A Harvest of Secrets(25)

Vittoria’s father, lord of the manor, had let them live that way, with a dozen other workers housed in similar circumstances. If they’d been walnut trees instead of human beings, he and his mother would have been cared for more kindly. But, he thought, really, they’d been treated more like animals than trees, like oxen who serviced the fields and were brought to the barn to sleep, and then buried in poorly marked graves when they perished. Pierluigi had been correct: their lives meant nothing. Nothing to Mussolini and his generals. Nothing to the Nazi or Allied soldiers. And nothing even to the lord of the manor, Umberto SanAntonio. True, Vittoria’s father had given them work, a place to sleep, enough to eat. But when Carlo’s mother fell ill, Signore SanAntonio had been notified and was finally convinced, after four terrible days, to send a doctor. “Keep her warm and give her water to drink,” the doctor had said on his one hasty visit, and it had been left to Carlo and one of the women field hands to wash her and care for her in her final agony. He, Paolo, Gianluca, and Giuseppe had dug the grave and buried her in a workers’ cemetery at the edge of the far orchard.

Carlo was ten and was immediately put to work like a grown man. Gennaro Asolutto, wine master and veteran of the first war, had taken a liking to him, brought him along when the vines needed pruning, let him help with the filtering and keg maintenance, talked to him for hours on end about the fine points of winemaking, the mistakes that could be made—overwatering, careless pruning, leaky kegs, improper amounts of sugar, letting the wine turn to vinegar—the reasons why some years produced a finer vintage than others, the different types of soil, the benefits of morning fog and cool winters, the deadly Tignoletta moths, the beetles that had to be captured and put into jars of gasoline before they chewed through all the grape leaves and devastated the crop. The threat of powdery mildew that had to be treated with sulfate and lime. Those conversations were what Carlo had instead of school. The friendship with Vittoria had persisted, which by itself was a kind of miracle. Her mother would usually allow Vittoria to come to the barn—especially when the Signore was away—and she and Carlo would groom the horses together, or walk to the cistern and sit with their backs against it, peeling away the rough chestnut skins, polishing the hard brown shells, talking about what he’d heard people say in the barn, and what she’d heard people say in the manor house, or at the Catholic-run school in Montepulciano where she took her lessons.

And then, as they grew into adolescence, her father had ordered him to stay away from her—and apparently ordered her to stay away from the barn—and there was no choice but to obey him. In true peasant fashion, Carlo had buried his resentment, buried his hopes, and, in time, moved on to harder work and different pleasures: the nighttime visits of young women from nearby properties, as beaten down by work as he was, and as toughened, taking a little comfort for themselves on Saturday nights when there would be no work the next day, expecting nothing in the way of tenderness or commitment, leaving before dawn with strands of straw clinging to their hair and the possibility of pregnancy weighing heavily on their shoulders.

He was twenty when Gennaro Asolutto grew too old to work, and for the first time, Umberto SanAntonio seemed to regard him as something other than a threat to his daughter’s purity. There was one face-to-face meeting at the well beside the barn: both Old Paolo and Asolutto had recommended him. Would he take over the wine operations? Would he accept ten lire every two weeks in payment? Did he want to move to a small cottage in the hazelnut grove?

Yes and yes and no. Carlo remained in the barn, supervised the winemaking, rode with Old Paolo in the truck to make deliveries. He discussed the fine points of fermentation with the older foreman, helped create two of the best vintages the Vineyard SanAntonio had ever produced.

But, though his hopes were deeply buried, he’d never stopped thinking about Vittoria, never forgotten the warm thrill of their childhood friendship. A grown man by then, and she a grown woman, Carlo had started to find ways of crossing paths with her, started to risk saying hello, then making small bits of conversation—about the weather, the grapes, the deliveries, her schooling, her brother, her mother’s failing health—though now the conversations were different, with something new, an electric charge, running beneath them. Once, when her father was away, she’d accompanied him and Enrico on a short trip into the city in the wagon, and they’d stopped there for coffee, and she’d reached out and touched his hand as she spoke. Carlo felt that a new kind of connection was being made, a spark of some forbidden attraction shooting across a bridge that spanned the chasm between their lives. More conversations after that. And then the first secret meeting—her idea. A first kiss—his idea. And then more.

Remembering that “more” on the suspicious old woman’s sofa, he finally fell into a troubled sleep, that, after a time, was broken by the sound of footsteps. He lay there with his eye open, listening. He’d heard that when the Blackshirts came for someone, they forced their victims to drink castor oil, glass after glass, until their captives erupted in diarrhea so violent and persistent that, humiliated and drained of fluids, they died of dehydration. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could hear the murmurs of a quiet conversation just outside the back door. Weary, hungry, half-awake, he waited a minute, two minutes, then decided there could be no reason for a conversation like that in the middle of the night. No good reason.

He tossed the sheet aside, and, without even bothering to lace up his boots, slipped out the front door into cool darkness. Stars sparkled like living creatures in the black sky, and a sliver of moon shone among them, a sibling keeping watch. A dog bayed in a nearby yard. Even if he’d imagined the conversation, even if what he’d heard was only the woman mumbling her prayers, listening to the radio, or speaking innocently to a neighbor who couldn’t sleep, he wasn’t willing to take the risk. Soon enough, she’d realize that he’d fled, and that would make her only more certain that he’d deserted. She’d spread the word, the Blackshirts would be looking for him, a crazed mob of politically connected Fascists who’d avoided service entirely and whose love of their Benito overwhelmed all other considerations, all human compassion, all morality.