‘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.