The Night Falling (8 page)

When perhaps two hours have passed, Paola returns. There’s a slight grunt from her, and a thump as something heavy hits the ground. She pushes it under the bed and Ettore smells blood, and not from his own leg. She lies back down beside him in silence, and he listens as her breathing steadily slows. The smell of smoke clings to her, bitter and strong. She has joined a poaching raid on a
masseria
, he knows then. They have stolen, they have killed livestock, they have torched, and she has her loot under the bed – meat, some of which they will eat, most of which they will sell to buy other foodstuffs. He feels nothing about this other than guilt, because it’s his fault she’s taken this risk, his fault that she’s this worried about their survival. For a second he’s furious with her, because she could easily be killed, or arrested, and what would become of Iacopo then? The guards open fire freely at thieves and raiders, and then there are the dogs, too. People frequently die, trying to take what they cannot buy. But his anger only makes the guilt worse, because Paola knows the risks, of course, and nobody worries more for her child than she does. But still she went. Ettore lies in the dark and his frustration grows until it’s harder to bear than the wound in his leg. When his sister shakes his arm to wake him he still has not slept, and he snatches the limb away in fury, ignoring her offended expression. They do not speak of her absence, of the meat under the bed, the smell of smoke, or the frank exhaustion on both of their faces.

In the piazza Ettore avoids the Masseria Vallarta overseer, who knows of his injury, and tries to find work elsewhere. He drops his improvised crutch and balances with both feet on the ground but the weight only on the whole leg, and is hired with a group of men to a smaller farm. But he can’t even begin the walk without the pole to lean on, and is promptly dismissed. When all the overseers and workers have gone he finds Valerio, also unemployed, sitting on the steps of the covered market with an unreadable face. Ettore has no idea what to do with his day. A kind of itching desperation means he can’t go home, he can’t rest. He sits next to his father for a while, as the sun rises and floods the piazza and the temperature soars. He thinks that once threshing starts he might have more luck – a job where he can stand rather than walk, feeding the machine or swinging a flail, using the strength of his arms rather than his legs. His body feels tremulous and broken. The sun roars down at them both but Ettore starts to shiver as his father starts to sweat. He keeps thinking he can hear the hum of a scythe swinging, but that can’t be right. He shakes his head doggedly, to be rid of the sound.

‘If Maria was alive she would fix that leg,’ Valerio says suddenly. ‘She would fix this cough too.’ He sets great store by the memory of his wife’s healing skills, though one time Maria Tarano made a poultice for a neighbour’s wound and that wound turned black, the skin around it shiny and fat, and the unfortunate man soon died of it. After that Ettore lost faith in her magic, in her infallibility. He saw from the way she shrank back when others came to her for help that she had lost faith too. But her efforts earned them payment in kind, so she kept them up. And she could not heal herself, of course, when cholera came for her eleven years ago. ‘I still miss her, Ettore. Sorely, I miss her,’ says Valerio, and Ettore suddenly sees that grief is a thing they have in common, he and his father. It saddens him that he hasn’t thought of this until now.

Paola sells cuts of her stolen meat – a sinewy shoulder of mutton – to various neighbours and strangers, by hushed word of mouth. The peasants keep such things to themselves, but the police and proprietors sometimes send out spies to watch and listen, to find out who suddenly has something they ought not to have. For three days they have bread and beans and olive oil to eat, and even a little wine to go with their meals. Paola cooks the beans in a
pignata
by the fire, makes a thick stew with the mutton bone and adds handfuls of black pasta and pecorino cheese. They eat together from one large dish, much cracked and stapled, that has served their dinners for as long as Ettore can remember; sitting on stools around a tiny, wobbly table that is the envy of many less well-furnished neighbours.

‘Did you hear about Capozzi?’ says Paola, as they eat. Ettore nods. She is normally his eyes and ears in Gioia, when he is in the fields all day; now he is about town in the daytime he sees and hears as well.

‘What of him?’ says Valerio.

‘Arrested again. Beaten as well, I heard. Badly. He was trying to prevent the removal of men from retaken common land, and the burning of what they’d planted there. He was only speaking, but they charged him with disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace!’ The three of them share a steady glance, and Ettore knows that Paola is waiting for them to express their anger, their outrage, their fear.

