A Harvest of Secrets(12)

A few seconds that passed at the pace of years, and the speakers—three soldiers, he guessed—moved on, voices fading. Paolo lay there for a long while, watching the day lose its battle with night, feeling the worst of the fear leak out of his arms and legs. In time, he turned, slowly stood up, and made his way back to his evening meal.

The main barn—stone foundation, water-stained gray stucco walls, tile roof—housed the horses, some of the kegs and bottles, and all the field-workers, and was long and narrow, two stories tall with a triangular attic storage area above. The first floor was broken up into a series of rooms: a huge locked storage closet beside a smaller unlocked one; then two sets of stables; then two large, high-ceilinged rooms where some of the kegs were kept (others were kept in a separate outbuilding), and a smaller room at the southwest end where the workers gathered for their meals. A toilet and sink were squeezed together behind a wooden door there. Upstairs there were bedrooms and a simple kitchen; above them, an attic with a window for loading hay at one end. Cold in winter, stifling hot in summer, no privacy, the kitchen awkwardly placed, but the building had housed the SanAntonio workers for generations and was now the source of few complaints and no improvements.

As soon as Paolo walked in through the wide main entrance—its doors were kept propped open in summer—he sensed that something wasn’t right. At that hour, the women would normally be talking and working noisily in the kitchen above, the men would be sharpening tools, washing hands at the rust-stained sink; the children would be feeding the horses or hiding from each other behind bales of hay or the thick oaken posts that supported the second floor. But all was quiet. He stood still and listened.

Nothing. Even the horses were silent. And then he thought he heard a raised voice from the last room to his left, and he wondered if the meal had already been served and an argument had broken out. He walked tiredly through the stables and past the kegs, and when he reached the room at the end of the building, he came upon the shocking sight of Marcellina, one of the barn’s two middle-aged mothers, holding a pitchfork at waist height with the sharp tines pointing away from her. Barely a meter beyond the metal points stood three young men in German military uniforms. They were armed—pistols at their hips—as Paolo noted immediately, but it was Marcellina holding them captive, not the other way around. The rest of the workers watched, eyes fixed on the soldiers, their heads leaning slightly forward, as if they were ready to attack the three Germans, or run from them.

“Che succede qua?” Paolo asked in his foreman’s voice. What is happening here? Every face in the room turned toward him.

“We were bringing the food down”—Marcellina gestured with the pitchfork toward steaming dishes on a low table—“and they came inside and started talking to us. No one can understand them. They have guns.”

“I see that they have guns. But I also see that they haven’t taken them out and shot you. Put down the forcone.”

Marcellina reluctantly lowered the pitchfork. Paolo went up close to the men and peered into their faces, one after the next. They smelled like dirt. Not one of them reached for a weapon. “Avete fame?” he asked, bringing one cupped hand to his mouth. Hungry?

Three eager nods.

“Feed them,” Paolo ordered.

“They’re Germans. Nazis,” someone behind him said. Marcellina again.

“I see that. Feed them. Share the food.”

Paolo gestured for the soldiers to arrange themselves on the bales beside the table. He remained standing and took the pitchfork from Marcellina, watching, making sure none of the men reached for their holstered weapons. They looked very young, not yet twenty. Their uniforms were dirty and unkempt, as if they’d slept in them for days. When Marcellina put a single plate in front of them—white beans, dried beef, slices of tomato and peppers from the garden—the men scooped the food into their mouths with bare hands as if they were starving.

“Wine,” Paolo ordered. Three cups were brought out, the unlabeled bottle passed. He suddenly remembered a moment at the door of the manor house kitchen, a surprise there. “Gaetano, go and fetch Eleonora, but secretly. Don’t let the Signore see you. If she’s busy, just signal her to come when she can. Run. Hurry.”

The boy dashed out of the building. Hungry though he was, Paolo stood with the pitchfork in one hand and watched. Deserters, he supposed. A first. He’d never heard of German soldiers deserting, and couldn’t imagine how they’d be able to avoid capture, trapped in the Italian countryside as they were, with German army patrols on every road between the vineyard and Montepulciano, and between Montepulciano and their homeland.

Less than two minutes later, Gaetano came through the door, out of breath, Eleonora on his heels, wiping her hands on her apron. She met Paolo’s eyes, scanned the group, fixed her gaze on the uniformed trio, and said, without hesitation, a phrase in German that brought weary smiles to their faces and one word from each of them. She turned to Paolo. “How did you know I could speak to them?”

He shrugged, held the answer in his mouth, asked her what she’d said. The mule had started braying crazily in its outdoor corral.

“I asked them if they liked our food,” Eleonora said. Everyone was watching her. She exchanged another few sentences with the soldiers, then turned to Paolo again.

“They’ve run away. They don’t want to fight anymore. They don’t want to kill Italians. They’re asking if we can hide them for a few days and give them some other clothes.”