Authors: Katherine Webb
The peasants consider love, or sexual attraction, so powerful a force of nature that no amount of will-power can resist it … good intentions and chastity are of no avail … So great is the power of the god of love and so simple the impulse to obey him that there is no question of a code of sexual morals or even of social disapproval for an illicit affair.
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Carlo Levi
Ettore
Ettore wakes up because he’s thirsty. His throat feels torn. When he opens his eyes things swing around his head in a giddy blur that slowly resolves itself into walls, window, ceiling, floor; all of them sunlit with extravagant brightness. He blinks and tries to sit up, and the room tilts again. He hears a soft gasp and movement, and then there are hands on his shoulders; small hands with clean, pale skin.
‘Take it easy, Ettore. Lie down. Welcome back to the land of the living, honey.’ It takes him a minute to understand – the words are in a language he must pick apart and process, not one he knows in his bones.
‘Marcie?’ he says.
‘That’s right, I’m here. You nearly weren’t, for a while there. Jesus! You scared us. Why on earth didn’t you come for help sooner? Honestly.’ He feels the mattress dip as she sits down on the edge of it, and turns to look at her. Her face has lines of concern, and faint shadows under the eyes. Ettore searches in his head for the right words to answer her. The effort wears him out.
‘Water? Please. How much time here?’
‘Here. Sip, don’t gulp.’ She hands him a glass of water and he drinks it so quickly he almost chokes. He feels like he could never have enough of it. A cough sends it shooting into his nose. ‘Like I said,’ says Marcie, shaking her head as she refills it for him. ‘That gorgeous friend of yours delivered you here three days ago. What’s his name? Penno? Your sister came too but they’ve both gone back to Gioia now – reluctantly, mind you. Only when the doctor had actually been and seen you, and they were sure you were going to live. Sorry – am I speaking too quickly? I always forget.’
‘How much time?’ Ettore tries again, when Marcie breaks her incomprehensible babble.
‘Three days.’ Marcie holds up three fingers, and Ettore nods.
‘Leandro?’
‘He’ll be here tomorrow. Tomorrow –
domani
. Now, please rest. Don’t be a man, and try to run before you can walk.’ She says something else but Ettore can’t hear her. With the water in his stomach he slides back senseless.
When he next wakes the room is empty but for an orange glow of late afternoon light. The room is not large but it has a high, vaulted ceiling, all painted white like the walls; there are red and white tiles on the floor and windows twice his height in two of the walls, front and back. He stands gingerly and finds that his leg hurts a lot less than it did. It hurts, but the pain is no longer the only thing he can think about. He still doesn’t want to put weight on it, however. He’s wearing a pair of loose trousers that aren’t his, and when he rolls up the left leg to look at his shin, the wound looks wider, but it’s dry, and less angry. The trenches smell of it has gone. There’s a wooden crutch, a proper one, leaning on the wall by the bed, and he grabs it. With his head spinning Ettore drinks more water, then goes to the front window and steps out onto the little balcony to look out. He knows he’s at Masseria dell’Arco, his uncle’s farmhouse. At once he feels trapped, anxious to leave. He thinks of the three days of work he has missed; he wonders what Paola and Valerio have been finding to eat. What Paola has had to do for Poete to coax some stolen milk or cheese from him. His hands curl around the balcony rail in frustration, and he stares out along the dirt road that leads away from the farm.
There’s a large, walled-in patch of ground to the front of the main buildings, called the
aia
. On a paved area here, threshed wheat is already piled high, drying, waiting to be shovelled into sacks. There’s a set of iron gates by which to enter and leave, guarded by a conical stone
trullo
hut where a man sits, night and day, to keep watch. There will be more guards on the roof, he knows, to watch the wheat. Six shaggy, creamy-white shepherd dogs are tied to lengths of chain here and there around the
aia
, and from his vantage point Ettore can see the precise circles they have trampled into the dust at the ends of their chains, each one with a four-metre radius. They wear collars of vicious metal spikes to protect their throats. Ettore stares into the setting sun until it makes his eyes stream. He is fifteen kilometres south-east of Gioia. His leg is better but he feels weak, his muscles wobbly, and he doesn’t think he could walk it yet.
