Italy: A Course in Geography

An outraged father tells a cousin that his young daughter has a problem. “Tumore [tumor]?” asks the cousin solicitously. The father growls back, “Onore [honor]!”

The scene is from Seduced and Abandoned, the uproarious and poignant film satire on Sicily’s exalted, exasperating code of honor. Pretty Maria Furnari, 19, might have been the heroine of that movie. She lived a secluded life in Piazza Armerina, a town of 28,000 set in the bleak, sun-baked hills of central Sicily. At home, Maria was so strictly supervised that she could not even go to church alone. But each weekday, Maria traveled 40 miles to and from the University of Catania, where she was working toward a teaching degree. Last spring Maria entered a geography course taught by handsome Professor Francesco Speranza, 44.

In June, Speranza asked Maria to visit him to discuss her grades, which were only average. They met not at his house but at a small hotel on the city’s outskirts. After the hotel meeting, Maria’s grades improved enormously-she got the equivalent of 100.

Corner Cowerer. All seemed to go well for a while, scholastically and romantically. But, gradually, Maria grew depressed because Speranza refused to leave his wife and live with her. Moreover, Mamma Furnari was becoming suspicious of the high grades in geography and troubled by a warning from a gossipy neighbor. Mamma and Maria had it out, and when the girl confessed her affair, she had to repeat it all to her father, Gaetano Furnari, 40, who jumped up from the dining-room table and ordered Maria to follow him. Hiring a car and muttering imprecations, Furnari drove to Catania. Dragging Maria behind him, he burst into a classroom where Speranza and two other professors were holding oral examinations of 15 students.

When he discovered which professor was Speranza, Furnari whipped out a pistol, shouted, “See this?” and fired five shots. As Speranza fell dead, screaming students bolted for the exits; one teacher tripped and fell trying to escape, the other cowered in a corner. Ignoring them, Furnari calmly pocketed the gun and gave himself up to the police. To his weeping daughter, Furnari said sternly, “Why are you crying? For me? You should have thought of me before. I have vindicated your honor, bambina.”

Unwatered Veins. Maria told the police she thought her father only intended to convince Speranza that he should live with her. Exactly, said her father, but “when I saw him before me, this man who had ruined my daughter and my entire existence, my intention gave way to instinct. My hand went automatically to my pistol and I fired away!” He added, “Unfortunately, I am a Sicilian, and in my veins I have blood, not dirty water.”

In their hearts, everyone knew he was right. The neighbors in Piazza Armerina are raising a defense fund; the Roman Catholic authorities in Catania have refused a church funeral to the murdered philanderer; and the police recorded Furnari’s crime as un delitto d’onore (a crime of honor), punishable -if he is found guilty-by a mere three to seven years in jail.