Authors: Katherine Webb
It’s afternoon before Leandro Cardetta appears with another man, tall and hunched, in a car driven by his servant with the deformed face. When Leandro sees Ettore waiting in a corner of the courtyard, leaning on his crutch, he smiles. The tall man must be Chiara’s husband, the architect, because he goes to her and hugs her as though he might drown otherwise, and Ettore sees how she keeps her body rigid, supporting the weight of his embrace. Either that, or rejecting it. The man’s height and the way he swoops over her make him look like a vulture, like he’s devouring her.
‘Ettore! It does me good to see you awake and walking,’ says his uncle, holding his arms wide as he approaches. They embrace briefly; his uncle’s arms have a brute strength belied by his ridiculous suits and the almost jaunty angle of his hat.
‘Uncle, thank you for your help, and your hospitality.’
‘Don’t thank me. Only promise to come to me sooner, when things are so bad. You might have died, my boy. What will my sister say, when I meet her in the next life, if I let her only son die when I could save him?’
‘She would say you do not control his destiny,’ says Ettore, and Leandro shakes his head ruefully.
‘Maria was always proud and stubborn. Too proud and too stubborn, and she passed it all to you with those blue eyes. She wouldn’t take my advice and come to New York. She wouldn’t take my advice and find a man worth a damn to marry, instead of that waster Valerio.’
‘Valerio is my father. You must not disrespect him in my hearing, uncle.’
‘Ah, you’re right.’ Leandro shakes his head, then claps Ettore on the shoulder. ‘Forgive me. No man could ever be good enough for a beloved sister. But, pride aside, you must stay until you’re fit. I know better than to insist, but at least hear sense, Ettore. You’re no good to your sister or her baby if you can’t work a day in the fields. You’re no good to them permanently crippled or dead. Stay here. Rest. Accept my help when it’s freely given.’
‘I will not take charity.’ Ettore clenches his teeth, repositions the crutch beneath his arm.
‘Don’t make yourself ridiculous, son,’ Leandro murmurs. The two men stare at one another. Leandro’s eyes are so dark that nothing can be read in them. They are like black glass, impossible to see through.
The two of them are standing next to the well, a lidded shaft that drops into one of several underground water cisterns around the
masseria
, into which the rain, when it comes, pours like a river. The kitchen girl, Anna, comes to draw water. She has round hips, a nipped-in waist below heavy breasts, and she blushes when she has to approach them. Leandro breaks off his scrutiny of Ettore to watch her, because the weight of the water pail makes her hips jiggle, and then he looks at his nephew and grins. But Ettore does not look at the girl. He has no interest in her, and Leandro’s smile fades away. ‘You still grieve, my boy. For that girl of yours.’
‘Livia,’ says Ettore, and with her name, as always, comes a cold, needling feeling inside him.
‘Livia, yes. It’s terrible to lose the one you love. And to lose her in such a way … You still don’t know who was responsible?’
‘If I did that man would be dead.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Leandro nods. ‘I’ve found out nothing, I’m afraid. If I do, you’ll know it at once. But the men know I am your uncle, you see. I’m sure they guard their tongues around me.’ He looks down at his feet, at the high shine on his brogues.
‘I’m sure they do. But thank you.’ Ettore frowns. ‘You have a new overseer,’ he says. Leandro’s head comes up in an instant.
‘Yes,’ he says, and there’s a warning in the word.
‘How can you give that man work, Uncle? He beat you once, did he not? I was little but I remember it. He beat you and then he pissed on you, in front of everybody, for having a handful of burnt wheat in your pocket at the end of the day. How can you look at him, and not want to kill him? How can you give him work and pay?’ he says. Leandro’s face goes blank and then tightens in anger. Ettore doesn’t know if it’s the memory or his invoking of it that causes the spasm. Then Leandro smiles, the chilly smile of a reptile. Ettore’s sure that smile has been the last thing some men ever saw.
‘Ah, Ettore. Yes, Ludo Manzo is an animal. But don’t you see? He’s
my
animal now. He runs the farm better than anyone else, and what better way to take revenge on a man than to come to rule him?’
‘As I would not be a slave, so I would not be an owner of slaves,’ says Ettore. ‘Your Marcie taught me that last winter. One of your presidents said it.’
‘
My
presidents?’
‘Her presidents. America’s presidents,’ Ettore corrects himself, quickly. He may be family, but Ettore knows better than to call his uncle an American.
