A Harvest of Secrets(68)

Eleonora checked to see that Enrico was too far away to hear, met Paolo’s eyes, and said, “The Signore left.”

“Left where?”

“Us.”

Paolo shifted his eyes to Antonio, moved his head far enough to see Enrico, then looked back to Eleonora, as if she might be able to tell him what astonishing thing would happen next. Eleonora was watching him closely. “I brought breakfast to the dining room this morning,” she said. “Only the Signorina was there. I handed her the note her father had given me, and when I returned”—Eleonora demonstrated by moving her palms to either side of her face and holding them there, not quite touching her cheeks—“the Signorina’s face was puffy. Her eyes were wet. She was holding the note in her hands. I asked her what was wrong, and she looked up at me as if from a dream. ‘My father went away,’ she said. ‘He took the truck and went away.’”

“But he’ll come back.” Paolo swung an arm toward Enrico, then in the other direction. “He has to come back. His children are here. His grapes.”

Eleonora shook her head. “He went to his friend in Viareggio, the Signorina said. She said her father had left her in charge. She said she didn’t think he was coming back.”

Paolo couldn’t make himself move.

Enrico let out a sound and shouted, “Lepre!” A moment later the hare he’d startled and nearly sliced in half came hopping past them and scurried under the wagon. “A rabbit, Paolo!” the boy called.

“Sì, sì,” Paolo called back, but his mind was spinning.

Eleonora asked him exactly what he’d been about to ask her: “Now what do we do?”

Paolo raised his eyebrows and looked around. The fact of the Signore’s departure was settling in his thoughts and hardening there into a shape. The shape was like a concrete box with all the past in it. All the work, all the years. Leaving the wheat unharvested didn’t matter now. Even the idea of letting the grapes rot on the vines no longer mattered.

He looked up from his trance and saw the young couple watching him. “We should leave, too,” he said, “before they come back.” The words were like blood in his mouth. Almost to himself he added, “But the Signorina and Enrico have to come with us. We have to convince them to come.”

“Let them save themselves,” Antonio said angrily.

Paolo was shaking his head. The rabbit sprinted out from its hiding place and went hopping across the harvested section of the field. Enrico watched it go and laughed.

“Maybe the Signore left because he knew the Nazis were coming back,” Eleonora said. “We should hurry.”





Thirty-Nine

Carlo barely had the energy to climb the thickly forested hills that marked the landscape east and north of Chiusi. He was unbearably hungry, dry-mouthed still, despite the few handfuls of river water, and he hadn’t slept more than a few hours for each of the past three nights. He knew where he was. And he knew that, if he’d had enough food and sleep over the past month, he would have been strong enough to walk to the vineyard by nightfall. But, as it was, he could barely put one foot in front of the other on the uphill stretches, and his legs wobbled and trembled as he descended.

The sun had already moved up and over the treetops behind his right shoulder—he was using the moving shadows of the trunks as a kind of compass. To his left and far below, he could hear the occasional truck engine. In better times, he would have made his way down to the road, stood there and held out his thumb, and no doubt would have been home by supper. But he was certain the Germans had found out about the derailed train by now and would be scouring the nearby countryside for every escaped Jew they could find. So he stayed deep in the trees, grateful there was no open farmland here and wouldn’t be until he drew closer to Pozzuolo. Having fished the streams that flowed into Lake Trasimeno, he knew the territory fairly well. Soon enough, he’d find water to drink, at least, and, if he had to, he could sleep for part of the night and cross the open fields—the last part of the walk home—in darkness.

At some point, weary beyond weariness and moving more slowly with each hour, he came upon a row of wild grapevines, so old and so evenly spaced he wondered if they might have been planted by the Romans. They’d turned color, mostly, but were a week shy of full ripeness. It didn’t matter in the slightest. They were a gift, as if the fruit he’d cared for so lovingly all those years was coming to aid him in his hour of need. He sat and ate two bunches, swallowing the pulp and chewing all the bitter nourishment from the skins before spitting them out.

When he was done, he couldn’t help himself—he lay back in the dirt and fell instantly asleep.





Forty

They rode back toward the barn together in the wagon, three of them silent, Enrico noisily confused. “We’re supposed to work the wheat! We have to work the wheat, Paolo!” he cried out several times, and Paolo couldn’t think of a way to tell him that the plan for the day had changed because his father had abandoned him without so much as an arrivederci. In any case, he knew Enrico well enough to understand that the emotion in the boy’s voice had little to do with the interrupted wheat harvest. When something upset him—especially something as terrible as the days he’d just lived through—he’d shriek and weep and smash a stone against a Nazi shirt, or dig holes in the ground, furiously, in random locations. The emotion would sink deep into him, be covered over by an energetic happiness for a while, and then resurface, as it had now, in something apparently unconnected.