by Caroline Lea
‘I don’t know.’ Cesare digs his spade into the ground, imagines the sound of metal on flesh. He pictures the bruise, the burst of blood. He shakes his head to dispel the image. ‘Bring the wheelbarrow closer,’ he says.
It is a cold day in late February, the wind blasting in from the north. Gino has been back working alongside Cesare for nearly a week, his presence steady and reassuring, but both of them move slowly in the chill air. A bone-weariness clenches around Cesare’s body, making his arms shake and his chest ache; it is like nothing he has ever known. And the fear and rage that course through him when he thinks of MacLeod . . . He jabs at the rock, watching his breath plume in front of him.
He imagines a man’s cry, cut off. He imagines the rasp of breath being squeezed from a throat.
He shakes his head again. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeats to Gino.
This morning, during the headcount, standing in the yard, Cesare had imagined he saw her hair. A flash of colour in the grey monotony that fills his days. But no. She must have returned to Kirkwall.
If he closes his eyes, he can picture her: the red hair, the white skin, the blue eyes. His hands ache for a brush and the colours he’d need to capture her. At night, in the dark, surrounded by the snores and coughs and grunts of the men, he traces her face in his mind, trying to create something beautiful.
Now he kicks at a stubborn rock and uses his boot to nudge it onto the spade. Gino pushes the wheelbarrow closer.
‘I’m not coming too near,’ Gino says, eyeing the rock. ‘My foot still hurts.’
Laughter pains Cesare’s lungs, or perhaps, he worries, it is the first sign of the infection that has begun making its way through the prisoners: sudden fever and a cough that racks their whole body.
As if reading his thoughts, Gino says, ‘It would be worth it, almost, sì? I would catch that sickness, to be in the infirmary.’
Cesare shakes his head. ‘You’re scrawny enough, Gino. No more illness for you.’
Gino flashes a quick grin – his teeth shockingly white against his grubby skin. ‘Ah, but those nurses . . .’ he says dreamily. ‘They are so beautiful.’
Cesare pictures Nurse Croy’s serious face, her pursed lips, the worried crease in her brow. ‘Not for me.’
Gino heaves the full wheelbarrow backwards, his face full of strain, but his eyes are still bright. ‘Sometimes I dream of their red hair,’ he says.
‘Wait.’ Cesare yanks the wheelbarrow back towards him, making Gino stumble. ‘Who has red hair?’
‘The nurses.’ Gino rubs his palms against his trousers. ‘Two of them. Twins. That hurt, amico.’
‘There are twin nurses with red hair? In the infirmary?’
Gino nods, still rubbing at his hands, his gaze uncertain. And Cesare is aware, from Gino’s expression, that this is unlike him, that he has hurt his friend’s feelings as well as his hands.
‘Scusi,’ Cesare says, and then he tells Gino everything: about Dorotea – Gino remembers now that she is the one who dived into the sea – about their bothy; about Con screaming; about MacLeod sending Cesare back to the quarry.
‘Basta!’ Gino breathes.
‘Yes. I must see her.’
A shout behind them, ‘Get on with your work! Faster!’
It’s MacLeod, pacing up and down the line, his baton in one hand. Gino rolls his eyes and pushes the wheelbarrow towards the lorry. When he returns, he is smiling.
‘You know, Marco said that MacLeod has a woman’s pocket mirror.’
Despite his anxiety about Dorotea, Cesare grins. ‘No!’
Gino nods and beckons Marco over. He has lost even more weight than they have; his skin is sallow, his eyes dull. But his expression brightens when Gino mentions MacLeod, who, he confirms, carries a pocket mirror and a moustache comb.
‘How can he comb it, though, a coglione? A bollock cannot be beautiful.’
Gino gives a shout of laughter and Cesare joins him, but then there is a sound, like a clap of thunder and he is lying on the ground, his face against the rock.
For a moment, he cannot understand what has happened.
He sees the black pair of guard’s boots, and looks up to see MacLeod’s blurred face, which is entirely expressionless, as if he is inspecting a rock.
Cesare blinks to clear his vision and tries to heave himself upright. As he does so, MacLeod hits him again, and he goes down.
