later used by John and Mella as a local landmark standing as it did outside their small restaraunt and sometimes sheep would rub alongside it to rid themselves of ticks,but it is not known if any of the sheep were related to Toninio,the adopted lamb belonging,if a lamb can belong,to Nickers.I do not believe that there could be any material worth garnered from any such relationship,but as a heartwarming story,it would be nice to think so in my opinion.
As a completely unrelated adjunct to this tale,the tank was to figure one more and final time in a tale which remains to this day buried in the antiquites of vagariaisms,and scarcely recorded at all except in the local paper of the region where the report read:
(This I translated for the benefit of those to whom Italian[Neapolitan dialect] does not come easily)
"Today in the hills there was a small explosion believed to have been caused when a small child of foriegn ethnicity climbed aboard the tank placed outside the restaraunt of John and Mella seguigialarias.Locals believe he pulled the action lever attached to the main gun,once believed to be not loaded,which facilitated the discharge of a shell which then proceeded to impact on a dunghill in the distance,known locally to sometimes smell of musk.The boy,Osama Bin Laden,known as "Binny" to his friend ran off and has not been seen since.Local police are confident that he will be found safe and well very soon and wish to assure his parents that he will not be blamed for this incident"
My thanks to Lambert,bless his acrylic socks,for bringing this important issue to light.(and an end hopefully)
Lizzie xx