A Harvest of Secrets(33)

Her father’s cheeks were bubbling, his blue eyes swinging side to side.

“They . . . I don’t know. Who knows? Something is happening, Vittoria. They have apparently killed one of the horses!”

“What! Father, oh Lord and Savior. Is Enrico safe?”

Her father nodded as if in a trance. She did cross the room then and take him by both hands. “Please tell them I’m ill, that I’ve been vomiting ever since Massimo died. My own godfather. Look at me, I’m broken, Father.”

It was all another act. The words seemed to lift out of a dark place, the throat of another person. A small, terrified, guilty person, but one who was capable of putting on an act in order to save herself.

“Broken,” Umberto repeated, his cheeks shaking, and for a moment Vittoria believed that her act had worked.

But then her father swung his head from side to side, bent his lips in against each other. “I can’t, Vittoria,” he said. “The man, this captain. He’s insisting. Who knows what else he’ll do if we refuse. Kill the other horse. Set the house on fire. You must come downstairs. You must. Now.”

He squeezed her hands once, turned and walked out of the room, and she saw no option but to follow. Better that than hear the sound of boots on the marble stairs and see the demon captain standing at the door of her bedroom, grinning, unbuckling his belt.

Before she’d gone even halfway down the stairs, she could see his black boots, then the trousers of his military pants, his hands clasped behind his back, and at last his head, uncovered by the usual military cap. He held the cap in one hand, and she wondered if, after pissing on their vegetables, he could possibly have taken it off out of respect for the house.

Two more steps and she saw the man spin around and lock his eyes on her, then run them from her face down to her feet and back again, as if assessing a farm animal he was thinking of buying.

Her afternoon merenda, tea with a slice of bread and their own salami, was pushing up against the back of her throat. She stopped in front of him and waited. Without a word, he reached out and took hold of her arm, and led her across the foyer into the small sitting room where her mother had often sat sewing, and where she’d sometimes breastfed Enrico when her husband wasn’t around to forbid such a “public display.” The captain said nothing, not a word, just kept holding her with his fingers tight on the back of her right arm, as if she might try to run away. Vittoria was doing her best to pretend she was unafraid, but her breath was coming in short gulps and she could feel rivers of perspiration running down her sides, trickling along her ribs.

Still grasping the back of her upper arm, the captain led her with a peculiar gallantry to a brocade sofa and gestured that she should sit. He pulled up a straight-backed chair—too close—and sat opposite her, adjusting his wire-rimmed spectacles, setting his hat (she noticed a piece of straw clinging to it) carefully on the coffee table, brushing back with three fingers what was left of his thinning brown hair. All in all, he was a particularly unattractive man, his face thin, centered by a blunt nub of a nose, his eyes slightly asymmetrical and the irises a pale-brown color with yellow streaks. With the first word out of his mouth, “Allora”—all right now—Vittoria remembered his awful Italian.

“Allora,” he repeated, and then stumbled along with his mutilation—understandable enough but painful to the ear—of her language. “As you know, a friend of the Reich was murdered on your father’s property three days ago.”

What it sounded like to her was, “So, as you knows a friend from the Reich and to your father last week killed on the land.”

She summoned as much confidence as she could, kept her eyes fixed on his, and nodded, once. An accident, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

“We just now questioned all the workers, and your father. A certain price had to be paid.”

“You murdered one of our horses.”

The man let out a short laugh. “Murdered, yes. Even then, of course, no one says to know anything about the tragic death of a man.”

“Nor do I,” she said. “Massimo was a great friend of the family, for many years, and my father is grieving terribly.”

“And yourself?”

“I’ve been vomiting for three straight days. I’ve barely eaten. We had a peaceful life, always, until—”

“Until the war arrived and the German forces occupied your beautiful lands, yes?”

Vittoria squeezed her lips together, drew and released a breath. “Please don’t speak for me. We’ve had a peaceful life. Nothing like this has ever happened to us. This man was my godfather. I loved him like an uncle.”

“Yes, an uncle. Why was it that one of the serving girls just now claims you were screamed when he was found in your room late in the night?”

“I was having a nightmare. He was sleeping in the guest room beside mine. It was natural for him to come to my aid.”

“A nightmare about what?” The captain slid his chair an inch closer, so that his knees were touching hers. “About the German officer?”

“About my mother. She died not long ago. I was dreaming that she was out walking in our fields and a wolf spotted her and was approaching. I was trying to warn her.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I?”

“Because perhaps you kill our friend, your so-called godfather.”