Every wall of the masseria is painted white, and in the morning sunshine it’s painful to look at. The place is arranged in a square around a large courtyard, its solid, flat rooflines like shoulders hunched against the world, and the only way in or out is via the huge archway that gives the place its name, tunnelling under the full width of the rooms above it, fifteen feet or more, and closed off by wooden doors twelve feet high. One and a half sides of the quadrangle are barns and storage sheds for grain and animals and equipment, with servants’ rooms above; these have reinforced gates that open only outwards, not into the courtyard. The dairy forms another side, and then the living quarters rise up three storeys, and only open inwards, not outwards. If the place came under attack, this inner keep would be well protected.
It’s early and Pip is still asleep; Clare sits with Marcie, who is quieter before noon, at a table on a partly covered terrace over the dairy, accessed via an exterior stone stairway. The cows have been and gone from milking; Clare heard the soft clatter of their feet, and occasional lows of discontent, sometime soon after dawn. She looks out at the view over the barns, at the parched brown fields and their grey stone walls, and hears the breeze making a low thrum as it rolls along the shallow crease in the land where the masseria is situated, and through a forbidding thicket of prickly pear. A dog barks, not far away, and the leathery leaves of a fig tree rattle against the outside wall of the dairy; other than that, the stillness is striking.
‘Are you all right, Clare? Did you sleep?’ says Marcie. Clare manages to shake her head, but can’t speak. For a while she feels Marcie watching her, from one side, then: ‘Poor little mouse.’ And it might be sympathetic, or an accusation of cowardice.
Clare still can’t bring herself to eat, though she knows she should. After two nights of failed sleep the hunger makes her unsure if she’s quite awake, or if her eyes are even open, and though she knows Marcie spoke a few minutes ago, she can’t quite remember what she said. Something about the weather, perhaps, or about the day to come. When she sips her coffee, she’s surprised to find it gone cold. When she looks up to ask Marcie if a fresh pot could be brought, she finds that she’s alone at the table, and for some reason this makes her want to weep. She stares out along the gentle curve of the land, squinting into the distance, and tries to think what she ought to do next. She must not be so strange once Pip is up, but everything is different and unsafe and she can’t think of a way back to a logical scheme of things, a way back to normality, where she knows what’s expected of her, or what to expect of those around her. She has no idea what’s happening. There’s some commotion down in the courtyard, and the creak of the gate opening, but she pays it no heed. Only when figures appear, directly in her line of sight, does she blink and try to focus.
Two men and a woman stand in front of her, the smaller of the men supported by the larger, who has the face and physique of a movie star. There’s a revolting smell with them, a smell of rot and corruption.
‘Signora Cardetta, Signora Cardetta, scusi… Ettore…’ the movie star says, and then something else she can’t decipher, and Clare shakes her head. They’re looking for Marcie, this odd trio. The woman has a raw-boned face and a gaze like a whip crack. Her hair is hidden under a scarf and there are two damp patches on the front of her blouse, over her nipples. Where is her baby? Clare wonders. The knees of the smaller man are sagging, and his head lolls on the other man’s shoulder, but just then he gasps, his eyes open and they find Clare’s. And suddenly she is wide awake. His hair is black and his skin as swarthy as any she’s seen in Puglia, stretched tight over cheekbones like razors, but his eyes are electric blue – a ridiculous, unreal blue like a shallow ocean on a sunny day. The colour of them hits her like a slap in the face, and for a few seconds it’s all she can see; his expression is at once bewildered and full of wonder, and she longs to know why. And then his eyes roll back and he collapses, and there’s a sudden strange expansion inside her head, like something swelling up at speed, and bursting.
Part Two
The peasants consider love, or sexual attraction, so powerful a force of nature that no amount of will-power can resist it… good intentions and chastity are of no avail… So great is the power of the god of love and so simple the impulse to obey him that there is no question of a code of sexual morals or even of social disapproval for an illicit affair.
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Carlo Levi
Chapter Eight – Ettore
Ettore wakes up because he’s thirsty. His throat feels torn. When he opens his eyes things swing around his head in a giddy blur that slowly resolves itself into walls, window, ceiling, floor; all of them sunlit with extravagant brightness. He blinks and tries to sit up, and the room tilts again. He hears a soft gasp and movement, and then there are hands on his shoulders; small hands with clean, pale skin.
‘Take it easy, Ettore. Lie down. Welcome back to the land of the living, honey.’ It takes him a minute to understand – the words are in a language he must pick apart and process, not one he knows in his bones.
‘Marcie?’ he says.
‘That’s right, I’m here. You nearly weren’t, for a while there. Jesus! You scared us. Why on earth didn’t you come for help sooner? Honestly.’ He feels the mattress dip as she sits down on the edge of it, and turns to look at her. Her face has lines of concern, and faint shadows under the eyes. Ettore searches in his head for the right words to answer her. The effort wears him out.
‘Water? Please. How much time here?’
‘Here. Sip, don’t gulp.’ She hands him a glass of water and he drinks it so quickly he almost chokes. He feels like he could never have enough of it. A cough sends it shooting into his nose. ‘Like I said,’ says Marcie, shaking her head as she refills it for him. ‘That gorgeous friend of yours delivered you here three days ago. What’s his name? Penno? Your sister came too but they’ve both gone back to Gioia now – reluctantly, mind you. Only when the doctor had actually been and seen you, and they were sure you were going to live. Sorry – am I speaking too quickly? I always forget.’
‘How much time?’ Ettore tries again, when Marcie breaks her incomprehensible babble.
‘Three days.’ Marcie holds up three fingers, and Ettore nods.
‘Leandro?’
‘He’ll be here tomorrow. Tomorrow – domani. Now, please rest. Don’t be a man, and try to run before you can walk.’ She says something else but Ettore can’t hear her. With the water in his stomach he slides back senseless.
When he next wakes the room is empty but for an orange glow of late afternoon light. The room is not large but it has a high, vaulted ceiling, all painted white like the walls; there are red and white tiles on the floor and windows twice his height in two of the walls, front and back. He stands gingerly and finds that his leg hurts a lot less than it did. It hurts, but the pain is no longer the only thing he can think about. He still doesn’t want to put weight on it, however. He’s wearing a pair of loose trousers that aren’t his, and when he rolls up the left leg to look at his shin, the wound looks wider, but it’s dry, and less angry. The trenches smell of it has gone. There’s a wooden crutch, a proper one, leaning on the wall by the bed, and he grabs it. With his head spinning Ettore drinks more water, then goes to the front window and steps out onto the little balcony to look out. He knows he’s at Masseria dell’Arco, his uncle’s farmhouse. At once he feels trapped, anxious to leave. He thinks of the three days of work he has missed; he wonders what Paola and Valerio have been finding to eat. What Paola has had to do for Poete to coax some stolen milk or cheese from him. His hands curl around the balcony rail in frustration, and he stares out along the dirt road that leads away from the farm.