These are the things he finds hard in Orkney: the sky, the open space, the weather. The sea, a yawn of water that roars and growls and threatens a cold grave. The ice that gnaws at his bones, day and night. The eyes watching him – the guards watching him dig, or his fellow prisoners watching him sleep in the hut at night. Never alone but always lonely. The anger. He finds the anger hard because there is nothing to do with it, except clench it inside.
Home for Cesare was Moena, in northern Italy. Border country, surrounded by mountains, bursting with green life. It had been invaded time and time again over the years, and had a language unique to the area – Ladin – and flew a Turkish flag. They were outsiders, the people of Moena, but, like the people of Orkney, they were also insiders: they belonged wholly to each other, to themselves. None of this mattered to the small boy that Cesare had been – dark-haired, broad and muddy-cheeked from pressing his face against the ground to watch a procession of ants, or grubby-kneed from crouching to study a spider’s web.
He went to the local school and was a sharp student, but always wanted to be outside. Wild-haired and full of daydreams – his teachers despaired.
My God, Cesare, you must sit still! Late again, Cesare, and will you look at the state of your knees?
But they smiled fondly as they said it for, late as he always was, he often brought them gifts: a picture of a kingfisher’s head, sketched in exquisite detail; a carving of a field mouse, with bright wooden eyes polished to a shine. They ruffled his hair, pinched his cheek. You will be on time tomorrow, Cesare.
He smiled and nodded. And the next day he was late.
At eighteen, much to the disappointment of his parents, who wanted him to work on the family farm, Cesare gained an apprenticeship in the local church, where he would perfect his skill in carving stone and wood, and shaping metal.
His master was severe, used to apprentices who cut corners in order to leave early and chase after women or wine. But Cesare worked hard, and although he was often late and arrived with eyes heavy from lack of sleep, he came clutching sketches, which he then painstakingly copied onto the church walls and ceiling: doves soared in flight; olive branches twisted behind the heavy stone columns. People began to visit the tiny church to marvel at the way the paintings made it hum with life.
Within four years, the master had retired, leaving the maintenance of the church in Cesare’s hands. He carved leaves into the altar legs, engraved little birds along the lectern. Under the pews, he shaped tiny creatures, so that a bored child, half asleep during a sermon, might find a frog or a mole under his wandering fingers and, for the rest of the service, would sit transfixed.
By 1937, Cesare was well-known and well-liked. At least four different women had decided they wanted to marry him and took it in turns to wait for him outside the church, then take him to their parents’ houses for dinner, brushing the wood-shavings from his hair, reminding him of their father’s job and what day of the week it was.
The parents eyed him with a mixture of admiration and suspicion. He had a fine set of shoulders, to be sure, and a strong jaw, and of course his paintings were beautiful. But, my God, what would he be like as a husband? As a father? No child was ever raised on a diet of paint. Besides, the man was far too skinny and, really, was that sawdust in his hair?
War crept in from the north and south. Men in uniform marching the streets, shouting, Il Duce! Some winds carry such a relentless momentum that they sweep everything along with them. Cesare didn’t hold strong political beliefs, but he also didn’t hold with the idea of being called a coward, so he was sent along to North Africa with the other men from his village.
Desert heat. Salt sting of sweat in his eyes. Hot gun in his damp hands as he inched forwards on his stomach, firing into sandstorms and hoping he wouldn’t kill anyone, hoping that none of the returning bullets hit him. It helped if he pretended the sand itself was some sort of beast he was firing at – a desert jinn he had to defeat. If he imagined other men firing back at him, his finger froze on his trigger. At night, he traced pictures on the cold sand: mountains; the curve of a woman’s hip; the church in Moena. Then he watched the wind scrub them out.
After two months, surrender; the nightmare heat behind the barbed wire of a desert camp. Then onto a boat and north. Into the wind, into the cold.
Onto an island where the sky arches above, like an open mouth, and guards yell and hit him.
It is best, Cesare decides, to keep his mouth shut and his head down.
He and the other men are herded past steel gates and into a square of bare earth, surrounded by metal huts, which are surrounded in turn by a barbed-wire fence. Everything is sharp and cold and grey; the men shiver as the uniformed guards line them up and count them. Each guard carries a long wooden baton and a gun. As a guard counts each Italian man, he taps him on the head with the baton – not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to convey a message: Your body belongs to us.
Each prisoner is then given a plain brown uniform – trousers and a shirt, which are dumped into the dirt.
‘Get changed, quickly,’ the guard in front of Cesare snaps. He has a thin moustache and a nose red from the cold.
‘What’re you staring at?’ he demands, then jabs at the uniform with his baton. ‘Move!’ Then he continues down the line.
Cesare glances left and right, where all the men are unbuttoning their old grey shirts and shivering. Next to him, he can hear Gino’s teeth chattering, and, further down the line, there is a cry from Antonio as a guard prods him for hesitating.
‘Basta!’ Cesare calls to the guard. ‘He speaks no English.’
The guard strides back, stops in front of Cesare, holding up the wooden baton. ‘And you do?’ the guard says.
‘Some.’ Cesare avoids the guard’s gaze.
‘So you’ll understand when I say that if you question me again you’ll regret it?’
Cesare eyes the baton, nods quickly, once.
‘Then shut your mouth and get into that uniform. Now.’
The guard watches as Cesare fumbles with his buttons, shivering at the cold cut of wind on his skin, pulling on the brown uniform as quickly as his numb hands will allow. The material is rough and thin and offers little protection from the biting chill in the air.
