Thirty-Three
That night, after eating the supper Eleonora brought him, a delicious meal fit for the table in the manor house （a cut of pork stuffed with figs and wrapped in prosciutto, with rosemary potatoes and escarole）， Paolo felt a wave of the most intense nervousness come over him. One of his teeth was loose, his face still sore. Tired from the day’s labor, he lay down for just a moment in the straw and, in spite of his worries, immediately fell asleep. He awoke to see a figure standing over him in the darkness, and realized that the figure was a man, and that the man had kicked the bottom of his right work boot to awaken him. For an instant, Paolo thought it was the German officer, but then he saw the enormous nose. He sat up.
“Time,” Antonio said.
In one hand he held a paper-wrapped package, the sight of which shoved Paolo back against a horrible memory.
“Yes, yes.” Paolo held an apology in his mouth—how could he have fallen asleep at such a time? And for hours, it seemed! He stood, brushed the straw carefully from his clothes, by habit, as if he were about to sit down to supper, or head off to Mass. At this late hour, the middle of the night, he was unused to being anywhere but in the bed in his upstairs room. The single exception had been the night he’d sneaked out, in the early hours, gone stealthily along the edges of the courtyard, and crawled on his back beneath the black Ford.
He’d been alert then, hyperalert, but now his mind felt dulled, as if thoughts were slogging through it in knee-deep mud.
Antonio handed him the package—like the last one, heavier than it looked. Terrified of dropping it, still half-buried in sleep, Paolo held the small bundle against his midsection with both hands and followed Eleonora’s lover out into the darkness and across the courtyard. It wasn’t until they reached the place where the courtyard narrowed onto a dirt road and headed into the trees that he saw the cream-colored Fiat there, leaning a bit to one side as if on a bad leg. This Antonio, this mysterious associate of Father Costantino, this frightening lover of the sweet Eleonora, had access to gasoline, to an automobile! He must have rich friends, or powerful friends, or friends who were thieves. The sight of the old car at the edge of the woods made Paolo’s hands begin to sweat. He and Antonio opened the doors, climbed in, and took their places—one of them, Paolo thought, a partisan, a soldier, young, strong, capable of finding an automobile and gasoline in wartime, and unworried, apparently, about driving a car along a lightless road with a bomb in the front seat.
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?