‘Marcie, Mr Tarano says that he intends to reimburse you for his medical treatment, and for his board,’ she says obediently.
‘Well, rot and nonsense! He’s family, for heaven’s sake! Oh, why must the peasants be so damned proud? And how on earth does he plan to pay us, anyway, he hasn’t two dimes to rub together. Don’t translate that, will you dear?’ says Marcie. She’s had several glasses of the amarena, there are two smears of colour either side of her nose and her eyes are sparkling. Ettore understands enough of what she says. He understands her dismissal of his offer, and anger and shame come in equal measures. He stares down at his plate until they begin to talk of other things.
‘I want to go,’ he says later, quietly, almost to himself. But Chiara hears him; he can feel her half-watching, half-listening, all the time. It’s distracting, and he can’t tell if he likes it or not.
More food arrives, and he eats but it’s too rich and makes his stomach roll. The meat seems to sit in his chest like a fist, the alcohol makes him slow and stupid; he can no longer pick any one word from their rapid English, so he stops trying. The sky turns to black, and prickles with stars; the white walls of the masseria are lit yellow with torches, alive with capering shadows. With the stink from the dairy there’s the sweet smell of jasmine, growing up the wall near the table. Knives and forks squeak and clatter against the china; they all chew and cut and spoon. The extravagance of it, the abundance, is like some mad pantomime. Marcie talks and talks and talks, and laughs, tipping back her head so that her teeth shine and the ridges of her throat are exposed. Young Filippo sometimes laughs with her, self-consciously, but Chiara is quiet. She is the one restful corner of the world, absorbing sound instead of making it. When Ettore can’t take any more he lurches to his feet, tipping over his chair and shoving the table so that the drinks slop, and it’s Chiara who reaches him first, and steadies his arm.
‘Come with me,’ she says quietly, in words he can understand. She guides him up stairs, through doors, back to his bed.
Leandro does not appear early the next day. Without Paola to wake him Ettore sleeps until the sun is high in the sky, and then he rushes downstairs feeling as though he’s missed something important, that he is sleeping away all control. He can see the foreigners on the terrace, at breakfast, and it’s like they never left the table – like they’ve been eating and drinking all night, like that’s all they ever do. He goes to the kitchen in disgust, asks Anna for some bread and a glass of milk, then goes out across the aia, moving faster as he gets used to the crutch. He leaves through the iron gates and goes around to the back of the quad, where there’s a complex of large trulli, the first buildings to be built in that spot, hundreds of years before the masseria was built. They abut and blend into the back wall of the farm, looking like some strange warty growth sprouting from its skin. Here the corporals and other permanent outdoor staff sleep, on wooden platforms above the animals – the stablehand and herdsmen, the dairyman and his wife who makes the cheese.
Detached from it all, a short distance away, is another trullo with three large, interlinked cones. These are the private quarters of the overseer of the farm, who manages it day to day, and in his uncle’s absence. Ettore pauses. He could go and ask for a half-day’s work while he waits for his uncle. He could make a little money to take back to Gioia, but his arm is trembling with fatigue from taking his weight on the crutch, his head aches and his leg is throbbing. He experiments with putting his full weight on it, but the grinding feeling, the pressure, brings tears to his eyes. Just then the door of the overseer’s house opens and a man emerges, and all thought of asking for work leaves Ettore’s head. This is not the same man who was overseer during the winter, when Ettore last came to stay at the dell’Arco. That man was called Araldo, and he’d been short and fat with a mad red beard. This man is Ludo Manzo. Older, more grizzled, but instantly recognisable. The very same man who once tormented Pino and Ettore, and countless other young boys. Ettore stares, and a violent rush of hatred makes his head throb harder. Ludo sees him there, looks him over lazily, and doesn’t recognise him. Why would he? Ettore was just a boy, one of many; as indistinct and unfinished as the boy Filippo. Ludo looks away and carries on walking towards the barns, but Ettore remains motionless for quite some time, with his leg tucked up like a stork.
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.’