Authors: Katherine Webb
‘If you want to go, it’s no shame,’ he says. ‘You should. This is not your problem.’ Pino swallows, and shakes his head. Gianni and Benedetto watch him steadily. Then Gianni almost smiles. He gives Federico a poke with the toe of his boot.
‘Stick around. Haven’t you ever seen old women watching a riot from up on a balcony? Gossiping and chewing their gums? You can be like one of them,’ he says, and Benedetto grins.
‘I’ll stay. For Livia,’ says Pino. Ettore clasps his shoulder briefly. Then all eyes turn to the figure on the ground.
Federico’s eyes are mad with anger; he’s breathing hard, kicking up the dust under his nose. When he sees Ettore he tries to say something, tries to spit out the rag.
‘I think he has something to say to you, Ettore,’ says Gianni, crouching over Federico like a hunter over a kill.
‘Let’s hear it,’ says Ettore. Gianni shrugs, reaches around and pulls the rag from Federico’s mouth. Benedetto lifts the club down off his shoulder and rests it in the palm of his hand. His eyes never leave his sister’s killer.
‘You!’ says Federico. He tries to spit but has no saliva. ‘So this is because I felt up your English whore? Are you in
love
with her?’ he asks scathingly.
‘I made a promise, nearly every day for the past seven months,’ says Ettore. ‘Do you know what the promise was?’ He feels calm now; the unnatural calm on the far side of crisis. Federico struggles against his ties, breathing through clenched teeth, saying nothing. ‘I promised my fiancée I would find out who attacked her, and left her to die, and that that man would burn.’ As he says this Ettore realises why Gianni has brought them to this straw rick – he realises that Livia’s brother has the same idea. He crouches down, speaks close to Federico’s ear. ‘You’re a dead man, Federico Manzo. How does it feel?’
‘You’re all dead.
You’re all dead
!’ Federico shouts, nearly incoherent with anger.
‘How many have you raped? How many killed?’ says Benedetto. Federico grins hysterically.
‘Hundreds! Fucking
hundreds
! I’ve had more pussy than any one of you limp-dicks will
ever
have. You’d better kill me,
cafoni
! You’d better kill me or you’ll all die, and your families with you!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Benedetto chuckles. ‘We’re going to.’
‘So I had your sweetheart, did I?’ Federico leers at Ettore. ‘Fucked her to death, did I? I wish I’d known she was yours. I’d have taken more time on her.’
‘Son of a
whore
!’ Pino exclaims. ‘Can’t you hear yourself? What kind of animal are you?’
‘I’m not afraid of you! Any of you – you see that? I’m not afraid of you!’ But Federico’s eyes say different; his face says different, all twisted up, writhing. Ettore nods.
‘Her name was Livia Orfino. I loved her. We all did – these are her brothers, Gianni and Benedetto Orfino.’ He points to them in turn. ‘You’ve had this coming a long time, and if you’d been even a little bit sorry I’d have knocked you out cold before this next part. But you’re not sorry. You’re proud. And you tried to do the same thing to Chiara. So.’ He shrugs.
Before Federico can say anything else Ettore stuffs the rag back into his mouth, muffling his stream of curses and threats. Benedetto hoists him up roughly, onto his shoulder; Gianni and Ettore climb up onto the rick and haul Federico up behind them. Then they jump down and step back. Ettore catches sight of Pino’s face, bloodless as bone, his mouth slightly open in horror. Benedetto strikes a match and walks right around the rick, setting it alight every few paces. Then he rejoins the others, as smoke starts to rise. They stand shoulder to shoulder, the three of them, with Pino edging back behind them, breathing hard. The darkness gets a flicker to it; a breeze teases the flames, puffs at the smoke. The quiet rushing sound of it gets louder and louder by steady increments. Ettore watches, and feels nothing. This is cause and effect. This is the logical end of this man’s life. He feels no pleasure, no satisfaction. It’s a thing that must be done, and he’s relieved to have fulfilled his promise at last.
Cause and effect
. The night vanishes into a storm of yellow and orange; the minutes tick by. At some point Federico gets the rag out of his mouth, and for a while they can hear him screaming at the heart of the buffeting roar of the fire. Ettore watches, and thinks nothing, and is only half aware of Pino lurching away to one side to throw up.
Once the screams stop Benedetto cuffs Ettore’s shoulder to rouse him. He nods his head at the darkness.
