Read Online The Night Falling by Katherine Webb - Free Book Online Page B

teeth grinding hard together, his jaw aching and his breath flaring his nostrils. It’s the kind of anger that can’t be suppressed, or ignored. It causes an impulse to destroy that will turn on him if he doesn’t satisfy it. Ettore opens his eyes and lurches to his feet, ready to tear into Ludo Manzo with fists and nails and teeth, but he is at home, and he is alone, and bewilderment stops him. Then the room lurches and chugs into a sluggish maelstrom all around him, and he sits back down, shaking. Only then does he remember cutting his leg with the scythe, or rather, his leg reminds him. The pain seems to fizz peculiarly, like the prickles of a thousand hot needles, then it clamps its teeth in a tight, unbearable grip like a steel trap. Ettore stares down at it in horror but there’s nothing much to see. The leg of his trousers has been rolled up over his knee and the exposed skin is caked in dried blood. There’s a cloth tied across the wound itself, and he recognises it as one of Iacopo’s wraps. Wincing, he pulls it off. The wound is a dark gaping slice, clean but deep; he can see the grey-white of bone in there, and lumpish black clots of gore. Immediately that the cloth is off, fresh blood begins to well and drizzle onto the floor. Ettore watches it stupidly. His throat is so dry he can’t swallow.
    The door swings open and Paola comes in with Iacopo in a sling on her back. She hesitates when she sees him sitting up, and for a moment relief floods her face. Then she sees his leg and rushes forwards.
    ‘For God’s sake, Ettore – I just got it to stop bleeding and the first thing you do is start it up again?’ Ettore tries to say sorry but he can’t make his voice work. Paola drags a small stool across to him and plonks his leg up on it. She ties the cloth back over the wound, and then squeezes it. Ettore chokes a little, coughs in shock at the pain, and Paola looks up at him. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry for your pain.’ His blood squeezes up between her fingers and he sees her pale, and her lips press tight. Over her shoulder Iacopo gazes at Ettore with an inscrutable expression, and Ettore reaches out his finger. The baby grasps it at once, with his whole hand, and opens his mouth to suck it. The strength of his grip makes Ettore’s stomach clench in pleasure. Some days Iacopo’s grip is weak, some days strong; some days he doesn’t even reach for the finger. Today the baby has a calm, businesslike demeanour, and his grip is steadfast.
    ‘I’ll be all right. It’ll be all right,’ Ettore manages to say.
    ‘Will it?’ says Paola. She pushes him back onto the straw mattress, then lifts up his damaged leg and lays it out. She wipes her hands angrily on a rag and won’t meet his eye. She wears a scarf over her hair, like always, tight to her head and tied at the nape of her neck. Her hair is rolled into a knot there so that no stray strands escape. It makes her look severe, older than her twenty-two years; it accentuates that hardness she’s had since Iacopo’s father died. She shakes her head. ‘If you can’t work, we’re finished.’ Ettore can’t remember when he last heard his sister sound frightened, but she does now.
    Lying down makes the room spin again, and Ettore shuts his eyes to still it.
    ‘Of course I’ll be able to work. How did I get back here?’
    ‘On Pino’s back, of course. All the way from Vallarta.’
    ‘Pino always was a big ox. I could go back now and finish the day. I’m fine.’
    ‘Go back now?’ Paola is trying to clean the blood out from under her fingernails.
    ‘It’s still light. There’s still time. I worked nine hours or more before it happened, I think …’
    ‘Yesterday. That was yesterday, you idiot; you’ve been asleep since then, nothing would rouse you. Who knows if they’ll pay you for an unfinished day … You were bleeding so much when you got here … You needed to rest.’ Paola can’t help but sound a tiny bit resentful. They all