Her mother shook her head. “I haven’t the strength. And, in the end, as I now see clearly, those things don’t matter very much. What matters is what I feel for you and your brother. It is, I think, what religious people must feel for God. A sense of having been given an incredible gift, and of being willing to give anything and everything back in return.”
Her mother closed her eyes tiredly. Vittoria waited, wanting more, but feeling that the air around them was as fragile as the thinnest glass. Any word might shatter the moment. She watched her mother’s chest rise and fall, the plate with the uneaten slices tilting on the tops of her thighs. Vittoria reached out and took the plate and napkin and set them on the night table, waiting, watching. At last, her mother opened her eyes, and the gaze there seemed to contain both death and something beyond death. Vittoria felt a tremor pass through her. Her mother smiled, wearily, and said four words Vittoria had been pondering ever since: “The surfaces fool us.” And then she closed her eyes again, too tired to go on.
Vittoria fell asleep thinking about her mother, woke up thinking about her mother, drank tea alone in the dining room （the nuns had risen long ago and were not to be seen）， and then, with the help of the one young nun who’d greeted her the day before, she set off in the wagon, still pondering those last words. A hundred questions rattled around in her thoughts. How had she not known that her mother had come here “many times,” as Sister Gabriella put it? Were those the times her father or one of the servants had told her, Your mother has gone to see her family in Salò or Your mother and a friend are taking a few days by the sea? Vittoria wondered if all their years together inside the manor house had been wrapped in a fine quilt of lies, pretty new patches sewn on day after day, all of them hiding a thin stuffing of truth. How much do you know about your parents’ marriage? Sister Gabriella had asked. What a thing to say! What a question!
As she guided the horse along, Vittoria realized that her answer should have been: absolutely nothing. That she should have pressed harder for answers, for information, for the revelation of secrets. But she’d been so relieved to have gotten the Germans safely behind those walls, and so intimidated—a rare feeling in her life—by the mother superior, and the meeting had ended so abruptly . . .
She pushed the horse to go a little faster along the muddy road. Even though, beside the rolled-up and neatly tied tarpaulin （was there anything the nuns couldn’t do, any kindness they failed to observe?）， the back of the cart was now empty, she worried about meeting the police again, or, worse, a German patrol. The small pistol sat wrapped in the waterproof at her feet, a foolish thing, perhaps, but it gave her some comfort. She wanted to get home as quickly as she could and try to unravel the threads on the quilt of lies. To rip off the pretty patches, tear out the stuffing, see what was there.
Just as the cart emerged from the trees a few meters from the courtyard, the clouds swirled and parted enough to allow the sun to shine through in flashes. For a moment, Vittoria realized how beautiful the property was: the grand manor house and pair of barns, like a larger brother and smaller sister who’d grown old together; the wide slope reaching up to a stand of trees at its summit and covered with perfect rows of vines, with a small orchard of olive and hazelnut trees to one side, the unused cabin there, and a small copse of fruit trees to the other; the vegetable plot, the stone patio with its metal chairs and glass-topped table, her mother’s flower gardens. Sunlight brushed all of it, the golden tint dancing and disappearing, chased by patches of cloud shadow, and for a moment there was no war, no Mussolini or Hitler, no Nazis, no dark family secrets, no absent lover. For that brief moment she understood why her father was so attached to the property, and so proud of his stewardship. He hadn’t created the Vineyard SanAntonio, but he had preserved it, over decades, kept the luscious wines flowing from those kegs of Slavonian oak.
She drew the cart into the courtyard and tied Ottavio to the barn post, stepped inside and brought him a handful of hay and a bucket of water. The building was eerily quiet, the mule’s enclosure empty. She assumed Paolo had summoned all the workers to the field to finish the harvesting of the wheat, and just as Eleonora stepped out of the house, Vittoria was wondering if she should free Ottavio from the traces herself and lead him into the stable, rather than waiting for someone else—Marcellina, Costanza, or Paolo—to come and do it. She could tell instantly from Eleonora’s face that something was wrong. Her father, she thought it must be. Her father had found another pistol and finished the sinful job she’d interrupted.