Just then a woman walks across the
aia
with a lanky youth at her side; for a second Ettore thinks it’s Marcie, but this woman is shorter, slighter. Her hair is a subtler blond, braided into some kind of knot at the nape of her neck from which wavy strands have escaped to hang down below the narrow brim of her hat. The boy is taller than her, and walks with a slight stoop as if to apologise for the fact. Their footsteps make little puffs of dust rise. For no reason he can find, Ettore has the nagging feeling that he has seen this woman before. That he knows her. They approach one of the dogs and it lunges towards them, barking wildly. The woman puts a restraining hand on the boy’s arm, like a mother would, but she looks too young for that. But then, like Marcie, these pale foreigners have artifice and lives of ease that make them look younger than they are. The dog stops barking but wheels about on the end of its chain, back a few steps, around to the left then the right. The boy crouches down and holds something out to it, but the dog won’t come near enough to take it. He shuffles closer, and Ettore hears the woman say something in warning. She has her hand on the boy’s sleeve, the knuckles white. In the end the boy has to throw his offering, and the dog gulps it down in one mouthful. It paces, and it watches, and goes no closer to them, and Ettore thinks it wise not to trust them.
He finds the rest of his clothes laundered and folded in a chest by the door; he dresses, drinks more water from the pitcher and makes his way downstairs. Marcie is on the terrace over the dairy, sipping
amarena
, eating olives with a tiny silver fork, and making notes on a piece of writing paper.
‘Ettore! Dear boy, come and sit down! It’s so wonderful to see you up and about. Sit, sit,’ she says. Marcie is still beautiful, he thinks, but it’s a kind of desperate beauty, teetering on ruin, that’s somehow pitiful. Ettore once heard his mother say that beautiful women grow to hate themselves as they age, and he wonders if this is what’s happening. If Marcie is starting to hate herself. There’s a darker shade, and glints of silver, at the roots of her hair; her smile is a dazzle of red and white; she’s wearing silk. Ettore thinks of Paola, and Iacopo, and a wave of anger courses through him. Marcie’s smile falters. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Well. You must eat. You’re so thin! How have you gotten so thin in the summertime? I’ll call for Anna to bring you something. And of course it won’t be long till dinnertime.’ She rises and calls through a dark doorway, down stone steps into shadow. ‘Anna! Anna!’
‘I do not want to eat. I want to go Gioia,’ says Ettore, but Marcie seems, or pretends, not to hear. ‘Thank you,’ he adds, stonily. As she returns to her seat Marcie says, without looking up at him:
‘Of course you want to eat, and you need to rest. And you simply
can’t
leave without seeing your uncle first. You know how … upset he would be. Please, Ettore. Sit down.’ She pours him a glass of the cherry drink, and it’s the deep, deep crimson of venous blood. After a pause he takes it from her, and she smiles again.
There are footsteps behind him, on the open steps that lead up from the courtyard, and the other woman and the boy come to the table. The woman’s eyes are wide and clear, and there’s a strange nakedness to their gaze that Ettore is unsure of; like an excess of transparency. She almost looks stupid, but it’s not quite that. The boy, whose face has the nondescript look of something unfinished, studies him with unguarded curiosity.
‘Ah, there you are, you two! Come and meet the walking wounded. Clare, Pip, this is Ettore Tarano, Leandro’s nephew. Ettore, this is Clare and Philip Kingsley. Clare’s husband is the architect designing the new front for the Gioia house, and these two are brightening up my whole summer by staying as guests while he works.’ Philip shakes Ettore’s hand first, enthusiastically, and Clare follows more reluctantly. Ettore wonders if it’s the callused roughness of his hands on her soft skin that she doesn’t like.
‘Filippo. Chiara. Kingsley,’ he says, so that he will remember the names, and the boy grins even more.
‘Filippo! Well, of course – I hadn’t thought before how fabulous your name is in Italian, Pip! I shall call you that from now on,’ Marcie declares. Much of what she says is lost on Ettore, and his face turns hot with frustration. He frowns at his aunt, then looks away; tips the
amarena
down his throat in one gulp. It makes him cough. There’s alcohol in it, not just cherries and sugar. Then Chiara Kingsley speaks in hesitant Italian, and he turns to her, surprised.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Tarano. I did not know that Mr Cardetta had family remaining in Gioia.’
‘Oh! I forgot – how wonderful! You can speak to him in Italian, Clare. I taught him some English last winter but it was hard going for both of us, because I have almost no Italian.’ Marcie claps her hands, pleased. Anna, the kitchen girl, arrives with a basket of bread and a plate of cheese, and more olives. The sight of the food makes Ettore sway on his feet, and sweat beads along his hairline.
‘Won’t you sit?’ Chiara says evenly. ‘You have been very unwell.’ Without speaking, Ettore sinks into a chair. His hand reaches for bread of its own accord.
For a while they drink and they talk, in English, and Ettore is aware of being consciously not watched as he eats savagely, desperately. He despises their tact; he despises himself for sitting there eating when his family in Gioia might have nothing. A shard of bread crust scores his sore throat and he gags, coughing and gasping. Filippo passes him water, which he takes without thanks. Ettore is aware of Chiara leaning towards him, her forehead creased in thought. He knows the look well; she is trying to find the right words in an unfamiliar language.
