Authors: Katherine Webb
Ettore
Ettore is eleven years old. It’s March and the sky is flat grey, an unbroken swathe of cloud which makes it look as though rain will fall, but it won’t – the sky has hovered like this for days, and come to nothing. The work gang is weeding, pulling up any wild plant amidst the young shoots of wheat now sprouting from the grain sown last October. Right now, the fields around Gioia are more mutedly, softly green than they will be for the rest of the year. Since this is one job that doesn’t require great strength, boys as well as men are employed. In years when there are more weeds – after a damp spring, for example – boys as young as eight and nine will be out in the fields, paid so little money it barely warrants the term wages. But little is not nothing – only those men who have built up such debts that they must work for free to recoup the losses get less. It is dull work, endlessly repetitive. When Ettore’s back gets tired from bending over, he bends his knees instead, as his father has taught him. To give the one set of muscles a break. After a while, he switches back again. His hands are stained and the skin is stinging and split from pulling at the tough stems, pitting his weight against deep roots knotted in the stony soil. Each boy has a canvas sling around his shoulders, and the number of times it’s been filled and emptied will dictate what he is paid come Saturday.
Along the edge of the field his father Valerio and some other men are breaking rocks. The smack of their picks, arrhythmic, echoing like gunshot, is all anyone has heard all day. They will all hear it in their sleep that night. Ettore gravitates towards the men, hovers as near as he dares. It’s
tufo
stone they’re breaking, the same stone that covers the county, coughed up from the ground as though the earth has an endless supply. Gioia dell Colle is built of the stuff. When newly cut or dug up it’s a soft buff colour; with time it weathers to grey, and the rain carves holes through it like worms through cheese. But what fascinate Ettore are the shells. The
tufo
stone is full of seashells. Sometimes just fragments, sharp little edges, but sometimes whole ones, their ridges making perfect, undamaged fan shapes, millions of years old. Pino laughed when the schoolmaster told them that – that the shells were millions of years old. He couldn’t fathom it, nor how they’d got into the stone, so he laughed. Ettore tried to explain it to him afterwards, because to him it held all the allure of proven magic, but Pino’s attention was like a gnat, weaving here and there and never quite deciding where to land.
Ettore keeps edging closer to the stone-breakers. He casts a furtive look back at the overseer, to make sure he’s not watching. They are at Masseria Tateo, and the overseer is Ludo Manzo, the corporal most feared and hated of all around Gioia for his cruelty, his arbitrary dispensation of punishment and his loathing of the
giornatari
, which has all the vehemence of one who has walked in their shoes, and never wants to do so again. The punishment that the men fear most is that they will not be hired again. They must work, or starve, and Ludo Manzo dismisses men for the least slackening of their pace, the least expression of displeasure, with his famous catchphrase ringing in their ears:
There’s no work here for ungrateful
cafoni.
Cafoni
means ignorant redneck, it means bumpkin, it means peasant scum. They are also beaten or lashed, sometimes; but it’s the boys who fear him most. The boys seem to attract the worst of his attention – and it is attention, not temper. In fact, when he notices a transgression Ludo actually seems pleased rather than not – pleased to have cause to punish. Perhaps it relieves his boredom. The men mutter to each other that he has sold his heart to the devil for a life of ease. But the day is long and the hours even longer, and the minutes stretch out into aeons to a boy of eleven, and so Ettore edges over to the newly broken stone, making some charade of picking weeds as he goes, and tries to see any perfect shells, newly come to light. If there are any, bedded into rocks of a size he can conceal, he will try to spirit them home for his collection. Once or twice Valerio has tried to cut a shell free for him, but they always shatter.
There’s a minute flutter of raindrops then. Across the field, weed-pullers and stone-breakers pause and turn their eyes briefly to the sky. But that’s all there is; those few drops.
‘You’re not paid to watch the weather, you fools,’ Ludo Manzo shouts at them. As one, the men go back to work. All but Ettore. There, facing the sky a few metres away, is the perfect specimen. A scallop shell as wide as the palm of his hand, turned upwards like a bowl and now with one spot of rain marking it darkly, as though it was meant to be. It’s embedded in a chunk of
tufo
that he might just be able to carry home, wrapped in his cap. He crouches over it and wriggles his fingers underneath it, hefting it to check the weight. It’s at the top end of what he can hope to conceal, and he lingers in indecision, wondering if it’s worth asking Valerio to try to cut it smaller, though he’s unlikely to under Ludo’s watchful eye; wondering if he could come back for the shell later, if he hides it now; wondering if he should just grab it and hope for the best at the end of the day.
