A Harvest of Secrets(48)

“We’re leaving, Paolo!” Marcellina almost shouted. “Today. Now!”

Paolo stood up. “You’ve gone crazy.”

“Staying here is what’s crazy! You heard the Nazi! He’s coming back! What do you think he’ll do then, play cards with you? He killed our horse. He would have killed you if Enrico hadn’t saved you. He promised to kill all of us, except me. And you want us to stay? And what? Wait to be raped? Tortured? Murdered? It’s because of the Germans you kept in the attic, that’s why!”

“He didn’t mention the Germans. He—”

“We had a meeting!” Costanza yelled. Both her son and daughter were weeping now. “Without you!”

“Who’ll do the work? The grapes . . .”

“Let the Signore and the Signorina do it!” Marcellina had started to cry, too, rivers down her cheeks, her mouth a shaking circle of grief. “You can come with us or stay and do it yourself, you and Enrico. We’re not going to wait here to die!”

“You’re crazy, Marcellina. Pazza! This is all crazy.” Paolo looked from one face to the next, searching for someone who’d agree with him. Costanza’s son, Gaetano, eleven or twelve, had his arms folded stiffly across his chest, and his lips pressed tight, but he was teary-eyed, Paolo could see it, and moved his eyes back to Marcellina. “And you’ll go where?”

Marcellina swung a heavy arm behind her, accidentally striking her daughter in the face, which only made the girl weep more loudly. “To Costanza’s sister. She works on a farm. North of Siena. They can keep us. Their men are gone, too. They need workers. It’s a three-day walk.”

“And Gennaro? How can he walk that far?”

“We’re taking the mulo for Gennaro.”

“Stealing it.”

“Taking it. When the war’s over, if we survive, we’ll come back and bring the mule with us.”

Paolo felt a furious hot rumbling inside his belly and chest. His whole body started to shake. He slammed both fists down so hard on the table that his mug of tea went over sideways. Tea on his eggs and bread, tea dripping onto his work boots. “I forbid it!” he yelled. Neck muscles, arm muscles, chest muscles, all tightened as if they would snap. “You’re betraying the family that feeds us, that has fed us forever. I won’t let you go! I’ll get my shotgun, I’ll—”

“And what?” Marcellina demanded. She’d stepped close to him now, so close he could have reached out and slapped her. “Shoot all of us?!” She pointed a thick, trembling finger at him. “You killed the Signore’s friend. Or you know who killed him. And look what trouble that brought us! Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” Paolo said, but his voice betrayed him, so he said it again. “Wrong.”

Marcellina laughed. A horrible sound, three harsh notes that erupted from her mouth in a spray of spittle. “You can come, Paolo,” she said from between her teeth. She wiped a sleeve across her lips. “Or you can stay here and die for your Signore. We gave everything for him, we’re not giving our lives.”

She glared at him for another two seconds, then whirled around and pushed past the others and out the door. Loaded down with their belongings, the rest of the workers followed. Only Gennaro Asolutto remained where he was, a cloth bag hanging by its strings from his gnarled left hand.

“How will you live, Gennaro? What will you eat?”

The old man shrugged, lifted the bag as if it contained a year’s worth of meals. His eyes were steady, but he seemed dazed, under a spell. For one long moment he stood facing Paolo, unblinking, and then he smiled sadly with just the corners of his lips and said, “Come with us, my friend. We work for an evil man.”

“I can’t, you know I can’t.”

Gennaro watched him through rheumy eyes. “These are ugly times,” he said, i tempi brutti, and he turned and shuffled away.

For a few minutes Paolo stood there, alone, listening. Out in the courtyard he heard the mule bray, as if, at last, after years of servitude, it had been granted its freedom. Someone came back inside and sprinted loudly up the steps, and he thought that maybe one of them—Gaetano, Costanza—had realized the foolishness of the plan and decided to come back. But then the footsteps pounded down the stairs. Paolo heard a woman’s voice call out, a child answer. Then silence.

He sat down hard in his chair. He stared in a dull trance at the hay bales, the stone-and-plank walls, the spilled tea, the eggs, the worn wooden handle of one of their pitchforks leaning in the corner. Crazy though she might be, Marcellina was leading the barn family in a way that, as foreman, he should have been leading them. But he had reasons for staying that they didn’t have. He would pay a price they didn’t deserve to pay. The long-disappeared old priest, Father Xavier, had been right: Sins are seeds. You plant them, then eat the fruit they produce.





Twenty-Eight

Vittoria sat down to dinner with the nuns—a simple, silent meal, all of them at two long tables. Afterward, she joined them for an hour of evening prayer and then was shown to one of the rooms that had been set aside for women who wanted to make a silent retreat for a few days. It had been nine years since she’d stayed in this building with her mother, and what struck her about the convent now, in contrast to the frenzy of the outside world, was the complete absence of drama. Three German army deserters had been brought to them—men within the enclosure! The risk involved!—and the nuns had acted as if Vittoria had brought nothing more than the cases of wine in the back of the wagon, or a few kilos of wheat.