‘You’re sad about that?’
‘Yes, I…’ She draws up her knees, wraps her hands around them and rests her chin, turning to look at him. ‘When I am not with you I am alone. When you go… Now, even with Pip I feel alone. That makes me sad.’ Her gaze has barbs and he recoils, gets up and moves away, reaching for his shirt.
‘I won’t be here for long. I will go when I can. And you will go when my uncle lets you. With your husband and your boy, back to…’ He realises he has no idea where she lives, no picture in his head of what it might look like. What her life might look like. Not like his, that much is certain. ‘Back to your real world.’
Ettore goes to the courtyard window. Federico is sitting on the water trough, smoking idly, watching Anna as she draws water. The sight of him causes a hard jolt of violence. Ettore grips the window ledge, stepping back when Anna goes inside and it seems like Federico might look up. Just then, Filippo appears on the terrace across the courtyard and pauses. Looking for Chiara. Ettore turns back to her and she has not moved, or dressed. She looks closed in, shrunken, and he knows he’s hurt her.
‘My uncle told me he needs to find out something from your husband before you can go. Do you know what that could be? You could go sooner if you told him.’ There’s nothing but silence from the room. ‘The boy is looking for you,’ he says.
‘Yes. I’ll go. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back to my real world, with my husband. I don’t love him.’
‘Why did you marry him?’
‘I was just a girl. I was eighteen when we met, nineteen when we married. I’d just finished school… and my parents introduced us. He seemed… he seemed the right person to marry.’
‘For money?’
‘No, no. Not for money. For… safety, I suppose. For a life that was the way life was supposed to be. The way I had been brought up to think it should be. And for Pip. I also married him for Pip.’
‘Because you loved the boy?’
‘Yes. He was so little, and so lost without his mother. And I loved Boyd… That is, I thought I loved him. Now I think… I think perhaps I had no idea what love was. No idea how things could be between a man and a woman.’ She looks up at him quickly, uncertainly, like she’s said too much. Ettore stays quiet. ‘But how could I have known? I was so young…’ She shakes her head, seems to want him to absolve her of her mistake. ‘I was a schoolgirl, and then I was Mrs Boyd Kingsley. That’s all I knew how to be, until now.’
‘You’re still Mrs Kingsley. You still have your life to go back to – the one you chose. The one that is how it should be; the one you will go back to. This is life. Full of things we must do whether we want to or not,’ he says harshly, and wants to feel angry with her and her naivety, but can’t. She takes a quick breath, like a gasp, and then hurries to her feet and starts to dress, but her hands are shaking and she can’t manage her buttons, the clasp of her brassiere, her hairpins. Ettore finds he can’t bear it; it’s like a little knife in his own heart, the ease with which he can hurt her. He goes to stand behind her, puts his arms around her, tucks his face into the crook of her neck. For a second he wants to tell her that she is like a cool drink at the end of a hot day, but he doesn’t.
‘You’re not going yet,’ she says, the words blurred. ‘Your leg is still not strong enough. You’re not going yet.’
‘Not yet,’ he agrees, but in his head he’s already back in Gioia, in the small room where his father is determined to die and his sister nurses her son with a knife in her spare hand. He is in the fields with the men he has always worked alongside; he is in the piazza, he is in the ashes of the Chamber of Labour; he has Livia’s murderer beneath him, and rocks in his fists; he is a blaze of outrage.
For a week he works. He uses his leg whenever he can and the wound no longer opens when he does so, and he can no longer feel it pull in the bone. The ache of it is manageable, and no worse than the fire in his back after a day with the mattock or scythe. The Gioia men return to work and threshing starts; the thump of the machine out away from the house is a constant background noise, like a giant, restless heartbeat. Leandro Cardetta, it seems, has no trouble procuring fuel. Ettore waits for Chiara; when he is not on duty he goes away from the masseria and waits. They meet in ruined trulli, the abandoned homes of poor men, peasant men, dead men. He avoids company inside the masseria; he still itches with impatience, but when he sees her coming towards him with that rapid, light, marching way she walks, he finds himself smiling. They learn each other’s bodies, and how they like to be touched; the pattern of their love-making is like a dance, learnt and instinctive at the same time. And he finds that his mind returns to it, to her, more and more; at times when he should be thinking of leaving, when he should be thinking of finding Livia’s killer, when he should be thinking of Paola, and home, and the war they are so clearly losing. One more time, he thinks, each time she goes. Just one more time.
One stuffy night he’s on duty in the trullo by the gates. The dogs whine and mutter to themselves as they settle down for the night; geckos cheep at one another as they wriggle across the warm stones, pausing to mark Ettore with the black spheres of their eyes. He sits with the rifle on his knees and lets his mind wander. There has been no sign of raiders or thieves since he arrived at dell’Arco, and the mood of the guards is relaxed. Twice Ettore has been to the roof and found Carlo fast asleep; once he castigated the young man mildly, and only afterwards realised what he was doing – warning him to be ready to attack Ettore’s own people. Then he was so appalled with himself that he almost laughed. One by one the lights go off inside the masseria until the darkness is complete, and Ettore’s eyes stretch and strain as they adjust. A soft sound gives his skin a prickle of warning; he’s on his feet in an instant, his finger on the trigger, heart lurching. The nearest dog growls with quiet menace but then there’s silence and he thinks he’s imagined the sound, until a face appears at the gates, not two feet away from him. With a gasp Ettore swings the gun up, knocks the barrel against the metal with a clang that makes the dog yip in excitement. Then he lowers it again, shutting his eyes in relief.
‘Paola, Mother of God! Don’t sneak up like that!’ he whispers, and sees her fleeting smile.
‘I stayed downwind of the dogs,’ she says, pleased. ‘Quiet when I want to be, aren’t I?’
‘Quieter than a shadow. Why are you here?’
‘I wanted to tell you something, and ask you something. When are you coming back?’
‘Soon.’ He puts the gun down, glances back at the farm. ‘Soon. What’s going on – is it Valerio?’
‘No, he actually seems a little better. I wanted to tell you… there’s a plan.’
‘A plan?’
‘Yes. A plan to fight back, but properly this time. No more strikes that they simply break with blacklegs. No more political debate. If this is a war then let it be an open one.’ In the near dark her eyes are huge and they shine. He can read nothing in them but conviction, and it makes him uneasy.
‘What is this plan?’
‘Well,’ she hesitates, choosing her words. ‘Well, brother, you’re not going to like it.’
Part Three
But when, after infinite endurance, they are shaken to the depths of their beings and are driven by an instinct of self-defence or justice, their revolt knows no bounds and no measure. It is an inhuman revolt whose point of departure and final end alike are death, in which ferocity is born of despair.
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Carlo Levi