‘Ettore, what are you doing? Are you crazy?’ says Pino near his ear, in the loudest of whispers. Ettore leaps up in alarm, knocking Pino’s chin with the top of his head so that both of them wince.
‘Mother of God, Pino! Don’t sneak up like that!’
‘I just didn’t want Manzo to see you! What are you doing? Oh … not another shell. It’s a nice one,’ he concedes, crouching. ‘But how many more do you need?’
‘I like them,’ Ettore mutters. He shrugs, and his friend looks at him with his head on one side, squeezing the soft flesh under his chin into a little roll. Against all logic, Pino, at eleven, is almost chubby. The neighbours all pinch his cheeks in delight, and say that he has a lucky angel watching him, feeding him honey in his sleep. They ruffle his hair, when it’s not shaved off for lice, hoping that some of his luck will pass to them, and to their own weedy, infested children.
Pino stands up, grabs Ettore’s sleeve and pulls him away. They walk a few paces, then he bends and scrabbles at a thistle in a desperate show of industry. Ettore gazes back at the rock, trying to fix its location in his mind for later.
‘Come
on
!
Please
, Ettore!’ Pino begs. They all fear Ludo Manzo, but Pino fears him more than all the rest, because Ludo seems to hate him for some reason. Maybe it’s his ready smile, or the way he laughs at things that others can barely find a smile for; maybe it’s the way he looks well fed, though he is not. Maybe it’s because, however harshly Ludo treats him, Pino is never crushed. Before long, he will be smiling again.
‘All right, all right, let go! You’re the one who’ll catch his eye!’ Ettore casts a glance in the direction of the corporals, and sees that they are all watching them. Three of them, including Ludo, mounted on wiry brown horses. They are on the far side of the field so he can’t see their faces, but he feels their eyes on him and it turns his knees to water. He crouches down, wants to disappear; he grabs at weeds and begins to pull them up with feverish vigour, stuffing them into his canvas sack. Fear churns in his guts. ‘Pino, don’t look up,’ he whispers, and Pino turns pale. His eyes are wide enough to fall out of his head; his mouth hangs slightly open as he too begins to work as though his life depends on it. They keep their heads down, hoping that nothing will come of it. Ettore aches to look again, to see if their attention has moved on, but he daren’t. Then they hear a horse approaching, and Pino gives a small, wordless mutter of fear.
Only when the horse is so close that they must move or be stepped on do the boys stand up and scurry back. They look up into the black eyes of Ludo Manzo. He has a long, skeletal face, with the exact round shape of his eye sockets plain to see, and scarred, gaunt cheeks. His beard is a scribble of black wire, and he stinks of stale wine.
‘Do you boys think I’m blind or stupid?’ he says conversationally. ‘Well? Which is it? Speak up or I’ll beat it out of you.’
‘Neither one of those, Mr Manzo,’ says Pino. Ettore glances at him incredulously. Pino always seems to think that people will do right, if he does. When Ludo speaks, Ettore stays silent. Without fail.
‘You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you, fatso? Well then, you tell me – if you don’t think I’m blind or stupid, why do you think I can’t see you from over there, dossing instead of working? Or do you think I won’t mind paying you for wasted time?’ This time there’s silence from both boys. The stone-breakers work on, making their fearful din. Ettore snatches a quick glance across, but Valerio’s head is down. He wishes his father would notice his trouble, even if there’s nothing he could do to help. Ludo crosses his arms over his horse’s withers, tips his hat back slightly on his head, peers down at them and thinks for a while. ‘Did you just forget what you were supposed to be doing? Is that it – are you too stupid to remember to work?’ he says at last.
Shut up shut up shut up
, Ettore thinks, even as he hears Pino take a shaky breath, and open his mouth.
‘Yes, sir,’ he says. Ettore gouges an elbow into Pino’s ribs but it’s too late. Ludo sits up with a gleeful twist of his lips.
‘Well then, let’s see if we can’t do something to help you remember.’ The other guards have come to watch; one grins and chuckles to himself, knowing there’s some spectacle to come; the other frowns at Ludo and pauses, as though he might say something. But in the end he only turns his horse away and walks it slowly to the far end of the field. Ettore wishes he would come back.