‘The doctor gave you water in a line. In a … cord. To the mouth,’ she stumbles.
‘With a tube?’ he says, and she nods.
‘That’s why your throat is a hurt, I think.’ When he doesn’t answer her she continues. ‘He cleaned your leg with alcohol. He cut away some badness. He has not closed it. It must dry. He comes back to close it,’ she says, all in the same careful tone, and precisely over-enunciated. Ettore nods.
‘I will pay for the doctor. Please tell Marcie that. I will pay for the doctor and for my time here.’
‘Marcie, Mr Tarano says that he intends to reimburse you for his medical treatment, and for his board,’ she says obediently.
‘Well, rot and nonsense! He’s family, for heaven’s sake! Oh, why must the peasants be so damned proud? And how on earth does he plan to pay us, anyway, he hasn’t two dimes to rub together. Don’t translate that, will you dear?’ says Marcie. She’s had several glasses of the
amarena
, there are two smears of colour either side of her nose and her eyes are sparkling. Ettore understands enough of what she says. He understands her dismissal of his offer, and anger and shame come in equal measures. He stares down at his plate until they begin to talk of other things.
‘I want to go,’ he says later, quietly, almost to himself. But Chiara hears him; he can feel her half-watching, half-listening, all the time. It’s distracting, and he can’t tell if he likes it or not.
More food arrives, and he eats but it’s too rich and makes his stomach roll. The meat seems to sit in his chest like a fist, the alcohol makes him slow and stupid; he can no longer pick any one word from their rapid English, so he stops trying. The sky turns to black, and prickles with stars; the white walls of the
masseria
are lit yellow with torches, alive with capering shadows. With the stink from the dairy there’s the sweet smell of jasmine, growing up the wall near the table. Knives and forks squeak and clatter against the china; they all chew and cut and spoon. The extravagance of it, the abundance, is like some mad pantomime. Marcie talks and talks and talks, and laughs, tipping back her head so that her teeth shine and the ridges of her throat are exposed. Young Filippo sometimes laughs with her, self-consciously, but Chiara is quiet. She is the one restful corner of the world, absorbing sound instead of making it. When Ettore can’t take any more he lurches to his feet, tipping over his chair and shoving the table so that the drinks slop, and it’s Chiara who reaches him first, and steadies his arm.
‘Come with me,’ she says quietly, in words he can understand. She guides him up stairs, through doors, back to his bed.
Leandro does not appear early the next day. Without Paola to wake him Ettore sleeps until the sun is high in the sky, and then he rushes downstairs feeling as though he’s missed something important, that he is sleeping away all control. He can see the foreigners on the terrace, at breakfast, and it’s like they never left the table – like they’ve been eating and drinking all night, like that’s all they ever do. He goes to the kitchen in disgust, asks Anna for some bread and a glass of milk, then goes out across the
aia
, moving faster as he gets used to the crutch. He leaves through the iron gates and goes around to the back of the quad, where there’s a complex of large
trulli
, the first buildings to be built in that spot, hundreds of years before the
masseria
was built. They abut and blend into the back wall of the farm, looking like some strange warty growth sprouting from its skin. Here the corporals and other permanent outdoor staff sleep, on wooden platforms above the animals – the stablehand and herdsmen, the dairyman and his wife who makes the cheese.
Detached from it all, a short distance away, is another
trullo
with three large, interlinked cones. These are the private quarters of the overseer of the farm, who manages it day to day, and in his uncle’s absence. Ettore pauses. He could go and ask for a half-day’s work while he waits for his uncle. He could make a little money to take back to Gioia, but his arm is trembling with fatigue from taking his weight on the crutch, his head aches and his leg is throbbing. He experiments with putting his full weight on it, but the grinding feeling, the pressure, brings tears to his eyes. Just then the door of the overseer’s house opens and a man emerges, and all thought of asking for work leaves Ettore’s head. This is not the same man who was overseer during the winter, when Ettore last came to stay at the dell’Arco. That man was called Araldo, and he’d been short and fat with a mad red beard. This man is Ludo Manzo. Older, more grizzled, but instantly recognisable. The very same man who once tormented Pino and Ettore, and countless other young boys. Ettore stares, and a violent rush of hatred makes his head throb harder. Ludo sees him there, looks him over lazily, and doesn’t recognise him. Why would he? Ettore was just a boy, one of many; as indistinct and unfinished as the boy Filippo. Ludo looks away and carries on walking towards the barns, but Ettore remains motionless for quite some time, with his leg tucked up like a stork.