When Paola comes back to the table she’s calmer, more yielding. For a while the lamp’s steady hiss is the only sound, and its light sculpts itself into the contours of her face. She sighs as she pulls the scarf from her head, undoes her hair and runs her fingers through it. Her hair is long, thick, black, just like their mother’s. With it down around her shoulders, softening her face, Paola is a different creature. Younger, more fragile.
‘You’re beautiful like that,’ says Ettore.
‘Stop trying to butter me up. You do know she’s in love with you? Your pale mozzarella?’
‘No, she is-’
‘Don’t argue. Any woman could see it, plain as day. She is in love with you, and she wants another child.’
‘Not another; she has none. The boy is her husband’s only.’
‘Then it makes even more sense. Do you love her?’
‘No! Only… I don’t know. Not love. Not like Livia.’
‘Like what, then?’
‘I don’t know! Anyway, soon she’ll go home and that will be the end of it. Don’t ask me when, because I don’t know.’
‘Jesus, Ettore – do you know how much like a child you sound? How much like a sulky little boy? What did she say to you about Girardi? I heard her say something about Girardi.’
‘No.’ Ettore’s jaw goes tense. He’s too afraid to tell her the truth. ‘You heard wrong.’ Paola eyes him suspiciously.
‘Luna said she gave you her gold necklace as if it meant nothing.’
‘It did mean nothing to her, her husband gave it to her. She doesn’t love him.’ Ettore can’t help that this pleases him; he hopes Paola won’t hear it. ‘What else did Luna say?’ Paola hesitates, looking up at him through the hoods of her lashes. It’s what she does when she’s holding back, and it makes Ettore uneasy. ‘Well?’
‘She says you told Pino they have money there. Cash, a lot of it. And jewels…’
‘No.’ Ettore splays his hands on the table and leans back, arms straight, adamant.
‘We could buy weapons! We could feed ourselves – all those who would fight! We could buy animals, tools…’
‘No, Paola. Are we brigands now? Nothing better than thieves? If we raid, we raid so we don’t starve; we raid to punish those who’ve hired and armed squads to set against us; those who have attacked us first. That’s how it’s always been. Do you see yourself leading a famous gang of brigands, like Sergente Romano? Is that how this looks in your head? This grand plan?’
‘Don’t patronise me, Ettore! At least Romano did something! At least he stood up, and showed courage!’
‘Courage or no courage, he was shot to pieces by the carabinieri. Who will care for Iacopo when that happens to you? And you would steal from our own family?’
‘Spoils of war,’ she says curtly, but he see his words unsettle her. ‘We mean to take over, Ettore! Not simply punish, or find our next meal. No more tit for tat. We mean to take back control! And you said yourself Leandro is not our family any more. He’s just one more fat proprietor, and a landowner to boot. One more rich man who feeds and shelters his horses and oxen and mules all through the winter while he lays off the men to starve and die!’
‘I was angry when I said that about Leandro, and I am angry with him… but he is still our uncle. He is still our mother’s brother, and he treats the workers better than some. Better pay, better food. This plan of yours will end in blood.’
‘Their blood!’
‘And ours! Rivers of it,’ he says. Paola’s face twists in frustration.
‘When did you get so afraid, brother? “He treats the workers better than some”? Can you hear yourself, Ettore? You’re talking about a man who employs not only Ludo Manzo but his fucking fascist son as well!’
‘I know who I’m talking about!’
‘Then why do you suddenly refuse to fight for the rights that are denied to us by all men like him? Is it the mozzarella? You don’t want her to get hurt, is that it?’ She glares at him across the table, until Ettore is forced to look away.
‘You think that if we fight the good fight, they’ll have to fall? And the latifundia with them? Are you really so naive, Paola?’ he says.
‘You sound like Gianni and Bianca, and all those others who’ve given up and are ready to just… cower down.’ She waves a hand in anger. ‘We need a revolution, like in Russia. If we stood up all at once we would be unstoppable.’
‘Would we? No,’ says Ettore, raising his hand to forestall an angry retort. ‘I have not given up, Paola, but Gioia del Colle is not all of Italy. It’s not even all of Puglia… Troops will be sent. More squads will be hired. This is not the way, Paola!’
‘It’s the only way left, brother.’
‘Before this summer is out I will lay my hands on Ludo Manzo again, and his son. I swear it. But a raid on dell’Arco would be suicide! Leandro is no fool. The roof is covered in armed guards. The gates are iron, the walls are three metres thick. The dogs in the aia would kill anyone they got hold of. It would be madness to try it.’
‘Not if we had guns. That’s the idea – that’s why we strike at Masseria Molino first. The new tenant there is so nervous he’s spent all his money on rifles and ammunition and now he can only afford to keep two permanent guards to use them. And he’s recruiting for the squads all the time, and arming them, if that makes you feel better. The moron is sitting there on a huge, barely protected arsenal. When we have guns, we can shoot the dogs at dell’Arco, and the guards.’
There’s that dangerous conviction in Paola’s expression again, that righteous fire, like a hunger eating her away. Inside, Ettore is cold. ‘We do this, or we surrender, and nothing will change. We do it, or we starve this winter. You, me, him.’ She hooks her thumb at Valerio. ‘My Iacopo. Pino. All of us. Those are the choices.’ For a long time Ettore doesn’t answer. He knows what Paola says is true. But it’s a bitter truth.
‘It’s hard to shoot a guard on a roof. They would pick us off through the slits as we stood banging on the doors,’ he says softly.
‘No, they won’t,’ says Paola. Calmly, she gathers up her hair and begins to braid it for bed. ‘Not if your mozzarella opens the doors for us.’
In the night Paola sleeps soundly. Her breathing is steady and even and sure, as if to prove a point to her brother, who is restless and chased around by his dreams. He dreams of the bottomless pit near Castellana, seeping out mists and bats and spectres. But in the dream the fields as far as Gioia start to break and crack open, into jagged fissures through which Ettore can see that the abyss is vast, and right beneath their feet. There is emptiness where there should be rock and roots and earth. Dusty soil dribbles into the cracks and sifts away into nothingness. Fear turns Ettore’s bowels watery, scatters his thoughts like blown smoke and brings him to his knees, scrabbling his fingers into the mud in an effort to cling on. He wakes up dried-mouthed and ashamed, and variations of this dream of insecurity mock him until sunrise.