She looks up to find him watching her speculatively.
‘You are not at all what I expected you would be, Mrs Kingsley,’ he says. ‘The British are often so set in their ways. So rigid in their thinking. You seem, if you don’t mind my saying, to be just the opposite of that. In fact, most of the time I find myself unable to put my finger on what it is you do think.’
‘I find the same thing myself, sometimes,’ she says, and Leandro smiles.
‘Your husband has told you something of my former life in New York, I can tell.’ He says this lightly, and Clare is instantly on her guard. She doesn’t trust any levity in him.
‘Yes,’ she says. Leandro grunts, nods.
‘You demanded to know, I’ll wager. I can’t imagine him volunteering the information. And may I counsel you not to credit everything you’ve heard, Mrs Kingsley? Your husband and I have a… complicated past. I know he would never tell you all of it. Perhaps he should have told you none of it.’
‘Will you tell me?’
‘Me? Christ, no.’ He chuckles again. ‘But I will tell you this. In the course of my life I’ve had to do things that no man in his right mind would be proud of. I’ve been on the wrong side of the law – so far on the wrong side I forgot there was a right side, sometimes. I forgot there was a law. I’ve left that behind me now; I’m not that same man any more. But it got me to where I am, it got me to where I wanted to be, and how many men can say that? Do you know what I used to dream of when I was a little boy, Mrs Kingsley?’ He leans forward keenly, elbows on his knees. ‘I used to watch the signori going into the Teatro Comunale in Gioia in the evening. I used to look at their fine suits and the dresses and jewels the women wore, and the carriages they came in, all lit up with lamps. Their horses were sleek and spirited, not broken-winded, or worm-eaten. I used to dream of being one of those men – of walking along with them with a beauty on my arm, and laughing about whatever it was the rich found to laugh about, and spending an evening well fed, watching a play. I didn’t even know what a play was, really. I couldn’t picture it – there I was, all bones and dirt, a starving, snot-nosed rat like the rest of us. And I watched them, and I dreamed. Do you know how old I was the first time I worked a full day in the fields, Mrs Kingsley?’ Clare shakes her head, mute. ‘Eight. I was eight years old,’ says Leandro, and his face drags down again, remembering. ‘You’ve no idea of the things I’ve done, and the shit I’ve waded through, to put myself where I am. And I will cut down any man who tries to take it from me. I will cut him down.’ He says this with total calm, total conviction, and Clare feels her legs twitch, the instinctive urge to run.
Suddenly, Leandro smiles. ‘I’ve lost the thread of my story. Forgive me.’
‘I can’t imagine what life must be like for the very poor here. I can be told, but I can’t imagine it,’ says Clare.
‘None of us can walk in another’s shoes, not truly. But don’t let it distress you, Mrs Kingsley. Soon you’ll be back in London, with your husband and your son, and it will be as though none of this ever happened. You need never spare a thought for poor Puglia again. Isn’t that what you want?’ She looks up sharply because the question has an undercurrent of unspoken meaning.
‘I won’t ever forget coming here,’ she says.
‘No. I don’t suppose you will,’ he says gravely.
‘Will you tell me what happened at Masseria Girardi?’ She takes a chance in asking, since they’re speaking plainly. ‘You said Ettore was angry with you about it.’
‘Angry with me about it – no. Although, perhaps he ought to be. No, my nephew is just angry about it. He’s angry about so many things. Of course he is. He was one of those starving brats, same as I was, and he’s never managed to change it at all.’
‘But what was it?’
‘It’s a hard story, Mrs Kingsley.’
‘I want to hear it.’
‘It was just over a year ago now, and all this… violence was just beginning – rumours and whispers. The harvest was a disaster – farmers were torching their own crops because the insurance money was worth more than the wheat! This is what the peasants don’t see!’ Leandro thumps one fist into the opposite palm. ‘If they drive us out of business, there’ll be nobody to pay them whatsoever! But the workers were starving, and they had the right to work – that’s what changed after the war. They believed they had the right, and masserie that refused to hire were attacked. The Girardi farm had been raided, stolen from. Then the men came and worked Girardi’s fallow fields and demanded pay, and Girardi says he saw amongst them the face of at least one man who’d been in a raiding party. And so he hit back. He filled the farmhouse with his neighbours, and with his own guards and annaroli. They all brought their guns. And when the workers came at the end of the next day, to return the tools, and Nettis – the man who spoke for them – asked to be paid… they opened fire.’
One of the dogs out in the aia barks, and there’s the sudden stutter of wings as pigeons in the courtyard launch up in fright. Clare has a hollow feeling beneath her ribs.
‘They opened fire on unarmed men?’ she says. Leandro nods heavily.
‘A shameful thing, but Girardi would say he was driven to it. It was a situation with no resolution… no good outcome.’
‘How many men were… killed?’
‘Six. Only six. Which is miraculous, really. Many, many more were injured. They fled on foot, and the guards chased after them on horseback. The youngest to die was sixteen; the oldest seventy. It was an evil day. A sad day for this country.’
‘And Ettore was there? He was one of the workers?’
‘He was there.’ Leandro nods again. ‘He wasn’t injured, but he lost friends. He lost his friend Davide, who was his sister’s lover – Paola’s lover. They’d have wed if they’d had any idea whether or not her husband was still alive. But New York swallowed him up.’
‘And the men who did it? The men who opened fire?’
‘Nobody knows for sure who was inside the masseria, except those that were there. Some have been arrested, some are on the run. Some were lynched by the braccianti in vendetta. Then men from the lynch mobs were arrested…’
‘The peasants know who was there?’
‘They think they know. They thought they knew well enough to seek revenge. Ludo Manzo knows; I’m sure he was there. I can see him itching to say something about it to me, in an offhand way, as he loves to do, but he’s not wholly sure where my loyalties lie, you see. Not completely sure. I pay him handsomely to keep this place running but he still sees a cafone when he looks at me. He hasn’t the wit to realise that I own him now. Him and his son. There are so many scores to be settled here, Mrs Kingsley. We’ll be picking away at this mess for generations.’
Clare turns to look out at the perfect blue sky and the sunlight glaring on the high white walls. She half expects to see some sign of the violence, like smoke in the sky. She half expects to feel the ground shudder with the ponderous footsteps of sorrow, hatred, death.
‘I should be afraid to be here. I was afraid, after what I saw in Gioia,’ she says softly.
‘And you aren’t now?’
‘I don’t know why not. I feel powerless, I feel weak. But not afraid. Not for myself, at any rate. Perhaps that’s a surrender of some kind.’
‘You’re safe inside these walls, Mrs Kingsley.’
‘Marcie’s planning a party. We’re to drink, and dance, and be merry.’
‘Marcie is frightened. I shield her from what’s happening here as much as I can, and she chooses not to look at the rest. All I want is her happiness. I’m helpless, Mrs Kingsley. Helpless. She has my heart – every last part of it. I’m not blind – I know she married a rich man first, and Leandro Cardetta second. But I married for love.’ He smiles wistfully. ‘Like a fool.’