A Harvest of Secrets(20)

“This is my work,” Carlo ventured at last, speaking guardedly, gesturing with his chin at the grape vines.

“Vero?” Bruno said. Truly? “Where?”

“Near Montepulciano. I work for a man who makes wine. SanAntonio, have you heard of him?”

Bruno shook his head, embarrassed.

“Northern wine,” Carlo hastened to say, dismissively, as if the famous product of Montepulciano might be inferior to its sweet white, or black-red Sicilian second cousins, as if the SanAntonio name wasn’t famous across half the peninsula. “I’d like to help if I could,” he told Ariana’s father. “I won’t stay much longer. You and your family have been so kind to me. I’d like to do a little work for you before I leave.”

A shadow came over Bruno’s square face. The man wouldn’t look at Carlo, and for one long minute he worked the soil clumsily with his thick hands. “You don’t have to leave,” he mumbled at last, still without making eye contact.

Bruno glanced at him, then quickly looked away. After a few seconds of confusion, Carlo understood. But she’s only sixteen, he wanted to say. And beautiful. And I’m . . . deformed. And I have someone waiting for me at home. But another grown man would be helpful around the farm, he knew that. And all over rural Italy it wasn’t unusual for girls to marry at sixteen. The idea that Vittoria SanAntonio would give her lifelong love to a workingman, a deformed and half-blind workingman at that, was beginning, with each passing day, to seem more like a fantasy. The idea that her father would allow it, all but preposterous. But in the center of him Carlo could feel—had always felt—a small stone of determination, almost another person, a soul, a spirit. It was the same presence that had given him the strength to live without a father, and the courage to speak to Vittoria again, once their childhood friendship had been buried by her father in the vast space between their lives. That same determination was the part of Carlo that had pushed him to learn the secrets of making wine, the part that had pushed him up and out of the trench with the battle raging around him; maybe even the part that had kept him alive, when another man with the same wounds might have perished.

Frozen in surprise for a few seconds, he at last found his voice and pretended not to understand the offer. “I can show you a few things about the vines, if you like. I can make it so they produce more, so the roots are healthier.”

“Show Ariana instead,” Bruno said, and then, obviously lying, “she works them, usually.” And with that he stood, brushed the dirt from his pants, and walked away.

The next morning, Carlo awoke to see a hard-boiled egg and a cup of weak coffee beside him in the barn, and, next to the food, the pair of clippers Bruno had been using the day before. It was a wordless acknowledgment: Here, you know the work better than I do. Please help us. Please consider staying with us. Carlo had never known his own father (A passing worker, his mother had told him. He left me with the great gift of a son. He blessed my life forever.) and for a short while, chewing the egg’s rich, crumbly yolk, and sipping the coffee, feeling the southern heat change the air of the barn, minute by minute, like water in a pot on a stove, he wondered what it would be like to put down his roots in Sicilian soil. Work he loved in a place where he could make a real difference, a devoted young wife, a father-in-law and mother-in-law instead of the emptiness of the barn in Montepulciano and the cold, grudging, strictly limited respect—a business arrangement—of Vittoria’s father. The war had left Sicily now, and probably wouldn’t return. The winters were milder, the food as good, the people kind. For a time, he sat there in the barn’s warmth, his belly full, the pain in the bones of his face almost gone, and contemplated the life that seemed to have been presented to him without his asking. All he had to do was say yes.

He could feel himself being drawn to that life, but at the same time a stronger force was tugging him north. Vittoria, of course, mainly, and the friendship with Old Paolo and Enrico. But something else, besides, something beyond logic and emotion. A kind of summons he could feel but not name. His fate, perhaps. His purpose and place on earth. He didn’t know exactly what it was. But he knew he’d have to make every possible effort to get back to her and to the vineyard. Every effort. If he made it back, and Vittoria had fallen in love with someone else, he’d decide then what to do. But he had an intuition that she’d wait for him, that she felt what he felt: they were part of each other’s destiny.

Later that same morning, he took the clippers and climbed up to the vines, tasting a few of the grapes as he walked, wincing at the flavor. It would soon be the end of summer, time for the harvest, not pruning, but here and there he clipped off a wandering vine, something that would suck energy from the fruit. He hadn’t been there long before he saw Ariana climbing toward him from the house, her sandals throwing up puffs of dust behind her. On her head she balanced a blue-and-white ceramic pitcher, steadying it with one hand. In the other hand, she held what turned out to be a dried fig. She came and stood beside him, let him drink from the pitcher, handed over the fig.

He twisted it in half and handed the other half back to her.

“My father said you could stay if you wanted to,” she said shyly.

Carlo nodded and looked away, the sweetness of the fig in his mouth, the sweet, imaginary life playing in his thoughts again, bumping up hard against the No of some interior counselor. Ariana’s dark eyes—so much like the eyes of her siblings—were fixed on him, a question. “You’re very young and beautiful,” he said at last. “I’m . . .” He brushed a hand up near his face.