‘You lazy Eyetie.’ MacLeod raises his baton and Cesare flinches, covers his head with his arms. But the blow never comes.
Marco grabs MacLeod’s arm, wrenches the baton from his hand, and then throws it across the quarry. The whole group is frozen, waiting.
MacLeod stares at Marco for a moment, then pulls his gun from his holster and, as Cesare shouts, No! MacLeod smashes the gun barrel into Marco’s face. The sickening crunch of metal on bone and Marco falls backwards, his head striking a rock.
He lies still.
Cesare doesn’t even think, but hurls himself at MacLeod, fists flailing.
As a boy, Cesare had never liked violence, had drifted above it. No one had bothered to try to beat him up: he’d seemed too dreamy; but he’d often stepped between boys who were fighting. Sometimes he’d misjudged it and been punched himself. The trick was only to retaliate when you needed to. The trick was to read another man quickly: the tension in his face and muscles, the line of his mouth, the force of his fist. You don’t have to be the strongest or the fastest to be able to dodge the blow, then elbow a man in the throat as he goes down.
But Cesare hasn’t accounted for MacLeod’s strength, for his own hunger-weakened muscles, for the lightness of his body after two months of digging in the cold.
MacLeod shoves him off and leaps to his feet. Cesare scrabbles for a rock, his spade, anything to defend himself, but MacLeod brings his boot down hard on Cesare’s hand. Cesare howls in pain and tries to stand, but then stops, because MacLeod has raised his gun.
Cesare knows that he is a dead man.
A man’s heart is the size and shape of his clenched fist. Cesare remembers studying the pictures of Da Vinci’s dissections. He used to run his fingers over the tracery of veins in the drawings, then place his hand on his own chest. Now, his heart is thudding hard enough for him to feel it in his throat.
MacLeod points the gun at Cesare’s chest. He can feel the other prisoners watching, can feel the tension in his muscles, the pull and push of the air in and out of his lungs.
A body holds about seven pints of blood. If a major vein is hit, a man might bleed to death in minutes. Or a bullet could lodge itself in an arm or leg and be removed. Or it might pass through a man’s body, puncturing his liver, his lungs or his bowel.
In the desert in Africa, Cesare had held Alessandro for two hours after the bullet had gone into his chest. His final breath had sounded like the far-off rumble of a waterfall. There’s an indescribable silence in a dead man’s eyes. Cesare wonders what the last colour he sees will be. Red, he supposes, or black.
He hopes for blue. The sky. Her eyes.
MacLeod flicks the safety catch.
Someone cries out – Gino? One of the other men? Or maybe the shout is his own? It is hard to tell – everything is slow, dreamlike.
Cesare closes his eyes and counts. He pictures mountains and olive trees and the arch of a church roof overhead. He pictures a woman with red hair. He thinks of the shape her mouth makes when she says his name.
Another shout, a crash, a flurry of noise. Cesare’s eyes snap open, but he cannot see MacLeod, only a wall of brown uniforms, thin bodies, battered boots.
He realizes that the other prisoners have stood between him and MacLeod, that they are blocking the path of the bullet that the guard would have fired. The bullet that would have found his heart.
And, one by one, the prisoners are dropping their spades and clapping. It is a slow, rhythmic beat, like the marching of a far-off army, but as more of the men join in, the individual claps blur into an ocean of sound, a thunderous roar.
MacLeod is in the centre of the circle of men, his gun still cocked, but pointing at their feet as he spins around, shouting at them. His words are lost in the sea of noise and Cesare stands to join them, cradling his throbbing hand, which is dripping blood down his leg, but he doesn’t care, he does not care, because, mio Dio, just look at the shock on that guard’s face! And the prisoners, shouting and clapping – every one of them stands taller. Every one of them seems to have cast off some great weight, some grey cloak that has bowed his shoulders and made him flinch and cringe, but no more, not now.
And more guards are running over now – English guards, with their batons raised. But they freeze at the sight of the wall of prisoners, who are shouting and clapping still.
