‘Gianni. How is your family?’ says Ettore. Gianni shrugs one shoulder.
‘Surviving. My mother still pines for Livia.’
‘As do we all,’ says Ettore carefully. In truth, pining isn’t something he can imagine Gianni doing. Pining needs softness; pining needs a heart in which to feel the wound. ‘Have you heard anything?’ He can’t help but ask, though he knows Gianni would have sought him out if he had. Gianni shakes his head.
‘It’s impossible to overhear the guards when we harvest.’
‘I know.’ This is something else that might be easier once threshing starts. With the cutting, and the men scattered all over the fields, there is less talk, less gossip. Less opportunity to eavesdrop on the guards and the other annaroli – those with permanent jobs on the masserie. There will be no other way to find out who did the things to Livia that Ettore is careful not to think about, because it’s unbearable in a way that could drive him mad. There’s no other form of justice for the peasants than the personal settling of scores; that has always been the way. Ettore has heard guards boasting of their various exploits and misdeeds, at other times, and he always made a note of the man’s face, if he didn’t know his name, and passed on what he’d heard to those that wanted to know. He trusts that, sooner or later, someone will do the same for him. But it has been six months, and not even a whisper about it. About her. About who would attack a young girl out alone, walking back to town with a bundle of foraged firewood in her apron. Ettore is confused, worried. It’s a source of steady shame, but violence towards wives, daughters and sisters is everywhere in Puglia. The downtrodden men, harried by failure and desperation, often lash out at the only targets they have, even if those targets are innocent, even if they’re loved; even if he loathes himself all the more as a result. But such violence stays in the home, and is nobody’s business. A deliberate attack, outside the family and of such savagery, is everyone’s business.
‘I always ask. I always try to find out,’ says Gianni, as though Ettore had accused him otherwise.
‘I know,’ he says again.
‘We will find out, one day.’ Gianni stares along the road ahead, his eyes narrow though the sun is not yet full up. His certainty reassures Ettore. One thing not in doubt is that, when they find him, they will make the man pay with his hide. They walk on in silence, and soon Gianni has drawn ahead, and Ettore is left behind. Gianni is not a man who needs or wants friends. Ettore feels despised for his weakness.
The day is a long and agonising grind. Too late, Ettore uses one of his bootlaces to tie his trouser leg closed below the wound, but the dust and dirt have already found their way in, and the cloth that’s tied around it is the same one he’s had since the beginning, and it has started to smell. At least, he hopes it’s the cloth that smells, and not the wound itself. He is tying sheaves instead of wielding the scythe; it’s easier in some ways – no tool to carry, no twisting, less shifting of weight from leg to leg. But more bending over, more stooping; and every time he leans down Ettore’s head swoops giddily, queasily, and he fights for balance. When lunchtime comes he stares at his chunk of bread and wonders why, though he knows his stomach is empty, he doesn’t want to eat. He puts the bread in his pocket to take back, and swallows his water in three gulps. The flies won’t leave him alone. By afternoon he’s shivering again, though the day has been one of flat, white heat, and he can tell from the way he’s stared at that he doesn’t look well. A man he doesn’t know claps him on the shoulder and tells him he’s earned his rest that day, but his touch makes Ettore recoil. His skin feels like needles and pins; his guts are juddering.
On the walk home he finds himself alone, because he’s slow and stops to rest often. The sun is setting and the sky has turned the palest turquoise, a colour so pretty that Ettore sits down on the stone wall beside the road and stares at it for a while, not quite knowing where he is or how he got there. He rolls up his trouser leg and peels off the sodden cloth over the wound. The gash has gone black, the skin of his shin shiny and fat. Ettore grins at it, a baring of his teeth that has nothing to do with mirth. Painfully, he stands and walks on, and it seems only moments until full dark descends. He can see lights up ahead and he thinks it must be Gioia, but he can’t seem to get any closer. He legs won’t do as he tells them any more; it’s a weird feeling – the sudden loss of something taken entirely for granted, like forgetting how to breathe.
He takes another rest, this time sitting with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. He wants them as far away from him as he can put them, but the smell of the wound is too strong to escape, and it reminds him of the trenches. Against the far grey sky bats twist and flutter in silence, and tiny stars are winking alight. Ettore stares up at them and can no longer remember where he was going, or why. Then there’s a growing sound, a rumble, a crunching. A motor car speeds into view, coming away from Gioia with its headlights dazzling. It’s deep red; it kicks up a plume of pale dust behind it, ten metres into the sky. It flashes past Ettore without pausing, and in the instant that it does he’s sure he can hear laughter beneath the sound of its engine – a high peal of female laughter. He stares after it in amazement. The proprietors can’t get petrol for their tractors or farm machinery, they say, but at least one rich man has a laughing car and enough fuel to make it fly.
He rests his head back on the wall. The night is cool but still the air seems hard to breathe, like it’s too thick, and sticks to the sides of his mouth and throat like dust. For a while he focuses on drawing this unhelpful stuff into his lungs, and pushing it out again, and he has no idea if this while is seconds or hours. When a figure emerges from the dark and crouches down beside him, Ettore has no idea what it might mean.
‘Porca puttana! Ettore – what is that stink? Is that you?’ it says, and puts a hand on his shoulder to rouse him. Ettore frowns, rounding up his thoughts and eyes and tongue, which stray away from him like wilful cats. He can see a black outline, a mass of curly hair that seems to move like snakes.
‘Pino?’ His friend seems enormous, a gigantic version of his normal self. ‘Why are you so big?’
‘What? Paola sent me to look for you when you didn’t come back. Is that your leg that smells so bad? Can you get up? Come on.’ Pino’s arm is around his ribs; he wraps one of Ettore’s arms around his neck and heaves him up. The movement is too much, and Ettore retches in protest, bringing up nothing. He suddenly thinks that if he dies without avenging Livia, his own rage will burn him for eternity – he will have his own personal hell, and he will never see her again. Some other lucky ghost will find her in heaven, and claim her. Ettore hasn’t cried since she died, not once, but he starts to cry now.
He doesn’t understand much of anything else for a while. He feels as though he’s floating, and at times it’s quite nice. At other times it starts to feel like drowning. He thinks he hears Valerio and Paola arguing about a doctor, about a druggist, about what to do; he thinks he senses Pino, still huge, waiting to find out what they decide. He wonders how they can carry on talking when the air is hotter than flames. He is inside a building, then he is outside, and then inside again, somewhere different. The sun comes up, and the light hurts his eyes. He is carried, and it is giant, snake-headed Pino who carries him; sweating, the breath puffing in and out of him. From time to time Paola’s face hovers in front of him, and her features swim about as though they’re melting – her eyes are drips of molten wax, running down the candle of her skull; she’s terrifying, and when she speaks she makes no sense.