‘Of course, of course.’ Leandro nods. ‘I’ve found out nothing, I’m afraid. If I do, you’ll know it at once. But the men know I am your uncle, you see. I’m sure they guard their tongues around me.’ He looks down at his feet, at the high shine on his brogues.
‘I’m sure they do. But thank you.’ Ettore frowns. ‘You have a new overseer,’ he says. Leandro’s head comes up in an instant.
‘Yes,’ he says, and there’s a warning in the word.
‘How can you give that man work, Uncle? He beat you once, did he not? I was little but I remember it. He beat you and then he pissed on you, in front of everybody, for having a handful of burnt wheat in your pocket at the end of the day. How can you look at him, and not want to kill him? How can you give him work and pay?’ he says. Leandro’s face goes blank and then tightens in anger. Ettore doesn’t know if it’s the memory or his invoking of it that causes the spasm. Then Leandro smiles, the chilly smile of a reptile. Ettore’s sure that smile has been the last thing some men ever saw.
‘Ah, Ettore. Yes, Ludo Manzo is an animal. But don’t you see? He’s my animal now. He runs the farm better than anyone else, and what better way to take revenge on a man than to come to rule him?’
‘As I would not be a slave, so I would not be an owner of slaves,’ says Ettore. ‘Your Marcie taught me that last winter. One of your presidents said it.’
‘My presidents?’
‘Her presidents. America’s presidents,’ Ettore corrects himself, quickly. He may be family, but Ettore knows better than to call his uncle an American.
‘I learnt a saying in America too, you know.’ Leandro smiles again, and some of the tension goes out of him. ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ He chuckles, and shakes his head. ‘Ettore, you of all people should know that this is no place for nobility.’ Leandro takes a few steps away, out of the shade and into the hard sunlight, then he turns back. ‘Avoid him, if it upsets you to see him. Don’t make trouble. And stay, I beg you. Let me do my dear sister that service. If you will not take an easy job here, then at least stay until you can walk better.’
Leandro disappears into the house, calling for his wife, and Ettore hears the high bird-call of Marcie’s answer, echoing inside. Chiara and her stooping husband have vanished, and the boy is alone on the terrace, reading a book with one foot propped up on the opposite knee, the fingers of his free hand fiddling ceaselessly with the laces of his shoe. Ettore waits to know what to do next. The sun slides slowly across the courtyard, and the breeze that blows is furnace hot, dry as the land. The harelipped driver comes out of the kitchens, swinging his arms. He lies down in the shadow of the water trough, puts his hat over his face, and sleeps. Once he’s settled, a few tatty sparrows flutter back to perch along the chipped lip of the trough, dipping their beaks, resting.
Ettore can’t leave, and he can’t stay. He leans back against the wall. In the winter he was here for weeks because he caught the influenza. There was no work then anyway, so he didn’t miss out on any wages, but Paola threw him out of the house in case he passed the infection to Iacopo, or to her. Sometimes Paola weakens, and says he should exploit their rich uncle more; she’s too pragmatic to pass up any opportunity of wages when they’re starving. But the Taranos and the Cardettas are on opposite sides of this war now, with a gulf between them, and Ettore remembers his mother reading and rereading one of the letters that Leandro sent sporadically from America, sometimes with money in, sometimes without. That particular letter came with a lot of money, and his mother held it in her hand, clenching it tight, while she read and reread. In the end she looked up, her eyes full of sorrow in the failing light, and said:
‘My brother has forgotten who he is.’
Ettore stands up from the wall, walks under the arch where the huge gates are, goes through a small door in one wall and climbs carefully up the spiral staircase inside. The steps are steep, and he’s clumsy with his crutch. The stairwell is lit by narrow slits in the wall, slits through which once arrows, and now bullets, can be shot. He pauses beside one, and runs his fingers around its rough edge. It’s chipped and worn from centuries of use. Ettore takes a breath, shuts his eyes. He sees a bloom of smoke from just such a slot, and a fragment of a second later, hears the crack of the shot. There was a startled gasp at his side, a thump like a fist punched into sand, and a cloud of red droplets as fine as morning mist. Davide dropped like a felled tree beside him, and was dead before he hit the ground. No weapon in his hand; a puzzled expression on his face. Paola’s lover; Iacopo’s father. It’s almost exactly a year since the massacre at the Masseria Girardi. Almost exactly a year since Ettore had to sneak home across country, once dark had fallen, and tell his sister that the second man she’d dared to love was dead. Iacopo was just a smooth swelling under her blouse then, and she’d put her hands underneath it to support it while she howled. She must know how wrong it feels for him to be on the inside of walls like these. Wrong like trying to breathe underwater.
Ettore carries on up the stairs to the roof and emerges into the light. The guard had been snoozing, sitting with his back to the parapet and his knees drawn up. He struggles to his feet and swings his rifle up, then grins foolishly and waves when he recognises Ettore. He is young, and has a kind face; fair hair, a snub nose. Ettore can’t remember his name – Carlo? Pietro? He nods to him and negotiates the pitch of the roof to reach the edge, to lean over and look out. The dry rocky plain of the Murgia stretches away as far as he can see – the high plateau that rises inland and runs almost the length of Puglia, north to south, like a giant finger. High enough for the temperature to be lower than at the coast; high enough for there to be snow in the winter, sometimes. But he can see no rivers, no creeks, no lakes. He’s above the west wing of the quad, and against the wall below there’s a vegetable garden, green with care and water, looking garishly bright against the brown and grey hues of everything else. Little red tomatoes crawl along the ground on their vines; pumpkins too; zucchini; globular aubergines, not yet ripe. There’s a path lined with apricot and almond trees, leading to an ancient stone love seat beneath a bower of roses that have shed their petals in distress at the drought. The garden is centuries old; Marcie revived it when she first came, with her fast unravelling dreams of the romance of Italy. The love seat has cracked right down the middle. Slowly, slowly, the land will reclaim it. The air is clear today, as though even the dust hasn’t the energy to stir beneath such a sun, and slowly, from the direction of Gioia, a figure swathed in dark clothing walks towards the farm. Long before he can see her face Ettore recognises his sister, and the strutting way she walks with the weight of her son on her back. He hurries down to meet her.
Paola waits for him at the gates, curling her fingers around the bars like a prisoner, and when she sees him walking towards her she grins – fleetingly, but it transforms her face and sends a jolt of joy through Ettore like a kick in the back. It’s been a long time since he saw his sister’s smile. He pulls her head towards him and presses his lips to her forehead, and they come away with the salt taste of her skin on them.
‘You’re up. You’re well,’ she says, and her relief is plain.
‘Yes. Soon I won’t need this thing.’ He smiles and raps the end of the crutch against the gate.
‘Don’t rush it. Let it heal.’
‘Yes, little mother.’
‘Don’t mock, just do as I tell you,’ she says, but she can’t be stern. Ettore reaches through and turns her shoulder to see his nephew. The baby is fast asleep with his face rucked up against Paola’s spine; his cheeks are marbled red, and he mumbles to himself when Ettore brushes his forehead. ‘Don’t wake him. He screamed half the night away.’