He watches the guard’s black boots move on. He exhales.
A whistle blows and Cesare stands straighter, craning his neck to see the figure of a tall, uniformed man climbing onto a platform in front of the lines of prisoners. Like the guards, this man has a gun and a baton. His moustache is grey, his face weathered. His coat glitters with medals, bristles with ribbons.
‘Attention, men!’ he calls. ‘I am Major Bates, your commanding officer. I expect to run an orderly camp. I expect you to do as you are instructed, without fuss or protest. Never forget that you are here as prisoners. Your lives are in our hands.’ He looks down at the men and Cesare sees something hard in his eyes. This man, he knows, would not hesitate to punish them.
Major Bates continues: ‘Your task, while you are here, is to build barriers in the sea between these islands. You will work in groups in the quarry, mining rocks to build these barriers.’
There are murmurs from around him, from the Italians who can speak some English, and Cesare shifts uncomfortably: if they are to build barriers, they will be helping the enemy, the people who are killing their friends and bombing their families.
Major Bates blows the whistle again and the Italians fall silent.
‘If you follow orders and work hard, there will be no problems while you are here.’ He pauses, shifts the baton from one hand to the other. ‘You will see, however, that on your uniforms, you have two red circles. One on the shoulder and one on the leg.’
Cesare glances down, touches the red patches of fabric. Around him, the other men are doing the same.
‘These are targets,’ the major says, his voice level. ‘If you try to escape, the guards will aim for your arm. If you do not stop, they will aim for your thigh. If you continue to run, they will aim for a larger target.’ He raises his hand to his head, briefly touches his grey hair.
The prisoners – even those who don’t understand English – stand very still, as if the guards are, at this moment, pointing guns at their legs and their arms. As if they are aiming at their skulls.
Major Bates’s smile holds no warmth. ‘You will take your meals in the mess hut behind me. You will rise with the first whistle in the morning, be out for reveille and to be counted in the yard by the second whistle. You will obey orders, and by obeying, you will be safe. If you do not obey orders, you will be put in the Punishment Hut, and given only bread and water. If you do not work hard enough, you will be taken to the Punishment Hut. If you are late to be counted, you will be taken to the Punishment Hut.’
All the Italians, no matter how little English they speak, are able to discern the threat in the repetition of these words: orders, obey, punishment.
Cesare’s mouth is dry as he is led towards his hut, with fifty other men. They file into the dark building, which has wooden bunks around the edges, and a small stove in the centre.
Gino and Antonio are in the same hut, and take bunks near to Cesare’s. The guard in charge – short, cheeks flaming with acne, barely more than a boy – gives them each a piece of soap, tells them they will be able to shower later, but that now they are to walk down to the quarry and begin.
No one moves, and the guard flushes brighter red. Before he can shout, before he can brandish his baton, before anyone can be taken to the Punishment Hut and whatever that might involve, Cesare calls to the other men, in Italian: ‘Come on, we’re going to the quarry. We need to line up now!’
The prisoners stand in line – slowly and reluctantly, with some of them shooting dirty looks at Cesare. Their expressions darken further when the guard nods gratefully at him.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cesare.’
‘Well, Cesare lad, you’ll be getting extra bread at dinner tonight.’
The other prisoners jostle past him, some of them still glaring.
‘You are a dog for the English, then?’ one man mutters.
But before Cesare can explain anything – before he can say that he was trying to help, that he wants to keep them safe, that these guards are dangerous, that the commander is willing to shoot them in the skull – the man has shoved Cesare so that he falls backwards and bangs his head on the hard wooden bunk.
‘Traditore!’ the man snarls. Traitor!
Gino and Antonio help him up. Cesare’s hands are balled into fists, but the man who pushed him has already gone.
Gino’s face is stern. ‘It is best to stay quiet, Cesare. You know this.’
Cesare nods, remembering the months in the North African camp. The fat black flies that rose in clouds from the bodies of the men who’d protested, or drawn too much attention. The best way to survive is to be invisible – to imagine your body as part of a machine that does whatever is expected, without protest or hesitation.
‘We must line up now.’ Antonio claps him on the arm – his hand, for a moment, on the scrap of red fabric that would tell the guards where best to put a bullet – and then they follow the rest of the men out into the grinding cold and line up, ready to walk down to the quarry.
That first night in his hut, Cesare shuts his eyes and listens to the exhalations of fifty frightened men around him. It is dark, but there are no snores yet – impossible to sleep when your whole body is coiled like a spring, when your breath is tight in your chest and you’re waiting for the sound of a baton on flesh.
He hears again the sound of the guard’s shouts in the quarry, feels again the sensation of his shovel striking rock, the echo reverberating through his shuddering arms. The explosions that had rocked his bones and made his teeth ache. He’d lost count of how many wheelbarrows of rocks they’d filled. His hands had blistered and the blisters had burst, and still he hadn’t stopped digging.
He moves his lips in prayer, closing his eyes, trying to remember the arched roof of the church in Moena. The painted branches, the illuminated birds, their wingtips touching as they soar upwards.
Just before he falls asleep, he traces the outline of the card, which has dried out and is tucked into his pocket still. He tries to see again the face of the girl who’d dragged him from the sea. He tries to picture her eyes and what he’d seen there: that warmth, that kindness, that sadness. The expression that had quickened his breath and set a repeated thrumming detonation in his chest.