‘I’m so sorry, Ettore. I’m sure… I’m sure she was glad you were with her. It must have been so hard, but I’m sure she was glad. I would be.’
‘At the end she barely knew me.’ Ettore curls his hand around her head and pulls it tighter to his chest, and Clare isn’t sure if this is just a reflex, an instinctive reaction to thoughts of the girl he lost. ‘She… she had a terrible fever. She hardly knew me.’
‘You’ve suffered such loss. You and Paola. Your uncle… Leandro told me that she lost her husband; that he disappeared to America, and then her lover was also killed. Did she love him very much?’
‘Yes. As much as I loved Livia, I think. But she’s… braver than me. Stronger than me. She doesn’t let it show. Is that wrong, do you think? Shouldn’t a man be the stronger one?’
‘No. Not always. I only met her so briefly but that was how she seemed to me – strong. Like she was wearing armour. Perhaps a person can be… too hard.’
‘Not here. You can’t be too hard here. You have to be hard.’
‘And she has her son, of course. She has part of her lost lover in him, something to love and care for, and distract her from her pain.’
‘Yes, that’s true. Many women are waiting – waiting to hear from their husbands or fathers or brothers who have gone to America. Perhaps they still write, perhaps they still send money, perhaps not. Still, they wait. Not Paola. She gave her husband two years, after he went there. Two years to send her a letter, or some sign he was still alive, and if he was still alive, that he still wanted her. Nothing came. So she said to me, “Life is short,” and she let herself love another. She heals herself; she doesn’t… let herself sink. I can’t seem to stop.’
‘It’s only been half a year since you lost her,’ says Clare gently. She sits up, away from him, and Ettore turns to look at her. He seems tired and vulnerable, like there’s no fight left in him, and she wishes she knew a way to sustain him.
She looks away across the burnt land, across the parched remains of wheat stalks; it’s a devastated landscape, empty as a broken heart.
‘I’m starting to see how strong you have to be to survive here. Why you need to be strong. Working for men like that overseer, Ludo Manzo…’ She shakes her head. ‘I saw him… I saw him doing something terrible to a man. Making him graze from the ground like a sheep.’
‘Ludo Manzo likes to humiliate people. Young boys especially, but anybody he can.’ Ettore’s voice turns hard. ‘Any excuse… he will use any excuse to punish a man.’
‘But why? How did he become so cruel? And why is he allowed to do such things?’
‘He is a product of this place and all the hundreds of years of hate in its blood. There’s no other why. Many men have tried to kill him, but he has a knack for staying alive. The luck of the devil, some say. Davide – Paola’s lover, who was killed at the Girardi farm – once got a knife to his throat in the dark of the night, and yet the blade slipped in his hand somehow, and didn’t go deep. Davide said it was like some black magic protected him.’ Ettore jerks up his chin, and Clare can’t tell if he accepts this idea or scorns it.
‘No wonder you are angry.’
‘Angry?’ Ettore shakes his head. ‘Wasps are angry. Spoilt children are angry. What we feel is much bigger. Much worse.’
‘Do you think it was Manzo who shot Davide at Girardi? Do you think he recognised him, and… shot him deliberately?’
‘What are you saying, Chiara?’
‘I asked Leandro about what happened at Girardi… He said that Ludo was there that day, that he was one of the men who fired-’ She breaks off as Ettore lurches forwards. He pushes her away from him, holds her at arm’s length, eyes snapping.
‘He said that – Ludo Manzo was at Girardi that day? You’re sure?’ His fingers are digging into her properly now, painfully. She nods dumbly. Ettore is on his feet in an instant, and stalks away towards dell’Arco without another word.
