Accabadora (8 page)

FOUR YEARS HAD PASSED SINCE THE BUSINESS OF THE PRAN'E
boe boundary, and still Nicola Bastíu could not understand how his father had been able to leave the question unresolved as if nothing was amiss. Slashing angrily with his billhook, he was pruning the hedge on the south side of the farm, the side where the olives were, and now and then throwing glances in the opposite direction, over the dry wall to where Manuele Porresu spent days waiting under the pergola of his farm for the right moment to harvest the produce of his fields, now larger by nearly two hundred metres thanks to the altered boundary on the Bastíu side. The others who bordered the area had already completed their harvest, some sooner than others, leaving the air thick with smoke from burnt stubble, which had raised the temperature by a couple of degrees, hardly ideal at that time of year. Nicola scarcely even glanced in their direction before setting himself mercilessly to prune
the hedge, with his brother at his side struggling unsuccessfully to keep up with his furious pace.

“Nicò, stop, it makes me feel ill when you go about it like a gorilla.”

“Leave me alone, Andría. Every time I come here and see what that wretch is up to . . .”

Andría knew his brother's repertoire of protests by heart. Nicola would eventually inherit the diminished area when the land was divided, and the thought of having to submit to injustice regarding his future property with no chance of redress redoubled his fury.

“At first it seemed
babbo
wanted to make him pay for it, but then nothing was done, and that man will benefit this year by at least an extra forty thousand kilos before our very eyes!”

Every time he worked along the disputed boundary, Nicola measured with his eye the section he believed to be missing, and estimated the extent of his loss from what Porresu had planted that year. Sometimes it was tomatoes, sometimes melons. This year it was grain.

“
Babbo
has explained to you why.”

“What do I care about
babbo
's friends, about who knows
babbo
, and about who
babbo
's afraid of offending! The land's mine, and Porresu's already had his own way once. What is there to stop him moving the boundary again tonight if he wants to, since he's found it's defended by idiots who just stand and watch?”

“He thinks the spell with the dog is still at work in the wall so he won't touch it again, even you know that.”

This was an irrefutable argument, but Nicola was not satisfied: even if it did guarantee the future, it could not restore his
lost land. The billhook whistled through the air like a hornet, while brambles fell around them in calculated disorder.

“All I understand is that it's down to me to defend my own property.
Babbo
's old, he hasn't the will to fight all these people. But to me it matters like hell not to be taken for a ride.”

“But what can you do, Nicola? Are you planning to move the wall and put it back over the grain? Then you too would become guilty of moving other people's boundaries.”

Nicola stopped swinging the billhook and looked at him.

“Even if you can't have back what has been taken from you, at least you can stop the thief from profiting from it.”

“I don't know what you mean.” Andría looked at the sweaty and dusty figure of his brother.

“I know very well what I mean. If Porresu's sons are dreaming of qualifying as doctors on my money.”

“I wouldn't do anything differently from
babbo
, Nicò. Or you'll end up losing more than you hope to gain.”

“Is it your land, Andría?”

“No, but . . .”

“Then mind your own business, I don't need you telling me how to live.” Then he said with deliberate malice, “By the way, have you told Maria Urrai yet that you've fallen in love with her, or shall I have to write it up on the wall of her house?”

Andría's silence was heavier than an oath, and it was with this weight between them that they finished clearing the hedge and made a huge pile of the brambles so they could dry out in the sun before being burnt a few days later.

Andría spent the whole afternoon turning over Nicola's words in his mind, unsure whether to believe him really capable of doing what he had threatened. Too discreet to tell his
mother, he was, despite his brother's opinion, sufficiently wide awake to understand that it would not be a good idea to discuss the matter with his father or with his friends at the bar. He realized not for the first time that Maria was the only person he could speak to openly, as he watched her sitting on the raffia seat of a chair specially made for her, as by the grudging light of an overcast sky she sewed on a pocket with the expertise of a professional seamstress.

“What do you think he might do?”

“Andrí, he's not that stupid, your brother. He talks like that because he's angry, but he has nothing positive to get his teeth into.”

“You haven't seen him, he can't sleep . . .”

The tawny shape of Mosè was curled up by the empty grate, a survivor of witchcraft sleeping placidly to the sound of the voices of the two young people, exploiting the absence of Bonaria to enjoy the few furtive hours allowed by Maria indoors. The animal's uncritical love seemed to Maria the only thing in the world she had never needed to earn. To calm his nerves Andría went over to bend down and bury his face, with its first traces of a beard, in the dog's soft fur.

“I don't believe he'd ever inflict damage to get even for an injury done to him,” Maria said, “but if you think he would, you should mention it to your father.”

