A Harvest of Secrets(55)

Now, walking beside Enrico, making the calculations he always made about how long each job would take, Paolo felt the shadow of impossibility sweep over him. He was tired already, wearied by the drama of the early morning. How was he going to find the energy to complete the vendemmia and bottle the wine? And then he thought, What does it matter? If the Nazis came again, they’d steal every case they could load onto a truck, then kill him, smash the rest of the bottles, shoot holes in the kegs, and burn down the manor house. Producing the next SanAntonio vintage, the goal that had pushed him out to work every morning of his life, would never happen. It was something he’d always been proud of, producing the vintage and then driving the truck with SANANTONIO painted on its side to shops in the great cities, the shopkeepers, workers, and ordinary people watching for him, looking on as he and Carlo or he and Giuseppe carried in the cases. Sometimes people would line up to buy the wine before the truck had even been emptied. Gone now. Finished. All ruined, and why? Because he’d listened to the priest and the man with the beak for a nose and killed the Signore’s friend with some kind of homemade bomb. How could he have been foolish and evil enough to do such a thing? And why had the priest needed to have it done?

For a moment, he stood and looked at the unharvested wheat, and then he and Enrico uncovered the scythes they’d left there and set to work.

Just after noon, Paolo saw Eleonora driving the wagon down toward them from the crest of the hill. She looked nervous with the reins in her hands but was doing a capable job. Beside her on the seat was a basket with a napkin over it, and, held tightly between her knees, a pitcher he hoped was filled with cool water. She brought the wagon to a stop, and Enrico went over and rubbed his hand along Ottavio’s flank, talking to the horse in quiet tones, as if they were both mourning his lost stablemate.

The three of them sat together in a bit of shade and ate and drank. Bread, cheese, the good salami that was usually reserved for the Signore’s table, well water so beautifully cool on the humid day that it caused a film of droplets to form on the sides of the clay pitcher. When he was finished eating, Enrico wandered off for a time, searching for nuts in the woods, or peeing there, or praying, or seeking out the spirits he claimed he saw and listened to. He lived by imitation, yes, Paolo thought, but from time to time his own beautiful uniqueness broke through the mask, and Enrico would do something no one else did: he’d walk the fields toward Cortona, singing, always finding his way home by nightfall; he’d pound a stone on the shirt of a deserting Nazi; he’d break open walnuts in his strong hands, use his teeth to remove the meat, and end up with walnut oil on his face and fingers and have to be reminded to clean it off with the juice of a lemon.

Eleonora was sitting in the grass not far from Paolo, her legs bent sideways beneath her, with the skirt pressed down between her knees, and a crumb of bread clinging to one side of her mouth.

“Why did you stay,” Paolo asked her, “when Cinzia and the others left?”

She shifted her dark eyes to him and brushed the crumb from her face with two fingers. “Antonio.”

The boyfriend. She was risking her life for love. It made him like her even more. “I’ve never met him.”

“Yes, you have, Paolo. He said he spoke to you. Behind l’altare.” She hooked her second finger and put it up in front of her nose and smiled at herself.

“Ah, yes. He terrified me.”

“He said how brave you seemed. And how strong. You frightened him, as well.”

Paolo laughed and looked at the sheaves they’d been able to collect. Six of them. In four hours of work. Harvesting the rest of the field would take them until Christmas. “I see from the wagon that the Signorina returned.”

“One hour ago. She’s with her father.”

“Yes. Her father,” he said sadly.

“He was shouting. She was shouting back.”

“Ah.”

“After I serve them, I’ll cook you supper and bring it out to the barn. Cinzia’s gone, so it will take me a long time.”

“You’re not afraid? That the Germans will come back?”

“I am, yes,” she said, twirling a braid in one hand, flipping it back over her shoulder, then fixing her eyes on him. “I have a favor.”

“Ask.”

“Antonio wants to stay in the barn tonight. With me. Maybe for a few nights. Then we’ll decide, you know, what to do.”

“Of course,” Paolo said, but if Eleonora left, too, how would he live? Cook for himself, something he’d never done. Serve the Signore his meals?

“And you’ll be staying?”

Paolo nodded helplessly, and tried to hold himself back from asking Eleonora to reveal some of her secrets. Her Jewish mother had been taken by the Nazis, and she’d been brought up by the nuns in Bolzano—that much she’d told him. But how had she escaped her mother’s fate? And why had the nuns taken in a Jewish girl and then sent her to this estate, so far from them? And why had she arrived just at the time when the Signora had fallen ill? Coincidence, or part of some larger plan? And how had she met Antonio? And how had the priest recruited her? And why had she been the one to suggest that he, the simple old foreman, speak with the priest about the secret work? She was entitled to her privacy and her past, Paolo thought, just as he was, but he could sense, again, that an entire other world lay hidden beneath the world he understood. The vines, the wheat, the grapes, and then . . . something else bubbling below the surfaces of things. He was about to venture a question to her when he heard Enrico behind him, singing a Christmas carol, of all things, stopping to run his hand down the white slash on Ottavio’s face. “The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head,” he sang quietly. “The stars in the sky . . . the stars in his sweet head. The stars in the sky . . .”