A short while later there’s another sound amidst the breaking of stone: the sound of Pino crying, and yelping in pain. Ettore tries not to look; he doesn’t want to witness his friend’s humiliation, but his eyes flicker back, treacherously, just once. He catches a glimpse of Pino’s bare behind; his trousers are round his ankles and he’s shuffling between the watching guards. Ettore can’t tell exactly what he is being made to do. Pino stumbles and falls down a lot, his cheeks blaze with pain and embarrassment, and Ludo laughs so hard he has to blow his nose; a kind of hard and silent laughter with no joy in it.
Ettore looks away. He is left alone to listen as this goes on – that’s his punishment. Ludo is an uncanny judge of character, and seems to know that this is worse for him, that his guilt will eat him because it was his interest in the shell that started it. Across the field, the other workers try not to see. Only the boys glance over occasionally; some of them look sick, others fearful, others blank. Ettore is put back to work with the other corporal close by him, cussing at him if he looks over his shoulder towards Pino. But it’s not Pino he’s watching, in truth; it’s Ludo Manzo. He wants to memorise Ludo’s face – every line of it, every whisker, and the way the muscles seem to writhe in his cheeks as he laughs. He wants to be able to picture it in his mind’s eye as clearly as he is seeing it now, because it will most likely be dark when he kills him.
Anger wakes him from this dream-memory with his teeth grinding hard together, his jaw aching and his breath flaring his nostrils. It’s the kind of anger that can’t be suppressed, or ignored. It causes an impulse to destroy that will turn on him if he doesn’t satisfy it. Ettore opens his eyes and lurches to his feet, ready to tear into Ludo Manzo with fists and nails and teeth, but he is at home, and he is alone, and bewilderment stops him. Then the room lurches and chugs into a sluggish maelstrom all around him, and he sits back down, shaking. Only then does he remember cutting his leg with the scythe, or rather, his leg reminds him. The pain seems to fizz peculiarly, like the prickles of a thousand hot needles, then it clamps its teeth in a tight, unbearable grip like a steel trap. Ettore stares down at it in horror but there’s nothing much to see. The leg of his trousers has been rolled up over his knee and the exposed skin is caked in dried blood. There’s a cloth tied across the wound itself, and he recognises it as one of Iacopo’s wraps. Wincing, he pulls it off. The wound is a dark gaping slice, clean but deep; he can see the grey-white of bone in there, and lumpish black clots of gore. Immediately that the cloth is off, fresh blood begins to well and drizzle onto the floor. Ettore watches it stupidly. His throat is so dry he can’t swallow.
The door swings open and Paola comes in with Iacopo in a sling on her back. She hesitates when she sees him sitting up, and for a moment relief floods her face. Then she sees his leg and rushes forwards.
‘For God’s sake, Ettore – I just got it to stop bleeding and the first thing you do is start it up again?’ Ettore tries to say sorry but he can’t make his voice work. Paola drags a small stool across to him and plonks his leg up on it. She ties the cloth back over the wound, and then squeezes it. Ettore chokes a little, coughs in shock at the pain, and Paola looks up at him. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry for your pain.’ His blood squeezes up between her fingers and he sees her pale, and her lips press tight. Over her shoulder Iacopo gazes at Ettore with an inscrutable expression, and Ettore reaches out his finger. The baby grasps it at once, with his whole hand, and opens his mouth to suck it. The strength of his grip makes Ettore’s stomach clench in pleasure. Some days Iacopo’s grip is weak, some days strong; some days he doesn’t even reach for the finger. Today the baby has a calm, businesslike demeanour, and his grip is steadfast.
‘I’ll be all right. It’ll be all right,’ Ettore manages to say.
‘Will it?’ says Paola. She pushes him back onto the straw mattress, then lifts up his damaged leg and lays it out. She wipes her hands angrily on a rag and won’t meet his eye. She wears a scarf over her hair, like always, tight to her head and tied at the nape of her neck. Her hair is rolled into a knot there so that no stray strands escape. It makes her look severe, older than her twenty-two years; it accentuates that hardness she’s had since Iacopo’s father died. She shakes her head. ‘If you can’t work, we’re finished.’ Ettore can’t remember when he last heard his sister sound frightened, but she does now.