Day after day of exploding the rock face, digging out the stones, loading wheelbarrows of rubble, emptying them into a lorry. The vehicle, Cesare knows, will drive to the shore, where other Italians will tip the rubble into metal cages, which are then dropped, using a crane, into the sea. The water swallows them and the exercise starts once more. It is repeated, again and again, day after bitter day. The sea never changes, the barrier never emerges. It is like dropping coins into a well.
The men laugh, at first, that their task is a joke. They watch the rocks vanishing into the sea, and one – a scholar from Venice – talks about Sisyphus, who had to push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again.
But after nearly two months of back-breaking work, unending hunger and exhaustion, there is nothing to laugh at. The men mutter to each other, just as when they’d arrived, that what they are being made to do is illegal: they shouldn’t be building enemy fortifications. The scholar from Venice, whose name is Domingo, has told them it’s against the Geneva Convention.
‘We should lay down our shovels and refuse to work for these pigs,’ Domingo says, when the men compare bruises. ‘They call us Fascist pigs, but they are the animals.’
In fact, very few of the men are Fascists, from what Cesare can tell. Some of them talk about Mussolini’s plan to make Italy great and strong, to recapture its glorious past. But most, like Cesare, have found themselves swept up in a whirlwind where they have no choice but to defend their families; where they have no choice but to label a stranger my enemy simply because he speaks a different language or calls a different country home.
And now they are far from the land they love, from the families they want to protect – these peaceable sons of farmers and shopworkers, bakers and teachers – and they have found that they aren’t treated as sons, brothers and young fathers. They are treated worse than horses or cattle or dogs. They are treated with less care than the machinery the men drive.
So, if the Geneva Convention says that the men’s work means they are aiding the enemy, who are they to argue?
Rumours of a rebellion begin to brew.
‘What would you do to him if you saw him in the street?’ Gino nods towards MacLeod, who is patrolling the south edge of the quarry, shouting and swinging his baton.
‘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
