A Harvest of Secrets(59)

The other, a tired old man.

The car seemed tired, too. When Antonio fired its engine to life, the noise echoed so loudly in the trees that Paolo worried every Nazi and Fascist in the entire province could hear it. They bumped away slowly down the road. At the first intersection, three roads converging, Antonio made a very sharp right turn and looped back, south, in the direction of Città della Pieve. Once they were on that road, rough and little-used, Paolo had the most terrible sense of being trapped. He’d been connected to the vineyard all these years, all his life in fact. Tied to it. Unable to leave. But in spite of that, and in spite of the unchanging work schedule, he’d enjoyed a certain amount of freedom. He could hunt on Sunday mornings, walk the fields or take the boys fishing on a holiday afternoon, sit up with Carlo or Gennaro or Giuseppe playing briscola after supper on Saturday. Now, he was trapped as surely as any animal ready for slaughter. The war had trapped him, trapped all of them. He watched the dark trees pass, and remembered Father Costantino gesturing him into the back room after Mass—when was it? Three months ago? He could picture the young priest standing very close, facing him, placing a hand on the top of his left shoulder. He could hear him saying these words, quietly, almost smiling, “Old Paolo, Christ would not want us to stand quietly by while the forces of evil are threatening our country, while others are being hurt and killed. Would He?”

“No, Father.”

“Then will you work with us?”

“What kind of work, Father? Repairing the church?”

A laugh, almost a snort. Father Costantino closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head in a way that made Paolo feel foolish. “Secret work, Paolo. Against the Nazis. Against Il Duce. Will you join us?”

That had been the start of it, that “Yes, Father, if you want me to, I will.”

Would he report what he saw on the roads when he made his deliveries? Yes, Father. Would he carry a note for a shopkeeper in Pisa and hand it to him when no one could see? Yes, Father. Would he let the priest know if he had any Jewish acquaintances, so the church could help protect them? Yes, Father, of course. Would he make sure to relay what people were saying about the bombing in Montepulciano? Were they upset at the Allies? Were they angry?

Yes, Father. Of course, Father.

The man was a priest, after all. A man of God.

But then: Would he take this package and, late at night, slip into the courtyard and tie it to the exhaust pipe of the visitor’s fancy American car? Would he bomb the train tracks near Chiusi?

That first yes had caught him like a rabbit in a trap. One foot was enough. Every yes after that had dragged him further and further away from the simplicity and straightforwardness of his old life, the rabbit dragging the trap across a field, in pain, afraid of being killed. And now here he was, riding in a rattling Fiat with a stranger, at midnight, the barn empty of people, the vineyard waiting for another visit from the SS, a bomb wrapped in paper and tied with twine sitting in his lap.

They were deep in the trees now, enveloped in darkness, the road visible only because a slice of moon made the sky above them half a shade lighter than the trees to either side, and because the Fiat had one feeble working headlight. It wasn’t a well-traveled route, not one Paolo had taken since the days when he’d brought Carlo and some of the other youngsters to a certain part of the River Chiana on fishing trips. A decade ago. On those trips, taken always on holidays when they had a full free day, a lot of people were out, and they’d been able to hitch rides in both directions. Then and now, there were no houses along this road, just stone walls and fences that marked the property lines of hidden estates. The headlamp blinked and went out, came on again. Antonio was spewing curse words under his breath, taking the Lord’s name in vain, swearing in Italian and muttering in some dialect Paolo didn’t know.

Antonio went along as quickly as the road and darkness would allow, trying to avoid the deepest holes and ruts, the windows open and the tires making soft splashing sounds in the wet dirt, crunching sounds where there was gravel.

“We are going now to damage the train tracks, yes?” Paolo asked, because the man beside him made him terribly uneasy. From the moment he’d first seen Antonio’s face—the huge curved nose, the mop of hair, the big jaw, the narrowed eyes—he’d felt like he was looking into the mouth of a volcano, all fire and smoke and tremendous heat. He wondered what must have happened to the young man in order to have made him so incredibly angry. He wondered, not if Antonio had ever killed anyone, but how many people he’d killed. And he wondered how a girl like Eleonora could be attracted to such a person.

“Not exactly,” Antonio answered after a few seconds, and in such a murderous tone that Paolo felt as if someone had taken hold of the back of his neck with freezing fingers. He thought about it for a few seconds, assessing the mood, the tone of voice, the strange midnight errand. And then he understood. It was a pretend assignment, an elaborate trick. The package in his lap, securely tied, could be nothing more than a piece of oak, a metal money box filled with sand, a square stone. So this was the way they were going to kill him: take him into the woods late at night, shoot or stab him, and leave his body to rot there by the side of the road in a place where no one would find it for weeks. Clearly, Eleonora had been aware of this plan and had fed him one last, exquisite meal as if in apology. So it must be then that she and her Antonio worked for the Nazis. Or that they suspected him of working for the Nazis. Either way, they’d decided it was time to eliminate him.