Clare watches him helplessly, fearfully; she can’t go after him directly, and be seen. She waits in agony for a few minutes and then sets off on a different route, frantic with the feeling of having mishandled something fragile, and done irreversible damage. In the end she has no choice but to go to the main gates, even if she is tellingly close behind him. The wall around the vegetable garden is too high for her to climb; the walls around the aia are lower but in full view of the trullo by the gates and the guards on the roof. And what would look guiltier than scaling a wall, anyway? But just as she has her hand on the flaking metal she hears male voices, raised in anger, excitement; there’s a whoop like a rodeo cry, and whistling. Clare, compelled by foreboding, jogs around the aia to the rear of the complex. The off-duty corporals are all there, gathered, watching. There’s a rising cloud of dust, and between the onlooker’s bodies Clare glimpses sudden frantic movements.
She edges forwards, already knowing what she’ll see. There’s a shout from behind her, and she glances up at the guards on the roof who are lined up, watching. At the centre of the dust cloud Ettore is fighting Ludo Manzo. He’s astride him, snarling, struggling to free his arms from Ludo’s grasp, to be able to hit. There’s blood in his teeth; the pair of them are covered in Puglia’s gold-brown dirt, barely recognisable. Ludo’s face is murderous; a rictus of total fury. On the edge of the circle his son stands watching, arms loose at his sides, fingers twitching with desire. The tendons in Ettore’s neck stand out in hard ridges; he claws at the older man’s face, leans all his weight forwards and gets his hands around Ludo’s scrawny neck, shaking with the strain.
Clare watches with the others. She can’t move or speak; there’s a clenched fist in her chest that makes it hard to breathe, and the shouts from the others are in the dialect she can’t decipher; she feels removed, helpless. Ludo is older but taller and full of vicious malice; Ettore younger but smaller, still weak in one leg, and reckless with anger. With an inhuman growl Ludo throws Ettore off and is on his feet in a heartbeat, fighting for breath, rubbing his throat. He darts forwards and kicks Ettore’s damaged leg as he tries to stand; Ettore roars in pain and falls to his knees, and Ludo catches his hair in one hand and lifts his chin to take the full impact of a crunching blow of his fist. Ettore rolls away, gets to his feet but staggers, shaking his head to clear it. Ludo is grinning now, like he’s heard a good joke; blood drips freely from his nose, clagged up and gluey with dust.
‘I’m going to take your head off for you, boy,’ he says, his Italian so contorted with some accent that Clare can barely understand him. He jabs a finger at Ettore. ‘Then none of this will bother you any more.’ He kicks Ettore viciously in the stomach and puts him back on his knees, retching, heaving for breath.
‘Stop!’ Clare shouts. Ettore gets back to his feet, still reeling, bent over, off balance. ‘Ettore!’ She wants him to look up, wants him to see how close Ludo has got to him, how he’s coiling himself up, wiry as a snake, to deliver the next kick. Her voice is lost in the din, she tries to push forward but an arm appears across her chest, keeping her back. ‘Ettore, look out!’ she tries again, but there’s no hope of him hearing. But then Ludo freezes.
There’s a gunshot, shockingly loud, close at hand. Before the echo of it has cracked off the masseria wall the men have fallen silent and gone still; the fighters included. They stand facing one another, poised; chests heaving, eyes alight with hate. Leandro Cardetta lowers his rifle and points it casually right at them. He walks forwards slowly, and says something in dialect that Clare can’t understand. She itches with frustration, but her relief is far greater. She edges back behind the wall of young men, dipping her head, not wanting to be seen. Ludo says something in his hard, emotionless voice, also in the dialect. He jerks his thumb at Ettore, and Leandro asks something of his nephew that Ettore answers, eventually, with a single reluctant nod. Ettore starts to speak, and Clare understands the word Girardi, before Leandro cuts him off with a bark. Keeping the rifle trained on the two of them, Leandro asks a question, but neither man will answer. Clare glances across at Federico, and doesn’t like the gleeful smirk on his face. Ettore wipes one hand across his face and spits a gobbet of bright red saliva into the dust. He doesn’t speak again but turns and walks out of the circle of men, away from his uncle and the huddled, fearful figure of his lover.