Nicola Capozzi is a Gioia man who founded the local branch of the socialist party there in 1907. The workers have no real understanding of the politics behind their strikes and their riots – they need no such understanding, but they know that Capozzi speaks for them. That he is their man. Since the new branch of the fascist party was formed in Gioia recently, with the full support of the
signori
and proprietors, there’s no doubt as to which side the police are on. There never has been. The men now wait to hear of Capozzi’s murder. Assassination, it will be called, and nothing will be done about it as and when it happens. Not via official channels, in any case.

‘There’ll be a rally. There’ll be a strike until he’s released. I’ll find out today when it will start,’ says Paola, holding her brother’s eyes. But all the outrage, all the fear and anger at the dinner table comes from her alone. Valerio carries on eating as though he hears nothing; and without Livia Ettore can’t find that feeling any more. He can’t find his will to fight.

For three days, all is well. Being well fed keeps Ettore’s shivers to a minimum, and he feels better even though he doesn’t feel right. Then, after three days, the food runs out and Valerio is coughing so hard he can be heard right across the piazza, and Ettore stands square before the overseer of Masseria Vallarta at dawn, with his weight on both feet, and declares himself fit for work. His cut leg beats like a drum; the bone screams silently at him. He can feel the overseer’s eyes on him as he joins the group for the walk to the farm; he grinds his teeth together, so hard that his jaw cramps, but he does not limp. Halfway along the dusty track out of Gioia he feels the warm trickle of fresh blood as the wound reopens. It goes down into his boot, and makes his foot slide around. Pino is not with him; he was hired elsewhere, and Ettore looks around at the other faces to see if there is a friendly one, one he knows, who might carry him back to town if he can’t walk. He sees Gianni, one of Livia’s older brothers, and makes his way over to him.

Gianni looks down at Ettore’s leg but says nothing. He’s older than Ettore by two years, but seems much older still. His face is hard, his expression grim. If Livia was a golden plover, then this brother is a black kite, silent and watchful. He doesn’t moderate his pace to make it easier for Ettore to keep up.

‘Gianni. How is your family?’ says Ettore. Gianni shrugs one shoulder.

‘Surviving. My mother still pines for Livia.’

‘As do we all,’ says Ettore carefully. In truth, pining isn’t something he can imagine Gianni doing. Pining needs softness; pining needs a heart in which to feel the wound. ‘Have you heard anything?’ He can’t help but ask, though he knows Gianni would have sought him out if he had. Gianni shakes his head.

‘It’s impossible to overhear the guards when we harvest.’

‘I know.’ This is something else that might be easier once threshing starts. With the cutting, and the men scattered all over the fields, there is less talk, less gossip. Less opportunity to eavesdrop on the guards and the other
annaroli
– those with permanent jobs on the
masserie
. There will be no other way to find out who did the things to Livia that Ettore is careful not to think about, because it’s unbearable in a way that could drive him mad. There’s no other form of justice for the peasants than the personal settling of scores; that has always been the way. Ettore has heard guards boasting of their various exploits and misdeeds, at other times, and he always made a note of the man’s face, if he didn’t know his name, and passed on what he’d heard to those that wanted to know. He trusts that, sooner or later, someone will do the same for him. But it has been six months, and not even a whisper about it. About her. About who would attack a young girl out alone, walking back to town with a bundle of foraged firewood in her apron. Ettore is confused, worried. It’s a source of steady shame, but violence towards wives, daughters and sisters is everywhere in Puglia. The downtrodden men, harried by failure and desperation, often lash out at the only targets they have, even if those targets are innocent, even if they’re loved; even if he loathes himself all the more as a result. But such violence stays in the home, and is nobody’s business. A deliberate attack, outside the family and of such savagery, is everyone’s business.

‘I always ask. I always try to find out,’ says Gianni, as though Ettore had accused him otherwise.

‘I know,’ he says again.

‘We will find out, one day.’ Gianni stares along the road ahead, his eyes narrow though the sun is not yet full up. His certainty reassures Ettore. One thing not in doubt is that, when they find him, they will make the man pay with his hide. They walk on in silence, and soon Gianni has drawn ahead, and Ettore is left behind. Gianni is not a man who needs or wants friends. Ettore feels despised for his weakness.