‘I learnt a saying in America too, you know.’ Leandro smiles again, and some of the tension goes out of him. ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ He chuckles, and shakes his head. ‘Ettore, you of all people should know that this is no place for nobility.’ Leandro takes a few steps away, out of the shade and into the hard sunlight, then he turns back. ‘Avoid him, if it upsets you to see him. Don’t make trouble. And stay, I beg you. Let me do my dear sister that service. If you will not take an easy job here, then at least stay until you can walk better.’
Leandro disappears into the house, calling for his wife, and Ettore hears the high bird-call of Marcie’s answer, echoing inside. Chiara and her stooping husband have vanished, and the boy is alone on the terrace, reading a book with one foot propped up on the opposite knee, the fingers of his free hand fiddling ceaselessly with the laces of his shoe. Ettore waits to know what to do next. The sun slides slowly across the courtyard, and the breeze that blows is furnace hot, dry as the land. The harelipped driver comes out of the kitchens, swinging his arms. He lies down in the shadow of the water trough, puts his hat over his face, and sleeps. Once he’s settled, a few tatty sparrows flutter back to perch along the chipped lip of the trough, dipping their beaks, resting.
Ettore can’t leave, and he can’t stay. He leans back against the wall. In the winter he was here for weeks because he caught the influenza. There was no work then anyway, so he didn’t miss out on any wages, but Paola threw him out of the house in case he passed the infection to Iacopo, or to her. Sometimes Paola weakens, and says he should exploit their rich uncle more; she’s too pragmatic to pass up any opportunity of wages when they’re starving. But the Taranos and the Cardettas are on opposite sides of this war now, with a gulf between them, and Ettore remembers his mother reading and rereading one of the letters that Leandro sent sporadically from America, sometimes with money in, sometimes without. That particular letter came with a lot of money, and his mother held it in her hand, clenching it tight, while she read and reread. In the end she looked up, her eyes full of sorrow in the failing light, and said:
‘My brother has forgotten who he is.’
Ettore stands up from the wall, walks under the arch where the huge gates are, goes through a small door in one wall and climbs carefully up the spiral staircase inside. The steps are steep, and he’s clumsy with his crutch. The stairwell is lit by narrow slits in the wall, slits through which once arrows, and now bullets, can be shot. He pauses beside one, and runs his fingers around its rough edge. It’s chipped and worn from centuries of use. Ettore takes a breath, shuts his eyes. He sees a bloom of smoke from just such a slot, and a fragment of a second later, hears the crack of the shot. There was a startled gasp at his side, a thump like a fist punched into sand, and a cloud of red droplets as fine as morning mist. Davide dropped like a felled tree beside him, and was dead before he hit the ground. No weapon in his hand; a puzzled expression on his face. Paola’s lover; Iacopo’s father. It’s almost exactly a year since the massacre at the Masseria Girardi. Almost exactly a year since Ettore had to sneak home across country, once dark had fallen, and tell his sister that the second man she’d dared to love was dead. Iacopo was just a smooth swelling under her blouse then, and she’d put her hands underneath it to support it while she howled. She must know how wrong it feels for him to be on the inside of walls like these. Wrong like trying to breathe underwater.
Ettore carries on up the stairs to the roof and emerges into the light. The guard had been snoozing, sitting with his back to the parapet and his knees drawn up. He struggles to his feet and swings his rifle up, then grins foolishly and waves when he recognises Ettore. He is young, and has a kind face; fair hair, a snub nose. Ettore can’t remember his name – Carlo? Pietro? He nods to him and negotiates the pitch of the roof to reach the edge, to lean over and look out. The dry rocky plain of the
Murgia
stretches away as far as he can see – the high plateau that rises inland and runs almost the length of Puglia, north to south, like a giant finger. High enough for the temperature to be lower than at the coast; high enough for there to be snow in the winter, sometimes. But he can see no rivers, no creeks, no lakes. He’s above the west wing of the quad, and against the wall below there’s a vegetable garden, green with care and water, looking garishly bright against the brown and grey hues of everything else. Little red tomatoes crawl along the ground on their vines; pumpkins too; zucchini; globular aubergines, not yet ripe. There’s a path lined with apricot and almond trees, leading to an ancient stone love seat beneath a bower of roses that have shed their petals in distress at the drought. The garden is centuries old; Marcie revived it when she first came, with her fast unravelling dreams of the romance of Italy. The love seat has cracked right down the middle. Slowly, slowly, the land will reclaim it. The air is clear today, as though even the dust hasn’t the energy to stir beneath such a sun, and slowly, from the direction of Gioia, a figure swathed in dark clothing walks towards the farm. Long before he can see her face Ettore recognises his sister, and the strutting way she walks with the weight of her son on her back. He hurries down to meet her.