Had Andría been certain he would have acted at once, even at the cost of a couple of kicks up the bum from his brother, who notwithstanding his seventeen years would have been only too happy to administer them; but as he was by no means certain, he decided that even with all that smoke there was not enough evidence of a fire, and so without realizing it, for the
last time in his life, he made a mockery of his own better instinct.

A man who values the respect of others may perform good acts gratuitously, but bad acts must be performed out of necessity. If Nicola Bastíu had been asked to account for himself at that moment, he would have had no hesitation in attributing what he was about to do to the necessity that would justify it. Even so he decided to act at night, darkness being already in its way a form of mitigation. He had little time for carrying out what he had planned, since his family thought he had gone to see his friends at the bar, while his friends thought he was still at home. The weather was very much on his side that evening: the air was dry, and a warm wind had got up from the south and was lifting the grass with rough gusts and caressing Porresu's ripe grain with the deceitful hand of a shepherd in a slaughterhouse. There was enough moonlight to see by, but knowing this was not necessarily to his advantage, Nicola moved fast, trying to make the most of the darkest shadows cast by the wall and the trees, and with instinctive respect for the nocturnal silences of the countryside. He needed to drag some of the dry brambles he had recently piled up with Andría over the stone wall, relocating them to the southernmost point of Porresu's farm; it was the only way to be sure that once they burst into flames, the wind would carry the fire in the direction that would cause the greatest possible damage. Everything had to be done quickly and with great care, because Nicola wanted no trace of the brambles dragged across the soft earth to make it easy to detect the perpetrator of the act. Porresu must suspect that he had
been had, but not be so certain of it as to be able to bring in the law, exactly as in the case of his own action against the Bastíus four years before. With a wind like that, the fire could easily have been started by flames from the field of a neighbour, perhaps one of those whose recently burnt stubble had been smouldering angrily on the blackened earth. It was always possible that the stubble had not burnt out properly. It was possible that the wind had got stronger. It was also possible that someone you had dismissed as a fool was showing you up as a fool in return. Not the likeliest story, but Nicola counted on it as he lit the tinder to set fire to the piled-up brambles.

By the time the flames were rising into the sky like a curse, the eldest son of Salvatore Bastíu was already on the way to his car; now let the wind do its work, he had already finished his own work for the day. The rifle shot that whistled through the night hit him just before he reached the road, leaving him stretched out on the beaten earth, with no explanation or shout of any kind.

THE COMMANDER OF THE CARABINIERI, A CALABRIAN
of Sicilian descent, knew immediately that the story was untrue, but he also knew that with eight witnesses ready to swear that there had been a hunting accident, there was no point in being pedantic. There are places where truth and the opinion of the majority can overlap, and in that mysterious world where people agree to agree, Soreni was a minor capital of morality. The statement was written down, signed and filed, and Nicola was brought home with a severe wound in his leg, but more ashamed of having failed in his intended revenge than of having compelled his father to ask friends to lie to cover this failure.

Fully aware of the cover-up used to explain the incident at Pran'e boe farm to the law, Manuele Porresu went to church on Sunday on his wife's arm walking tall, proud of having created justice out of his own unjust act, and conscious of having won
the silent respect even of those who had previously believed him to be in the wrong. On the other hand, what most worried Salvatore Bastíu was that his son should have appeared stupid, so that he himself would have to judge him stupid. No one at Soreni was ever more mocked and marginalized than a stupid person, because if shrewdness, force and intelligence were powerful weapons, stupidity had no greater enemy than itself, its fundamental unpredictability making it even more dangerous in friends than in enemies. The trouble was that in neither case could a reputation for stupidity ever be accompanied by respect, something of enormous importance in a place that, when all was said and done, offered few other advantages.

Giannina Bastíu went shopping with her head held high in spite of everything, but the malicious spark in the eyes of those who asked in sugary tones after Nicola encouraged her to lie and claim that he would soon be fully recovered. In fact his leg deteriorated daily, and despite careful medication, the wound became infected, causing a persistent fever and twice forcing Dr Mastinu to reopen the suture to release pus. Maria and Bonaria had to wait before they could pay a courtesy call, because Nicola refused to see anyone, partly from shame and partly because he did not want his friends to know of his condition. But after two weeks immobile and confined to bed, he had turned into a caged lion who could scarcely even tolerate attention from the doctor and his own family. As the days passed his leg gave no sign of healing, until even Dr Mastinu realized no further improvement could be expected.

Once word spread through the local bars that Nicola's leg would probably have to be amputated, the so-called hunting accident began to seem less amusing.

* * *

It was the first time Bonaria had seen Nicola since the incident at Pran'e boe. Even when the young man began to receive visitors, the elderly seamstress had insisted on taking her time, and had not even sent Maria to ask after him. It was as if she had distanced herself from the event and from the person responsible for it, as if the incident in which Nicola nearly lost his life had in fact killed him and then brought him back to life in some distant foreign country that could not be reached without a very long journey.