Cesare looks up to the top of the hill and sees other groups of Italians stopping their work, throwing down their spades. And perhaps he is imagining it – perhaps he creates the idea later – but it seems that he hears the engines of the lorries cease; it seems that the cranes fall silent. It seems that the very sea holds its breath to listen to these men who have thrown down their spades and cried, No, we will not dig for you. No, we will not help you fight our countrymen. No, we will not be your animals any longer. No!
Major Bates marches up and down the line of prisoners shouting, but the men are deaf to the sound. Not one has picked up his spade.
Major Bates’s face is puce – he has yelled at MacLeod too, called him a fool boy and an imbecile, and has sent him up to wait in his office, but still the Italian men won’t work. There is an unspoken agreement between them: no matter how much Major Bates roars, no matter his threats, they will not dig.
The major’s gaze falls on Cesare.
‘You! Come here,’ he calls. Then, loud enough for the other men to hear, he says, ‘You know I’m a reasonable man. I don’t want to threaten you. But you must work. I order it.’
Cesare is aware of all the eyes on him – all his countrymen, it seems. They have had so few letters from home, and those that have arrived have been battered or soaked or torn, or full of small domestic details that fill the men with a painful longing. In this moment it feels to Cesare as though these men are his home. They are his country, his safety, his belonging – these men who have been shot at and boiled and frozen along with him, and who all, as one, laid down their spades because it is the right thing to do.
‘You must dig,’ says Major Bates to Cesare, his voice loud and clear.
‘We will not build enemy fortifications,’ Cesare says, and as his eyes meet Domingo’s, the other man gives a small nod of encouragement. ‘It is against the Geneva Convention.’
Major Bates rakes his hands through his hair. His eyes are wide, slightly wild, his voice a little unsteady, when he orders the men to go back to the camp, to stay in their huts.
‘There will be no food today, except bread and water. And tomorrow, if you do not work, you will have bread and water. And the day after, bread and water. And you will be confined to your huts until further notice.’
There is some muttering as they walk back to the camp, but all the men march upright, their shoulders thrown back. Cesare walks among them, marvelling: it is like watching them strolling towards the fields on their own land to bring in the harvest.
Cesare’s own chest lifts; he breathes more deeply. He forgets entirely about the pain in his hand, about the blood on his trousers, about the heat he can feel, which is like the beginning of a fever and spreads an aching heaviness through his limbs.
So it takes him by surprise when one of the guards, who is holding Marco by the arm, also grabs Cesare and steers them both towards the infirmary.
Dorothy
I am bandaging a man’s twisted ankle. Con is standing behind me holding the scissors and pins, passing me each item before I have even held out my hand for it.
‘I will marry you after the war,’ the prisoner says to Con, and she smiles. Even a week ago, she would have paled at his words and looked at the floor. I take the scissors from her and squeeze her hand briefly. Her colour is better too, her breathing normal, although she still has to rest often. Both of us are eating more, now that we spend most of our time in the camp. We return to the bothy occasionally, but it feels dark without the hole in the roof and, although neither of us says it, I know that Con thinks of Angus every time she looks at those new planks.
I pin the man’s bandage.
‘I will take you back to Florence,’ the man says to Con. ‘I will bring you oranges and grapes every day. And the peaches! You will sit in the sun and eat peaches!’
She shakes her head, still smiling. ‘I like the cold.’
He is about to answer when the door flies open. I turn and, for a moment, I think I must have misremembered his features, because Cesare’s cheekbones are sharp under his skin and his face is paler than I remember.
But his eyes light when he looks at me. It takes me a moment to notice his hand, which is bloodied, his fingers bent.
‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Oh, God! Come here! I’ll get – Sit down!’
Dark patches of blood shine on his brown trousers. I steer him to sit on one of the beds, while Con and Bess take charge of the other man, who looks only half conscious, and is bleeding heavily from his forehead.
‘What happened?’ I touch each of Cesare’s bloodied fingers in turn, bending them a little. He sucks in air through gritted teeth and shakes his head, eyeing the guard, who is watching them both carefully.
I nod to show I understand, and begin dabbing at the cuts on his hand. Some of them are deep and grit-filled and I wince as I wipe the cloth over his skin again and again.