Paola waits for him at the gates, curling her fingers around the bars like a prisoner, and when she sees him walking towards her she grins – fleetingly, but it transforms her face and sends a jolt of joy through Ettore like a kick in the back. It’s been a long time since he saw his sister’s smile. He pulls her head towards him and presses his lips to her forehead, and they come away with the salt taste of her skin on them.
‘You’re up. You’re well,’ she says, and her relief is plain.
‘Yes. Soon I won’t need this thing.’ He smiles and raps the end of the crutch against the gate.
‘Don’t rush it. Let it heal.’
‘Yes, little mother.’
‘Don’t mock, just do as I tell you,’ she says, but she can’t be stern. Ettore reaches through and turns her shoulder to see his nephew. The baby is fast asleep with his face rucked up against Paola’s spine; his cheeks are marbled red, and he mumbles to himself when Ettore brushes his forehead. ‘Don’t wake him. He screamed half the night away.’
‘Is he sick?’
‘No.’ Paola smiles again. ‘Two teeth are coming through. A few more and he’ll be better furnished than Valerio,’ she says. Ettore laughs quietly, and for that moment the simple happiness of the child thriving is enough.
Paola’s face falls first. She looks past Ettore at the implacable white walls of the
masseria
, and her eyes are troubled.
‘Come in. See our uncle and Marcie. You know how she loves to see Iacopo,’ says Ettore, but Paola shakes her head.
‘She loves it too much. I think she wants to eat him.’
‘Don’t be cruel.’
‘I saw her plenty when we brought you here. Me and Pino. Has Leandro offered you work?’
‘Work as soft as I’d like it,’ he says, disgusted.
‘Take it,’ she says flatly.
‘No, Paola! Must we have the same argument over and over? This is a war, and you of all people know it. Leandro has chosen his side and we—’
‘Poete got caught. They found him with a flask of milk hidden in his coat, and fired him.’
‘Damn him … Clumsy idiot.’ But even though he’s dismayed Ettore is also happy that Paola won’t have to let the man touch her any more.
‘Valerio can’t get work. He stands there coughing and spitting and shaking like a leaf, and no bastard will hire him – why should they? He’s scarce fit to lift his feet, let alone a scythe or flail. We’ve
nothing
, Ettore. You must take work here.’
‘I can get other work, real work—’
‘Don’t be a fool! You’ve one good leg, and if you open that wound again … I nearly lost you, Ettore. We can’t lose you. Don’t be a fool.’ Her voice is taut with fear. Ettore leans his head against the hot metal of the gate and feels it cutting into him. He says nothing. ‘You must do this, Ettore. Your scruples won’t feed my baby. They won’t. Please.’ He can’t bring himself to speak, because he knows she’s right. Suddenly the gate is like prison bars indeed, and inside he is not his own man. He has no control. She clasps her hard hands around his for a moment before she turns to go, and he takes a breath. She has iron inside her, like the gates. Nothing will bow her.
‘Wait,’ he calls, and she turns. ‘Wait and I’ll get some food for you to take back. If this is our family, let them feed us,’ he says bitterly. Paola doesn’t smile again, but she looks relieved, and she nods.
For four days Ettore does as his uncle suggested, and stews on what his sister told him. She asks of him something she would be unwilling to do herself, but then, her wages, a woman’s wages, would scarcely be worth the self-loathing. He rests his leg. He sleeps and eats and does no work, and feels like he’s marooned outside his own life. He itches to be away, to be whole and gone. He doesn’t eat at the table with his uncle and Marcie and their guests unless he’s directly requested to; he says little, letting their English rattle around him, unexamined. The amount of food they put away, the constant chewing, the way some dishes are sent back all but untouched, enrages him in a way that makes it hard to breathe. The muscles between his ribs pull the bones into a tight cage. Whenever he can he fetches his food from the kitchen instead, and takes it up to the roof to eat it, where the guards have got used to seeing him. On the fourth day his uncle returns to Gioia with the architect, and he’s left alone with the women and the boy, which makes it easier for him to keep himself away. He can see that Marcie’s wounded; he’s being an ungracious guest, he knows, but he doesn’t feel like a guest. He feels like a traitor. He goes around and around the
masseria
on his crutch, feeling the strength return to his arms and shoulders, the muscles burning, turning hard. The wound in his leg still pulls when he tries to use it – a wrenching feeling deep in the bone – so, since he must heal before he can leave, he doesn’t push it. He’s not dizzy any more, his body feels strong. He wakes earlier each day, with the voices of the dairy herd as it comes in for milking.