The day is a long and agonising grind. Too late, Ettore uses one of his bootlaces to tie his trouser leg closed below the wound, but the dust and dirt have already found their way in, and the cloth that’s tied around it is the same one he’s had since the beginning, and it has started to smell. At least, he hopes it’s the cloth that smells, and not the wound itself. He is tying sheaves instead of wielding the scythe; it’s easier in some ways – no tool to carry, no twisting, less shifting of weight from leg to leg. But more bending over, more stooping; and every time he leans down Ettore’s head swoops giddily, queasily, and he fights for balance. When lunchtime comes he stares at his chunk of bread and wonders why, though he knows his stomach is empty, he doesn’t want to eat. He puts the bread in his pocket to take back, and swallows his water in three gulps. The flies won’t leave him alone. By afternoon he’s shivering again, though the day has been one of flat, white heat, and he can tell from the way he’s stared at that he doesn’t look well. A man he doesn’t know claps him on the shoulder and tells him he’s earned his rest that day, but his touch makes Ettore recoil. His skin feels like needles and pins; his guts are juddering.

On the walk home he finds himself alone, because he’s slow and stops to rest often. The sun is setting and the sky has turned the palest turquoise, a colour so pretty that Ettore sits down on the stone wall beside the road and stares at it for a while, not quite knowing where he is or how he got there. He rolls up his trouser leg and peels off the sodden cloth over the wound. The gash has gone black, the skin of his shin shiny and fat. Ettore grins at it, a baring of his teeth that has nothing to do with mirth. Painfully, he stands and walks on, and it seems only moments until full dark descends. He can see lights up ahead and he thinks it must be Gioia, but he can’t seem to get any closer. He legs won’t do as he tells them any more; it’s a weird feeling – the sudden loss of something taken entirely for granted, like forgetting how to breathe.

He takes another rest, this time sitting with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. He wants them as far away from him as he can put them, but the smell of the wound is too strong to escape, and it reminds him of the trenches. Against the far grey sky bats twist and flutter in silence, and tiny stars are winking alight. Ettore stares up at them and can no longer remember where he was going, or why. Then there’s a growing sound, a rumble, a crunching. A motor car speeds into view, coming away from Gioia with its headlights dazzling. It’s deep red; it kicks up a plume of pale dust behind it, ten metres into the sky. It flashes past Ettore without pausing, and in the instant that it does he’s sure he can hear laughter beneath the sound of its engine – a high peal of female laughter. He stares after it in amazement. The proprietors can’t get petrol for their tractors or farm machinery, they say, but at least one rich man has a laughing car and enough fuel to make it fly.

He rests his head back on the wall. The night is cool but still the air seems hard to breathe, like it’s too thick, and sticks to the sides of his mouth and throat like dust. For a while he focuses on drawing this unhelpful stuff into his lungs, and pushing it out again, and he has no idea if this while is seconds or hours. When a figure emerges from the dark and crouches down beside him, Ettore has no idea what it might mean.

‘
Porca puttana
! Ettore – what is that stink? Is that you?’ it says, and puts a hand on his shoulder to rouse him. Ettore frowns, rounding up his thoughts and eyes and tongue, which stray away from him like wilful cats. He can see a black outline, a mass of curly hair that seems to move like snakes.

‘Pino?’ His friend seems enormous, a gigantic version of his normal self. ‘Why are you so big?’

‘What? Paola sent me to look for you when you didn’t come back. Is that your leg that smells so bad? Can you get up? Come on.’ Pino’s arm is around his ribs; he wraps one of Ettore’s arms around his neck and heaves him up. The movement is too much, and Ettore retches in protest, bringing up nothing. He suddenly thinks that if he dies without avenging Livia, his own rage will burn him for eternity – he will have his own personal hell, and he will never see her again. Some other lucky ghost will find her in heaven, and claim her. Ettore hasn’t cried since she died, not once, but he starts to cry now.

He doesn’t understand much of anything else for a while. He feels as though he’s floating, and at times it’s quite nice. At other times it starts to feel like drowning. He thinks he hears Valerio and Paola arguing about a doctor, about a druggist, about what to do; he thinks he senses Pino, still huge, waiting to find out what they decide. He wonders how they can carry on talking when the air is hotter than flames. He is inside a building, then he is outside, and then inside again, somewhere different. The sun comes up, and the light hurts his eyes. He is carried, and it is giant, snake-headed Pino who carries him; sweating, the breath puffing in and out of him. From time to time Paola’s face hovers in front of him, and her features swim about as though they’re melting – her eyes are drips of molten wax, running down the candle of her skull; she’s terrifying, and when she speaks she makes no sense.