Ettore has the sense of being hundreds of years old; the feeling gets stronger and stronger. He is not Ettore Tarano but merely one of a million cafoni who have lived and died in Puglia for centuries. He’s one of a silent multitude who have broken themselves against the rocks and hard ground, who have starved and toiled and ground a life out of dust, and afterwards have given back their bones for the privilege. Short lives, anonymous lives; lives lived hand to mouth, with their fleeting moments of joy like tiny sparks that flare and are then snuffed out. He’s ancient man, he goes back thousands of years; he has worked with stone tools, then bronze, then iron; his eyes, the colour of the Adriatic, have looked out from his dark face and seen ages creep past, never changing. He is the blood and soul of this land, he is its constant march, and he’s tired. So tired.
Paola watches him closely, but when she speaks he can’t find the energy to reply. He must walk – when he stands still all those millennia pile up around him, crushing him. And yet he doesn’t see how anybody can be expected to carry on when they’re as tired as he is.
‘Ettore…’ says Paola, shaking his arm as the light begins to fade on Sunday. He stares at her from far away, then blinks and looks around. He’s in Piazza XX Settembre, frozen in the middle of its triangular space, with no recollection of arriving there. ‘I need to know you’ll be all right tonight. I need to know you’ll come back for it,’ she says. Her face is careworn; grey hairs have started to thread through the black. For a second Ettore sees their mother.
‘Come back?’ he says.
‘From wherever the hell you’ve gone!’ She smacks the side of his head with the flat of her hand. She sounds frightened.
‘I’ve gone nowhere. I’ll never go anywhere – neither will you.’
‘In a few hours we go to dell’Arco – are you listening? We will go as planned and we will attack it, and kill Ludo Manzo, and take what we need. What we deserve. Will you be with us? Your mozzarella might panic if she doesn’t see you… she might cause trouble – sound the alarm, who the hell knows. So?’
‘Chiara?’ he says, and the thought of her causes a faint sting, quick as a fitful sigh. Paola shuts her eyes. She takes hold of his sleeve, leans her forehead against his shoulder for a second.
‘Please, Ettore. Please don’t do this. We need you. Di Vittorio has resigned. He’s left Cerignola, and fled north. All the socialists are fleeing north. Everything’s falling apart… I need you.’
Somehow the warm press of her head reaches him, touching some place that’s still tender and living. He reaches up, holds the back of her neck for a moment.
‘Don’t be frightened, Paola,’ he says. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go with you.’ With a sudden shimmer of unreality, a sudden slipping of time, he remembers saying the exact same thing to her on her first day of school. His sister looks up at him, relieved.
‘All right,’ she says, nodding. ‘All right. Good.’ She steps away and smooths out his torn shirt sleeve, bunched up where she grabbed it. There are three ragged tears in it where lead shot winged him on Friday night; three corresponding scorch lines on the skin underneath. ‘Don’t wander off again. Don’t vanish. Go to Sant’Andrea; I’ll fetch you in a few hours, when it’s time.’ Ettore nods, but when he doesn’t move she sighs and takes his arm again. He lets her march him; he has no will of his own. He is callused hands and an aching back; he is wounds and bruises; he comes from nothing, and nowhere. He is deep beneath the ground, falling.
In the soft darkness of early night Ettore walks at his sister’s side, his breath stifling beneath the scarf tied across his face. Faceless, nameless; one of a number. He moves with them and lets them inform him, this gang of thirty-three souls. There are guns amongst them, tucked into belts and pockets; knives, cudgels. Ettore will be the first in; he has a pistol because he might need to use it on the door guard. He is distant and wholly calm until they are at the top of a slight rise in the land, looking across at Masseria dell’Arco with its lights blazing out, shining from the high white walls. It’s beautiful and serene, but a fortress nonetheless. Looking down at it, Ettore feels his heart beat harder. He takes a deep breath in, and with a tingling at the back of his neck he feels himself wake up. It’s just like in the war, just like at the Isonzo front; drunk and freezing, thought obliterated by fear and the bursting of shells, and yet when the whistle blew, when the firing started, his mind went crystal clear, and he focused, to the exclusion of all else, on doing what needed to be done – on staying alive.
His throat has gone dry but he’s steady. They have circled and approached from the south, to be downwind of the dogs. There’s some fine timing to be managed. The gate guard will be silenced just before Ettore goes over the aia wall at the corner of the quad, and sprints to the doors at exactly eleven, when Chiara will have them opened from inside. Then he will remove the door guard and the others will cross the aia as fast as they can, and be inside before the roof guards have got themselves together to fire down at them. The raiders stand, bunched together, silent. Waiting. One man has a pocket watch in his hand; he squints down at it intently.
‘I hope you remembered to wind that thing,’ Ettore says softly. There’s a low collective chuckle, and beside him he feels Paola relax minutely. At five to eleven the man with the watch nods to another, who sets off with a knife in his hand, low to the ground and fast, towards the gates. They wait, listening hard. There’s a tiny noise, like a foot dragged through dust. The nearest dog barks furiously for a moment, then growls and goes quiet. They have no way of knowing if their man has been successful; they can only trust. At one minute to eleven, Ettore gets the nod.
He runs on silent feet down to the wall. It’s near two metres high but made of huge chunks of rough tufo, easy to climb. He’s over in seconds, drops as softly as he can and freezes. The nearest dog growls, gargling the sound deep in its throat. Ettore hardly breathes. The dog comes as close as it can to where he is, sunk in the deep shadow of the wall. It strains on its chain but doesn’t bark, and he wonders if it’s familiar with his scent, if it recognises him at all. He can’t trust in that. When he moves, it will have to be like lightning – as soon as he does he’ll be within the dog’s reach. He waits, the muscles in his legs burning, wanting to straighten up. But he’s waiting for a specific sound. The seconds tick by and his heart thumps twice as fast, and he thinks eleven o’clock must have come and gone, and Chiara has not done as she said she would. As clear as day, he sees the end of them all in gunshots fired from the darkness above, in the jaws of these dogs, in swinging clubs, buckling skulls. Then he hears it. The soft, high sound of her voice coming quietly from inside, and the jangling of the door keys. He has a split second to be grateful and then he’s up, running with every shred of effort he can find.
The dog snarls and launches itself at him. He smells the greasy stink of it, its meaty breath as its jaws snap centimetres from his face. But he’s past it and the small door is opening, swinging inwards, a hand’s breadth, then two. He’s through it without hesitation, and has the guard back against the side of the arch, the pistol pressed up under his chin. It’s Carlo, his pleasant face sagging in shock.
‘Open the big doors,’ he whispers. He sees Carlo recognise him, feels him relax a fraction. He drags him forward then thumps him back again, harder, gouging the gun into his soft gullet. ‘Do it! Now!’