‘Sorry,’ I whisper.
‘Is no hurt,’ he says, although his forehead glistens with sweat and his jaw is hard.
I put the back of my hand on his forehead. Burning. He turns his head to one side and coughs. I wince.
‘You have the infection too.’
He coughs again, then shakes his head. ‘It is nothing,’ he murmurs. ‘You are not sick? Your sister?’
‘She is better.’ I smile, nodding at where Con is helping to clean the other Italian’s wounds.
‘No talking to the prisoner,’ the guard snaps. I am about to argue: this rule has never been enforced before. But then Cesare widens his eyes slightly, shakes his head.
There is a gust of air as the door opens again, and another guard appears. The stern-faced guard talks to him, briefly, then nods and comes back into the infirmary.
‘You,’ he says to Cesare. ‘You’re to be taken to the Punishment Hut. And you too.’ He nods at the other prisoner, who is lolling forwards, barely conscious.
‘No!’ Con says. ‘He needs proper care.’ And although she won’t meet the guard’s eyes, although she’s clearly terrified at challenging him, I can see a glimpse of the Con I remember and my heart lifts.
The guard considers for a moment, straightens the collar of his uniform, then turns to Cesare. ‘You’re still coming with me.’
‘For what?’ I demand. ‘Why?’
I’ve only just finished bandaging Cesare’s fingers, and he cradles his hand. I notice the slight tremor in his arm, the high colour in his cheeks, the sheen on his forehead.
‘For inciting a riot and for striking a guard,’ the uniformed man replies.
Cesare shakes his head, ‘I did not –’
‘Enough of that,’ the guard says, pulling Cesare to his feet.
‘But you can’t take him!’ I say. ‘His hand . . . And I think he has the illness – he’s feverish. Listen to his cough.’
The guard eyes Cesare with contempt and turns away. ‘Looks like any other Eyetie to me,’ he says.
‘No!’ I reach out to grab at the guard, but Con is there next to me, holding me back.
‘Don’t, Dot,’ she says, her face tight with fear, just as it was in the days after the Royal Elm and the poor smothered man. I’d thought that her terror afterwards was for herself: disgust at what she had done. But now, looking at her wide eyes, her p
leading expression, I realize that her fear is for me. She wants to protect me.
‘Don’t,’ she pleads again.
‘I have to!’ I struggle, but she doesn’t let go.
‘You’ll get hurt –’
I push her away. ‘Get off me!’ I snap.
‘But –’ She catches at my sleeve, and I feel a surge of frustration: why can’t she understand that I’m not the one who needs protecting now? That it’s Cesare who’s at risk?
She pulls fiercely on my arm and I shove her away, slapping my hands against her shoulder hard – harder than I mean to, propelling her backwards.
She stumbles, her foot catching on the legs of one of the beds. She cries out, steadies herself and stands upright, staring at me. I can’t look at her, can’t watch her rubbing her shoulder where I’d shoved her. My palms sting.
I turn away from her; I watch Cesare being led from the infirmary, the guard twisting his arm behind his back.
When I look back at Con, she is absolutely still, holding one hand to her cheek as if I’d slapped her full across the face.
I feel a twist of guilt and, to cover it, I make my tone vicious: ‘Don’t look at me like that. You were grabbing at me and trying to make me do exactly as you wanted. You’re always doing that. I’m tired of you hanging off me.’ It isn’t true, I think, but in that moment, with Cesare being dragged to the Punishment Hut, I don’t care.
I walk away from Con, without looking back, to scrub the bloodied clamps and bowls in the sink. Steam from the hot water rises in a cloud around my face, so that I don’t have to look at my sister, don’t have to see the shock on her face.
I almost turn around to say it: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you, to snap at you.
But I don’t. The water in the sink turns brownish red, then clear and clean. I rattle the metal implements to cover the sound of my breathing, the churning of my thoughts.
There is a gust of chill air and the door bangs, and when I turned around, Con has gone. I have no idea where.
I don’t know where she is going. One of the tombs? One of the caves – the bothy? Where will she go?