Frozen in surprise for a few seconds, he at last found his voice and pretended not to understand the offer. “I can show you a few things about the vines, if you like. I can make it so they produce more, so the roots are healthier.”
“Show Ariana instead,” Bruno said, and then, obviously lying, “she works them, usually.” And with that he stood, brushed the dirt from his pants, and walked away.
The next morning, Carlo awoke to see a hard-boiled egg and a cup of weak coffee beside him in the barn, and, next to the food, the pair of clippers Bruno had been using the day before. It was a wordless acknowledgment: Here, you know the work better than I do. Please help us. Please consider staying with us. Carlo had never known his own father （A passing worker, his mother had told him. He left me with the great gift of a son. He blessed my life forever.） and for a short while, chewing the egg’s rich, crumbly yolk, and sipping the coffee, feeling the southern heat change the air of the barn, minute by minute, like water in a pot on a stove, he wondered what it would be like to put down his roots in Sicilian soil. Work he loved in a place where he could make a real difference, a devoted young wife, a father-in-law and mother-in-law instead of the emptiness of the barn in Montepulciano and the cold, grudging, strictly limited respect—a business arrangement—of Vittoria’s father. The war had left Sicily now, and probably wouldn’t return. The winters were milder, the food as good, the people kind. For a time, he sat there in the barn’s warmth, his belly full, the pain in the bones of his face almost gone, and contemplated the life that seemed to have been presented to him without his asking. All he had to do was say yes.
He could feel himself being drawn to that life, but at the same time a stronger force was tugging him north. Vittoria, of course, mainly, and the friendship with Old Paolo and Enrico. But something else, besides, something beyond logic and emotion. A kind of summons he could feel but not name. His fate, perhaps. His purpose and place on earth. He didn’t know exactly what it was. But he knew he’d have to make every possible effort to get back to her and to the vineyard. Every effort. If he made it back, and Vittoria had fallen in love with someone else, he’d decide then what to do. But he had an intuition that she’d wait for him, that she felt what he felt: they were part of each other’s destiny.
Later that same morning, he took the clippers and climbed up to the vines, tasting a few of the grapes as he walked, wincing at the flavor. It would soon be the end of summer, time for the harvest, not pruning, but here and there he clipped off a wandering vine, something that would suck energy from the fruit. He hadn’t been there long before he saw Ariana climbing toward him from the house, her sandals throwing up puffs of dust behind her. On her head she balanced a blue-and-white ceramic pitcher, steadying it with one hand. In the other hand, she held what turned out to be a dried fig. She came and stood beside him, let him drink from the pitcher, handed over the fig.
He twisted it in half and handed the other half back to her.
“My father said you could stay if you wanted to,” she said shyly.
Carlo nodded and looked away, the sweetness of the fig in his mouth, the sweet, imaginary life playing in his thoughts again, bumping up hard against the No of some interior counselor. Ariana’s dark eyes—so much like the eyes of her siblings—were fixed on him, a question. “You’re very young and beautiful,” he said at last. “I’m . . .” He brushed a hand up near his face.
“I don’t mind.” She watched him. “The young men here are brutti. Crude, awful. The women to them are like animals.”
“All of them?”
Ariana shrugged and turned her face away, and he watched a tear wander crookedly down one dusty cheek. He reached out and gently took hold of her wrist, but she wouldn’t look at him. “You have someone, I think,” she said, tilting her forehead north. “There.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m promised to someone, and she to me.” The tears were running down both Ariana’s cheeks now, a cascade of sorrow. You’ve known me for only a few weeks, he wanted to say. It’s an infatuation. But there was something so perfectly sincere about her, such a cool, pure well-water of feeling, that he couldn’t make himself speak. At last he brushed the tears from her face, took her hand, put the clippers there, and said, “I can show you how to make the grapes better. For your family,” but she was sobbing openly now, and the words felt like dust in his mouth.