And he realized that he must be only about twenty-five kilometers from the vineyard, from home.
Thirty-Seven
Vittoria sat alone at the huge mahogany dining room table, holding between her hands the note her father had left her. It had been written on their own stationery: heavy, cream-colored paper with a design of one small bunch of blue grapes centered on top, and VINEYARD SANANTONIO 1887 printed beneath it. There was no salutation, only this:
Enough gas in the truck. Leaving to stay with Vito in Viareggio.
All responsibility is yours now.
U.
U., she thought. Not “love,” not “be safe,” not even “your father.” Just U. For a moment, until she checked and saw the V. on the envelope, the tone of it made her wonder if Eleonora had misunderstood, and the note had been meant for someone else. Vittoria read it over a second time, a third, then set it flat on the tablecloth and turned her eyes out the window.
A loathsome idea occurred to her then, a whispered possibility that might as well have been a viper crawling between her feet. She tried, without success, to kick it away. Her father had sent her on the delivery to the SS house in Montepulciano when there had really been no need for her to go. When she’d told him what the Nazi captain had done, he’d seemed unsurprised, unconcerned. Then, after Massimo was killed, her father had called that same captain to come and investigate, and had said nothing to her about it, given her no warning. When she returned from the nunnery and went to see him, he’d seemed surprised, almost disappointed, that she’d made it back alive. Now he’d abandoned her without warning, left her there unprotected, knowing that the captain would almost certainly return. She imagined her father being stopped on the road to Viareggio and giving the Nazi salute to a pair of German soldiers, all thoughts of his daughter and son having already been left far behind.
The idea was so gruesome that she felt physically ill. Her whole being recoiled against it, but she couldn’t seem to escape the suspicion that her own father had wanted her dead, or worse. Or, a slightly less horrible option, that, involved in his own troubles, consumed by them, her father simply didn’t think about what might happen to her and Enrico, didn’t really care.
She answered a question or two from Eleonora, then left the note and her untouched breakfast on the table and walked in a daze, in a kind of deep mourning, out of the dining room, along the hallway, and through the front door. She stood on the patio for a moment, then crossed the courtyard and climbed the slight rise to the smaller of the two barns. Her father had taken the truck and left the barn doors wide open. She went around behind the building to the place where she and Carlo had made love, and she sat down in the soft grass there with her back against the wall.
How much do you know about your parents’ marriage? Sister Gabriella had asked.
She knew a little more now. A little more about who her mother had been, and a little more about who her father was. It seemed to her that they were the perfect representation of the rift in Italian society: change, however naive and vengeful, versus tradition, however unjust and rigid. Thinking about her parents’ marriage, it occurred to her that human beings were always striving for power over one another, a murderous dominance. And that love was the only force in the universe running counter to that. She thought of Enrico, and how the last thing he ever seemed to want, the very last thing, was to have power over another person. And people pitied him!
She put her palms down flat on the grassy earth to either side of her, as if to take hold of the fleeting minutes she and Carlo had enjoyed there, a bond they’d forged against every unspoken rule of Italian history. How like her own mother she’d turned out to be! She composed another letter for Carlo in her mind but could not imagine finding the strength to write it.
She swore an oath to herself then: if the Good Lord would bring him back to her alive, she’d use every last drop of her strength to nurture and protect the love between them. They’d make a new nation of two—fair, generous, based on kindness and mutual respect, not dominance, not riches. She made the sign of the cross and swore the oath upon her mother’s soul, and sat there imagining that love, that future, until she heard Enrico’s voice and then the plaintive squeak of the wagon wheels.
Thirty-Eight
When Paolo awakened—later than usual—on the morning after his trip to the railroad tracks, his first thought was that, in spite of everything that held him to the vineyard, now was the time to leave. Marcellina had been right: the chances were good that the Nazis would return. It was impossible to forget what Antonio had told him the night before about Father Costantino, impossible to forget the feeling of the officer’s pistol aimed at his forehead, the spark of evil in the man’s eyes, the way, without hesitating for an instant, he’d turned and shot three rounds into Antonina’s body. Probably the only reason he hadn’t killed all of them on that night was because he worried about who the Signore might know—a German general who loved his wine?—and what kind of trouble that might bring a lowly captain. But, if what Antonio had said was true, then the Signore sympathized with the Germans. And, if what Eleonora had told him was true, then the Nazis had executed twenty Italians because of an insult. So what was to keep the men from returning, lining him and Eleonora and Enrico up against the wall, and shooting them as if they were just more horses in a barn?