A Harvest of Secrets(37)
He gestured behind him, and Vittoria could see that a dozen cases of wine—given to the nuns regularly, free of charge—had been placed against the wagon railings, and a heavy green tarpaulin laid across bales of hay that formed three sides of a rectangle inside them. She heard footsteps on the barn stairs and saw Marcellina, and then, behind her, one after the next, three pale-looking young men dressed in workers’ caps and clothing. One of them was wearing Carlo’s jacket.
“We argued,” Old Paolo said. “Marcellina thinks they should be visible, and ride along like workers. I do not. They can’t manage the horse, can’t speak five words of Italian, and it wouldn’t make sense to have them on the wagon seat if we’re taking it through the gates of the nunnery. I want them in back, underneath the tarpaulin. The priest said to take the Zanita Road, but I don’t want you to. I had a dream that you shouldn’t. The rain, the mud, the hills, I want you to go by the smaller road, the one along the river. It will take you longer, but very few Germans use it. Almost no one uses it who doesn’t know it well. Leave one case out in the open, in front, and if you see Germans, offer it to them. I hope you don’t. I pray you don’t. You know I’d go with you if I could.”
Vittoria pulled at the sleeve of her left arm and showed the pistol.
“This I never thought to see,” Paolo said. He took the pistol from her, holding the rounded wooden handle in his palm, and snapped the barrel forward, revealing four filled chambers. He touched the backs of the bullets with one finger, shook his head in wonder, then snapped it closed again and handed it back to her. “So many things I never thought to see, Signorina.”
“Where is my brother?”
“At the ravine. I accompanied him there early this morning. He stands on the bank and talks to Antonina. He wanted to climb down and kiss her. I stopped him. I tried to get him to return with me, but he wouldn’t.”
“When the Nazi touched me at their house, I merely hated him,” she said. “Now I want to kill him.”
Paolo slid his eyes sideways, away from her, shifted his weight. As she had a few nights earlier, when he’d told her about the deserters, Vittoria thought she detected something in his face, something in the wrinkled skin around his eyes, as if there were an encyclopedia of secrets there and he’d lifted the cover and was giving her a glimpse.
She watched as Paolo and Marcellina helped the men climb into the wagon and showed them how to position themselves on their backs, on a thin cushion of straw, between the hay bales and beneath the tarpaulin. Paolo tied the canvas securely to the railings, and then, before raising the back gate, set two more bales of hay in place to hide the bottoms of the men’s boots.
“You remember how, Signorina?”
“Firm but gentle.”
“Esatto.” A weak smile crossed Paolo’s face. He handed her the waterproof jacket and placed the rain hat on her head with his own hands. She climbed up onto the bench as she had so many times as a girl, and took hold of the reins. She tapped Ottavio’s hindquarters, heard Paolo say, “You’ve forgotten nothing,” and then they were out in the rain.
People called the river road to San Vigliano “the witches’ road” because of old tales that it was haunted. Vittoria didn’t believe in such things and neither had her mother. “Pagan stories,” her mother had called them. But, as she guided the horse into the trees and up and over the first rise, she did sense some mysterious spirit in the air. The rain and low gray skies, the nagging, bodily memory of the encounter with the captain, the awful moment with her father, Germans in the back of the wagon, the pistol now folded into a waterproof worker’s hat at her feet, her brother standing at the edge of the ravine, mourning his murdered Antonina—it almost seemed that a living creature, some dark spirit, swirled in the wet air around her, whispering, taunting, telling her Carlo would never make it home, the country would never be liberated, the war would never end.
She went along in a hypnosis of doubt and fear, acutely aware of the silent men lying on their backs behind her, praying she’d get them—and herself—to safety. All the romance of the word partigiana had disappeared. Cold rain on her face. Rain drumming on the tarpaulin. Mud beneath the horse’s hooves. She could understand her father’s despair: What was there to live for? More torment? Surely, if the Allies were able to fight their way up the peninsula, the Nazis would grow more and more vicious . . . especially if they discovered, or even suspected, Italians conspiring against them. And, once the Nazis were chased north, who knew how the Americani would treat them?
But some frail hope drew her forward. She could feel it deep inside her, hidden beneath the fear and dark thoughts like the German deserters a meter behind her, lying still on a damp cushion of straw. Her mother seemed to be speaking to her, in that calm, soothing voice Vittoria had loved: You can surrender to the evil or you can find a way to push back against it, that’s the choice, Vita.
As she went farther into the trees, Vittoria pretended it was a mild summer night, and Carlo was lying with her in the soft grass behind the smaller of the two barns. She imagined he was running his hands over her bare breasts, kissing her the way he did—a mix of gratitude and awe, of passion and gentleness, as if the early years they’d spent so close to each other had woven a fabric in which they wrapped themselves now; as if the enormous distance between their lives had been shrinking over those years, glance by glance, word by word; as if, when their bodies were linked, finally, in the heat and sweat and excitement, fifty generations of difference had become same. In the rain, in the cold, in the fear, she clung to that image, to the memory of her mother’s voice, fought back hard against the swirling spirit of negativity, insisted to herself that she and her lover would be together again, in peacetime, in some new arrangement—not in the manor house, and not in the barn, but something else, something she couldn’t yet imagine. Yes, their adult lives had been lived in utterly different circumstances, but as little children they’d been able to connect with each other purely and simply as human beings, in a place beneath or beyond the roles in which society dressed them. Why couldn’t she and Carlo find—or make—a grown-up life in such a place?