Physically, Paolo thought, there was almost nothing left of the man beside him. Once the strong, quiet keeper of the vines and respected boss of all the field-workers, Gennaro Asolutto had moved into his midseventies and, no longer able to do much work, had descended—thin-armed, weak-backed—into an almost impenetrable silence. He ate, he slept, he relieved himself in the barn toilet or nearby trees, he rode the wagon into the fields now and again to keep the others company and divert himself. Most of the rest of the time he sat out in the courtyard on a flimsy metal chair, watching the birds and squirrels and running rosary beads through his fingers. There were times now, since Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler, since the start of the war, when Paolo almost envied him. When he did speak, however, Asolutto seemed to be offering, with a few quiet words, wisdom of a fine vintage, thoughts that had been fermenting in a dark keg for years and had to be tasted the way a succulent glass of wine was tasted, carefully, thoughtfully, with gratitude. “It seems the war is coming to us,” Paolo said, quietly enough so that those behind them couldn’t hear. “The DellaMonica workers say part of Sicily has already been taken.”
For a few minutes he thought Asolutto hadn’t heard. The old man kept his eyes forward, head bobbing up and down with the bouncing of the wagon, lips dry and pursed. He was either thinking of an answer or about to fall asleep.
At last he spoke: “è importante ciò che si dice.” It’s important, what is said.
Paolo watched the rumps of the two horses, one black, one brown. He listened to the sound their hooves made on the gravel, a pleasant clop, clop that had always soothed him. He smelled the moist earth of the forest they were passing through. And he moved Asolutto’s words around and around in his mind, trying to understand what the old man was saying.
“Meaning what, Gennaro?”
Another stretch of silence. “Il Duce talks and talks, but words are not air. Words have weight. They’re not air.”
“Meaning what?”
“Words reach into people’s minds. Words draw people toward war.” Another long pause, and then Asolutto made a sound that was almost a syllable of laughter, and said, “Some good person should kill the bastard.”
Paolo looked over his shoulder to see if any of the three women behind him had heard. Somebody should kill the bastard, he thought. As if Mussolini were close by. As if they were going to listen to him give a sermon at the church. Or, as if, earlier that morning, the beak-nosed man standing behind the big stone had instructed him to kill Mussolini instead of someone else.
“You know war,” Paolo said.
Asolutto grunted.
Paolo hesitated. “I never asked. Did you kill anyone in the first war?”
The older man was quiet for so long that Paolo was sure he’d taken offense. “Sì,” Asolutto said at last. “And when you kill another person, you kill a part of yourself. Your soul bears a stain afterward. Forever.”
Gennaro Asolutto retreated into his silence. The gravel road merged with the cobblestone streets on the village outskirts, and after a short, bumpy ride and two more turns, Paolo pulled the wagon up in front of the church, beside other, smaller wagons, and tied the horses to an iron ring buried in the curb there. He helped Asolutto down, helped brush the straw from the children’s Sunday clothes, and they all made the sign of the cross and filed inside.
The church’s walls were made of odd-shaped stones the size of melons and potatoes and loaves of bread, and broken, high up on either side, with six stained-glass windows that admitted a weak light. The nave was filled with a dozen rows of dark pews, mostly empty, and one bank of flickering votive candles in tall, blood-colored glasses. The church’s only treasure was a marble sculpture of Mary, pure white, that stood to the left of the altar as they faced it. Where the beautiful sculpture had come from, Paolo had no idea, but Mary was lifted slightly off the ground, and below her, reaching up their arms and hands and trying to take hold of the Blessed Mother, were two men, two women, and two children. From their faces, hands, and clothing, Paolo sensed they were working people, peasants, contadini, and, like the music of the horses’ hooves, the sculpture had always afforded him a peculiar comfort.
No large framed paintings of saints and angels on the walls, no golden candlesticks, no gold-trimmed marble altar rail—Santa Serafina was nothing like the churches he’d seen on deliveries to Florence, Naples, and Rome. But, modest though it was, the building had always felt to Paolo like an anteroom of heaven. The former priest there, Father Xavier, had left under mysterious circumstances, disappeared one day without warning or explanation. He’d been replaced by a younger priest, Father Costantino, a secretive man, brilliant but unpredictable, a puzzle. And now, in Paolo’s life at least, the new arrival had grown to be much more than a priest, a man who gave orders, who risked lives, who knew things about the war, about politics, about life, that floated far over Paolo’s head. Usually, the weekly service was Paolo’s time of rest and peace after a hard week of labor. Today, no. Today, after the early-morning conversation behind the altar rock, he felt battered by the whispering demons of doubt. The stones of the walls were accusing him. Even Asolutto’s words had seemed aimed at him: Was it ever right to kill another human being? Did anything ever justify that? Did words always lead, eventually, to murder and sin, and so was it wiser to remain silent?