Among Vittoria’s long list of regrets was the fact that she’d never thought to have a deep discussion with her mother about politics. A remark here and there—We have too much, Vittoria, too much!—and the radical Montepulciano soirees her mother loved and her father grumbled about, those were her only clues. It seemed to her that every family had its unspoken rules. In her family, her father imposed them: which subjects could be discussed, which publications and books could be brought into the house, which people one should speak to, or avoid.
Why had she always been so obedient?!
As they approached the crest of the last hill, Vittoria saw the buildings of the city appear, first the towers of two churches with their gray slate roofs, then four-and five-story homes coated with brown-and cream-colored stucco, and then, as they crested the rise and the horses’ hooves began knocking loudly on cobblestones, the smaller houses and shops on the outskirts. In the centro, the streets were narrow, steep in places, and she noticed that one whole block lay in ruins, stones and wooden beams scattered about, making the street resemble a room littered with a child’s broken toys. A smashed table with one good leg, a sofa torn in half, a bicycle wheel, the remains of a ruined radio console. Broken roof tiles. Water pipes bent like strands of straw. “What happened here?” she asked, then remembered Massimo Brindisi saying something about it at Sunday’s meal. The debris. The village priest coming out the back door dressed as a merchant.
“The bombs,” Paolo said. “The Allies. Mostly they try for the factories farther north—Torino, Milano, Genova. Sometimes they miss. Or they see a few army trucks parked together and think it’s a secret headquarters. Or they want to frighten them in other places.”
“Which ‘them’？”
“The Germans. The Fascists.”
Just as he finished pronouncing those words, almost spitting them, soaking them in disdain—tedeschi, fascisti—Paolo turned the cart off the main street, made a short detour to avoid the rubble, and pulled the horses to a stop in front of an elegant stone house, four narrow stories with wrought iron balconies, fruit trees, a small lawn with empty metal chairs set in a half circle, and behind, a yard that extended, front to back, across the whole block. A wrought iron gate guarded the entrance to the property. Beyond it she noticed a bespectacled Nazi officer standing on the house’s top step with his booted feet spread and his chin slightly lifted.
“You stay, Signorina,” Paolo said to her, using, as always, the formal Lei instead of the familiar tu. “Enrico and I will unload. Help me, Rico.”
Her brother and Old Paolo carried the first two cases through the gate, clasping the wooden boxes to their chests, bottles clinking. Up the walk and right past the officer they went, disappearing through the front door. The Nazi stepped aside but didn’t so much as glance at them. He was staring at Vittoria, and she sat still, feeling his eyes on her, praying silently, already cursing her father for making her take the trip. When the sixth and last load of cases was being carried in, the officer trotted down the steps, strode along the walk, through the gate, and came up close against her side of the wagon.
“Che bello donna,” he said in his mutilated Italian. The sunlight reflected off his thick lenses at such an angle that she couldn’t see his eyes. “My name is Tobias,” he said, and Vittoria thought, As if I care. He reached out a hand and rested it on top of her right thigh. She slid sideways, but he held on, massaging the muscles through the cloth of her dress.
“My brother will kill you,” she said, but, twisted by fear, the words came out in a squeak.
“Really?”
“Really.” She jerked her leg sideways, away from him. “With a pitchfork,” she said. Con un forcone.
The officer was grinning. He squinted at her—he didn’t know the word—then turned the corners of his lips down as if admiring her courage, or mocking it. “Every time now you come? With the wine?”
She shook her head side to side.
“I visit you then. In your house. Where the famous wine is made. SanAntonio Vineyard. We know it.”
Paolo and Enrico were coming down the walk, approaching the left side of the wagon. The German, standing on the opposite side, took a step back, and she could see his eyes now. He winked at her and turned away. Paolo and Enrico climbed into their places, and, as they were starting off again, Vittoria felt the contents of her stomach rising into the back of her mouth. She leaned over the side and vomited onto the stones.