‘Time to go. They’ll be able to see this right back in Gioia,’ he says. Ettore blinks – his eyes feel gritted up, stinging from the smoke; he’s sweating from the heat of it. He nods and turns to follow. He’s the last – Gianni’s marching off, Pino’s already fifty metres away, at the edge of the fire’s glow, about to vanish into darkness. Then there’s a sudden strange noise up ahead, and a yell, and a man on a horse comes galloping out of the darkness with an overarm swing of a cudgel that smacks into Pino’s head. Pino drops full length, felled like a tree. Ettore hears Benedetto shouting, a massive roar like the bear he is; he sees the big man swinging his own cudgel and bringing down another man from his horse. The horse’s eyes are white and rolling, it shies away from the fire and bolts. On instinct Ettore drops to the ground as the man who knocked Pino down rides past him, and the club swings over his head with a whistle. He’s up and running before the man can turn his horse.
‘Pino!
Get up
!’ he shouts. But Pino stays down. There’s the deafening crack of a shotgun nearby. Ettore feels something snag his shirtsleeve; there’s a sting like ant bites on his arm, and to his right the ground erupts into dust and fragments. He changes course, zig-zagging as another shot is fired, and misses him. He sprints as fast as he can, with stones rolling under his boots. His weak leg wobbles, threatens to give way; it feels like his heart will explode. There are shouts behind him; he thinks he can still hear Benedetto roaring, or perhaps it’s Federico howling. But he’s reached Pino, so none of it matters.
The cudgel blow has staved in the side of his head, above his ear. The hideous dent is a hand span long, five centimetres deep in its centre; dark with a matted mess of blood and crushed skin. Pino’s eyes are half open, sightless. His face is as perfect as it ever was; there’s dust in his hair, and the top two buttons of his shirt are missing. It seems entirely impossible that he has this wound, and that he is gone. Ettore collapses to his knees beside his friend. He puts his fist on Pino’s chest, at the open neck of his shirt. For a while he can’t make his hand uncurl – can’t make the hand do what he tells it. The air in his lungs doesn’t work; he’s gasping and it feels like he’s drowning. When at last he manages unclench his fist and press his fingers to Pino’s throat he knows he won’t feel a pulse, not with that gruesome head wound. But still he hopes, like a child.
‘Ettore! Move!’ shouts Gianni, running by. ‘More are coming!
Move
!’
‘No,’ says Ettore. His voice is thick and slow; he sounds idiotic. ‘No. I’m staying with Pino.’
‘Benedetto!’ Gianni shouts over his shoulder, as he runs on, out of the light into the sheltering dark. The firelight is flickering in Pino’s eyes and making him look alive. Ettore puts out a hand to close his lids but it’s shaking so badly he doesn’t manage it on the first try.
‘Pino … Not you. Not you,’ he says. Then huge hands haul him to his feet and drag him along, stumbling.
‘Leave him, boy. If we try to carry him back we’ll be caught. Move! Take your own weight and run!’
‘Wait,’ says Ettore, still struggling to breathe, struggling to speak. ‘I think … I think Pino’s dead.’
‘Yes, he’s dead,’ says Benedetto, his rough voice unsuited to being gentle. ‘And it won’t help if you die too.’ So Ettore runs, and the last vestiges of the child inside him, the last part of him that knew how to laugh, stays behind in the dust, with Pino.
When he tells Paola she says nothing. Her eyes blaze and her lips press hard together, and for a while she stands as still as a statue. Then, quick as a snake, she grabs the
pignata
full of soup from the stove and hurls it across the room with a screech that sounds like it’s tearing her throat. Then she wets a rag and scrubs frantically at the soot on Ettore’s face and hands. Traces that could give him away. When he tells Luna she drops slowly to the floor, buckling downwards, falling in slow motion. She curls herself up, knees to her chin, and then she doesn’t move or speak. Ettore knows exactly how she feels. He stays with her the rest of the night, and because her eyes are as sightless as Pino’s he doesn’t have to hide his tears from her.
‘We should have left as soon as the fire was lit. But we wanted to be sure Federico didn’t escape – roll clear or something. But he didn’t. We could have gone straight away. Or just shot him. No need for a fire that the corporals would see. But we wanted him to pay, you see; wanted him to burn, like Livia burnt with the fever he gave her. Pino shouldn’t have come with us at all; I should have told him he had no place there. Livia didn’t belong to him, like she did to me, like she did to her brothers. He owed her nothing. I shouldn’t have fetched him when we found Federico – I could have lied. I could have said I didn’t have time to come and fetch him. It’s my fault. All of it,’ he says, but Luna shows no sign of having heard him. She stays huddled down where she is, threshed out like the wheat, the living heart of her gone.
There’s no work on Saturday. Ettore can’t stay still so he walks around Gioia del Colle, openly, without caution or his hat tipped low to hide his eyes. He watches the world with flat disregard and waits to be stopped, waits to be arrested, since everybody knows he and Pino were friends. But he isn’t stopped. Nobody approaches him, nobody seems to have noticed that something utterly, abhorrently wrong has happened, and Pino is dead. He’s incredulous; furious. Pino’s body is brought to the police barracks, identified and returned to Luna, whose mother takes custody of it since her daughter is still mute and incapable. Ettore is on the street corner when the barrow comes out with Pino’s body on it, and a lad wheels it to the mortuary to be laid out. A growing number of people come to walk alongside it, to accompany him. Pino was well liked, well loved. Ettore doesn’t walk with them, though the wrongness of that makes him queasy. He doesn’t feel he has the right. The procession goes past him, and the trolley with its creaking wheels. Some of the followers turn to look at him, puzzled, frowning. He welcomes their disapprobation.
Ettore has the sense of being hundreds of years old; the feeling gets stronger and stronger. He is not Ettore Tarano but merely one of a million
cafoni
who have lived and died in Puglia for centuries. He’s one of a silent multitude who have broken themselves against the rocks and hard ground, who have starved and toiled and ground a life out of dust, and afterwards have given back their bones for the privilege. Short lives, anonymous lives; lives lived hand to mouth, with their fleeting moments of joy like tiny sparks that flare and are then snuffed out. He’s ancient man, he goes back thousands of years; he has worked with stone tools, then bronze, then iron; his eyes, the colour of the Adriatic, have looked out from his dark face and seen ages creep past, never changing. He is the blood and soul of this land, he is its constant march, and he’s tired. So tired.
Paola watches him closely, but when she speaks he can’t find the energy to reply. He must walk – when he stands still all those millennia pile up around him, crushing him. And yet he doesn’t see how anybody can be expected to carry on when they’re as tired as he is.
‘Ettore …’ says Paola, shaking his arm as the light begins to fade on Sunday. He stares at her from far away, then blinks and looks around. He’s in Piazza XX Settembre, frozen in the middle of its triangular space, with no recollection of arriving there. ‘I need to know you’ll be all right tonight. I need to know you’ll come back for it,’ she says. Her face is careworn; grey hairs have started to thread through the black. For a second Ettore sees their mother.
‘Come back?’ he says.
‘From wherever the hell you’ve gone!’ She smacks the side of his head with the flat of her hand. She sounds frightened.
‘I’ve gone nowhere. I’ll never go anywhere – neither will you.’
‘In a few hours we go to dell’Arco – are you listening? We will go as planned and we will attack it, and kill Ludo Manzo, and take what we need. What we deserve. Will you be with us? Your mozzarella might panic if she doesn’t see you … she might cause trouble – sound the alarm, who the hell knows. So?’
‘Chiara?’ he says, and the thought of her causes a faint sting, quick as a fitful sigh. Paola shuts her eyes. She takes hold of his sleeve, leans her forehead against his shoulder for a second.
‘Please, Ettore. Please don’t do this. We need you. Di Vittorio has resigned. He’s left Cerignola, and fled north. All the socialists are fleeing north. Everything’s falling apart … I need you.’
Somehow the warm press of her head reaches him, touching some place that’s still tender and living. He reaches up, holds the back of her neck for a moment.
‘Don’t be frightened, Paola,’ he says. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go with you.’ With a sudden shimmer of unreality, a sudden slipping of time, he remembers saying the exact same thing to her on her first day of school. His sister looks up at him, relieved.
‘All right,’ she says, nodding. ‘All right. Good.’ She steps away and smooths out his torn shirt sleeve, bunched up where she grabbed it. There are three ragged tears in it where lead shot winged him on Friday night; three corresponding scorch lines on the skin underneath. ‘Don’t wander off again. Don’t vanish. Go to Sant’Andrea; I’ll fetch you in a few hours, when it’s time.’ Ettore nods, but when he doesn’t move she sighs and takes his arm again. He lets her march him; he has no will of his own. He is callused hands and an aching back; he is wounds and bruises; he comes from nothing, and nowhere. He is deep beneath the ground, falling.
In the soft darkness of early night Ettore walks at his sister’s side, his breath stifling beneath the scarf tied across his face. Faceless, nameless; one of a number. He moves with them and lets them inform him, this gang of thirty-three souls. There are guns amongst them, tucked into belts and pockets; knives, cudgels. Ettore will be the first in; he has a pistol because he might need to use it on the door guard. He is distant and wholly calm until they are at the top of a slight rise in the land, looking across at Masseria dell’Arco with its lights blazing out, shining from the high white walls. It’s beautiful and serene, but a fortress nonetheless. Looking down at it, Ettore feels his heart beat harder. He takes a deep breath in, and with a tingling at the back of his neck he feels himself wake up. It’s just like in the war, just like at the Isonzo front; drunk and freezing, thought obliterated by fear and the bursting of shells, and yet when the whistle blew, when the firing started, his mind went crystal clear, and he focused, to the exclusion of all else, on doing what needed to be done – on staying alive.